History of African Philosophy
This article traces the history of systematic African philosophy from the early 1920’s to 2014. In Plato’s Theaetetus, Socrates suggests that philosophy begins with wonder. Aristotle agreed. However, the pattern of discourse in the history of systematic African philosophy which began in the 1920s suggests that African philosophy began with frustration and not with wonder.
This frustration, according to Ruch and Anyanwu (1981:184-85), was due to historical events such as slavery, colonialism and racism that generated frustration with European philosophy. This eventually led to angry questions and then responses and reactions out of which African philosophy emerged. These reactions led to a great debate and then to more questions and reactions. So began the on-going spiral of arguments. The frustration was borne out of colonial caricature of Africa as culturally naïve, intellectually docile and rationally inept; the caricature was created by European scholars such as Kant, Hegel and, much later, Levy-Bruhl. It was the reaction to this caricature that led African scholars returning from Europe into philosophizing, The frustration about this treatment of Africa influences African philosophers to this day. It has a wider implication that touches on sensitive issues such as the identity of the African people, their place in history, and their contributions to civilization. To dethrone and undercut the colonially-built episteme became a ready attraction for African scholars’ vexed frustrations. Thus began the history of systematic African philosophy with the likes of Aimer Cisaire, Leopold Senghor, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, William Abraham, John Mbiti and expatriates such as Placid Tempels, Janheinz Jahn and George James.
Table of Contents
- Criteria of African Philosophy
- Schools of African Philosophy
- The Movements in African Philosophy
- Periods of African Philosophy
- References and Further Reading
African philosophy as a systematic study has a very short history. This history is also a very dense one, since actors sought to do in a few decades what would have been better done in many centuries.As a result, they also did in later years what ought to have been done earlier and vice versa, thus making the early and the middle epochs overlap considerably. The reason for this overtime endeavor is not far-fetched. Soon after colonialism, actors realized that Africa had been sucked into the global matrix unprepared. During colonial times, the identity of the African was European, his thought system, standard and even his perception were structured by the colonial shadow which stood towering behind him. It was easy for the African to position himself within these Western cultural appurtenances even though they had no real-time connection with his being.
The vanity of this presupposition and the emptiness of colonial assurances manifested soon after the towering colonial shadow vanished. Now, in the global matrix it became shameful for the African to continue to identify himself within the European colonialist milieu. For one, he had just rejected colonialism and for another, the deposed European colonialist made it clear that the identity of the African was no longer covered and insured by the European medium. So, actors realized all too sudden they had been disillusioned and had suffered severe self-deceit under colonial temper. The question which trailed every African was, “Who are you?” Of course, the answers from European perspective were savage, primitive, less than human, etc. It was the urgent, sudden need to contradict these European positions that led the post-colonial Africans in search of African identity. So, to discover or rediscover African identity in order to initiate a non-colonial or original history for Africa in the global matrix and start a course of viable economic, political and social progress that is entirely African became the focal point of African philosophy.
Placid Tempels, the European missionary, wounded by this pitiable African condition elected to help and in his controversial book, Bantu Philosophy, sought to create Africa’s own philosophy as proof that Africa has its own peculiar identity and thought system, that the African is not a nobody but somebody, that he is not savage or primitive or even less than human. However, it was George James, another concerned European who attempted a much more ambitious project in his work, Stolen Legacy. In this work, there were strong suggestions not only that Africa has philosophy but that the so-called Western philosophy, the very bastion of European identity, was stolen from Africa. This claim was intended to make the proud European colonialists feel indebted to the humiliated Africans, but it was unsuccessful. That Greek philosophy had roots in Egypt does not imply, as some Europeans claims, that Egyptians were black nor that black Africans had philosophy. The use of the term “Africans” in this work is in keepingwith George James’ demarcation which precludes the Caucasian people of North Africa and refers to the black people of southern Sahara.
After these two Europeans, Africans began to attain maturation. Aimer Cesaire, John Mbiti, Odera Oruka, Julius Nyerere, Leopold Senghor, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Kwame Nkrumah, Obafemi Awolowo, Alexis Kegame, Uzodinma Nwala, Emmanuel Edeh, Innocent Onyewuenyi, and Henry Olela, to name just a few, opened the doors of ideas. A few of the works produced sought to prove and establish the philosophical basis of African, unique identity in the history of mankind, while others sought to chart a course of Africa’s true identity through unique political and economic ideologies. Some of these works were written belatedly when the early epoch had rolled over to the middle epoch of African philosophy, such as Nwala’s Igbo Philosophy, Edeh’s Igbo Metaphysics, Olela’s, Onyewuenyi’s, Anyanwu’s and Ruch’s works, etc., to explain the position that the history of African philosophy was so dense that the two epochs overlapped considerably. The criterion for identifying where each work belongs remains the focus of much debate. The ones that seek to prove or establish Africa’s unique identity belong to the early period whereas the ones that seek to clarify, justify or criticize or deny Africa’s peculiar identity belong to the middle period. The relationship can be seen between the philosophical concerns of the early and middle periods of African philosophy.
For its concerns, the middle era of African philosophy is characterized by the great debate. Those who seek to clarify and justify the position held in the early epoch and those who seek to criticize and deny the viability of such position entangled themselves in a great debate. Some of the actors on this front include, C. S. Momoh, Robin Horton, Henri Maurier, Lacinay Keita, Peter Bodunrin, Kwasi Wiredu, Kwame Gyekye, Richard Wright, Barry Halen, Joseph Omoregbe, C. B. Okolo, Theophilus Okere, Paulin Hountondji, Gordon Hunnings, Odera Oruka and A. F. Uduigwomen to name a few.
The preceding epoch eventually gave way to the later period which has as its focus the construction of an African episteme. Two camps rivaled each other, namely the Critical Reconstructionists who are the evolved Universalists/Deconstructionists and the Eclectics who are the evolved Traditionalists/Excavators. The former seek to build an African episteme untainted by ethnophilosophy; whereas, the latter seek to do the same by a delicate fusion of relevant ideals of the two camps. In the end, Critical Reconstructionism ran into a brick wall when it became clear that whatever it produces cannot truly be called African philosophy if it is all Western without African marks. The mere claim that it would be African philosophy simply because it would be produced by Africans (Hountondji 1996 and Oruka 1975) collapses like a pack of cards under any argument. For this great failure, the influence of Critical Reconstructionism in the later period whittled down and it was latter absorbed by its rival—Eclecticism.
The works of the Eclectics heralded the emergence of the New Era in African philosophy. The focus becomes the Conversational philosophizing, or Conversationalism, in which the production of philosophically rigorous and formidable African episteme better than what the Eclectics produced occupied the center stage. It is eclectic in that the ideals of traditional and universal African philosophy are combined. But above all, it is conversational eschewing perverse dialogues and concentrating on individual creativity, originality and reconstruction.
The sum of what historians of African philosophy have done can be presented in the following two broad categorizations to wit; Pre-systematic Era and the Systematic era. The former refers to Africa’s philosophical culture, thoughts of the anonymous African thinkers and may include the problems of Egyptian legacy. The latter refers to the periods marking the return of Africa’s first eleven, Western-tutored philosophers from the 1920’s to date. This latter category could further be delineated into four periods:
- Early period 1920s - 1960s
- Middle period 1960s - 1980s
- Later period 1980s - 1990s
- New (Contemporary) Era since 1990s
Note, of course, that this does not commit us to saying that, before the early period, people in Africa never philosophized—they did. But one fact that must not be denied is that they did not document their thoughts and, as such, scholars cannot attest to their systematicity or sources. In other words, what this periodization shows is that African philosophy as a system first began in the late 1920s.
Because there are credible objections among African philosophers with regards to the inclusion of it in the historical chart of African philosophy, the Egyptian question will be ignored for now. The main objection is that even if the philosophers of stolen legacy were able to prove a connection between Greece and Egypt, they could not prove in concrete terms that Egyptians were black Africans or that black Africans were Egyptians. It is understandable the frustration and desperation that motivated such ambitious effort in the ugly colonial era which was captured above, but any man of reason, judging by the responses of time and events in the last few decades knows it was high time Africans parted ways with that unproven legacy and let go of that now helpless propaganda. If however, some would want to retain it as part of African philosophy, it would carefully fall within the pre-literate or the pre-systematic era.
