The Ink of the Scholars: Recovering Africa’s Philosophical Futures

Critical Review of Souleymane Bachir Diagne’s The Ink of the Scholars




By Bruce Lloyd *

Souleymane Bachir Diagne’s The Ink of the Scholars is a slim but ambitious volume. In just over a hundred pages, Diagne invites us to rethink the place of philosophy in Africa—not as an imported tradition, nor as folklore misunderstood as philosophy, but as a field with its own dense and plural histories. Drawing inspiration from the adage that “the ink of the scholars is more precious than the blood of the martyrs,” Diagne defends the vitality of scholarship as Africa’s most precious inheritance and its most necessary tool for imagining the future.

Themes and Contributions

The book moves across four thematic landscapes: ontology, time and development, intellectual history, and political philosophy.

Ontology: Diagne probes how African religions and aesthetics shape ideas of being, drawing on Bantu concepts of “vital force” and the mediating role of language and translation.


Time: He emphasizes the importance of prospective thought—Africa must imagine futures, not simply remain trapped in colonial histories or discourses of underdevelopment.


Orality and the written word: Perhaps Diagne’s most forceful intervention is his reminder that Africa is not only an oral continent. The manuscript traditions of Timbuktu and beyond prove that Africa has always cultivated textual, critical, and systematic scholarship.


Political philosophy: Revisiting African socialisms and the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights, Diagne considers the stakes of communal values, justice, and democracy in an African key.

Throughout, Diagne balances the recovery of neglected archives with attention to contemporary problems. The book reads as both a philosophical essay and a manifesto for African intellectual sovereignty.

Strengths

Diagne’s greatest achievement lies in mediating between false dichotomies: oral vs. written, local vs. universal, African vs. Western. He refuses to treat “African philosophy” as a monolith, instead highlighting plurality—Islamic, Christian, indigenous, Francophone, Anglophone—and insists that Africa has always been a space of cross-cultural dialogue. The manuscript cultures of Timbuktu, for instance, stand as powerful rebuttals to colonial narratives of Africa as “without writing” or “without history.”

Equally striking is his concern with time. Philosophers often neglect futurity, but Diagne insists that Africa must cultivate its own prospective thinking, its own philosophy of development and hope. In an era dominated by crisis narratives, this forward-looking gesture is refreshing.

Weaknesses and Silences

But Diagne’s brevity is both virtue and vice. Many arguments are sketched rather than worked through in depth. His reflections on ontology and temporality, for instance, could benefit from more sustained conceptual analysis.

Moreover, the book sometimes shies away from the sharper critiques raised by decolonial theory. Thinkers like Achille Mbembe or Valentin-Yves Mudimbe interrogate how colonialism invented Africa as an object of knowledge; Diagne, by contrast, leans toward reconstructive recovery rather than radical deconstruction. This makes his tone less polemical, but it can also feel less attuned to the structural violence of racial capitalism and epistemicide.

Comparison with Other African Philosophers

Placed alongside his contemporaries, Diagne’s voice is distinctive:

Like Paulin Hountondji, he resists the reduction of philosophy to ethnographic folklore, but where Hountondji stresses methodological rigor, Diagne emphasizes archival recovery.


Unlike Kwasi Wiredu, who advocates for “conceptual decolonization” within indigenous languages, Diagne embraces a plurilingual cosmopolitanism that favors translation and dialogue.


Compared to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s programmatic return to indigenous languages, Diagne is less militant: he sees cross-fertilization rather than linguistic separation as Africa’s path forward.


Against Mbembe’s radical critique of “Black reason,” Diagne offers hermeneutic repair: not dismantling categories of modernity, but re-inscribing Africa’s intellectual presence within them.

This comparative lens highlights Diagne’s position: he is neither radical deconstructionist nor nostalgic traditionalist, but a mediator seeking pluralist synthesis.

Feminist and Indigenous Knowledge Critique

Yet one of the book’s more glaring blind spots is gender. By recovering manuscript traditions dominated by male scholars, Diagne risks reproducing an archive that already excludes women’s voices. Feminist philosophers such as Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí remind us that knowledge is always gendered, and that women’s intellectual roles—oral traditions, healing practices, ritual expertise—must be recognized, not merely sidelined as “non-philosophical.”

Similarly, indigenous epistemologies—embodied knowledges of land, ecology, and community practice—barely enter Diagne’s narrative. His focus on texts and manuscripts risks marginalizing forms of wisdom that resist textualization. Here, indigenous critiques push further: philosophy should not only be translated into French or English but should also be produced in Yoruba, Wolof, Shona, or Dagara, with their own conceptual grammars intact.

Conclusion: Ink and Blood Today

The Ink of the Scholars is a vital corrective to narratives of Africa as a continent without philosophy. Its call to value scholarship over violence, manuscripts over martyrdom, remains urgent in a time when war and fundamentalism continue to destroy archives and silence intellectuals.

