Description
“An unexamined world is not worth Living”
— Socrates (470–399 B.C.)
Ever since Socrates made his famous admonition of a complacent world, against which he gadfly rebelled through his methodic approach, now known as the dialectic, of seeking for clarity in thought-process, in aid of establishing the ‘truth’, the world, both as a social formation and as an evolving living environment, has witnessed monumental changes, and the frontiers of knowledge continue to expand in an endless match of civilization in a creative way that is either destructive of, or beneficial to our common humanity. Development is, indeed, destructive progression in a dialectic process.
From the Cartesian methodic doubt, through the Copernican revolution to cybernetics, it does seem, as Albert Einstein has also reinforced it in his declaration that, “the most important thing is to stop not thinking”, Socrates’ ‘unexamined world’ has been over-subscribed by intellectual captives of his admonition.
In different essays and research works, published articles, lectures delivered and seminar papers presented at different occasions, both academic and in the “public space”, where ideas are the common merchandise of exchange, Akinyemi Onigbinde in this compendium expose to his readers myriad of ideas hidden in ‘caves’ of knowledge by priests of ‘truth’. In his intellectual Odyssey, spanning some 40 years as an academic, researcher and public intellectual, the author, through his critical perspectives on policy-options on socio-political and governance issues, demonstrates that the true calling of a scholar, privileged with philosophical insight, is to enrich the social space with a single objective: to rid the mind of ‘cobwebs’ that cluster the path of clear thinking, a condition – precedent for social action.