In this essay, discussion will focus on the history of systematic or literate African philosophy touching prominently on the criteria, schools, movements and periods in African philosophy. As much as the philosophers of a given era may disagree, they are inevitably united by the problem of their epoch. That is to say, it is orthodoxy that each epoch is defined by a common focus or problem. Therefore, the approach of the study of the history of philosophy can be done either through personality periscope or through the periods, but whichever approach one chooses, he unavoidably runs into the man who had chosen the other. This is a sign of unity of focus. Thus philosophers are those who seek to solve the problem of their time. In this presentation, the study of the history of African philosophy will be approached principally through the periods, schools, movements and only discuss the personalities within these purviews.
To start with, more than three decades debate on the status of philosophy ended with the affirmation that African philosophy exists. But what is it that makes a philosophy African? Answers to this question polarized actors into two main groups, namely the Traditionalists and Universalists. Whereas the Traditionalists aver that the studies of the philosophical elements in world-view of the people constitute African philosophy, the Universalists insist that it has to be a body of analytic and critical reflections of individual African philosophers. Further probing of the question was done during the debate by the end of which the question of what makes a philosophy “African” produced two contrasting criteria. First, as a racial criterion; a philosophy would be African if it is produced by Africans. This is the view held by people like Paulin Hountondji, Odera Oruka (in part), early Peter Bodunrin, Godfrey Ozumba and Innocent Asouzu, derived from the two constituting terms—“African” and “philosophy”. African philosophy following this criterion is the philosophy done by Africans. This has been criticized as pejorative, incorrect and exclusivist. Second, as a tradition criterion; a philosophy is “African” if it designates a non-racial-bound philosophy tradition where the predicate “African” is treated as a solidarity term of no racial import and where the approach derives inspiration from African cultural background or system of thought. It does not matter whether the issues addressed are African or done by an African insofar as it has universal applicability and projected from the purview of African system of thought. African philosophy would then be that rigorous discourse of African issues or any issues whatsoever from the critical eye of African system of thought. Actors like Odera Oruka (in part), Meinrad Hebga, C. S. Momoh, Udo Etuk, Joseph Omoregbe, the later Peter Bodunrin, Jonathan Chimakonam can be grouped here. This criterion has also been criticized as courting uncritical elements of the past when it makes reference to the controversial idea of African logic tradition. Further discussion on this is well beyond the scope of this essay. What is however common in the two criteria is that African philosophy is a critical discourse on issues that may or may not affect Africa by African philosophers—the purview of this discourse remains unsettled.
This is the foremost school in systematic African philosophy which equated African philosophy with culture-bound systems of thought. For this, their enterprise was scornfully described as substandard hence the term “ethnophilosophy.” Thoughts of the members of the Excavationism movement properly belong here and their high point was in the early period of African philosophy.
The concern of this school was nationalist philosophical jingoism to combat colonialism and to create political philosophy and ideology for Africa from the indigenous traditional system as a project of decolonization. Thoughts of members of the Excavationism movement in the early period can be brought under this school.
There is also the philosophical sagacity school whose main focus is to show that standard philosophical discourse existed and still exists in traditional Africa and can only be discovered through sage conversations. The chief proponent of this school was the brilliant Kenyan philosopher Odera Oruka who took time to emphasize that Marcel Gruaile’s similar programme is less sophisticated than his. But since philosophical sagacity thrives on the method of oral interview of presumed sages whose authenticity cannot be independently verified, what is produced distances itself from the sages and becomes the fruits of the interviewing philosopher. So the sage connection and the tradition became defeated. Their enterprise falls within the movement of Critical Reconstructionism of the later period.
Another prominent school is the hermeneutical school. Its focus is that the best approach to studying African philosophy is through interpretations of oral traditions and emerging philosophical texts. Theophilus Okere and Okonda Okolo are some of the major proponents of this school. The confusion however is that they reject ethnophilosophy whereas the oral tradition and most of the texts available for interpretation are ethnophilosophical in nature. The works of Okere and Okolo feasted on ethno-philosophy. This school exemplifies the movement called Afro-constructionism of the middle period.
The literary school’s main concern is to make a philosophical presentation of African cultural values through literary/fictional ways. Proponents like Chinua Achebe, Cheik Anta Diop, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka to name a few have been outstanding. Yet critics have found it convenient to identify their discourse with ethnophilosophy from literary angle thereby denigrating it as sub-standard. Their enterprise remarks the movement of Afro-constructionism of the middle period.
Perhaps the most controversial is the one variously described as professional, universalist or modernist school. It contends that all the other schools are engaged in one form of ethnophilosophy or the other, that standard African philosophy is critical, individual discourse and that what qualifies as African philosophy must have universal merit and thrive on the method of critical analysis and individual discursive enterprise. It is not about talking, it is about doing. Some staunch unrepentant members of this school include Kwasi Wiredu, Paulin Hountondji, Peter Bodunrin to name a few. They demolished all that has been built in African philosophy and built nothing as an alternative episteme. This school champions the movement of Afro-deconstructionism and the abortive Critical Reconstructionism of the middle and later periods respectively.
Perhaps, one of the deeper criticisms that can be leveled against the position of the professional school comes from C. S. Momoh’s scornful description of the school as African logical neo-positivism. They agitate that (1) there is nothing as yet in African traditional philosophy that qualifies as philosophy and (2) that critical analysis should be the focus of African philosophy; so what then is there to be critically analyzed? Professional school adherents are said to forget in their overt copying of European philosophy that analysis is a recent development in European philosophy which attained saturation in the 19th century after over 2000 years of historical evolution thereby requiring some downsizing. Would they also grant that philosophy in Europe before 19th century was not philosophy? The aim of this essay is not to offer criticisms of the schools but to present historical journey of philosophy in the equatorial (African) tradition. It is in opposition to and the need to fill the lacuna in the enterprise of the professional school that the new school which can be called conversational school has recently emerged in African philosophy.
This emerging school thrives on fulfilling the yearning of the professional/modernist school to have a robust individual discourse as well as fulfilling the conviction of the traditionalists that a thorough-going African philosophy has to be erected on the foundation of African thought systems. They make the most of the criterion which presents African philosophy as a critical tradition that projects individual discourses from the thought system of Africa. Some prominent members of this school include Pantaleon Iroegbu, Bruce Janz, Jonathan Chimakonam, Jennifer Vest, Innocent Asouzu and Ada Agada to name a few. Their projects promote partly the movements of Afro-eclecticism and fully the conversationalism of the later, new period respectively.
There are four main movements that can be identified in the history of African philosophy, they include: Excavationism, Afro-constructionism/Afro-deconstructionism, Critical Reconstructionism/Afro-Eclecticism and Conversationalism.
The Excavators are all those who sought to erect the edifice of African philosophy by systematizing the African cultural world-views. Some of them aimed at retrieving and reconstructing presumably lost African identity from the raw materials of African culture. While others sought to develop compatible political ideologies for Africa from the native political systems of African peoples. Members of this movement have all been grouped under the school known as ethnophilosophy, and they thrived in the early period of African philosophy. Their concern was to build and demonstrate unique African identify in various forms. A few of them include Placid Tempels, Julius Nyerere, John Mbiti, Alexis Kagame, Leopold Senghor, Kwame Nkrumah and Aime Cesaire.
The Afro-deconstructions sometimes called the Modernists or the Universalists are those who sought to demote such edifice erected by the Excavators on the grounds that their raw materials are substandard cultural paraphernalia. They are opposed to the idea of unique African identity or culture-bound philosophy and preferred a philosophy that will integrate African identity with the identity of all other races in a common universalism. They never built this philosophy. Some members of this movement include Paulin Hountondji, Kwasi Wiredu, Peter Bodunrin, Macien Towa, Fabien Ebousi Boulaga, Richard Wright and Henri Maurier. Their opponents are the Afro-constructionists, sometimes called the Traditionalists or Particularists who sought to add rigor and promote the works of the Excavators as true African philosophy. Some prominent actors in this movement include Innocent Onyewuenyi, Henry Olela, Lansana Keita, C. S. Momoh, Joseph Omoregbe, Janheinz Jahn, George James, Sophie Oluwole and, in some ways, Kwame Gyekye. Members of this twin-movement have variously been grouped under ethnophilosophy, philosophic sagacity, professional, hermeneutical and literary schools and they thrived in the middle period of African philosophy. This is also known as the period of the great debate.
