WISDOM AND INTELLECTUAL PRACTICE IN EVERYDAY LIFE

In the Swahili language, the terms hekima (wisdom, knowledge, judgement) and busara (good sense, wisdom, sagacity) are the two words most explicitly denoting ‘wisdom’. They are often used in a joint idiomatic phrase, hekima na busara, to endorse or commend the wisdom or good common sense of someone's action. This expression may be used for such praise (as in fulani ameonyehsa hekima na busara yake alipofanya hivi na hivi – someone has shown his wisdom by doing such-and-such), but also in communal invocations when seeking the right decision on an important matter (for instance, Mungu atupe hekima na busara kuamua vizuri – may God give us the wisdom to make the right decision). There are numerous words for different kinds of knowledge in Swahili, often originating in Arabic loanwords, and it constitutes a separate task in its own right (which cannot be undertaken here) to sketch out the interrelationships of semantic fields of ‘knowledge’ in the Swahili context. Ujuzi (knowledge, wisdom, experience), maarifa (knowledge, information, intelligence) and elimu (education, knowledge, learning) are three more of the most commonly used terms, within a multiplicity of words for ‘knowledge’.

To add more social dimensions to the way that knowledge as intellectual (and morally relevant) ability is usually qualified and appreciated in the Swahili context, age has to be mentioned as a category. It is generally older people who, through their longer life experience, are associated with wisdom. This is also reflected in the use of the term wazee (elders, old people), where the connotations of being honourable, respectable, and knowledgeable are inherently part of the meaning itself. Furthermore, mzee (singular of wazee) can also be used as an honorific term for someone who is not an elder or old in terms of age. For this person, mzee may be used as a kind of title, marking an achievement or a certain status (such as intellectual or political leadership), and inherently ascribing or invoking wisdom as a characteristic quality of that person. In this way, we may find presidents, mayors and educational or religious leaders being addressed as mzee by people who are older than them – it is a discursive marker to acknowledge their achievements, or a level of superiority and power of the addressee (in the latter case, of course, it has little to do with wisdom; see also McIntosh in this volume on related issues in the Mijikenda context).

THE SWAHILI BARAZA

In everyday life along the Swahili coast, there is one particularly prominent setting in which intellectual practice can be observed, as social performance of knowledge and discursive capacity – albeit only among men, in a gendered space. This is the evening baraza of men of a neighbourhood – their meeting point (literally, ‘baraza’ refers to the stone benches integrated in walls) in front of the houses on the street, an informal social institution that provides space for reflection, discursive focus and attention, and intellectual exchange in familiar surroundings and a leisurely atmosphere. After evening prayers, regular groups of neighbours and friends will assemble at their baraza to exchange the day's news, comment on recent events, and generally to socialize and enjoy each other's company. These groups are small, consisting of three to eight persons or so. They are characterized by familiarity, and, along with gossip, joking, and the exchange of news, serious discussions may emerge or be taken up again at any stage of the evening's conversation. Such discussions may cover any topic, with politics or proper Islamic conduct perhaps the most common ones for any baraza, no matter what age group. People use and display their abilities of reasoning and rhetoric, of thinking and speaking, making the baraza a setting in which we can observe how ‘wisdom’ is displayed, performed and appreciated in the Swahili context.⁵

