African Art as Philosophy Senghor, Bergson, and the Idea of Negritude

This critically acclaimed study offers a distinct, incisive look at how Senegalese philosopher Senghor sees in African art the most acute expression of Bergson’s philosophy.

Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001) was a Senegalese poet and philosopher who in 1960 also became the first president of the Republic of Senegal. In African Art as Philosophy, Souleymane Bachir Diagne uses a unique approach to reading Senghor’s influential works, taking as the starting point for his analysis Henri Bergson’s idea that in order to understand philosophers, one must find the initial intuition from which every aspect of their work develops. In the case of Senghor, Diagne argues that his primordial intuition is that African art is a philosophy.

To further this point, Diagne looks at what Senghor called the “1889 Revolution” (the year Bergson’s Time and Free Will was published), as well as the influential writers and publications of that period—specifically, Nietzsche and Rimbaud. The 1889 Revolution, Senghor claims, is what led him to the understanding of the “Vitalism” at the core of African religions and beliefs that found expression in the arts.

Souleymane Bachir Diagne is Professor of Philosophy and Francophone Studies and Director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University. His books include The Ink of the Scholars: Reflections on Philosophy in Africa, Open to Reason: Muslim Philosophers in Conversation with the Western Tradition, African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson, and the Idea of Negritude, and Postcolonial Bergson.

Chike Jeffers is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Dalhousie University. He is coauthor of What is Race? Four Philosophical Views and translator of Aimé Césaire’s Letter to Maurice Thorez.