A few Afro-deconstructionists of the middle period evolved into Critical Reconstructionists hoping to reconstruct from the scratch the edifice of authentic African philosophy that would be critical, individualistic and universal. They hold that the edifice of ethnophilosophy, which they had demolished in the middle period, contained no critical rigor. Some of the members of this movement include, Kwasi Wiredu, Olusegun Oladipo, V. Y. Mudimbe, D. A. Masolo, Odera Oruka and, in some ways, Barry Hallen and J. O. Sodipo. Their opponents are the Afro-Eclectics who evolved from Afro-constructionism of the middle period. Unable to sustain their advocacy and the structure of ethnophilosophy they had constructed, they stepped down a little bit to say, “Maybe we can combine meaningfully, some of the non-conflicting concerns of the Traditionalists and the Modernists.” They say (1) that African traditional philosophy is not rigorous enough as claimed by the Modernists is a fact (2) that the deconstructionist program of the Modernists did not offer and is incapable of offering an alternative episteme is also a fact (3) maybe the rigor of the Modernists can be applied on the usable and relevant elements produced by the Traditionalists to produce the much elusive, authentic African philosophy. African philosophy for this movement therefore becomes a product of synthesis resulting from the application of tools of critical reasoning on the relevant traditions of African life-world. A. F. Uduigwomen, Kwame Gyekye, Ifeanyi Menkiti and Kwame Appiah are some of the members of this movement. This movement played a vital reconciliatory role, the importance of which was not fully realized in African philosophy. Most importantly, they found a way out of the dead luck produced by the Modernists and laid the foundation for the emergence of Conversationalism. Members of this twin-movement thrived in the later period of African philosophy.
The Conversationalists are those who seek to create an enduring corpus in African philosophy by engaging elements of tradition and individual thinkers in critical conversations. They emphasize originality, creativity, innovation, peer-criticism and cross-pollination of ideas in prescribing and evaluating their ideas. They hold that new episteme in African philosophy can only be created by individual African philosophers who make use of the “usable past” and the depth of individual originality in finding solutions to contemporary demands. They do not lay emphasis on analysis alone but also on critical rigor and analytic-synthesis, where the latter consists of constructive synthesis from either tradition or individual thoughts. Members of this movement thrive in this contemporary period and their school can be called the conversational school. Some of the philosophers that have demonstrated this trait include Pantaleon Iroegbu, Innocent Asouzu, Bruce Janz, Jonathan Chimakonam, Ada Agada, Godfrey Ozumba and Jennifer Lisa Vest.
The early period of African philosophy is an era of the movement called cultural/ideological excavation aimed at retrieving and reconstructing African identity. The schools that emerged and thrived in this period were ethnophilosophy and ideological/nationalist schools. The Sub-Saharan Africans, Hegel wrote, had no high cultures and had made no contributions to world history and civilization (1975: 190). Lucien Levy Bruhl also added that they are pre-logical and two-third of human (1947: 17). The summary of these two positions, which represent the colonial mindset, is that Africans have no dignified identity like their European counterpart. This could be deciphered in the British colonial system which sought to erode the native thought system in the constitution of social systems in their colonies and also in the French policy of assimilation. Assimilation is a concept credited to the French philosopher Chris Talbot (1837) which rests on the idea of expanding French culture to the colonies outside of France in the 19th and 20th centuries. According to Betts (2005: 8), the natives of these colonies were considered French citizens as long as the French culture and customs were adopted to replace the indigenous system. The purpose of the theory of assimilation, for Michael Lambert, therefore, was to turn African natives into French men by educating them in the French language and culture (1993: 239-262).
During colonial times, the British, for example, educated their colonies in the British language and culture, strictly undermining the native languages and cultures. The products of this new social system were then given the impression that they were British, though second class, the king was their king, and the empire was also theirs. Suddenly, however, colonialism ended and they found, to their chagrin, that they were treated as slave countries in the new post-colonial order. Their native identity had been destroyed and their fake British identity had also been taken from them; what was left was amorphous and corrupt. It was in the heat of this confusion and frustration that the African philosophers sought to retrieve and recreate the original African identity lost in the event of colonization. Ruch and Anyanwu, therefore, ask, “What is this debate about African identity concerned with and what led to it? In other words, why should Africans search for their identity?” Their response to the questions is as follows:
The simple answer to these questions is this: Africans of the first half of this (20th century) century have begun to search for their identity, because they had, rightly or wrongly, the feeling that they had lost it or that they were being deprived of it. The three main factors which led to this feeling were: slavery, colonialism and racialism. (1981: 184-85)
Racialism, as Ruch and Anyanwu believed, may have sparked it off and slavery may have dealt the heaviest blow, but it was colonialism that entrenched it. Ironically, it was the same colonialism at its stylistic conclusion that opened the eyes of the African by stirring the hornet’s nest. Trouble started when the departing colonialists let the Africans know, to their humiliation, that the colonial identity they brandished was a fake one. An African can never be a British or French even with the colonially imposed language and culture. With this shock, the post colonial African philosophers of the early period set out in search of Africa’s lost identity.
Many actors in this period, like George James and Placid Tempels, were not native Africans but were touched by the insincerity and cold-heartedness of the departing colonialists. James in 1954 published his monumental work Stolen Legacy. In it, he worked to prove that the Egyptians were the true authors of Western philosophy; that Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle plagiarized the Egyptians; that the authorship of the individual doctrines of Greek philosophers is a mere speculation perpetuated chiefly by Aristotle and executed by his school; and that the African continent gave civilization knowledge, arts and sciences, religion and philosophy, a fact that is destined to produce a change in the mentality both of the European and African peoples. In G. M. James’ words:
In this way, the Greeks stole the legacy of the African continent and called it their own. And as has already been pointed out, the result of this dishonesty had been the creation of an enormous world opinion; that the African continent has made no contribution to civilization, because her people are backward and low in intelligence and culture…This erroneous opinion about the Black people has seriously injured them through the centuries up to modern times in which it appears to have reached a climax in the history of human relations. (1954: 54)
These rugged intellectual positions supported by evidential and well thought-out proofs quickly heralded a shift in the intellectual culture of the world. But there was one problem George James could not fix; he could not prove that the people of North Africa (Egyptians) who were the true authors of ancient art, sciences, religion and philosophy were black Africans, as can be seen in his hopeful but inconsistent conclusions:
This is going to mean a tremendous change in world opinion, and attitude, for all people and races who accept the new philosophy of Africa redemption, i.e. the truth that the Greeks were not the authors of Greek philosophy; but the people of North Africa; would change their opinion from one of disrespect to one of respect for the black people throughout the world and treat them accordingly. (1954: 153)
It is inconsistent how the achievements of North Africans (Egyptians) can redeem the black Africans. This is also the problem with Henri Olela’s article “The African Foundations of Greek Philosophy”.
In Onyewuenyi’s The African Origin of Greek Philosophy however, an ambitious attempt emerges to fill this lacuna in the argument of new philosophy of African redemption. In the first part of chapter two, he reduced the Greek philosophy to Egyptian philosophy, and in the second part, he attempted to further reduce the Egyptians of the time to black Africans. There are, however, two holes he could not fill. First, Egypt is the world’s oldest standing country who also told their own story by themselves in different forms. At no point did they or other historians describe them as black people. Second, if the Egyptians were at a time wholly black, why are they now wholly white? For the failure of this group of scholars to prove that black Africans were the authors of Egyptian philosophy, one must abandon the Egyptian legacy.
There are however other scholars of the early period who tried in more reliable ways to assert black identity by establishing native African philosophical heritage. One of such is Tempels who authored Bantu Philosophy (1949). He proved that rationality was an important feature of the traditional African culture. By systematizing Bantu philosophical ideas he confronted the racist orientation of the West which depicted Africa as a continent of semi-humans. In fact, Tempels showed the latent similarities in the spiritual inclinations of the Europeans and their African counterpart. In the opening passage of his work he observed that the European who has taken to atheism quickly returns to a Christian viewpoint when suffering or pain threatens his survival. In much the same way, he says the civilized or Christian Bantu returns to the ways of his ancestors when confronted by suffering and death. So, spiritual orientation or thinking is not found only in Africa.