In baraza communication the art of speaking, the level of knowledge, experience and education, and the habitus in which people shape and present themselves as knowledgeable and reasonable, together shape a kind of wisdom performance. The collective wisdom performance of a baraza – if we can call it that – consists of the specific complementary ways in which individuals act, speak and argue. A baraza typically consists of neighbours and friends who are very familiar with each other but may have different characters, educational and ethnic backgrounds, and possibly vary in social status. We can commonly identify an internal order which participants follow to fill out complementary roles. To illustrate this, we have to be aware that the factors that matter in baraza discussions are quite differently personified in each participant. For instance, a sharifu (a descendant of Prophet Muhammad)Footnote ⁶ will normally have a high social status and be treated with corresponding respect, but in his baraza, this may not matter as much as elsewhere in social interaction. What matters more is the actual input that people make during discussions, the impact they have (in the mid- and long term) on the thinking of the others. In this sense, a sharifu, like anyone else, may have to prove himself as knowledgeable and thoughtful, as an entertaining or otherwise admirable speaker. In each case he will have to have a significant impact on knowledge-based or insight-seeking discussions, in order to attain a highly respected position in the baraza. Speaking of complementary roles, for baraza discussions to make knowledge-related and wisdom-oriented progress, we can anticipate the need for a balanced combination of different types of thinkers and speakers – critical listeners and sceptics, questioners and educated readers (in religious, scientific and worldly affairs), enthusiastic commentators and citizens well-informed on politics and world news. From my experience during fieldwork, members of neighbourhood barazas typically do fill such roles and thus contribute in distinct ways.

What about wisdom as linked to individual members of a baraza? Let me approach this by considering the perspective of those who appreciate and admire others as wise. Based on a significant amount of shared time spent with each other, their judgement is based on experience. They have observed how someone approaches and discusses tricky issues, and have been able to correlate the comments, statements and predictions made on such issues by this person to the way that these issues then developed further. In a way, then, they have been constantly scrutinizing the validity and success of the evaluations of their baraza peers. Some aspects and ways of behaviour and discursive performance that are particularly appreciated and associated with wisdom are the following: independent thinking, the ability to speak well and convincingly, and being well-informed on worldly and religious matters. More to the point, as for the concrete synthesis being shaped in each respective event of reflective inquiry, making convincing arguments from unconventional and unexpected angles or positions is particularly appreciated, even (or perhaps specifically) when this runs against established modes of thinking. Often, this is done by or linked to a sensitive and appropriate use of humour that assists in bringing home such a point or argument.

A SWAHILI ISLAMIC SCHOLAR AND HIS LECTURES

As described in more detail elsewhere (Kresse Reference Kresse and Reese2004; Reference Kresse and Falola2007: Chapter 6), I attended the daily Ramadhan lectures of an Islamic scholar in Mombasa, Sheikh Abdilahi Nassir – a local intellectual who had also held positions as teacher, politician and publisher, and turned to Shi'ism in the 1980s. Making people think, I concluded when reflecting upon his lectures, is what these were all about, and, as I explain below, I feel he should be identified as a ‘wise’ person according to some of the criteria just mentioned. Furthermore, the discursive situation of his lectures shared some significant features with the baraza, as far as the appreciation and transmission of knowledge is concerned. The lectures were given in a small hall which had been built in a simple neighbourhood of Mombasa, through the initiative of local youths. The purpose was to provide an educational support centre for children of the neighbourhood, assisting them with their homework and other school-related tasks during the afternoon. The project had also been started partly in response to the fact that local drug users had begun frequenting the openly accessible plot (where the hall was to be built), to hang out and pass the day. In their stead, the initiators of this project were determined that more useful and beneficial activities should occupy this spot. The educational initiative had invited the Sheikh to deliver his Ramadhan lectures in their hall, when they heard that the imam of a local mosque had retracted his offer to him to give his lectures there.Footnote ⁷ Sheikh Abdilahi had accepted, and a mixed audience of different ages, and ethnic and educational backgrounds, and Islamic affiliation (Shia and Sunni), attended, with numbers varying between thirty and seventy listeners, all of whom were male.

