THE post-war, French existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre made a priceless contribution to philosophy in his re-shaping of the dialectic.
In bringing new meaning to the dialectic, Sartre opened up a brand new horizon on the role of the individual in history and the role an individual possessed of the instinct for change can do for history.

Before Sartre’s intervention, Marxist philosophy saw the dialectic as the driving force in society which determines the movement of broad social forces.
The dialectic was thus a determinist force. The individual is a product of the dialectic. Then came an intervention behind prison walls.
The Italian philosopher, Antonio Gramsci was facing inevitable death in a prison under the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini.
In jail, Gramsci penned brilliant philosophical notes in which he questioned traditional Marxist understanding of the dialectic.
Gramsci’s was not given credit for being the first philosopher to relook at the dialectic because his prison notes were published long after the end of WW2.

It was left to Sartre to continue where Gramsci left off. In his magnum opus, “Critique of Dialectical Reason” Sartre says the purpose of his book was to introduce into Marxist philosophy “the unsurpassable individuality of the human adventure.”

In Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre dissolved the determinism of the dialectic as he argued that within a certain field of possibilities man steps outside his historical and social limitations and “succeeds in making of what has been made of him.” The basic point of Critique of Dialectical Reason is that man makes the dialectic just as the dialectic makes him.
Since Sartre, philosophy has accepted the contention that society does not have to wait for the relentless movement of the dialectic, but the individual can harness the dialectic to bring about changes. In philosophy this is called the role of the individual in history.

Humans then can step outside a defined area of limitation and change the course of society. We in the 20th and 21st centuries then accept that what Nietzsche longed for – the Ubermensch. Society can produce the Ubermensch and in the 21st, the world thought the Ubermensch had come in the form of Barack Obama. But lacking in self-confidence and ignorant of how the individual can change the dialectic, Obama became a failure in leadership.

This has been an overbearing digression on the subject of Nigel Hughes but recent remarks by him on the ethnic divide in Guyana makes the discussion on Sartre relevant.
Here is what Hughes noted in an interview about the 2015 election: “I think there was movement away from the traditional voting practice, whether people stayed away, as opposed to whether they came out and specifically voted against the traditional votes, the 2015 elections offered a glimmer of hope.” Hughes went on to add that racial attitude determines the voting choices of Guyanese.

What Hughes chose to ignore deliberately or because of political limitation is why the “glimmer of hope” was allowed to fade rather than, as Sartre noted, to seize the moment and change the dialectic. I would like to see Hughes expand on that because the “glimmer of hope” opened up the possibilities that Sartre wrote about.
Nigel has a huge responsibility to Guyana’s historiography to explain the failure of the Ubermensch in 2015 when he had the power and authority in 2015 to build on the glimmer of hope.
Why, as the deputy leader (chairman) of the AFC, the party with 40 percent of power, he and others in the AFC’s leadership (not to mention Roopnaraine and Thomas in the WPA) did not attempt the birth of a new political culture, thus weakening the hold of ethnic voting in Guyana. In 2011 and 2015, the election results showed there was no hegemony of the racially driven mind.

Will we get that analysis from Nigel? I don’t think so because if and when he does offer his thoughts, he would have to admit to the class that he and the AFC belonged to a new political culture and was in fact part of an ethnic make-up that had won power and was satisfied with that power at the level of class and power.
I am referring to the Mulatto/Creole class (MCC) that had no inclination after 2015 of reaching out to the Indian people that voted for the AFC in 2011 and 2015. The MCC in the AFC of 2015, of which Nigel was an essential component, contributed to the widening of the racial divide.

If in today’s Guyana, ethnic voting determines election results, then Nigel Hughes should be the last person to make that pronouncement. The closest the Ubermensch is to Guyana is Irfaan Ali. I hope he wins on September 1, 2025.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.