In his attempt to explain the Bantu understanding of being, Tempels admits that this might not be the same with the understanding of the European. Instead, he argues that the Bantu construction is as much rational as that of the European. In his words:
So the criteriology of the Bantu rests upon external evidence, upon the authority and dominating life force of the ancestors. It rests at the same time upon the internal evidence of experience of nature and of living phenomena, observed from their point of view. No doubt, anyone can show the error of their reasoning; but it must none the less be admitted that their notions are based on reason, that their criteriology and their wisdom belong to rational knowledge. (1949/2006: 51)
Tempels obviously believes that the Bantu, like the rest of the African tribes, posses rationality which undergird their philosophical enterprise. The error in their reasoning is only obvious in the light of European logic. The Bantu categories only differ from those of the Europeans, which is why a first-time European on-looker would misinterpret them to be irrational or spiritual. This effort clearly makes a case for Africa’s true identity, which, for him, could be found in African religion within which African philosophy (ontology) is subsumed. In his words, “being is force, force is being”. And the same could be said of Alexis Kagame’s work The Bantu-Rwandan Philosophy (1956), which offers similar proofs and arguments thus further strengthening the claims of Tempels, especially from an African’s perspective. The major criticism against their industry remains the association of their thoughts with ethnophilosophy, where ethnophilosophy is seen perjoratively. A much more studded criticism is offered recently by Innocent Asouzu in his work Ibuanyidanda: New Complementary Ontology (2007). His criticism was not directed at the validity of the thoughts they expressed or whether Africa could boast of a rational enterprise such as philosophy but at the logical foundation of their thoughts. Asouzu seems to quarrel with Tempels for allowing his native Aristotelian orientation to influence his construction of African philosophy and lambasts Kagame for following suit instead of correcting Tempels’ mistake. The principle of bivalence as evidenced in the Western thought system was at the background of their construction.
Another important philosopher in this period is John Mbiti. His work African Religions and Philosophy (1969) avidly educated those who doubted Africans’ possession of their own identities before the arrival of the European by excavating and demonstrating the rationality in the religious and philosophical enterprises in African cultures. He boldly declared: “We shall use the singular, ‘philosophy’ to refer to the philosophical understanding of African peoples concerning different issues of life” (1969: 2). His presentation of time in African thought shows off the pattern of excavation in his African philosophy. Although his studies focus primarily on the Kikamba and Gikuyu tribes of Africa, he observes that there are similarities in many African cultures just as Tempels did earlier. He subsumes African philosophy in African religion on the assumption that African peoples do not know how to exist without religion. This idea is also shared by William Abraham in his book The Mind of Africa as well as Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy. African philosophy, from Mbiti’s treatment, could be likened to Tempels’ vital force, of which African religion is its outer cloak. The obvious focus of this book is on African views about God, political thought, afterlife, culture or world-view and creation, the philosophical aspects lie within these religious over-coats. Thus, Mbiti establishes that the true, and lost, identity of the African could be found within his religion. Another important observation Mbiti made is that this identity is communal and not individualistic. Hence, he states, “I am because we are and since we are therefore I am” (1969: 108). Therefore, the African has to re-enter his religion to find his philosophy and the community to find his identity.
This is a view shared by William Abraham in his The Mind of Africa (1962). He shares Tempels and Mbiti’s views that the black African tribes have many similarities in their culture, though his studies focus on the culture and political thought of the Akan of present day Ghana. Another important aspect of Abraham’s work is that he subsumed African philosophical thought in African culture taking, as Barry Hallen described, “an essentialist interpretation of African culture” (2002: 15). Thus for Abraham, like Tempels and Mbiti, the lost African identity could be found in the seabed of African indigenous culture in which religion features prominently.
On the other hand, there were those who sought to retrieve and establish once again Africa’s lost identity through economic and political ways. Some names discussed here include Kwame Nkrumah, Leopold Senghor and Julius Nyerere. These actors felt that the African could never be truly decolonized unless he found his own system of living and social organization. One cannot be African living like the European. The question that guided their study therefore became, “What system of economic and social engineering will suit us and project our true identity?” Nkrumah advocates African socialism, which, according to Barry Hallen, is an original, social, political and philosophical theory of African origin and orientation. This system is forged from the traditional, communal structure of African society, a view strongly projected by Mbiti. Nkrumah says that a return to African cultural system with its astute moral values, communal ownership of land and a humanitarian social and political engineering holds the key to Africa rediscovering her lost identity. Systematizing this process, will yield what he calls the African brand of socialism. In most of his books, he projects the idea that Africa’s lost identity is to be found in African native culture within which is African philosophical thought and identity shaped by communal orientation. Some of his works include, Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965), I Speak of Freedom: A Statement of African Ideology (1961), Africa Must Unite (1970), and Consciencism (1954).
Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal charted a course similar to that of Nkrumah. In his works Negritude et Humanisme (1964) and Negritude and the Germans (1967), Senghor traced Africa’s philosophy of social engineering down to African culture, which he said is communal and laden with brotherly emotion. This is different from the European system, which he says is individualistic, having been marshaled purely by reason. He opposed the French colonial principle of assimilation aimed at turning Africans into Frenchmen by eroding and replacing African culture with French culture. African culture and languages are the bastions of African identity, and it is in this culture that he found the pedestal for constructing a political ideology that would project African lost identity. Senghor is in agreement with Nkrumah, Mbiti, Abraham and Tempels in many ways, especially with regards to the basis for Africa’s true identity.
Julius Nyerere of Tanzania is another philosopher of note in the early period of African philosophy. In his books Uhuru na Ujamaa: Freedom and Socialism (1964) and Ujamaa: The Basis of African Socialism (1968), he sought to retrieve and establish African true identity through economic and political ways. For him, Africans cannot regain their identity unless they are first free and freedom (Uhuru) transcends independence. Cultural imperialism has to be overcome. And what is the best way to achieve this if not by developing a socio-political and economic ideology from the petals of African native culture, and traditional values of togetherness and brotherliness? Hence, Nyerere proposes Ujamaa, meaning familyhood—the “being-with” philosophy or the “we” instead of the “I—spirit” (Okoro 2004: 96). In the words of Barry Hallen, “Nyerere argued that there was a form of life and system of values indigenous to the culture of pre-colonial Africa, Tanzania in particular, that was distinctive if not unique and that had survived the onslaughts of colonialism sufficiently intact to be regenerated as the basis for an African polity” (2002: 74). Thus for Nyerere, the basis of African identity is the African culture, which is communal rather than individualistic. Nyerere was in agreement with other actors of this period on the path to full recovery of Africa’s lost identity. Other philosophers of this era not treated here include Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Amilcar Cabral, and the two foreigners, Janheinz Jahn and Marcel Griaule.
The middle period of African philosophy is also an era of the twin-movement called Afro-constructionism and afro-deconstructionism, otherwise called the great debate, when two rival schools—Traditionalists and Universalists clashed. While the Traditionalists sought to construct an African identity based on excavated African cultural elements, the Universalists sought to demolish such architectonic structure by associating it with ethnophilosophy. The schools that thrived in this era include Philosophic Sagacity, Professional/Modernist/Universalist, Afro-hermeneutical and Literary schools.
An important factor of the early period is that the thoughts on the basis for Africa’s true identity generated arguments that fostered the emergence of the Middle Period of African philosophy. These arguments result from questions that could be summarized as follows: (1) Is it proper to take for granted the sweeping assertion that all of Africa’s cultures share a few basic elements in common? It was this assumption that had necessitated the favorite phrase in the early period, “African philosophy,” rather than “African philosophies”. (2) Does Africa or African culture contain a philosophy in the strict sense of the term? (3) Can African philosophy emerge from the womb of African religion, world-view and culture? Answers and objections to answers soon took the shape of a debate, characterizing the middle period as the era of the great debate in African philosophy.
This debate was between members of Africa’s new crop of intellectual radicals. On one hand, are the demoters and, on the other, are the promoters of African philosophy established by the league of early period intellectuals. The former sought to criticize this new philosophy of redemption, gave it a derogatory tag “ethnophilosophy” and consequently denigrated the African Identity that was founded on it as savage and primitive identity. At the other end, the promoters sought to clarify and defend this philosophy and justify the African identity that was rooted in it as true and original.
For clarity, the assessment of the debate era will begin from the middle instead of the beginning. In 1978 Odera Oruka a Kenyan philosopher presented a paper at the William Amo Symposium held in Accra, Ghana on the topic “Four Trends in Current African Philosophy” in which he identified or grouped voices on African philosophy into four schools, namely ethnophilosophy, philosophic sagacity, nationalistic-ideological school and professional philosophy. In 1990 he wrote another work, Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinker and the Modern Debate on African Philosophy in which he further added two schools to bring the number to six schools in African philosophy. Those two additions are the hermeneutic and artistic/literary schools.