Sheikh Abdilahi's lectures were special in comparison to others, not only because of his particular gift for public speaking (unhurried, thoughtful, original and clear), which kept younger and older listeners equally attentive, but also because he used particularly memorable phrases, humorous idioms and vivid illustrations while developing his overall arguments. He also combined his commentaries on the Qur'an (tafsir), which constituted the lectures on weekdays, with reflections on the current social and political situation in Kenya, particularly as it affected coastal Muslims (in fact, he had been an influential politician in his youth, representing regional interests and arguing to the British colonial government for the independence of the Coastal Strip from Kenya; cf. Salim 1970). So these lectures were not just historical or doctrinal exercises. His weekend lectures engaged even more explicitly with the audience, as he discussed topics that had been requested by members of the audience beforehand. These topics included discussions of the recent local controversies about the beginning and end of Ramadhan, the potential effects a new constitution would have on Kenyan Muslims, and the agenda of US politics in the Middle East (with a particular view to Saddam Hussein). At the end of each of these lectures, ample time was provided for further questions and discussion. With these features, his lectures provided a rare example of a local Islamic scholar engaging openly in discussion and debate, in mutual exchange, and thus at least in principle on an equal level with his audience. This intention was also exemplified in his way of speaking, as he included himself and his audience in the same ‘narrative we’, together facing problems and reflecting upon them. This was in contrast to the more common ways of lecturing by Islamic scholars that I encountered otherwise, where the audience was usually addressed from a position of superiority, in an ideological and combative language presenting dogmas that should be followed. Sheikh Abdilahi's lectures, in contrast, were about the questioning of dogmas, and the questioning of oneself, making the listeners think about themselves, not only as Muslims but also as moral agents.

This process of seemingly open-ended engagement with questions that were of concern and importance to all present was what made listening to Sheikh Abdilahi's lectures such a special experience for all involved. This was confirmed to me in informal discussions with a variety of regular attenders – but also by people who said they (as opponents of Shi'ism) did not attend because they knew of the ‘danger’ and the ‘temptation’ that his rhetorical skills posed to all his listeners. One feature of Sheikh Abdilahi's rhetoric was to encourage listeners to start a process of self-questioning by reflecting upon social issues from ‘their’ perspective, with reference to common sentiments and understandings generally shared by ‘us’ coastal Muslims. This marked the lectures as a discursive space of common reflection, and in turn supported the acknowledgement of the Sheikh as someone who could provide meaningful insight into issues that mattered for all in the Muslim community. And as the process of questioning oneself opens up the possibility of self-transformation, both of these aspects are related to the appreciation and transmission of ‘wisdom’, as described above. Comments on Sheikh Abdilahi and his lectures by members of the audience support this impression. Various people of different ages, status, and educational background expressed to me that they were most impressed by the Sheikh as an independent thinker who was not repeating the common rhetorical appeals so frequently used in Islamic speeches, but rather engaging with issues that mattered to everyone, in ways – and through words – that were also accessible to everyone.

Some of these features are shared with the baraza, as far as the discursive setting vis-à-vis an understanding of ‘wisdom’ is concerned. In both cases, there is a learning (or thinking) process set in motion for those who are seeking knowledge and advice. They are sitting in, listening in, at discursive events which are concerned with shaping clearer perspectives of orientation in the world, learning through presence and observation. They observe how elders and intellectual superiors are dealing with social concerns, how they argue, how they phrase their advice, and how they present themselves in terms of overall behaviour. They may copy and try to emulate those features which they find most convincing – manners of speaking and reflecting about things, as well as ways of behaving appropriately in such contexts (potentially making an impression on others). This, then, is part of performing a general task set by Islam for all Muslims: that of becoming a better person, of increasing one's moral status; of following the role model of Prophet Muhammad (and other prophets). An admirable example of good and decent behaviour is copied and internalized, so as to make oneself a better person, and in terms of the application of one's knowledge to the particular setting in which one is situated, more wise.

