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Diversity vital to our knowledge
By Diona Fay Howard
Published: Tuesday, November 1,
2005
"Hello
class, welcome to intellectual heritage 51. Can anyone tell me
what intellectual heritage means?" says a Temple professor at
the beginning of each semester. A bold student ready to earn an A
for the course eagerly answers, "It means the legacy of great
thinkers and ideas in this world."
The professor gives a nod of approval and distributes the course
syllabus. When the eager student finally receives his syllabus,
his smile suddenly turns into a frown and he begins to question
the answer he provided a moment ago. "Why are we only
studying European philosophers?" Ironically, this young
student is not alone in questioning this situation.
Last spring, the Sankofa student organization - committed to
empowering the communities of people of African descent - in
collaboration with others, produced a list of demands they wanted
the university to address, with black scholarship in the
intellectual heritage courses included.
When sophomore Tyne Hunter reflected on how it made her feel as a
black student to not learn a sufficient amount of African and
minority scholarship within the university core courses, she said,
"I think the intellectual heritage courses as a whole seem to
diminish the intellectual works of many minority scholars. We only
study minority works in intellectual heritage 52 and, even then,
it is only three books crammed into a small period of time."
The works of people like Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King
Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi are included in the intellectual heritage
52 program, which is fine, but these individuals are not the only
minority thinkers. Students have been learning about them since
grade school as though they are the only thinkers of minority
descent. The college level is where less mainstream but equally
important philosophers should be studied.
Contrary to the common misconception, European and ancient Greek
philosophers were not the only seekers of wisdom and truth. In
intellectual heritage 51, students are introduced to Socrates,
Plato and Aristotle, but are denied the fact that these
philosophers were taught in Ancient Kemet (Egypt) under Egyptian
Mystery teachers.
As Innocent Onyewuenyi points out in his article, "Is there
an African Philosophy?" what American and European
institutions call Greek or Western philosophy is copied from
indigenous African philosophy of the "Mystery System."
Onyewuenyi also explains that many students are taught that
Socrates was the first person to say "Man know thyself?"
Unfortunately, people are not made aware that the expression was
commonly inscribed on Egyptian temple doors centuries before
Socrates was born.
Imhotep, an Egyptian, who is deemed as the "Father of
Medicine," was a philosopher, poet, scribe, chief lector,
priest, architect, astronomer and magician. He lived during the
Third Dynasty and served as adviser to King Zoser. According to
Phillip True Jr., "He urged contentment and preached
cheerfulness. His proverbs contained 'philosophies of life.'
Imhotep coined the phrase 'Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we
shall die.'"
The Greeks identified Imhotep as their own god of healing and many
of his teachings were absorbed in the foundation of Greek culture,
True wrote in an essay published on nbufront.org.
However, as True said: "As the Greeks were determined to
assert that they were the originators of everything, Imhotep was
forgotten for thousands of years [as] a legendary figure.
Hippocrates, [the ancient Greek physician] who came 2,000 years
after [Imhotep], became known as the Father of Medicine."
Works of philosophers such as Imhotep should be included into the
intellectual heritage curriculum. By doing so, Temple professors
would be pioneers in giving honor where it is due.
Excluding African philosophy but blatantly including mostly
European thinkers denies Africa the acknowledgement of its
meaningful contributions. Therefore, if the Egyptian Mystery
System never existed, would there be a Plato, Socrates or
Aristotle?
Certainly not!
Diona Fay Howard can be reached at dionafay04@yahoo.com.
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