The Birthday of a Philosopher and Theologian of Rebirth

"Being born is an opportunity to give birth to oneself anew", as a Yoruba saying may be adapted.

 

Thursday, the 4th of ​A​pril 2024​, was the birthday of a thinker who has made rebirth a central theme of his work.

 

I am not aware of him  using the term "rebirth" as emblematic of his philosophy and theology at the intersection of Kalabari and Christian thought and European/Continental philosophy, but the theme of rebirth is helpful in summing up some of his central preoccupations​.

​These abiding concerns are possibilities of human recreation in engaging with and expanding life's possibilities. He explores birth as a biological and symbolic,​ social category in Kalabari thought,  reinforced by Continental philosophy, with aspirations to expanding the scope of potential  available to the human being through reworking the possibilities the individual is born into, as perceived in Kalabari ​ethos and Christian and European thought​. These are orientations also explored in practical terms  ​i​n shaping the course of his life's journey.

 

​His work is a matrix incidentally unifying and expanding classical Nigerian philosophies​ and correlative classical African philosophies, systems of knowledge that make more sense through the lens of his detailed exploration of constitutive nodes of Kalabari  thought, an understanding of his creativity which I am not aware of as having been discussed in depth so far. 

The parallels between his work and ​classical Nigerian philosophies​ and correlative classical African philosophies demonstrate them as significantly centred on the question of how to navigate and expand the possibilities available to the human being within a philosophy centred on action on Earth as it impacts action in the spiritual universe, these universes understood as co-inherent, with the validation of life on Earth by those who live on Earth, with the help of those beyond Earth, as the primary task of those on Earth, as they move towards full entry into the spiritual universe beyond Earth.

 

Happy birthday to Nimi Wariboko, adept of rebirth, seeker of infinity through the doorway of recurrent transformation.

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