A SWAHILI POET AND HIS POEM

My second example is drawn from the utenzi genre of Swahili poetry, and concerns its relevance for documenting or transmitting wisdom and knowledge in general. Both in written form and as oral performance, poetry has been an intrinsic element of Swahili culture and social life for many centuries, and various poetic genres have been prominently used for different social occasions. Common elements with related Bantu languages and cultures are traceable – at least in terms of this poetry's prominent place in public social performance on festive occasions, and its didactic and mnemonic function in terms of preserving a popular consciousness of norms, values and eventsFootnote ⁸ – as well as strong influences from Arabic traditions. There is also a significant and ongoing tradition of Islamic poetry in Swahili (see also Knappert Reference Knappert1971; Shariff Reference Shariff and Harrow1991). Swahili poetry is richly documented and researched, and even though poetic composition is nowadays no longer part and parcel of common education,Footnote ⁹ the ability to compose poetry according to the classic rules of composition is still highly admired, if barely rewarded. Notably, poems composed for specific festive occasions (such as weddings, religious holidays or political rallies) are still recited in public; they are usually requested from qualified poets for the event. Historically, didactic poetry has been an important genre of social and moral education. One famous example of this is the Utenzi wa Mwanakupona, a nineteenth-century poem in which a patrician mother reminds her daughter of all aspects of proper conduct towards her future husband (see Allen Reference Allen1971; Biersteker Reference Biersteker and Harrow1991). Other prominent cases illustrating forceful wit and wordplay combined with education are the poems of Muyaka, from nineteenth-century Mombasa (Abdulaziz Reference Abdulaziz1979), and more recently Shabaan Robert's poems, written in late colonial Tanganyika.

The transmission of moral knowledge through poetry does not per se entail ‘wisdom’ of the poet: reiterating existing descriptions of social values does not characterize someone as ‘wise’. So, if, in the Swahili context, poetry as a didactic educational means has to do with the perpetuation of moral knowledge in society, where does a link between poetry and wisdom come in? We have to look at the composition of a poem, the creative act of the individual poet. It would be in and through the formulation of insights that are relevant for a wide variety of members that wisdom comes into play. This can be in the sense that a piece of common social knowledge is phrased in such an extraordinarily beautiful and memorable way that this now becomes a common expression; or, a new and relevant insight shines out of the creative and innovative use of language within a poem.

My example here is a long epic poem of the utenzi genre, written in the 1960s by Ahmad Nassir Juma Bhalo – the brother of Sheikh Abdilahi, treated above – then still only in his twenties (Nassir Reference Nassir1979).Footnote ¹⁰ His poem Utenzi wa Mtu ni Utu (‘Utenzi about the saying “a human being is humanity”’) consists of a long explanation of utu, the Swahili concept for humanity, both in a general sense and also for moral goodness itself. The poem provides over four hundred stanzas of illustrations, exemplifications and reflections (an expansive but not uncommon length for a didactic sermon in this genre). It draws on common social knowledge in the form of proverbs, as shown in the title, and presents the poet's specific interpretation of them, contributing to a general account of utu. Internal sub-aspects of utu are treated and illustrated in interrelating parts. They concern the codes of good moral behaviour in true friendship, the marital relationship, intergenerational relationships, and social relationships in general. Here as well, proverbs are used as starting points for reflection and commentary. Furthermore, utu as a central moral concept is explored through its relationship to relevant subsidiary ones, like upendano (mutual love) and usawa (social equality). The result is a universalist account of moral goodness, framed and formulated from a Swahili perspective, but notably from that of a specific critical individual, the poet Ahmad Nassir, and thus not representing any communal ‘Swahili wisdom’Footnote ¹¹ as such. Interestingly, the particular position he put forward here contrasts with other understandings of utu I heard expressed by other Old Town residents, assuming that true moral goodness could only be achieved by Muslims, or by members of the Swahili community. In this way, his poem goes beyond locally or ethnically confined conceptions of morality while using local colour for its general portrayal.

