White Supremacy in philosophy fuelling modern-day inequality – Princeton varsity prof

A visiting Professor at the University of Princeton, United States, Professor Hendrik Lorenz, spoke with GABRIEL OSHOKHA, on the connectivity of ‘Africa in Aristotle and Aristotelian Tradition’ with today’s world, among sundry matters, at a programme hosted by the Department of Classics, University of Ibadan and the Classical Association of Nigeria

What informed your choice of the theme of the lecture?

My lecture was about ‘Africa in Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition.’ I chose that theme because, on the one hand, it reflects my expertise and skill in studying the ancient and medieval texts I mentioned; on the other hand, it also seems relevant to the experience of Nigerians in 2025. This is because it depicts the scientific underpinnings of an outlook on sub-Saharan Africa coming from Europe, coming from the Mediterranean world, which is negative in large part and which is to some extent, the basis of ongoing discrimination and prejudice against sub-Saharan Africa, and against countries such as Nigeria, in particular. I wanted to share with the students and faculty members here in Ibadan an account of the scientific framework that was developed in the Aristotelian tradition that is meant to naturalize and justify prejudice and discrimination against Black Africans so that people are able better to recognise patterns of argumentation and outlooks that embody and support prejudice. I am hoping that this would be helpful for people to think about their situation, and their condition, especially about the Global North and countries in Europe and the United States of America. That is why it seems to me that it was a good theme to share with the audience in Ibadan.

Do you think we can adapt the Aristotelian tradition to accelerate development in Nigeria, if so, how?

Yes, I do think there are many positive things in the Aristotelian tradition, many positive ideas; ideas about individual happiness, the fulfilment of human potentialities and how that relates to happiness and well-lived human lives. There are also good ideas in Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition about constitutionalism, the rule of law, and productive ways for human beings to live together in community, and so forth. These are positive ideas that one can learn from and that one can apply to make things better in the present. But I also want to emphasise that many ideas in Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition are quite harmful and have been historically quite harmful, in particular ideas that relate to what I would call Eurocentrism, or one might also call it White Supremacy. The idea is that in some really important ways, European civilisation is importantly different from the cultures and values of the Global South, for example, Nigeria, and that there is a deep difference. It’s not just a matter of difference, there is also the idea that European civilisation is superior. There is also the idea that the lessons and values of European civilisation may not even apply to Nigeria because a country like Nigeria is in a condition which is so deeply and fundamentally different that lessons from the so-called Western civilisation may not even be applicable. There is also then the whole picture of African backwardness and African lack of development in comparison with European and American development. So, the emphasis is on a big gap between the US and Europe on the one hand and sub-Saharan Africa and some other regions of the world in the Global South on the other hand. And I think that to a very large extent, that kind of conception of a gap and the rhetoric of a gap comes out of the philosophical and scientific tradition that I am tracking in talking about Aristotle and Aristotelianism. And so I think that is one element where Aristotelian ideas – ideas that come out of classical antiquity – are not just not helpful for thinking about Nigeria’s realities and how to make a change and improve the condition of lives in Nigeria but are actively harmful  because they instil and can support a certain kind of pessimism – a pessimism that in Nigeria, it’s just impossible to make meaningful progress, it’s impossible to reach anything like the condition of life, the condition of civilised living that is found in Europe and the United States of America. So, often people feel that the best thing they can do if they are in Nigeria is to leave Nigeria, to go to Europe, to go to the United States of America where they can have a good life, where they can have a safe life, and so on. That whole pattern of thinking, I think is, to a significant extent, influenced by the philosophy and the science that I’m studying – the notion of a very deep gap, which comes out of Classical Antiquity, and which begins with Aristotle but then changes and gets updated, and it’s transformed in the later Aristotelian tradition, which continues until today. And so in the work that I’m sharing with people in Ibadan now, I emphasise ideas from Classical Antiquity that are problematic, and may even be harmful. I don’t think we should study those ideas just because they are problematic and harmful. Rather, I think we should study them carefully to oppose them effectively and to reconfigure our thinking. In order to overcome them, we need to know what they are, we need to, as it were, know our enemies. You are not going to be in good shape fighting an enemy if you don’t understand how the enemy operates. And so it’s in this spirit that I’m sharing some of the Classical ideas. Of course, I don’t want to say that all of the ideas in Classical Antiquity are the enemy. And as I said at the beginning of my comments in answer to your question, there are really helpful and productive ideas in the Classical tradition as well. But it’s important to realise it’s some bad mixed with the good. It’s not all good. And just because there are bad and harmful things in the tradition does not mean we should not study them. Because even the bad ideas that are part of this tradition are still massively influential and they make a difference to contemporary realities. And if we want to fix or improve contemporary realities, it’s helpful to think historically about how some of these harmful ideologies and patterns of propaganda arose in the first place. So that we know better what it is we are dealing with.