Those who uphold philosophy in African culture are the ethnophilosophers and these include the actors treated as members of the early period of African philosophy and their followers or supporters in the Middle Period. These would include C. S. Momoh, Joseph Omoregbe, Lansana Keita, Olusegun Oladipo, Gordon Hunnings, Kwame Gyekye, M. A. Makinde, Emmanuel Edeh, Uzodinma Nwala, K. C. Anyanwu and later E. A. Ruch, to name a few. The philosophic sagacity school, to which Oruka belongs, also accommodates C. S. Momoh, C. B. Nze, J. I. Omoregbe, C. B. Okolo and T. F. Mason. The nationalist-ideological school consists of those who sought to develop indigenous socio-political and economic ideologies for Africa. Prominent members include Julius Nyerere, Leopold Senghor, Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo. The professional philosophy school insists that African philosophy must be done with professional philosophical methods such as analysis, critical reflection and logical coherence as it is in Western philosophy. Members of this school include: Henri Maurier, Richard Wright, Peter Bodunrin, Kwasi Wiredu, early E. A. Ruch, R. Horton, and later C. B. Okolo. The hermeneutic school recommends linguistic analysis as a method of doing African philosophy. A few of its members include Theophilus Okere, Okonda Okolo, Godwin Sogolo and partly J. Sodipo and B. Hallen. The Artistic/Literary school philosophically discusses the core of African norms, and includes Chinua Achebe, Okot P’Bitek, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka, Elechi Amadi and F. C. Ogbalu.
Also, in 1989, C. S. Momoh in his The Substance of African Philosophy outlined five schools, namely African logical neo-positivism, the colonial/missionary school of thought, the Egyptological school, the ideological school and the purist school. The article was titled “Nature, Issues and Substance of African Philosophy” and was reproduced in Jim Unah’s Metaphysics, Phenomenology and African Philosophy (1996).
In comparing Momoh’s delineations with Oruka’s, it can be said that the purist school encompasses Oruka’s ethnophilosophy, artistic/literary school and philosophic sagacity; The African logical neo-positivism encompasses professional philosophy and the hermeneutical schools; and the ideological and colonial/missionary schools correspond to Oruka’s nationalistic-ideological school. The Egyptological school, therefore, remains outstanding. Momoh sees it as a school which sees African philosophy as synonymous with Egyptian philosophy or at least as originating from it. Also, Egyptian philosophy as a product of African philosophy is also expressed in the writings of I. C. Onyewuenyi and Henry Olela.
Welding all these divisions together are the perspectives of Peter Bodunrin and Kwasi Wiredu. In the introduction to his 1985 edited volume Philosophy in Africa: Trends and Perspectives, Bodunrin created two broad schools for all the subdivisions in both Oruka and Momoh, namely the Traditionalist and Modernist schools. While the former includes Africa’s rich culture and past, the latter excludes them from the mainstream of African philosophy. Kwasi Wiredu also made this type of division, specifically Traditional and Modernist, in his paper “On Defining African Philosophy” in C. S. Momoh’s (1989) edited volume. Also, A. F. Uduigwomen created two broad schools, namely the Universalists and the Particularists, in his “Philosophy and the Place of African Philosophy” (1995). These can be equated to Bodunrin’s Modernist and Traditionalist schools respectively. The significance of his contribution to the great debate rests on the new school he evolved from the compromise of the Universalist and the Particularist schools (1995/2009: 2-7). As Uduigwomen defines it, the Eclectic school accommodates discourses pertaining to African experiences, culture and world-view as parts of African philosophy. Those discourses must be critical, argumentative and rational. In other words, the so-called ethnophilosophy can comply with the analytic and argumentative standards that people like Bodunrin, Hountondji, and Wiredu insist upon. Many later African philosophers revived Uduigwomen’s Eclectic school as a much more decisive approach to African philosophy (Kanu 2013: 275-87). It is the era dominated by Eclecticism and meta-philosophy that is tagged the ‘Later period’ in the history of African philosophy. For perspicuity therefore, the debate from these two broad schools shall be addressed as the perspectives of the Traditionalist or Particularist and the Modernist or Universalist.
The reader must now have understood the perspectives on which the individual philosophers of the middle period debated. Hence, when Richard Wright published his critical essay “Investigating African Philosophy” and Henri Maurier published his “Do we have an African Philosophy?” denying the existence of African philosophy at least as yet, the reader understands why Lansana Keita’s “The African Philosophical Tradition”, C. S. Momoh’s African Philosophy … does it exist?” or J. I. Omoregbe’s “African Philosophy Yesterday and Today” are offered as critical responses. When Wright arrived at the conclusion that the problems surrounding the study of African philosophy are so great that others are effectively prevented from any worthwhile work until their resolution, Henri Maurier responded to the question, “Do we have an African Philosophy?” with “No! Not Yet!” (1984: 25). One would understand why Lansana Keita took it up to provide concrete evidence that Africa had and still has a philosophical tradition. In his words:
It is the purpose of this paper to present evidence that a sufficiently firm literate philosophical tradition has existed in Africa since ancient times, and that this tradition is of sufficient intellectual sophistication to warrant serious analysis…it is rather…an attempt to offer a defensible idea of African philosophy. (1984: 58)
Keita went on in that paper to excavate intellectual resources to prove his case, but it was J. I. Omoregbe who tackled the demoters on every front. Of particular interest are his critical commentaries on the position of Kwasi Wiredu and others who share Wiredu’s opinion that what is called African philosophy is not philosophy but community thought at best. Omoregbe alludes that the logic and method of African philosophy need not be the same as those of Western philosophy, which the demoters cling to. In his words:
It is not necessary to employ Aristotelian or the Russellian logic in this reflective activity before one can be deemed to be philosophizing. It is not necessary to carry out this reflective activity in the same way that the Western thinkers did. Ability to reason logically and coherently is an integral part of man’s rationality. The power of logical thinking is identical with the power of rationality. It is therefore false to say that people cannot think logically or reason coherently unless they employ Aristotle’s or Russell’s form of logic or even the Western-type argumentation. (1998: 4-5)
Omoregbe was addressing the position of most members of the Modernist school who believed that African philosophy must follow the pattern of Western philosophy if it were to exist. As he cautions:
Some people, trained in Western philosophy and its method, assert that there is no philosophy and no philosophizing outside the Western type of philosophy or the Western method of philosophizing (which they call “scientific” or “technical”. (1998: 5)
Philosophers like E. A. Ruch in some of his earlier writings,, Peter Bodunrin, C. B. Okolo, and Robin Horton were direct recipients of Omoregbe’s sledge hammer. Robin Horton’s “African Traditional Thought and Western Science” is a two part essay that sought in the long run to expose the rational ineptitude in African thought. On the question of logic in African philosophy, Robin Horton’s “Traditional Thought and the emerging African Philosophy Department: A Comment on the Current Debate” first stirred the hornet’s nest and was ably challenged by Godorn Hunnings’ “Logic, Language and Culture”, as well as by Omoregbe’s “African Philosophy: Yesterday and Today”. Earlier, Meinrad Hebga’s “Logic in Africa” had made insightful ground clearing on the matter. Recently, C.S. Momoh’s “The Logic Question in African Philosophy” and Udo Etuk’s “The Possibility of an African Logic” as well as Jonathan C. Okeke’s “Why can’t there be an African Logic” made impressions. However, this logic question is gathering new momentum in African philosophical discourse.
On the philosophical angle, Kwasi Wiredu’s “How not to Compare African Traditional Thought with Western Thought” responded to the lopsided earlier effort of Robin Horton but ended up making its own criticisms of the status of African philosophy which, for Wiredu, is yet to attain maturation. In his words, “[M]any traditional African institutions and cultural practices, such as the ones just mentioned, are based on superstition. By ‘superstition’ I mean a rationally unsupported belief in entities of any sort (1976: 4-8 and 1995: 194).” In his Philosophy and an African Culture, Wiredu was more pungent. He caricatured much of the discourse on African philosophy as community thought or folk thought unqualified to be called philosophy. For him, there had to be a practiced distinction between “African philosophy as folk thought preserved in oral traditions and African philosophy as critical, individual reflection, using modern logical and conceptual techniques” (1980: 14). Olusegun Oladipo supports this in his Philosophy and the African Experience. As he puts it:
But this kind of attitude is mistaken. In Africa we are engaged in the task of the improvement of “the condition of men”. There can be no successful execution of this task without a reasonable knowledge of, and control over, nature. But essential to the quest for knowledge of, and control over, nature are “logical, mathematical and analytical procedures” which are products of modern intellectual practices. The glorification of the “unanalytical cast of mind” which a conception of African philosophy as African folk thought encourages would not avail us the opportunity of taking advantage of the theoretical and practical benefits offered by these intellectual procedures. It thus can only succeed in making the task of improving the condition of man in Africa a daunting one.(1996: 15)
Oladipo also shares similar thoughts in his The Idea of African Philosophy. African philosophy for some of the Modernists is practiced in a debased sense. This position is considered opinionated by the Traditionalists. Later E. A. Ruch and K. C. Anyanwu in their African Philosophy: An Introduction to the Main Philosophical Trends in Contemporary Africa attempt to excavate the philosophical elements in folklore and myth. C. S. Momoh’s “The Mythological Question in African Philosophy” and K. C. Anyanwu’s “Philosophical Significance of Myth and Symbol in Dogon World-View” further reinforced the position of the Traditionalists.(cf. Momoh 1989 and Anyanwu 1989)
However, it took Paulin Hountondji in his African Philosophy: Myth and Reality to drive a long nail in the coffin. African philosophy, for him, must be done in the same frame as Western philosophy, including its principles, methodologies, methods and all. K. C. Anyanwu again admitted that Western philosophy is one of the challenges facing African philosophy but that only calls for systematization of African philosophy not its decimation. He made these arguments in his paper “The Problem of Method in African philosophy”.