Generally speaking, this poem can be qualified as part of local wisdom literature in two ways. Conventionally, it could be argued that the poet is engaged in a commentary and interpretation of Swahili folk wisdom reflected in commonly known proverbs and sayings. But I believe it is more useful to appreciate as wisdom the specific way in which Ahmad Nassir here goes beyond commonly held beliefs about values and morality; thereby, he has generated new insights, and thus provides us with a wider perspective on utu than was previously available. This is accessible to all potential addressees, the members of the Swahili-speaking community. Within their circle, the interpretation of utu that Ahmad Nassir presents in his poem may be characterized as ‘of necessary interest to everyone’: it is of concern for all of them, providing orientation on how to behave as a good human being. Kant's phrase ‘of necessary interest to everyone’ (Kant Reference Kant and Schmidt1930: 701)Footnote ¹² links us back to a ‘doctrine of wisdom’ that according to Kant characterizes a ‘worldly conception’ of philosophy (the Weltbegriff) which is open and accessible to all. I believe that this is applicable to the poem Utenzi wa Mtu ni Utu: being accessible to all members of a discursive community, the text has generated an expanded horizon of what utu means, and how and why it needs to be adhered to.

There are further links to general reflections raised above, in that readers or listenersFootnote ¹³ are made to re-think the familiar (a common feature of philosophical thinking). In reading or listening to the poem, they are urged to compare the explanations and characterizations here with their own understanding of utu. For them, as for the poet, their conceptions are linked to proverbs as resources of social knowledge which usually remain implicit and unreflected. But confronted with the poem, the audience is pushed to make their own understandings explicit and reassess them with a view to the interpretation presented to them here. In a similar way to the dynamics in Sheikh Abdilahi's Ramadhan lectures reviewed above, the poet Ahmed Nassir here makes people think, makes them question some of the values and standards and self-conceptions that they would normally take for granted in their everyday life.Footnote ¹⁴Vis-à-vis a particular (if long and complex) explanation of moral goodness, they are challenged to confirm or modify their own personal vision or interpretation. And, as described above, this may lead them to more fundamental reflection about themselves – that is, to instances in which intellectual self-transformation could be set in motion.

This may actually be welcomed by the audience, and lead to an appreciation of the author as wise. Apart from this moment of intellectual challenge as a criterion for wisdom, there was also the view that he managed to provide a ‘true’ and ‘complete’ account of utu. Either in being able to pinpoint and put in words exactly what utu was all about (as people implicitly claimed they had always known it to be), or in opening up a new, wider and richer perspective on it, the poet would be recognized as thoughtful and accomplished. Making them able to see more clearly what had not been visible to them before, either buried within assumptions or just generally out of sight, is a poet's achievement that is explicitly appreciated by many in the Swahili context. In this region, throughout history poets have been seen as teachers of society, a view that implicitly ascribes the capacity of wisdom to them. It can be said that poet teachers are more readily acknowledged as ‘wise’ by their Swahili peers, the more ‘complete’, ‘true’ and ‘clear’ their poetic accounts or moral and didactic messages are perceived to be. Ahmad Nassir's Utenzi wa Mtu ni Utu did well on all these counts. Comments on the poem that I could gather particularly appreciated the ‘completeness’ of aspects covered, next to the fact that they thought a true picture was being drawn in clear and enjoyable language. But most admired was the fact that the author of such a profound and all-encompassing poem had only been in his twenties when composing the poem. This also proved that even if old age and much life experience was usually deemed to be associated with, or even seen as a condition of, wisdom, this was not necessarily so. The poetic composition itself could make evident that relevant and helpful insight into human life had been generated – wisdom.

Evident in the above paragraph, however, is a considerable tension between the two dominant aspects reported for the appreciation of the poet as wise, namely the intellectual challenge of making people think, on the one hand, and the reference to truth and completeness of attributes of utu listed on the other. This may reflect an inherent ambiguity about what really counts as wisdom in the Swahili context: between the non-conformity and originality of individual thinkers going beyond previously established borders of knowledge, on the one hand, and the adherence and (complete) reproduction of an existent body of knowledge, in this case about utu, on the other. Both standards of judgement seem to exist side by side with each other, but are not completely reconcilable overall.