But the book is also an unfinished project. It needs feminist recovery strategies, indigenous knowledge methodologies, and deeper decolonial engagement to fully realize its promise. Diagne gives us an invitation more than a conclusion: to read more widely, to translate more carefully, and to imagine African philosophy not as an appendage of Western canons, but as a rich, plural, and forward-looking field in its own right.

In that sense, the book is both a mirror and a provocation. It shows us what Africa has already been, and dares us to imagine what African philosophy might still become.

* Bruce Lloyd is a member of the Scientific Council of the Alternative Planetary Futures Institute (Ap-Fi). Book review was developed with help from ChatGPT.

The Ancient Fear of Future Leaders and the AI Age of Suppression

 

Across civilizations, one of the deepest fears haunting rulers has been the rise of a challenger—someone destined to undermine their authority and alter the course of history. From the Pharaoh’s attempt to destroy Moses in the biblical Exodus to Zahak’s murderous purge in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, ancient narratives reveal a recurring pattern: the deliberate elimination of children who might grow into transformative leaders. These tales of cruelty and prophecy echo through time, not merely as myth or scripture but as timeless lessons about the psychology of power. Today, in the digital age, the methods have changed, yet the underlying dynamics persist. Artificial intelligence, wielded by authoritarian regimes, is becoming the new tool to preemptively suppress potential leaders—not by killing infants, but by systematically disabling dissenters before they can rise.

Pharaoh, Moses, and the Politics of Infanticide

The story of Moses begins in an empire built on fear. Pharaoh, warned of a prophecy that a Hebrew child would grow to liberate his people, ordered the mass killing of Hebrew male infants. In his mind, killing children was not cruelty but “preventive governance”—a desperate attempt to crush leadership before it emerged. Yet fate defied him: Moses was hidden, protected, and raised within Pharaoh’s own household, ultimately returning as the liberator he feared most.

Zahak, Fereydon, and the Fear of Prophecy

A similar drama unfolds in the Iranian epic Shahnameh. The tyrant Zahak, warned that a child named Fereydon would someday overthrow him, unleashed a reign of terror against infants. Entire families, including those of humble blacksmiths, suffered loss as the tyrant sought to strangle destiny at its root. Fereydon, however, survived in hiding, nurtured away from the regime’s gaze, and later rose to fulfill the prophecy. Just as in Exodus, the tyrant’s paranoia could not outmaneuver the power of hidden resilience.

From Infanticide to Algorithmic Suppression

Today’s despots rarely need to spill blood in the same way. The tools of control are not swords but servers, not daggers but datasets. Artificial intelligence, in the hands of autocratic regimes, plays a chillingly familiar role: identifying, monitoring, and neutralizing those who might rise as leaders of opposition.

AI-driven surveillance systems scan faces in real time, tracking activists at protests. Predictive policing algorithms flag individuals as “future threats,” creating digital blacklists that shape their opportunities—or ensure their imprisonment. Social media monitoring tools map networks of influence, enabling the regime to discredit, harass, or isolate those whose voices might resonate. Disinformation campaigns, amplified by bots and recommendation systems, preemptively weaken credibility before a leader can mobilize followers.

This is the digital echo of Pharaoh and Zahak: the attempt to strangle leadership before it breathes, not by slaughtering infants but by algorithmically neutralizing the very possibility of dissent.

The Enduring Fear of Transformative Leadership

What unites these ancient and modern practices is the psychology of power itself. Authoritarians fear not just the present opposition but the future potential of leadership. They understand that leadership often emerges unexpectedly, from unlikely places—from an infant hidden in a basket, or a child raised in secrecy, or an activist whose online post sparks collective imagination. Power therefore seeks to preempt, to kill possibility itself.

The stories of Moses and Fereydon remind us, however, that suppression is never absolute. The seeds of leadership are resilient; they germinate in hidden spaces, away from the gaze of tyrants, until the moment arrives for transformation. Technology may enable regimes to extend their control, but it cannot extinguish the human yearning for freedom and justice.

Conclusion: Old Stories, New Warnings

The continuity between ancient narratives of infanticide and modern AI-enabled suppression is striking. Across time, rulers have sought to eliminate the possibility of transformative leadership, whether through physical slaughter or digital silencing. Yet history also teaches that such strategies ultimately fail. Leaders who embody the aspirations of their people emerge despite persecution, often because of it.

The enduring lesson is clear: technology changes, methods evolve, but the struggle between oppressive power and transformative leadership remains the same. The task of our era is to ensure that AI, rather than becoming the tyrant’s tool, is redirected toward protecting human dignity and empowering the very leaders who can guide us toward a freer, more just, and more hopeful future.

