Abstract

The symbiotic relationship between philosophy and literature has a long history stretching back to the ancient Greek period. This perhaps is largely because these branches of knowledge share a common disciplinary boundary within the area of humanism. With the return to humanism by some contemporary movements in philosophy, this relationship has taken a methodological bent in which philosophical positions are driven home through literary forms. This essay demonstrates such a relationship by exploring the existentialist theme of authentic personhood in Femi Osofisan’s Tẹgọnni: An African Antigone (1994). The article situates Osofisan’s work within the broader theoretical perspective of the personhood debate in African philosophy. Using the eponymous heroine of the play as an instantiation of the existentialist theme of authenticity, the article argues—contrary to the dominant view in the discourse of African traditional thought, namely that personhood is constituted through alignment with the rules of the community—that the real marker of authentic personhood is the right deployment of an individual’s freedom in the achievement of self-conceived life goals. The article adopts the Sartrean existentialist theoretical framework as an evaluative apparatus to apply to the creative work. It concludes that, given the rich existential dispositions of Osofisan’s Tẹgọnni, the work qualifies as a philosophical memoir on human existence.

摘要

哲学与文学的共生关系源远流长，可追溯到古希腊时期。这可能主要是因为这些知识分支在人文主义领域内共享一个共同的学科边界。随着一些当代哲学运动回归人文主义，这种关系采取了一种方法论倾向，通过文学形式将哲学立场带回家。本文通过探索 Femi Osofisan 的Tẹgọnni：一个非洲安提戈涅中真实人格的存在主义主题来展示这种关系(1994)。这篇文章将 Osofisan 的工作置于非洲哲学中人格辩论的更广泛的理论视角中。文章以该剧的同名女主角作为存在主义真实性主题的实例，与非洲传统思想话语中的主流观点相反，即人格是通过与社区规则保持一致而构成的——真实人格的真正标志是在实现自我设想的人生目标时正确运用个人的自由。文章采用萨特存在主义理论框架作为评价工具应用于创作。它的结论是，鉴于 Osofisan 的Tẹgọnni丰富的存在主义倾向, 该作品堪称一部关于人类生存的哲学回忆录。