SOCIALITY, MORALITY AND ISLAM

I have discussed the cases of two thinkers who were socially acknowledged and praised for their wisdom, for the way that they passed on their knowledge and made it ‘work’ within a common social discursive space between author (speaker, composer) and recipients. Both illustrate that independence in one's thinking is one important element for being perceived as wise. In both cases, the non-conformity of their discourses,Footnote ¹⁵ linked to the questioning, reassessment and qualification of commonly assumed truths, was seen as an aspect that made their reflections remarkable and original to their Swahili peers – offering wider, further avenues of perceiving the world, and oneself within it. However, such independence does not imply being cut off from local traditions. On the contrary, it is embedded in them, makes use of them, and consciously positions itself toward them. In both cases, the chosen medium for reflection – and, if you like, ‘transmitting wisdom’ – was an established means of intellectual communication within the East African coastal society: Islamic lectures in the first case, and poetry in the second.

We have also seen – perhaps more clearly than anything else – that the social embeddedness of such individual thinkers within the discursive dynamics of society is crucial for the identification of their thoughts as ‘wise’, and for the possibility of their having an impact on others around them. For Sheikh Abdilahi's lectures, an immediate link to the audience assisted in this, as he could be directly observed and experienced by everyone present. He was also careful to address social issues that his audience wanted to hear about, issues about which they were seeking a clearer picture and more precise intellectual orientation. By doing so he picked up on discussions that were currently on people's minds, taking care that his reflections took on the thoughts and concerns of his listeners. Thus the discursive situation in the lecture hall resembled that of the common baraza in several respects, with a particularly knowledgeable person as a senior member of a group reflecting in interaction with his listeners on current events and concerns, and how best to deal with them. In a different way, the discursive context of Ahmad Nassir's poem on humanity also resembles the baraza: the poet addresses his audience as his peers, and is himself a member of the group. He too seeks to clarify and provide orientation on common matters of moral judgement that are encountered by everyone in the social community. In doing this, he draws from previous pronouncements on these issues that have shaped the thinking of members of society, namely proverbs. Thus in all three cases, the discourses of knowledge, the questioning of social knowledge, and the reconstitution of perspectives for knowledge in the future, as fields, efforts and projects that individual intellectuals are engaged in, are inextricably linked to common social discourses of knowledge and the channels and forms of discursive interaction that the Swahili context provides.

As a bottom line, direct social interaction or sociality may be emphasized as a necessary framework condition for the appreciation of knowledge, and of wisdom (and philosophy) in a more emphatic sense (see also Collins 1998: Chapter 1). If no shared moral or practical concern was addressed in intellectual discourse, there would be no way that discourse, or its contributors, could be qualified as ‘wise’. Anyone described as mwenye hekima (a wise person, literally ‘an owner of wisdom’) by their peers in the Swahili context, or attributed with hekima or busara (wisdom), will have been shown to be part of a common social discursive sphere, and have given meaningful input to it. Thus according to my ethnographic investigations, language (the mastery of words, rhetoric) and sociality (being part of a group) are core components of wisdom. This should not rule out the sphere of non-verbal knowledge and its performance (on that I can say very little). In fact, there seems to be a double-sidedness of performance-oriented knowledge, between verbal and non-verbal paradigms of knowledge and practice. In the performance of healing, for instance, I once observed the use of a phrase that seems to reflect this: when being introduced to a new patient, the senior healer asked his junior assistant ‘Anataka dawa au maneno?’ (Does she want medicine or words?). Both are, it seems, complementary viable ways or strategies of healing, and are qualified as such in this phrase. If we look at an overview of knowledge realms or relevant sub-fields of knowledge in the Swahili context, we can see that qualifications of language (verbal/non-verbal) and performance (performative/non-performative) provide two crucial axes by which we can rethink knowledge and the characteristics of its various sub-fields overall. We can already see that these axes are cutting across each other, as the performance of verbal (and discursive) skills featured crucially in the examples above.