Some scholars uphold the view that moral decadence in Nigeria is rooted in the clash of Western and African values. Are you in support of this claim? If so, why?

I think that it’s not helpful to think about the global situation in terms of a clash of civilisations between the Global North and the US and Europe or Western civilisation on the one hand and the Global South, for example, African cultures on the other hand. I also don’t think it’s helpful to think about the problems that Africans face in terms of moral decline or moral decadence. I’m inclined to emphasise more the idea that the underlying problems that affect our societies both in the Global North, and in particular the United States of America, where I live, and the Global South, and in particular in Nigeria where we are right now, are very similar – I emphasise the similarities, I don’t emphasise the differences. Of course, there are differences but they seem to me to be less important and less striking than the similarities. And so I don’t want to think about this in terms of a clash of civilisations between countries like the US and countries like Nigeria, or moral decadence found in Africa and in Nigeria, and then moral excellence found in the United States of America and Europe. I don’t think of things this way because I see very similar structural problems. And the main structural problem that I see both in the US and in Nigeria is inequality – inequality of income, inequality of resources and inequality of opportunities, including access to education, healthcare, medicine, and so forth. I think that’s the underlying problem from which Nigerian society suffers. And it’s also the underlying problem from which the United States society suffers. And it’s a problem that seems to me to be getting worse and worse, and in the US where I know something about the development in the last 40 years, inequality between the richest Americans and the poorest Americans has risen and keeps rising. All the other kinds of problems that we could talk about are consequences of the underlying fundamental problem of inequality. And I think that Philosophy can help with the identification and analysis of the structural problem of inequality, and with working out why it’s so bad, why inequality in a society is so harmful. Aristotle in his work, “The Politics” actually has a lot to say about this. In that political theory, Aristotle emphasizes the importance of fostering a middle class of people in society – of people who are neither extremely poor nor extremely rich. Aristotle thinks that in a society if you have too many people who are extremely rich, and too many people who are extremely poor, it leads to conflict and instability and all kinds of political problems follow from these.

So, Aristotle in his “Politics” advocates for building a middle class as large as possible, which ultimately amounts to a fairer distribution of the wealth of the nation. And this is something I’m sure Nigeria could benefit from, and I’m sure the United States could benefit from, too. This is just one example of the similarities or commonalities that I see as opposed to emphasising the difference, the clash, the gap between the Global North and the Global South as if that gap were so deep. If that gap is perceived as so deep and fundamental, then it may seem as if the only way of engaging with one another is in the mode of conflict.

How could Classical Studies be improvised for fostering lasting peaceful co-existence in a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society like Nigeria?

Again, yes, I think there are some very useful tools for thinking about how Classical studies could be updated, or how it could be brought to bear on the question you’re talking about, that is, peaceful co-existence in a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society such as Nigeria. I think truly peaceful co-existence is not just a lack of violence. Lack of violence is one thing, true peace is another. True peace is a much more ambitious goal than the lack or absence of violence. True peace requires communication – effective communication and an agreement about the rules of the political social game. It doesn’t require agreeing on all the facts, but there has to be agreement on the framework of rules for interacting politically and socially so that there can be effective cooperation and communication so that people can reach one another, can communicate their opinions to one another, can reason with one another, can offer reasons that the other side accepts as legitimate reasons, can offer opinions that the other side accepts as legitimate opinions. And even if you have disagreements about matters of opinion, there needs to be a framework within which one can have reasoned arguments and effective communication, seeing the other’s point of view when you’re dealing with others,  especially with different groups, in a framework of multi-ethnic, multicultural groups of people. We sometimes find it difficult even to be able to communicate with one another because we find it difficult to accept the perspectives of the other group as legitimate. And I think here, Philosophy can help, because Philosophy is really all about clarity of communication and clarity in reasoning. And the more people enter into a philosophical framework, and focus on clarity in reasoning and clarity in the effectiveness of communication, the more they will be able to enter into one another’s perspectives to, at least, appreciate what the world looks like from the point of view of the other person, or the other group of people. Especially in political conflicts over resources, it can become very easy to just dehumanise the other group so that the perspectives of the group become completely illegitimate, or even worse, you don’t understand the perspectives of the other groups at all. You couldn’t enter into their perspectives, you couldn’t explain what they are trying to do and why, because you dehumanise, and you just regard them as a harmful force that needs to be fought. And when that happens, you enter into violence, you enter into civil war, and that happens frequently of course. But just stopping the violence is not enough to achieve real peace. To achieve real peace, you need to achieve the ability to communicate effectively across different groups, and across differences. I think it’s at this point that Philosophy can help; it can improve people’s ability to communicate with one another effectively and to take seriously and treat as legitimate the arguments and reasons that members of the other group can offer. This is, I think, one of the main places where the Classical tradition, which of course, gives us Philosophy, including Plato and Aristotle and the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions. These traditions are alive and well, and they are powerful traditions. While they contain some problematic and harmful aspects that I talked about a little while ago, they also contain a lot of good ideas, in particular good ideas about communication, and reasoned argument, fulfilling the potential for genuine dialogue, which I think is the ultimate humanizing force. Dehumanizing happens when there are conflicts. And to overcome the dehumanisation and humanise the other as a human being, the way you do this is by entering into dialogue with that person. And once you have a dialogue with that person, you will see them as human.

