This thesis traces the evolution of the concept of African philosophy through three phases: the cultural essentialism of Léopold Senghor, founder of Négritude, the universalist critical reaction of Paulin Hountondji and the professional philosophers, and the sophisticated particularism of Valentin Mudimbé. The three stages are contextualized with discussion of the socio-political positioning of each writer, his motives, and his particular understanding of what is at stake in the definition of African philosophy. The initial need to bring about a revalorization of African culture and a recognition of African philosophical capabilities is met by a flamboyant and highly vocal cultural movement, Négritude, which is, however, intrinsically limited in scope and lifespan, and sets up a number of persistent, dogmatic suppositions about the ‘essentially African reason’. A demonstration of the Western origins of this essentialism debunks but does not dispel its influence, since it is firmly anchored to the themes of authenticity, colonial influence, and postcolonial independence. This leads to a dilemma where any move to separate African philosophy from the notion of a distinctly African reason is perceived as a Eurocentric attempt at acculturation, or a capitulation to the false universalism of ‘Enlightenment philosophy’, and on the other hand, the view that African thought is essentially different from European thought is also criticized as deriving from the Western colonial discourse. There is no definitive answer to this problem, and even the search for such an answer is itself part of the problem, a further twist in the ruse that Mudimbé believes is inherent to the colonial discourse. The practical solution Mudimbé proposes is to introduce an écart between African scientific practice and the West, to create a new space within which Africans might investigate the field of their experience in an Afrocentric way which will preserve their cultural specificity.

My thesis is original in placing together Wittgenstein's ideas of how language works, and arguments for the philosophical significance of the embodied and relational figure of the mother. I both use and resist a Wittgensteinian therapy to overcome the problem of the forgetting of the mother in philosophy. I begin with the problem of essentialism, important to Wittgenstein and to feminist philosophy. My reading of Wittgenstein finds an ignored lacuna between language and (female) experience. I add in to the debate the type specimen approach from botany. Adopting this approach enables me to avoid a classification which requires a true inner essence to mothering, and provides a way for me to denote the significant place of the language games of mothering in language games about women. I argue for a different symbol of the mother. I agree with Wittgenstein's account of language, but add to it. I show the importance of Wittgenstein's insight that although meaning is not fixed independently of use, use does not fix meaning in that I create new meanings for the figure of the mother. I argue, through an exploration of Wittgenstein's concept of `übersichtlichen Darstellung ; that Wittgenstein can help us to see the phenomena of our life differently, in a way that makes space for understanding female difference. His concept of a form of life provides such openings. As the Wittgensteinian agent seems distinctly un-female, I bring in the philosophy of Kierkegaard in my argument for a different relational self as mother. I argue for a Kierkegaardian flexible maternal self with mobile edges. I insert the language games of the mother into Kierkegaard's writing on women. My aim is a more adequate representation of a (true) reality. I use the work of John Wisdom to make a bridge between Wittgenstein and the narrative form, which I use throughout. Wisdom's strategy is to engage in unconventional reflection in looking for new ways of telling philosophical stories, and in finding new patterns of meaning in the familiar. I claim that the narrative form enables me to express the shifting essence of the mother and the diversity of mothers; and to acknowledge the silences which are part of the mother's story. My aim in this thesis is creative. I use Wittgenstein to create a new kind of relation to philosophy. I do not offer a correct reading of Wittgenstein or Kierkegaard. Instead, aided by the insights provided by feminist philosophy, I write in the language games of the mother to their ideas. Thus, I bring into existence through utterance a different, feminist philosophical symbol of the mother.

Derrida's claim that there can be no concept of time that escapes from the sphere of the metaphysical presents us with three major questions: (1) Why does Derrida make this claim? What does he mean by it? (2) How, in the light of this claim ought we to read Husserl and Heidegger who aimed at just what Derrida rules out? (3) How can we square the claim with other things Derrida says about time and about metaphysics? We undertake a critical reading of the two major works on time by Husserl and Heidegger respectively, arguing that while each of these two texts does indeed subscribe to such metaphysical values as fundamentality, certainty, unity, identity and wholeness, they nonetheless make a substantial contribution to our release from the domination of 'the ordinary concept of time'. Furthermore, we argue, Derrida's own writing is marked by the same (perhaps inevitable) 'metaphysical' shadow, albeit in an exemplary self-conscious manner. To Derrida's claim about the impossibility of a non-metaphysical concept of time we reply (a) he elsewhere endorses a 'pluri-dimensional' temporality, and (b) when being careful, he admits that it is not concepts per se that are metaphysical, but their mode of textual articulation. From these two concessions our double strategy develops. I. His denial of an original, primitive time, coupled with his understanding of metaphysics in terms of textual articulation licences a programme for the description of temporal structures and representations of time, one abjuring any foundationalist pretensions, and resisting the temptation to spatializing interpretations. II. We redescribe the 'moment' in a way that breaks utterly with any representational element whatever. This approximates in temporal terms the time-dissolving moves found both in the latter Heidegger, and also in Derrida.