Other arguments set Greek standards for authentic African philosophy as can be found in Odera Oruka’s “The Fundamental Principles in the Question of ‘African Philosophy’ (I)” and Hountondji’s “African Wisdom and Modern Philosophy.” They readily met with Lansana Keita’s “African Philosophical Systems: A Rational Reconstruction”, J. Kinyongo’s “Philosophy in Africa: An Existence” and even P. K. Roy’s “African Theory of Knowledge”. For every step the Modernists took, the Traditionalists replied with two, a response that lingered till the early 1990’s when a certain phase of disillusionment began to set in to quell the debate. Actors on both fronts had only then begun to reach a new consciousness, realizing that a new step had to be taken beyond the debate. Even Kwasi Wiredu who had earlier justified the debate by his insistence that “without argument and clarification, there is strictly no philosophy” (1980: 47) had to admit that it was time to do something else. For him, African philosophers had to go beyond talking about African philosophy and get down to actually doing it.
It was with this sort of new orientation which emerged from the disillusionment of the protracted debate that the later period of African philosophy was born in the 1990’s. As it is said in the Igbo proverb, “The music makers almost unanimously were changing the rhythm and the dancers had to change their dance steps.” One of the high points of the disillusionment was the emergence of the Eclectic school in the next period called ‘the Later Period’ of African philosophy.
This period of African philosophy heralds the emergence of the movements which can be called Critical Reconstructionism and Afro-Eclecticism. For the Deconstructionists of the middle period, the focus shifted from deconstruction to reconstruction of African episteme in a universally integrated way; whereas, for the eclectics, finding a reconcilable middle path between traditional African philosophy and the universal African philosophy should be paramount. Thus they advocate a shift from entrenched ethnophilosophy and universal hue to the reconstruction of African episteme if somewhat different from the imposed Westernism and the uncritical ethnophilosophy. So, both the Critical Reconstructionists and the Eclectics advocate one form of reconstruction or the other. The former desire a new episteme untainted by ethnophilosophy while the later sue for reconciled central and relevant ideals.
Not knowing how to proceed to this sort of task was a telling problem on all advocates of critical reconstruction in African philosophy such as V. Y. Mudimbe, Ebousi Boulaga, Olusegun Oladipo, Franz Crahey and Marcien Towa to name a few. At the dawn of the era, these African legionnaires pointed out, in different terms, that reconstructing African episteme was imperative. But more urgent was the need to first analyse the haggard philosophical structure patched into existence with the cement of perverse dialogues. It appeared inexorable to these thinkers and others of the time that none of these can be successful outside the shadow of Westernism. For whatever one writes which is effectively free from ethnophilosophy is either contained in Western discourse or in the very least proceeds from its logic. If it is already contained in Western narrative or proceeds from its logic, what then makes it African? This became a something of a dead-end for this illustrious group, which struggled against evolutions in their positions.
Intuitively, almost every analyst knows that discussing what has been discussed in Western philosophy or taking a lead from Western philosophy does not absolutely negate or vitiate what is produced as African philosophy. But how is this to be effectively justified? This appears to be the Achilles heel of the Critical Reconstructionists of the late era in African philosophy. The massive failure of these Critical Reconstructionists to go beyond the lines of recommendation and actually engage in reconstructing delayed their emergence as a school of thought in African philosophy. The diversionary matrix which occurred at this point ensured that the later period, which began the two rival camps ofCritical Reconstructionists and Eclectics, ended with only the Eclectics left standing. Thus dying in its embryo, Critical Reconstructionism became absorbed in Eclecticism.
The campaign for Afro-reconstructionism had first emerged in the late 1980‘s in the writings of Peter Bodunrin, Olusegun Oladipo, Kwasi Wiredu and V. Y. Mudimbe, even though principals like Marcien Towa and Franz Crahey had hinted at it much earlier. The insights of the latter two never rang bells beyond the ear-shot of identity reconstruction, which was the echo of their time. Wiredu’s cry for conceptual decolonization and Hountondji’s call for the abandonment of the ship of ethnophilosophy were in the spirit of Afro-reconstructionism of the episteme. None of the Afro-reconstructionists except for Wiredu was able to truly chart a course for reconstruction. His was linguistic even though the significance of his campaign was never truly appreciated. His 1998 work “Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion,” was a clearer recapitulation of his works of preceding years.
Beyond this modest line, no other reconstructionist crusader of the time actually went beyond deconstruction and problem identification. Almost spontaneously, Afro-reconstructionism evolved into Afro-eclecticism in the early 1990’s when the emerging Critical Reconstructionism ran into a brick wall of inactivity. The argument seems to say, “If it is not philosophically permissible to employ alternative logic different from the one in the West or methods, perhaps we can make do with the merger of the approaches we have identified in African philosophy following the deconstructions.” These approaches are the various schools of thought from ethnophilosophy, philosophic sagacity, ideological school, universal, literary to Afro-hermeneutic schools which were deconstructed into two broad approaches namely: The traditionalist school and the modernist school also called the particularist and the universalist schools.
Eclectics, therefore, are those who think that the effective integration or complementation of the African native system and the Western system could produce a viable synthesis that is first African and then modern. Andrew Uduigwomen, the Nigerian philosopher could be regarded as the founder of this school in African philosophy. In his 1995 work “Philosophy and the Place of African Philosophy,” he gave official birth to the Afro-eclecticism. Identifying the Traditionalist and Modernist schools as the Particularist and Universalist schools, he created the eclectic school by carefully unifying their goals from the ruins of the deconstructed past.
Uduigwomen states that the eclectic school holds that an intellectual romance between the Universalist conception and the Particularist conception will give rise to an authentic African philosophy. The Universalist approach will provide the necessary analytic and conceptual framework for the Particularist school. Since, according to Uduigwomen, this framework cannot thrive in a vacuum, the Particularist approach will in turn supply the raw materials or indigenous data needed by the Universalist approach. From the submission of Uduigwomen above, one easily detects that Eclecticism for him entails employing Western methods or African paraphernalia.
However, Afro-Eclecticism is not without problems. The first problem though, is that he did not supply the yardstick for determining what is to be admitted and what must be left out of the corpus of African tradition. Everything cannot meet the standard of genuine philosophy, nor should the philosophical selection be arbitrary. Hountondji, a chronic critic of traditional efforts once called Tempels’ Bantu philosophy a sham. For him, it was not African or Bantu philosophy but Tempels’ philosophy with African paraphernalia. This could be extended to the vision of Afro-eclecticism. On the contrary, it could be argued that if Hountondji agrees that the synthesis contains as little as African paraphernalia, then it is something new and in this respect can claim the tag of African philosophy. However, it leaves to be proven how philosophical that little African paraphernalia is.
Other notable eclectics include Batholomew Abanuka, Udobata Onunwa, C. C. Ekwealor and much later Chris Ijiomah. Abanuka posits in his 1994 work that a veritable way to doing authentic African philosophy would be to recognize the unity of individual things and, by extension, theories in ontology, epistemology or ethics. There is a basic identity among these because they are connected and can be unified. Following C. S. Momoh (1985: 12), Abanuka went on in A History of African Philosophy to argue that synthesis should be the ultimate approach to doing African Philosophy. This position is shared by Onunwa on a micro level. He says that realities in African world-view are inter-connected and inter-dependent (1991: 66-71). Ekwealor and Ijiomah also believe in synthesis, noting that these realities are broadly dualistic, being physical and spiritual (cf. Ekwalor 1990: 30 and Ijiomah 2005: 76 and 84). So, it would be an anomaly to think of African philosophy as chiefly an exercise in analysis rather than synthesis. The ultimate methodological approach to doing African philosophy, therefore, has to reflect unity of methods above all else.