How much of the Aristotelian tradition is integrated into Classical Studies? And do think the tradition is still valid in today’s fast-paced world?

That’s a great question. There’s a lot of the Aristotelian tradition that is integrated into Classical studies, for sure. But, there’s also a lot of the Aristotelian tradition that goes beyond the subject matter of Classical studies. Because the Aristotelian tradition continues beyond the Classical period; it continues in later Antiquity; it continues in the Medieval period in different ways in Europe and in the Arabic tradition. Then it survived into the Early Modern period, into the Renaissance period, and to a very large extent, it’s still alive even now in 2025. These are living active intellectual traditions, and so it would be a mistake to think that the Aristotelian tradition is only studied in the context of Classical studies. That’s the origin of the Aristotelian tradition and, in particular, Aristotle himself who of course lived in ancient Greece in the 4th Century BC. And so Aristotle’s life and work, of course, are parts of the subject matter that Classical studies deals with. But the Aristotelian tradition lives on and it’s continuing actively till today. Then you also asked a question whether the Aristotelian tradition was still relevant and helpful in today’s fast-paced, social and moral situation. Yes. I do think there are really important lessons to be learnt from Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition about the importance of dialogue, the importance of cooperation. If a society is to be successful, people need to be able to do things together, to deliberate together, and to think together about what they want to do as a society. This requires that they can reason with one another, and this requires that they can have dialogue with one another. And that requires that they see each other as human beings, and to that extent as equals. And these ideas continue to be extremely important, and continue to provide helpful guidance in our world today. It seems to me that guidance is even more important now than it might have been 100 or 200 years ago. With the arrival of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the way AI is beginning to be more and more prominent in the way we do business and the way we interact with one another, I think it becomes even more important and even more urgent to reflect on what’s distinctive of humanity, what distinguishes human intelligence and human beings from machines and Artificial Intelligence. It’s in this context that I think we can learn a lot and derive a lot of useful lessons for thinking about humanity, and the connection between humanity and the ability to reason, which is very prominent in Aristotle and also in Plato. And also the connection between humanity and the ability to feel emotions, which is also very prominent both in Aristotle and Plato. What those emotions are, and how reasoning interacts with emotions. There are interesting ideas about these questions in Plato and Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition. And I think these questions are helpful for thinking about the difference between humanity and machines. Because first of all, it’s not clear to me at all whether machines can genuinely reason, rather than just reproduce patterns without having anything like genuine understanding. And it’s certainly not clear to me that machines are or will ever be able to feel emotions – these sophisticated and intricate ways of feeling and relating oneself to the world and others that human emotions embody. I have selected one example, and there are other examples, but it seems to me to be one example where ideas from Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition continue to be relevant and helpful as we navigate the fast-paced society and the ever-changing moral, social and political landscape that we face.

Your view that the shape of the earth is oval, as stated in your lecture, invalidates a wider belief that the earth is flat. Why so?

Regarding the shapes of the earth, there was in the ancient tradition a fair amount of disagreement. About this, different thinkers came up with different ideas. In some representations, the earth is presented as being oval or as being a hemisphere. But by the time Aristotle developed his conception of the physical world, and also in the entire Aristotelian tradition, there was consensus that the shape of the earth was spherical, like a football. And that’s in part driven by work in mathematical astronomy and is also the view of the best mathematical astronomers of Aristotle’s time. It’s in part based on empirical work in optics and on the explanation and analysis of the pattern of the movement of the heavenly bodies.

So, the idea is that the earth is a sphere and is part of a whole system of concentric spheres. That’s the picture we get in Plato and Aristotle and that’s the picture they get from the best astronomers who were working in their time. In Plato and also in Aristotle, we also get ideas of a theoretical or speculative philosophical kind about why it is that the earth should be spherical. There is the idea that among two-dimensional figures, circles are the best and that the sphere is the best among three-dimensional figures. So, you then get evaluative or normative ideas about how good spherical shape is, or how beautiful it is. So, to sum up, in Plato and Aristotle, you get a combination of scientific ideas that come out of mathematical astronomy and aesthetic evaluative ideas to the effect that a spherical shape is the best. But in any case, by the time Aristotle works on the structure and constitution of the natural world, he takes it for granted that the shape of the earth is spherical. And he is aware of the fact that his predecessors didn’t all agree with his conception of the shape of the earth. Nevertheless, it seemed clear to him that the earth is spherical.