Abstract:

This contribution highlights how Immanuel Kant and Michel Foucault, both critics of Western Enlightenment, notably avoided confronting the Lumières’ slogan aude sapere by neglecting to examine its darker, enslaving aspects. They failed to address the Enlightenment question “what is happening right now, in the present” from the perspective of the enslaved men and women of their era. By disregarding these struggles for freedom and autonomy, both thinkers lacked the philosophical courage (parrhêsia) to denounce the European slave industry as a profound contradiction within the Enlightenment project. Their silence and lack of extended empathy underscore how the Aufklärung fell short of fostering true maturity. I therefore contend that the nyamodo ontology of the Beti people of Central Africa, with its emphasis on humaneness, offers a powerful antidote to ideologies that enable barbaric immaturity, such as those underpinning the darker side of the Western Enlightenment.