HOERNLE, ALFRED

Reinhold Frederick Alfred Hoernle (November 11, 1880-July 21, 1943) was a philosopher and a prominent supporter of the Joint Council movement and the South African Institute of Race Relations (S.A.I.R.R.).

Born in Bonn, Germany, Hoernle, the son of a famous Sanscrit scholar, spent his early childhood in India, which he left at the age of five. He was educated in Germany and from 1898-1905 attended Oxford University in England, where he had a brilliant record. He taught philosophy in Scotland, South Africa (1908-1912), England, and the United States (1914-20) before moving permanently to South Africa in 1923.

He and his wife Winifred, a well-known anthropologist, helped establish the departments of Bantu studies and Archaeology at the newly expanded University of the Witwatersrand, and they encouraged African studies at other universities. They were also closely associated with the journal Bantu Studies. As the Joint Council movement developed they worked to foster it, and when J.D. Rheinallt Jones founded the S.A.I.R.R., Hoernle became its first president. Hoernle put much energy into his academic and political work, and died relatively young.

He was a respected public figure, in part because of his international reputation as a scholar. He tried to apply his philosophy of “synoptic idealism,” which called for the consideration of problems from every possible angle, to South Africa’s racial problems. The clearest statement of the results was his 1939 Phelps-Stokes lecture series, published as South African Native Policy and the Liberal Spirit.

The abstractness of Hoernle’s philosophical approach allowed his ideas to be easily twisted by his political opponents. For instance, they focused on his view that segregation could work in principle while ignoring his conclusion that in South Africa it was impossible in practice. In translating his synoptic view to politics he too often allowed his opponents to define the debate, and his belief in the power of reason distracted him from the powers of prejudice and economic interest. Like other white liberals, his views were tinged with paternalism and cultural chauvinism which ultimately limited his efficacy as a supporter of black aspirations. Within the limits of his outlook, he worked sincerely and diligently to change South Africa’s racist society.

CHRISTOPHER LOWE