Eclecticism survived in the New Era of African philosophy in conversational forms. Godfrey Ozumba and Jonathan Chimakonam on Njikoka philosophy, E. G. Ekwuru and later Innocent Egwutuorah on Afrizealotism and even Innocent Asouzu on Ibuanyidanda ontology are all various forms of eclectic thinking. However, these theories are grouped in the New Era specifically for the time of their emergence and the conversational structure they have.
The purest development of eclectic thinking in the later period could be found in Pantaleon Iroegbu’s Uwa Ontology. He posits uwa (worlds) as an abstract generic concept with fifteen connotations and six zones. Everything is uwa, in uwa and can be known through uwa. For him, while the fifteen connotations are the different senses and aspects which uwa concept carries in Igbo-African thought, the six zones are the spatio-temporal locations of the worlds in terms of their inhabitants. He adds that these six zones are dualistic and comprise of the earthly and the spiritual. They are also dynamic and mutually relate. Thus, Iroegbu suggests that the approach to doing authentic African philosophy could consist in the conglomeration of uwa. This demonstrates a veritable Eclectic method in African philosophy.
However, one of the major hindrances of Eclecticism of the later period is that it leads straight to applied philosophy. Following this approach in this period almost makes it impossible for second readers to do original and abstract philosophizing for its own sake. Eclectic theories and methods confine one to their internal dynamics believing that for a work to be regarded as authentic African philosophy, it must follow the rules of Eclecticism. The wider implication is that while creativity might blossom, innovation and originality are stifled. Because of pertinent problems such as these, further evolutions in African philosophy became inevitable. The Kenyan philosopher Odera Oruka had magnified the thoughts concerning individual rather than group philosophizing, thoughts that had been variously expressed earlier by Peter Bodunrin, Paulin Hountondji and Kwasi Wiredu, who further admonished African philosophers to stop talking and start doing African philosophy. And V. Y. Mudimbe, in his The Invention of Africa…, suggested the development of an African conversational philosophy, and the reinvention of Africa by its philosophers, to undermine the Africa that Europe invented. The content of Lewis Gordon’s essay “African Philosophy’s search for Identity: Existential consideration of a recent effort” suggests a craving for a new line of development for African philosophy—a new approach which is to be critical, analytical and universal while still being African. This, in particular, is the spirit of the conversational African philosophy beginning to grip African philosophers in late 1990’s when Gordon wrote his paper. Influences from these thoughts by the turn of the millennium year crystallized into a new mode of thinking, which then metamorphosed into conversational philosophy. The New Era in African philosophy was thus heralded. The focus of this New Era and the orientation became the conversational philosophy.
This period of African philosophy began in the late 1990’s and took shape by the turn of the millennium years. The orientation of this period is conversational philosophy, so, conversationalism is the movement that thrives in this era. In the Calabar School of Philosophy, three prominent schools of thought emerged, namely Interrogatory Theory, Ibuanyidanda and Njikoka philosophies. Conversational philosophy is defined by the active engagement of individual African philosophers in the creation of critical narratives either by engaging the elements of tradition or straight-forwardly by producing new thoughts or by engaging other individual thinkers. So there is critical analysis, critical synthesis, theoretical evaluation, re-enforcements and purifications of the thoughts of other African philosophers in ways that upgrade them to metanarrative of African philosophy. These also make such thoughts universal although with the primary purpose of solving African problems. In this era, the synthesis of the later period evolves into critical synthesis and the degraded critical analysis returns in full force.
Some of the noisy proponents of conversational African philosophy in this era ironically have emerged in the Western world, notably in America. The American philosopher Jennifer Lisa Vest is noted principally for this campaign. Another champion is the brilliant Bruce Janz, ironically, a white American philosopher. He too, is an ardent scholar in African philosophy. These two, to name a few, posit that the highest purification of African philosophy is to be realized in conversational philosophizing.
However, it was the Nigerian philosopher Innocent Asouzu who went beyond the earlier botched attempt of Leopold Senghor and transcended the foundations of Pantaleon Iroegbu to erect a new model of African philosophy. The New Era, therefore, is the beginning of that African philosophy, and Innocent Asouzu, according to the young Nigerian philosopher Ada Agada, arguably could be regarded as the father of it. It is believed that he beat his compatriot, the imaginative Pantaleon Iroegbu, whose career was cut short by death, to this honor. Ada Agada believes Asouzu also beat the illustrious Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu to this honor simply by the dense, constructionist flavor of his works.. The importance of Wiredu in African philosophy cannot be fully captured in an expression,thought the most prolific says, “One can add that without a Wiredu there may never have been an Asouzu in African philosophy.” Yet, there is a touch in Asouzu’s works that make him stand out. Wiredu may therefore be properly regarded as a forerunner. Wiredu may be regarded as the John de Baptiste of African philosophy, in that he identified problems and suggested ways of constructing a more modern African philosophy for decades. He was preparing the mind of Africa for the arrival of a new African philosophy. In the same light, Ngugi wa Thiong’o (cf. 1986) spoke of decolonizing the African mind while Amilcar Cabral (cf. 1969), the Guinean nationalist, recommended what he called “return to the source,” a sort of re-africanization of the colonized people of Africa through philosophical re-education. This re-education is necessary for the recovery and re-integration of Africans brainwashed through the colonial education or, as some have said, mis-education to borrow the favored concept of Ivan Illich in his Deschooling the Society. The colonial mis-education, which is said to have consisted in the transfer of foreign system of thought and the denigration of the indigenous one, eventually created out of the so-called Africans what Tempels Placid, in Bantu Philosophy, calls évoléus, or the deracinés (1949/2006: 13). These are those Africans who have been torn away from the traditional ways of life and the thoughts of their own ethnic group. They have taken on those of the West, which they have been made to believe represent civilization.
However, to do a new African philosophy is as important as to prepare for it. This is the ultimate focus of Wiredu’s campaign. Wiredu’s style of cry and hue was adopted extensively by some who became his latter contemporaries, namely V. Y. Mudimbe, who spoke of the post-colonial Africa that was invented by the West and which needs to be re-invented for authentic African philosophy to take root in his book, The Invention of African. D. A. Masolo, the Kenyan philosopher, also followed in these footsteps in his book African Philosophy in search of Identity. For him, the true African identity was corrupted and compromised by colonialism, and it was the task of African thinkers to reconstruct the true African identity from which the authentic African philosophy will grow out of particular cultural condition and pursue varied constructions of African reality, problems and methods of acquiring relevant and new knowledge.
Paulin Hountondji was another thinker to be influenced by Wiredu’s line of thought. A Benin philosopher, it seems from the extreme tone of his works that he is an unrepentant évoléus. He sees nothing good in ethnophilosophy, a term he has been incorrectly credited for coining in order to correlate it with all previous attempts to articulate African philosophy from the traditional orientation (cf. Bodunrin 1984: ft.3, 21). The difference between him and Wiredu is that he seems to advocate the assimilation and retention of the colonial system of thought. He radicalizes Wiredu’s campaign of rigor for African philosophy by outright denigration of an African system of thought. Such uniqueness he assumes is debased and crystallizes in what he calls the “myth of unanimism” (1996: 61). The undoing of his argument is the implication of his thought that to be capable of philosophizing at all, Africans must adopt the colonial system of thought. This separates him from the pack of Wiredu-loyalists. As celebrated as his works have been, they are no less controversial. For one, some think his African Philosophy: Myth and Reality is a bad mark in African philosophy. The premise of his argument is faulty from the start. The idea of African traditions and indigenous systems of thought polluting the philosophy Africans seek to construct and reduce it to ethnophilosophy is faulty. Also, the suggestion that constructing a philosophical tradition that would engender African thought systems is tantamount to constructing a debased philosophy is misleading. It is the approach, not the paraphernalia of African culture that makes a thought fall under ethnophilosophy. Despite Hountondji’s elaborate admission, the African indigenous system of thought is not inferior to that of Europe The philosophy it will yield would be unique. Two sets of questions that might startle and expose the weak-ends in Hountondji’s advocacy are:
- If an African indigenous thought system makes Africans and their philosophy inferior to those of the colonialist, can the assimilation of Western thought system make Africans and the philosophy they would construct through it equal to the colonialists? And could such Africans and their philosophy be truly called African with Western background thought system?