The aim of the thesis is to defend the hypothesis that an anti- Aristotelian interpretation of the genesis of the process of knowing provides an interesting and fruitful means to understand the human never-ending search for knowledge and to answer doubts concerning the reliability of human knowledge of external reality. Such statement requires an explanation.

It is my intention in this thesis to demonstrate that there exists a clear and explicit formal relationship between the seemingly exclusive descriptions of spatio-temporal and purely temporal continuity, and further, that this relationship manifests itself within our most fundamental understanding of the physical world itself, namely; within our understanding of the identity, diversity and re-identification of material bodies (Book 1). It may therefore be claimed that behind that cultural understanding which leads us to imagine that the physical world is located in both space and time, whereas our thoughts and feelings are located in time alone, there lies a formal logical framework, or an explicit formal description of how being in space and time relates to being in time alone - leading us to wonder, perhaps, whether these two things are really as distinct as we might at first imagine. That I should then go on (albeit without a formal methodology) to apply to this analysis a philosophical interpretation of Bergson's conception of the relationship between the intuition and the intellect (Book 2) is of lesser importance - indicating as it does little more than my own philosophical inclinations. However, something will be gained, I hope, from this further exercise. Along the way it will allow me to clarify a number of technical points of which the general philosopher may be unaware; for example the unobservable nature of numerical identity and re-identification, the importance of the principle of special relativity to the topic of mind and the technical difficulties of claiming that mental events are 'in time' at all. Notwithstanding these latter points, however, the intentions of this work are predominantly analytical and are adequately described as an attempt to consolidate spatio-temporal and purely temporal description under a unified logical framework.

In this study, I propose a reading of Derrida as a Cartesian thinker. The mode of reading is closely textual and not historical; and the analysis focuses on the methodological or dispositional affinities between a sceptical Descartes in cogitation and a deconstructive Derrida, to the exclusion of the onto-theological aspects of their arguments. I locate the source of such epistemological affinities between them in the self-reflexivity of philosophical self-doubt or self-criticism, and highlight, in the course of analysis, the formatively self-referential aspects of both Cartesian scepticism and Derridian deconstruction; The point of contention is that, in both cases, the starting point of thinking is the self that self-reflects. Standard interpretations tend to view Derrida as an anti-Cartesian thinker; Against this reading, I advance the following two points of contention. Firstly, I argue that Derrida can be read as a Cartesian thinker in that his reflexive tendency is indicative of his implicit commitment to the methodological or epistemological Cartesianism, i. e. the reflexive mode of cogitation. The claim here, limited to such an extent, is that there is a structural resemblance between the reflexive form of Descartes's cogilo and that of Derrida's deconstructive move in that both thinkers follow performatively reflexive, and reflexively repeated moves; The Derridian move is only one "step" beyond, and in this sense derivative from, the Cartesian. Secondly, I argue further that Derrida can be read as a radical Cartesian. For this, I present a reading of Derrida's reflexive hauntology as a sceptical radicalisation of Descartes's reflective ontology. By bringing to the fore a structurally Cartesian dimension which underlies the Derridian economy of writing and thinking, I argue, against Derrida's self-understanding of his (non-)project, that deconstruction is to be read as a conservative intra-metaphysical trajectory rather than as a transgressive endeavour to go beyond metaphysics. In highlighting the traditional aspects of deconstruction as opposed to the revolutionary sides of it, my aim is both to explicate the significance of Derrida's deconstructive project and, at the same time, to expose its constitutive limits, deconstruction taken as a meta-critical, reflexive endeavour to transcend the limits of philosophy by philosophy. The critical point I raise against Derrida is the following: Insofar as the logic or strategy of his deconstruction remains structurally locked in, and at the same time exploitative of, the implicit binarism of Cartesian scepticism, i. e. the logic of either-or, the deconstructive gesture that attempts to think "the Other" by reflecting critically upon its own condition of thinking, is bound to be self-reflexive or self-referential, therefore, self-corrosively ineffectual. Part I sets out to articulate the aforementioned two contentions of thesis. It aims to discover the recursively self-reflexive movements in the writings of Derrida. For this, chapter 2 offers an analysis of some of Derrida's central terms of hauntology that are descriptive of the movements and moments of meta-reflection, viz. double, mark, fold, interest, and law. Although Part I deals mainly with Derrida, the reflexive dimension of Descartes's cogito argument is also analysed in an early stage [1.31] to the extent that it can set the terms for the subsequent reading of Derrida as a Cartesian [1.32 -2.3]. Part II elaborates the key points made in Part I, first by providing a detailed account of the Cartesian economy of self-reflexivity [Chapter 4], and second, by closely reading selected passages from Den ida's essay on Descartes, 'Cogito et histoire de lafolie' [Chapter 5]. Derrida's defensive and sympathetic reading of Descartes's madmen against Foucault's, the last chapter argues, exemplifies a case of Derrida as a committed Cartesian with a mind bent on methodic meta-reflection.