Indo-Iranic Roots Beneath the Veil of Islamic Orthodoxy: Reassessing the Foundations of Persian Intellectual Life

 

The claim that Twelver Shia thought is not the true foundation of Persian intellectual life—but rather a later institutional framework layered atop a much older Indo-Iranic substrate—is supported by the deep continuity of pre-Islamic metaphysics, cosmology, and esotericism in Persian philosophy. While the Safavid state eventually institutionalized Shi’ism as the official creed, Persian scholars and mystics had long cultivated an intellectual tradition rooted in Zoroastrian and Indo-Iranic worldviews. Under conditions of Islamic hegemony, these thinkers often preserved their intellectual heritage by embedding ancient insights within Qur’anic language and Islamic categories, thus ensuring continuity while avoiding persecution.

Indo-Iranic Influence and Revival

Persian philosophy, far from being born ex nihilo under Islam, represents a creative adaptation of older Indo-Iranic traditions. The teachings of Suhrawardi (d. 1191), founder of Illuminationist philosophy, exemplify this continuity. Suhrawardi’s system synthesized Zoroastrian cosmology, Platonic forms, Hermetic wisdom, and even Hindu metaphysical ideas into an Islamic philosophical framework. His emphasis on “light” as the primary reality resonates with ancient Iranian dualisms of light and darkness, signaling a deliberate revival of Iranic illuminative wisdom. Not coincidentally, Suhrawardi was executed, with his “heresy” often linked to his overt revival of pre-Islamic themes. Centuries later, Mulla Sadra, the towering figure of Safavid-era philosophy, also faced exile for advancing ideas that diverged from orthodoxy. These examples illustrate how Persian thinkers continued to carry forward a legacy that predated Islam, even at personal risk.

As Hossein Ghanbari (2024) argues, Persian intellectual life has been shaped by “the assimilation and adaptation of pre-Islamic Persian beliefs into the Islamic intellectual framework” rather than originating solely within Shia theology. Persian thought did not disappear under Islam; it survived in coded language and philosophical synthesis.

Master-Slave vs. Unity Paradigm

This continuity is visible in the conceptual contrasts between Persian metaphysics and mainstream Islamic theology. Islamic orthodoxy—whether Sunni or Shi’a—typically envisions the divine-human relationship in terms of Master and Slave (Owner and Owned). The Qur’anic paradigm of obedience, submission, and servanthood reflects this structure. By contrast, Indo-Iranic metaphysics envisions the human quest as one of unity with the Truth: mystical self-annihilation (fanāʾ), gnosis, and fusion with the ultimate reality.

Persian Sufi poets and philosophers repeatedly return to this theme of union, rather than submission. Their writings emphasize direct apprehension of truth, the inner unveiling (kashf), and esoteric gnosis over legalistic theology. This divergence highlights that Persian intellectual culture was not reducible to Islamic categories but was instead enriched by older, Indo-Iranic frameworks that privileged unity, illumination, and metaphysical depth.

Persian Adaptation Under Islamic Hegemony

The dominance of Islamic institutions required Persian scholars to articulate their ideas within the vocabulary of Qur’anic language and Shia theology. This was not a surrender of identity, but a tactical adaptation. Zoroastrian, Greek, and Indo-Iranic legacies were preserved in disguise—coded into philosophical works and mystical texts that formally cited Qur’anic verses but carried pre-Islamic themes.

The Safavid era (16th–18th century) is particularly instructive. Twelver Shi’ism was elevated as the state religion, yet its intellectual substance in Persia was deeply interwoven with mystical, illuminative, and philosophical traditions unique to Iran. What emerged was not a purely Islamic orthodoxy, but a hybrid intellectual culture in which Indo-Iranic wisdom survived beneath the Shia veneer. Persian mysticism, philosophy, and poetry thus reflect a dual heritage—Islamic in appearance, but Indo-Iranic in essence.

Supporting Evidence

1. Continuity of Themes – From Zoroastrian dualism and cosmic order (asha) to Sufi notions of illumination and unity, Persian thought shows a remarkable philosophical continuity across religious boundaries.

2. Esoteric Preservation – Figures such as Suhrawardi and Mulla Sadra risked persecution to safeguard Indo-Iranic wisdom within Islamic discourse. Their “heresies” reveal the persistence of non-Islamic intellectual DNA in Persian thought.

3. Literary Testimony – Persian literature, from Rumi to Hafez, consistently transcends Islamic orthodoxy, invoking themes of light, unity, and the eternal quest for gnosis that resonate more with Indo-Iranic metaphysics than with Shia legalism.

Conclusion

The philosophical foundation of Persian intellectual life cannot be reduced to Twelver Shi’ism. Instead, it reflects a layered synthesis, in which Indo-Iranic metaphysics, Zoroastrian cosmology, Greek philosophy, and Islamic theology interwove under conditions of external hegemony. The Safavid project institutionalized Shi’ism, but the intellectual substance of Persian philosophy remained deeply Indo-Iranic in character, often disguised in Islamic language but carrying forward much older currents of thought.

Thus, Persian intellectual life is best understood not as a derivative branch of Shia theology, but as a continuum of Indo-Iranic wisdom adapted under Islamic forms—a testimony to the resilience of Persian thought and its ability to preserve its heritage under shifting religious and political orders.