Qu'est ce que l'homme ? Par Pierre Nzonzi

A. Remarques générales. Nous publions ce texte philosophique de Pierre Nzonzi. Nous passons le clair de notre temps au téléphone à discuter de philosophie. Hier par exemple, Pierre Nzonzi a soulevé une thèse très controversée : La tentation de la théologie à vouloir s’ériger en philosophie conduit à la violence politique. Dès qu’on accole un prédicat identitaire à la philosophie, et si en plus "la fonction pratico-sociale l’emporte sur la fonction théorique ou fonction de connaissance (Louis Althusser), la philosophie devient une idéologie. Philosophie allemande, philosophie bantu ? Non ! Puisque "l’homme est l’égal de l’homme" selon le préjudicat kongo, "Muntu wa fuana muntu" ou le préjudicat sango, "Zo kue zo", le Philosophe se rend au chevet des peuples qui croupissent partout dans le monde sous les chaînes. Tant qu’il n’aura pas achevé sa longue marche vers la rationalisation totale du réel, l’humanité ne sera pas libre. Suite dans la revue Kongo Kultur, vol. 1-2, janv. juin 2009

A. General remarks. We publish this Pierre Nzonzi's philosophical text. We spend of our time on the phone discussing philosophy. Yesterday for example, Pierre Nzonzi raised a controversial thesis: The temptation of theology to want to set themselves up in philosophy led to political violence. As soon as we tacked a predicate of identity to the philosophy, and if more "practical-social function outweighs the theoretical function or function of knowledge (Louis Althusser), philosophy becomes ideology. German philosophy, Bantu philosophy ? No! Because "man is the equal of man" as préjudicat Kongo, "Muntu wa fuana muntu" or préjudicat Sango, "Zo kue zo," the philosopher goes to the bedside of people languishing around the world in chains. Until it has completed its long march towards total rationalization of reality, humanity will not be free. Following in the journal Kongo Kultur, Vol. 1-2, Jan-June 2009

This question can disconcert us. Aren't we men? Why should  this question be raised ? Or if one can grant it, looking at the history does one not already to raise this question with Plato, Aristote, Descartes, and more close to us with Heidegger? All that is true. But it is urgent to rest it today. This question is not only what locates the man and the other beings of nature but it questions all philosophy not to say that it founds it. This question is in truth the bottom of philosophy. What is philosophy ? Is not the speech of the man on itself ? Its transcription of its nature ? It is there that it is necessary to come from there. Because our time is more progressist of all the history. It made considerable progresses on the communication, the world became a point where very of world can meet at least once. In medicine, in the knowledge of nature, never a time as went far as ours. There are still other things. But it is the time when the Lights were weakened, the men do not think any more because they forgot the man. Heidegger which had seen the problem well choked philosophy with its design To be it.

It is necessary to say the things in the name of the truth against our own friends said Aristote, allusion made to his friend and Master, Plato. In the same way ourselves let us must affirm this currency if we want to be philosophical. There is only the truth which determines the philosopher. Since the death of Hegel (1831), philosophy was withdrawn from its house, it is not more in its element, in spite of the efforts of Nietzsche and Husserl. Heideggger, we have just said it withdrew itself from philosophy. We needed Lévinas, but we did not see its subtlety well. He wrote through the lines. It is thus within this historical framework of philosophy that we try to bring back philosophy in its house. For this reason this question resounds with our ears. To wonder: what is  the man? It is again to hear the question : what is philosophy? Philosophy was abused by an ideology which made it unsuitable to itself. Some monopolized it to make the pride of their people, others to dominate the others. Incapacity where we are to think of dissecting philosophy, each one wanting to keep a piece for itself. Philosophy said Hegel is its history. It is not any speech. It is the speech of the man on itself, the speech of its characteristic to become. She says the man as her seeks to determine it. The man is not a man of people, of a tribe, of a race he is the man as a man and philosophy is its face. It is understood why philosophy determines all, the policy, science, today ecology. If somebody blows that a governor grows rich by wasting the richness by a country, he does not only think but wishes. Unconsciously he wants to put himself at the place of the other which he criticizes. But if it sometimes happened at somebody to think the State by comparing it to justice, the law in its inviolability, happiness in its communicability or the virtue, this one transcribed a cosmology being equivalent to the face of the man whom it imposes; this one, we will say thinks but does not wish. It is determined as a philosopher. The same if somebody plunges his hand in crowd to monopolize itself of it, this one perverts the statute of philosophy because it does not make any more philosophy but of the policy. Philosophy does not need crowd to be. This manner of being changing of the policy and not of the philosopher.
It is understood why it is very difficult to be determined today as a philosopher, the speeches which we hear here and there are there to only allure. Thus let us return to the question of the man : What is the man ?

Peter Nzonzi, more known under the name of Pieth Bernard

Translator : M'Boka Kiese.

N'kondi (statuette à clous).