An Introduction to African Philosophy PDF
Preview An Introduction to African Philosophy
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706 12 Hid’s Copse Road Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ, England Copyright © 1998 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Imbo, Samuel Oluoch, 1961– An introduction to African philosophy / Samuel Oluoch Imbo. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Philosophy, African. I. Title. B5305.I43 1998 199’.6—dc21 97-48810 CIP 9781461636502 Printed in the United States of America ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. To Yu-jung Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Acknowledgments Introduction PART ONE - Definitions of African Philosophy Chapter One - How Is African Philosophy to Be Defined? PART TWO - Ethnophilosophy and Its Critics Chapter Two - Is Ethnophilosophy Really Philosophy? Chapter Three - Is African Philosophy Unique? PART THREE - African Philosophy Making Connections Chapter Four - What Should the Language(s) of African Philosophy Be? Chapter Five - Are There Connections Among African, African American, and Feminist Philosophies? Conclusion References Index About the Author Acknowledgments I owe a huge debt of gratitude to many people who have contributed to this book over the years. First, my teachers, especially the late Henry Odera Oruka, who together with Dismas Masolo introduced me to comparative philosophy. Next, my students at Purdue University Calumet and at Hamline University, who unfailingly asked the crucial questions that challenged me to clarify my positions on the topics discussed here. I am very grateful to Jeffrey Crawford, whose extensive comments on the manuscript at various stages were extremely useful. His suggestions, even those I did not agree with, made the book clearer than it might otherwise have been. Emmanuel Eze and Bill Lawson provided additional constructive guidance that made me revisit some previously unclear arguments. My institution, Hamline University, provided a most supportive environment in which to finish writing this book. I particularly want to acknowledge the debt to my colleagues in the philosophy department, Duane Cady, Nancy Holland, and Stephen Kellert, for listening and providing opportunities for ongoing dialogue on these topics. Support from the College of Liberal Arts came in the form of the Hanna Grant, which freed me from material concerns during the summer of 1997. Finally, my wife, Yu-jung Hu, to whom this book is dedicated. She was the first reader of every chapter and also typed and computer edited the manuscript through all its stages. Without her love, inspiration, and encouragement, this book would not have been completed. Introduction Much contemporary writing on African philosophy is a direct challenge to the bases and content of Western scholarship. Other writing that celebrates indigenous traditions is an indirect challenge to the view that in the absence of “great” written texts, traditional Africa could not claim to have had intellectual cultures. Indeed, the theme of whether philosophy can exist and thrive in the absence of written texts runs through many contemporary discussions in African philosophy. A number of books, mostly anthologies, bring together articles from a wide range of academic journals where these debates on the nature and definition of African philosophy have been raging. Large parts of these anthologies are taken up with discussions of whether an African philosophy exists, how it is to be defined, what distinguishes it from Western philosophy, whether it is oral or written, and whether it can be accessible to non-Africans or is so unique that only Africans can understand it. Participants in the debates bring different definitions and underlying assumptions about what philosophy is, and it is therefore not surprising that African philosophy gets defined and classified in such different ways. Two general trends are discernible in the introductory texts. On the one hand, there is an ethnophilosophy that takes a culture-specific view of philosophy and finds African philosophy in the proverbs, myths, folk tales, sculptures, and traditional cultures. Opposed to ethnophilosophy is the universalist approach, which rejects culture-specific philosophy. Universalists for the most part are skeptical about the existence of a philosophy that is not written down and—if such a philosophy did come into existence—its ability to develop a tradition of debate and sustained inquiry. Within the universalist approach there is a minority, represented by Kenyan philosopher Henry Odera Oruka, that defends an oral philosophical tradition. Odera Oruka develops a thesis he calls Sagacity, according to which there were in traditional Africa sages who were philosophic in the strictest sense despite their illiteracy. He offers Socrates as a parallel example of a sage, who never wrote down his thoughts and yet is generally considered a great philosopher. The larger argument between the ethnophilosophers and universalists is really whether the notion of text should be restricted to its usual domain— the written word. Despite the useful function of synthesizing arguments from diverse sources, the current literature almost invariably lacks variety in the number of topics represented and so serves as an introduction to African philosophy in only a limited sense. One such introductory text is Tsenay Serequeberhan’s African Philosophy: The Essential Readings.1 Even though he brings together some of the main voices of contemporary African philosophy, Serequeberhan limits the contributions in that collection to the writings of Africans. While it is important, in his words, to “hearken to what Africans have to say for themselves,” the issue of whether non- Africans can contribute to African philosophy should itself be part of the ongoing discussion. Limiting the contributions to only those of Africans effectively sidesteps this larger debate. The anthology is also limited in another sense. Most of the articles confine themselves to the single issue of whether there exists such a thing as African philosophy. The book is thus imbalanced in the sense that most of the chapters dwell on questions of definition and justification. Such an introduction does not give an adequate indication of the landscape of African debates on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. Another example of an anthology that has served as a vehicle for these debates on the nature and definition of African philosophy is Richard Wright’s African Philosophy: An Introduction,2 which first came out twenty years ago. The most often cited third edition was published in 1984. This anthology, like Serequeberhan’s, suffers from an imbalance. In this case, the problem comes from leaning too heavily in the ethnophilosophical direction. As Kwame Anthony Appiah, a towering figure in contemporary African scholarship, has noted: “The only paper in Wright’s collection that exemplifies the critical analysis that characterizes the best philosophy—the only paper that seems to me to offer a standard for African philosophy to aim at—is Kwasi Wiredu’s ‘How Not to Compare African Thought with Western Thought.’ ”3 I take a slightly more charitable view than Appiah’s in holding that with the possible exception of one or two, the rest of the essays, Wright’s collection, by uncritically falling back on traditional cultures as acceptable materials for philosophical study, does not rise above the level of ethnophilosophy. A book like M. Akin Makinde’s African Philosophy, Culture, and Traditional Medicine4 is not intended as an introduction to African philosophy, and it would be unfair to treat it as such. Yet insofar as it bears the title “African Philosophy,” I highlight it because it illustrates a problem of a different kind. It purports to sidestep the whole debate about whether an African philosophy exists. Although the device of finding African philosophy “by means of some African traditional thinking which addresses itself to much the same philosophical issues as Western philosophy” 5 may lull Makinde into thinking that the question of the existence of African philosophy has successfully been ducked, this stratagem is in fact the uncritical embrace of one view of philosophy without regard to the implications of that view and without an examination of the alternatives. The product may indeed be insightful about traditional African medicine and its practice, but its status as philosophy must remain doubtful. Recently Safro Kwame has anthologized Akan philosophy in Readings in African Philosophy: An Akan Collection.6 Safro Kwame’s work is similar in spirit to the work of another Akan philosopher, Kwame Gyekye,7 whose focus is also on the Akan ethnic group. Although impressive in terms of breadth of topics covered (there are selections on traditional and current trends, metaphysics, epistemology, business ethics, and feminism), the anthology has a focus on only one ethnic group—the Akan group, composed of speakers of languages such as Twi, Fanti, Asante, and Akwapim in modern Ghana. The title “African Philosophy” is therefore overly ambitious—unless one holds a unanimist view of Africans whereby what is true of one ethnic group is also true of others.
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