However, in his later works, even L vy-Bruhl realised he had oversimplified things. The post-war Continental philosophies have continued this process of academic rehabilitation. The strength of post-modernism is that it gives Africans, feminists and others a voice. In any case, there is much evidence, even if often neglected, of the debt, that the ancient Greeks were happy to acknowledge, to Egypt, for many centuries the intellectual centre of the world. At the same time, others, such as the Sengalese philosopher, L opold S dar Senghor sustain the conventional history.
Emotion is black as much as reason is Greek.
For Senghor, the African is characterised by the emotional faculty, devalued in racist eyes, but for him another way of knowing the essence of things. The bushes, which dry up and become green again, are symbols of life and death. In 1948, Jean-Paul Sartre adopted Senghor's analysis in large part, whilst adding that if the struggle of all oppressed peoples is to be successful, racial differences must one day be abolished. Negritude is a stage in discovering and becoming what the black person authentically is. The first is expressed through customs, art, song and dances, the second through passion and personal beliefs.