We Must Nurture A Society With A Passion For Knowledge And Ideas

THE Sorbonne is located in the Quartier Latin (Latin Quarter), a historic centre of intellectual life in Paris. Just opposite the Sorbonne on rue (street) Saint-Jacques is the demanding Lycée Louis le Grand, where the founding President of Senegal, Leopold Sedhar Senghor, and the Caribbean intellectual Aimé Césaire (Frantz Fanon’s mentor) completed high school.

Adjacent to the Lycée Louis-le-Grand is the Collège de France where Michel Foucault used to teach and his teaching notes have become a reference point for sociologists, political scientists and intellectuals tout court. A few metres away is the Panthéon, hosting in its necropolis the remains of outstanding Frenchmen and women, including philosophers such as Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo, writer Alexandre Dumas, and Nobel scientists Marie and Pierre Currie who created the theory of radioactivity. A few steps from the Panthéon is the rue d’Ulm, which houses the prestigious École Normale Superiéure where Raymond Aron and Jean-Paul Sartre, (two lifelong philosophical adversaries) met and studied. Let me add that north facing the Panthéon is a horde of cafés, bistros and tea salons where students hold their ‘pot’ to celebrate masters and doctoral theses defended successfully. It is also the location of the Café Soufflot (named after Jacques-Germain Soufflot, the neoclassical architect of the Panthéon): a café where Jean Paul Sartre and his equally intellectually omnipotent girlfriend, Simone de Beauvoir, would have philosophical debates with their friends. I provide this Latin Quarter tapestry as an entry point to argue the thread in a society’s passion for ideas and knowledge and how they get ingrained in the life of a given society across generations. Ordinarily, in a normal country, I may not need to put into perspective the importance of France or French intellectuals in the history of ideas, including those that shaped the world and revolutions. Such would be accepted as historical facts, notably by the educated class. Nor would I have to justify why I quote some of the most prolific and consequential French intellectuals of their time. But I write for a Namibian audience and the tone of this audience demands that I have to apologise on occasion, as I am doing now, not only for the time that I spent at the Sorbonne in the Latin Quarter, but also for quoting intermittently Aron, Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu etc. In short, I must apologise to the ‘educated segments’ of this population my passion to share ideas and importantly having them contested by the broader public. It is this pathology, (the disregard for knowledge, ideas and their importance in dynamic societies) that was last week evident in the letter of a certain CBH, headlined ‘Post-Scriptum Ad Nauseam’. (By the way, I would have expected him to use Ad Nauseam in its proper context). Nonetheless, the likes of CBH believe that education must be myopically and opportunistically at the service of the ruling elite. In this process, they seek to nurture a society that views degrees as a process of getting a job and not as a means to fundamentally transform and contest society. Yet, education and the passion for knowledge and the critical thinking inherent in knowledge must be the essence of a progressive society. It is why in France, prolific intellectuals (architects, writers, scientists) enjoy cult status and that would explain why a good number have their remains interred at the Panthéon. Also, in life, they are part of state dinners, the entourage and official travels of the head of state. Just last year, when George Bush visited Gordon Brown, they had dinner with historians. Undoubtedly, it is this embrace of ideas and knowledge and the dynamism inherent in such societies, which explains why Singapore (a small country in global terms) remains one of the most significant economies in the world. Niko Bessinger, the late architect and politician, would have said that the difference between Singapore and Namibia lies in the quality of the people, including leaders: Singapore has educated people and it is a society that embraced ideas and knowledge pretty early as the key to competitiveness. Lee Kuan Yew, the founding PM of Singapore, is an Oxford graduate and he believes that Singapore must become better than Paris. By celebrating the best among us, we are likely to push our society upwards. Knowing this, it shocks me when the likes of CBH ignore this element in all we do and how we frame the public discussion. It is a disservice to society when CBH with ‘degrees’ speaks of intellectuals and the university in a reckless sense as ‘ivory towers’, disconnected from daily life. It does suggest that the value of education and the ideas that ought to flow from a university have not yet intrinsically been internalised in a larger context. Nor have we understood the real purpose of intellectual life in the development of a country. To conclude, I don’t advocate recreating the Quartier Latin, but its history, its intellectuals and its vitality is something that should inspire our small nation. After all, there are no shortcuts to progress, and there is no society in world history that developed sustainably without nurturing a passion for knowledge and ideas. I don’t see how we can be an exception to this rule. * Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow in political science at the University of Paris- Panthéon Sorbonne, France.