In conclusion, I will discuss further the interrelationship between some of these realms of knowledge, and conceptual takes on their overall qualification, drawing from internal qualifications and categories. This will be done in relation to the characterization of intellectuals or knowledge specialists.

Realms or areas of knowledge, or expertise, that are generally acclaimed as important and established in the Swahili context are: historical knowledge, religious knowledge, medical knowledge (healing), artisanship (wood carving, for example), and, as we have seen, verbal knowledge (by which I here mean knowledge related to the use of language). The latter is probably the most significant and overarching area of knowledge and intellectual activity, and it can be subdivided into at least the following fields: vocabulary, rhetoric, wordplay (ambiguity, for example), and the developed genres of poetry (tungo), for example song (wimbo), riddles (mafumbo) and sayings (misemo). Indeed, poets especially were described to me as ‘teachers of society’ (though this characterization was also applied to Islamic scholars). In terms of relevant skilled performances linked to verbal knowledge, ways of speaking, lecturing, reciting or singing are crucial here, and these are in various ways important for success and recognition as poet, teacher, Islamic scholar and healer.

Intellectual practice, as we have seen, is performed in a variety of everyday situations and processes. Healing, composing poetry, formulating speeches or lectures, and participating in discussions with friends and neighbours (as at the baraza), are common and socially established activities within which intellectual practice is performed. From what we have seen above, expertise is associated with intellectual independence, with creativity, and with originality of thought, as well as with the completeness of reproduction of existing knowledge (as in the case of poetry). Acknowledged thinkers are creators and originators of ideas that are seen as valuable by their peers. The skills by which these ideas are disseminated are discursive (and thus socially rooted and trained) skills, linked to historically developed communicative genres already embedded in society.

I should raise a final point about the social – and moral – relevance of knowledge, engrained in the Muslim character of society. A basic Islamic directive combining the two, knowledge and morality, is often implicitly referred to, or explicitly pointed out, by ordinary people commenting on everyday life, just as it is by intellectuals in poetry or educational literature and speeches. It is encapsulated in the formula that Muslims should inform each other (pass their knowledge on to others) and remind each other (about what is right and wrong), kujulishana na kukumbushana in Kiswahili (to make each other know and to make each other remember). Thus we have here an arising sense of social responsibility linked to knowledge, and this can be spelled out in a double sense: first, knowledge is seen as a source of moral improvement and is thus socially valuable (that is, to be passed on), which leads to an implicit obligation of acquiring knowledge, to spread it for wider social benefit; second, there is a clear social obligation to show concern for one's fellow human beings, to be ready to provide reminders, if needed, as to how they should behave. Here, individuals work on the basis of their own knowledge, and the more they know and the better they understand, the better influence they can have upon others, and the higher their own moral status will be. On the basis of all this, we can speak of a particular kind of ‘knowledge economy’ at work in the Swahili context, in which heuristic, moral and religious motivations and obligations interact and enforce each other, shaping a wider framework that underpins social action (see also Kresse 2009).

Put more simply, there is an explicit social obligation to attain knowledge about how to live well (as a good Muslim, as a good human being), and more basically, what (forbidden things) to avoid, and how. On the basis of the latter, individuals can help their peers avoid committing sins – and they have the responsibility to do so. On the basis of the former, they can seek to perfect themselves as human beings. This refers back to a basic moral obligation of ‘commanding good and forbidding wrong’ for all Muslims more generally (see Cook 2000).