This thesis addresses the relation between Immanuel Kant and Gilles Deleuze, with reference to women. It argues that Deleuze's "methods" reveal an intensive dyanamic in Kant obscured by readings which concentrate on the molar structures in his thought and that this dynamic is implicated with the deployment by Deleuze (and Guattari) of becoming-woman as a middle line which escapes the rational tribunal. It insists that a philosophy of difference function as a positive elimination of relations to unity, to the subject and to other figures of power in philosophical thought and that Deleuze's oeuvre is a critical and creative engagement with the transformation of philosophical problems and the relation of thinking to history which emerge from this. The other theme, that of women, is addressed through Luce Irigaray's reading of Kant and Rosi Braidotti's reading of becoming-woman. I argue that whilst the former's critique of an uncritically assumed symmetry in Kant's work is effective and well-directed, she becomes caught in her own methodology of jamming, but that there are nonetheless strong and productive directions in her thought, many of which are parallel and/or connected to those of Deleuze and Guattari's becoming-woman. Against Braidotti's interpretation of becoming-woman, I argue that it adopts a molar political strategy and as such does not connect with the force behind this thought. Lastly, this thesis is an argument against bilateral sexual difference, in favour of distributive or 'n-sexes': the title, Breeding Demons connects the theme of demons in Deleuze's writing to the cycles which effect such distributions.

The three syntheses of time are Deleuze’s response to Kant’s belief that time is synthesized by the unity o the “I think.” Deleuze believes that there is a prior synthesis of time in the unconscious. He calls this a “passive” synthesis of time. My thesis will seek to clarify Deleuze’s theory of the three syntheses of time by providing the background from which he derived his concepts. In chapter one I argue that the system of “signs” presented in Proust and Signs is the precursor to Deleuze’s three syntheses of time. I conclude that Worldy Signs correspond to synthesis of habit, Signs of Love correspond to the synthesis of memory, and Signs of Art correspond to the synthesis of the future. In chapter two I argue that the system of “series” presented in the second half of The Logic of Sense illustrates Deleuze’s conceptions of “resonance” and “forced movement” that are critical to understanding the three syntheses of time. I conclude that Deleuze’s conception of connective, conjunctive and disjunctive series are derived from Freud’s reading of libidinal stages in his Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality. In chapter three I argue that chapter two of Difference and Repetition is based upon concepts derived from Freud’s Project for a Scientific Psychology. I conclude that the concepts of the Id, Ego and Superego each correspond to a synthesis of time and that these agencies are primarily based upon neurological processes. In chapter four I argue that the static repetitions are the means by which the three syntheses of time manifest themselves in our actions. I conclude that the Superego presents and forbids actions that constitute a “pure event” and that the psyche reacts by repetitive behaviours that correspond to the three static dimensions of time: the before, the during, and the after.

This study is an exploration of the place of perspectivism in the philosophy of Henri Bergson. His work is compared with that of Thomas Nagel in terms of the mutual concern of these two philosophers to reconcile our increasingly objecti vist and impersonal understanding of reality with the perspectival apprehension of the world that living and conscious beings instantiate. It argues that Bergson's philosophy of time holds the key both to comprehending and to balancing the demands made upon us by these conflicting interests. It is seldom that Bergson's name is thought of in this connection, his concerns more often than not being identified with some thesis about time, movement, or vital forces. One purpose of the present work, therefore, is to contest this interpretive slant, not merely by offering an alternative image of Bergson, but also by critically exploring his employment of perspectivism (both positive and negative). We pursue this goal through the double strategy of both unravelling the inconsistencies in Bergson's· treatment of perspective and separating his own argument from the multitude of myths, opinions, and interpretations, sympathetic and unsympathetic, that have arisen around what is currently understood by "Bergsonism". In retrieving his thought from such philosophical ghettoes as "vitalism," "spiritualism," and "psychologism," we will argue for a Bergsonian perspectivism which ultimately resides in a thesis propounding the primacy of perception. One consequence of this is the demotion of memory's importance within his thought. Not that the orthodox image of Bergsonism that retains the privileged place of memory is wrong. Rather, we argue that there is enough in Bergson's peculiar picture of perception to obviate the need for memory in his philosophy, and, moreover, that it is actually more Bergsonian that memory should be so discharged.

Kant's metaphysics of space periods is explored via his in both the pre-critical and critical relation to Leibniz, the incongruent counterparts argument, and the distinctive arguments of the Transcendental Aesthetic. Sequentially, Heidegger's phenomenology of space from the period of Being and Time is explicated in terms of concepts like deseverance, directionality, region and equipmentality. The two analyses are found to overlap on several key points. These include: the priority of the whole over the parts, openness, and exteriority and thus non-discursivity. The points of overlap we call 'spacing' . Through further analyses, it is discovered that the concepts of spacing are precisely the concepts required by these two philosophers even when they treat of subjects not normally considered essentially spacial. These subjects include the nature of temporal relations, of selfhood and self-constancy, and of the experience and significance of art. The importance of spacing for these subjects is individually discussed, as are possible reasons why the language of space should be required.