CONCLUSION

Perhaps we could say that the social dimensions of knowledge in the Swahili context – and probably in many Muslim societies (and possibly many others) – encompass two significant levels: a discursive one and a moral one. The first refers to the general level of sociality, which surrounds and shapes specific forms of knowledge, and nurtures the transmission of knowledge (using and reconfirming established forms and genres for communication). The second refers to a religiously framed idea of social responsibility: to seek knowledge about good (and evil), to do good and help to do good, and to avoid sinning and prevent others from committing sin. The first is of descriptive character, referring to an ‘is status’ of how knowledge is socially embedded; the second is of prescriptive character, involving a normative ‘ought status’ about the use of knowledge in relation to action. This second one applies to all social actors as agents; they all have the responsibility to follow up on their knowledge in their deeds. Emphatically, of course, this is true for socially acknowledged knowledgeable people: the local intellectuals, particularly Islamic scholars, but also experts in other socially relevant fields.

This kind of social responsibility, and the link between knowledge and action, has already featured above, in Ahmad Nassir's poem about utu (goodness, humanity). I would like to conclude with the suggestion that even though the point just made has been sketched out for a particular Muslim context and with reference to the explicit relevance of Islam as a ‘discursive tradition’ (Asad Reference Asad1986) with moral significance, it could perhaps also be made similarly (and more generally) for other societies, within and beyond the bounds of the Muslim world. Many societies in Africa, particularly among the Bantu-language speaking groups, share historically developed overlaps and commonalities with the Swahili context when it comes to conceptions of goodness, personhood and humanity. This can be seen, for instance, in discussions of ubuntu and related concepts in Southern Africa, and of conceptions of ‘personhood’ in Africa.

Within the field of African philosophy, the general conception that there was, and should be, a social obligation to put knowledge to good use was once pushed for by the Kenyan philosopher Henry Odera Oruka in his ‘sage philosophy’ project, under the term ‘sagacity’ (Oruka Reference Oruka and Odera1990–1). While pointing at the fact that this normative use of knowledge was a socially established and individually performed feature of many African communities (a claim that his fieldwork-based research substantiated particularly for his own, the Luo context), he also insisted that this should be cultivated further, in everyday life. But also, academic philosophy in particular had the task to make (or keep) the knowledge on which it drew socially accessible and applicable, so that it could become (or stay) meaningful to all. Here, we are reminded again of the philosopher as Spezialist für's Allgemeine, as mentioned above. ‘Philosophy should be made sagacious’, said Oruka (Kresse and Oruka 1997), and academic philosophy should be careful to retain its social relevance.Footnote ¹⁶ If the general character of the link between knowledge and practice is somewhat similar despite the fact that we are now talking far beyond the realm of Muslims and Bantu-speaking African peoples initially discussed with reference to the Swahili coast, this could be the topic of further comparative reflections. For now, I close with the observation that we have found our way back to the general consideration of wisdom. Apart from everything else, perhaps it is a good way of qualifying wisdom through reference to the link between knowledge and practice. Perhaps wisdom, in the Swahili context and beyond, is to have the ability or good sense to put knowledge into action.

What does this mean, finally, in terms of ‘expertise’ for the field of social interaction in the Swahili context? Wisdom, as qualified here, seems to be always the outcome of a socially relevant performance of knowledge by specific individuals within a known group of people able (and somewhat required) to assess, evaluate and appreciate it. It may be seen as the expertise of keeping alive an interactive process of producing, interrogating, understanding and applying socially relevant knowledge within a community. The criteria and qualifications of that expertise, then, evolve (or rather, have evolved) from within the historical dimensions of these processes, whereby past discourses and their praise and appreciation of thinkers and speakers leave a kind of benchmark, a normative standard which then is used to qualify future performances of individuals within these communication processes. Thus, from a perspective based on experiences and observations from the Swahili coast, we may say that wisdom is the expertise of nurturing knowledge, and attending to it, for the benefit of social practice.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to panel members and the audience at the AEGIS conference in London in 2005 for stimulating comments and questions on a first version of this article; in particular, I thank Louis Brenner, Trevor Marchand, Knut Graw, Katrin Bromber, Alena Rettova and Joy Adapon for their comments on various draft versions. This article also draws from passages and develops ideas presented in Kresse 2008.