- When Africans leave off everything that makes them African (traditions, culture, thought system, etc.,) and adopt those of the West in a cheap search for belongingness, do they become Westerners by default? Would they still remain Africans? Or do they now become évolués? Is being unique actually the same as being inferior? And is being like the West actually the same as being non-inferior?
Hountondji’s failure to understand these lines of difference led him to what is perhaps the greatest philosophical misinformation in any liberation struggle. By way of analogy, Hountondji is asking Africans to abandon their thatch house, move across the street and seek admission into the colonialist mansion where they will sleep in the garden working as gardeners. This, he says, would make Africans equal to the European, the Lord of the Mansion. Perhaps, it is the feeling of having left the thatch house and being within the walls of the colonialist mansion that can delude such an African into thinking that he is now on par with the owner of the mansion. Hountondji forgets in his excitement that the owner of the mansion, to which the African is a gardener, does not and cannot share this sentiment. You cannot beat a man in his home; every such mansion has but one master.
The mansion of Western philosophy was not built in a day and was once like the African thatch house. When readers see the speculations of Homer, Hesiod and even the Ionian philosophers they wink in amusement. Plato’s eugenics for examples, the position of the Cynics and Aristotle’s grave ignorance with regards to slaves and women, represent the thatch house of European philosophy. For Hountondji to advise Africans to abandon their thatch house instead of seeking ways to turn it into a befitting mansion is the height of philosophical indolence. The confirmation of this indolence is that Hountondji, living within the Eldorado world of the colonialist philosophical mansion, has not been able to construct any theory to exemplify the structure he proposes for African philosophy. So where is the paradise he promises? It does seem better therefore, to remain in the thatch house and rebuild it into a mansion like Neurath’s Mariner, which was rebuilt plank by plank whilst Neurath was on board the ship, than to abandon what is truly African to become a gardener in another man’s mansion. Most African évolués, it is safe to declare, who have written or are writing on the subject of philosophy are nothing but commentators on Western philosophy.
The orientation of crying the hue and sermon-crusading of Kwasi Wiredu was replaced by Pantaleon Iroegbu’s theoretic framing. He began the actual doing of African philosophy in accordance with the recommendations of Wiredu and his apostles such as Olusegun Oladipo, Peter Bodunrin, Lansana Keita, V. Y. Mudimbe, D. A. Masolo to name a few. Theophilus Okere and the Congolese philosopher Okonda Okolo, Marcien Towa as well as Wamba Dia Wamba in some fashion can also be brought under this category.
Iroegbu in his Metaphysics: The Kpim of Philosophy inaugurated the reconstructive and conversational approach in African philosophy. He engaged previous writers in a critical conversation out of which he produced his own thought, (Uwa ontology) bearing the stain of African tradition and thought systems but remarkably different in approach and method of ethnophilosophy. Franz Fanon has highlighted the importance of sourcing African philosophical paraphernalia from African indigenous culture. This is corroborated in a way by Lucius Outlaw in his African Philosophy: Deconstructive and Reconstructive Challenges. In it, Outlaw advocates the deconstruction of the European-invented Africa to be replaced by a reconstruction to be done by conscientious Africans free from the grip of colonial mentality (1996: 11). Whereas the Wiredu’s crusade sought to deconstruct the invented Africa, actors in the New Era of African philosophy seek to reconstruct through conversational approach. The conversational approach is a method of critical engagement of tradition or the individual thinkers that aims at criticisms, reconstructions and constructive syntheses.
Iroegbu inaugurated this drive but it was Asouzu who has made the most of it. His theory of Ibuanyidanda ontology or complementary reflection maintains that “to be” simply means to be in a mutual, complementary relationship (2007: 251-55). Every being, therefore, is a variable with capacity to join a mutual interaction. In this capacity every being alone is seen as a missing link and serving a missing link of reality in the network of realities. One immediately suspects the apparent contradiction that might arise from the fusion of two opposed variables when considered logically. But the logic of this theory is not the two-valued classical logic but the three-valued African logic (cf. Chimakonam 2012, 2013 and 2014a). In this, the two standard values are contraries rather than contradictories thereby facilitating effective complementation of variables. The possibility of the two standard values merging to form the third value in the complementary mode is what makes ezumezu logic a powerful tool of thought.
Other emerging theories of conversational and reconstructive African philosophy came later. These include the Interrogatory Theory of J. O. Chimakonam; Njikoka philosophy, or integrative humanism, credited to Godfrey Ozumba and J. O. Chimakonam consolationism, which is credited to the emerging Nigerian philosopher Ada Agada and Afrizealotism developed by E. G. Ekwuru are some of the theories that have left their domains and are spreading.
Interrogatory Theory is a social philosophy which holds that societies ride on the wheels of institutions. Institutions are social structures or building blocks of any society. Repressive colonial times in Africa replaced traditional institutions with non-compatible ones ignoring any usable part of tradition and admittted without censorship every element in the imposed modernity. Hence, social structures in postcolonial Africa are ram-shackled, creating the massive retrogression of the continent’s social order. To get Africa on its feet and moving in the right direction requires the reconstruction of the social structures of Africa’s modernity and the construction of its futurity. Interrogatory theory is therefore conceived as a conversational algorithm that would provide the theoretical base for the African renaissance (Chimakonam 2014b: 1). It constructively questions rather than being exclusively critical; it questions to reconstruct rather than being merely critical to deconstruct, is dialogical rather than merely individualistic, rigorous rather than merely informative yet radical rather than being conventional.
Njikoka philosophy sees the question of being as central in African philosophy. “To be” therefore, is to be in a mutual, integrative relationship. Njikoka, meaning integration, maintains that being is being only if it is in a network of other beings. Isolated from this network, there is strictly no being because true beings depend for their existences on the mutuality and on the network to which they inevitably belong. This prompts the integrativists to regard every being as a necessarily link of reality (Chimakonam 2013: 79). Within the network of reality, every being therefore is necessary. The same logic which undergirds Asouzu’s Ibuanyidanda philosophy is the driving principle of this theory.
Ada Agada’s consolationism is an existentialist theory which reflects on African experiences. In a way, it seeks to answer such existential questions already raised in Western philosophy but from African perspectives. The melancholy man is the 21st century human beleaguered by existential problems, some of which are beyond him and leave him seeking consolation as the only remaining option. The emotional man, which Senghor erroneously announced as the Negro, was in fact, according to Ada Agada, the universal man. The much taunted reason or rationality of man emerged from emotions. Thus, science, art, religion and philosophy find their bearing in the immanent space of human joy and sadness. The goal of being in the world is a struggle to avoid sadness and achieve joy. Consolationism therefore, subverts the Western category of being and replaces it with the category of mood. For when man fails to achieve joy and is rather sad, he finds consolation by finding God or anything that serves this purpose.
Afrizealotism is an existential theory which seeks to reconstruct the African being, or humanism. In the post colonial era, the African emerged distorted, not purely African but not purely Western. This is due to the colonial contamination of the African system of thought. Afrizealotism therefore, seeks, not to purge the Western influences totally, and certainly not to admit all of African tradition without censorship, but to produce a viable synthesis by sifting new and relevant variables from the Western system that is sufficient without making the new synthesis Western. All the while, it seeks to retain enough relevant African traditions to ensure that the synthesis is African but not archaic. This presupposes a logic that is dynamic and at least three-valued. Like Iroegbu Asouzu, Ozumba, Chimakonam and Agada, the champions of Afrizealotism are building the new edifice by reconstructing the deconstructed domain of thought in the later period of African philosophy. The central approach is conversation. By engaging other African philosophers or tradition in critical and positive discourses, they hope to reconstruct the deconstructed edifice of African philosophy. Hence, the New Era of African philosophy is safe from the retrogressive, perverse dialogues which characterized the early and middle periods.
Also, with the critical deconstruction that occurred in the later part of the middle period and the attendant eclecticism that emerged in the later period, the stage was set for the formidable reconstructions and conversational encounters that marked the arrival of the New Era of African philosophy.
The development of African philosophy through the periods yields two vital conceptions for African philosophy, namely that African philosophy is a critical engagement of tradition and individual thinkers on one hand, and on the other hand it is also a critical construction of futurity. When individual African philosophers engage tradition critically in order to ascertain its logical coherency and universal validity, they are doing African philosophy. And when they employ the tools of logic in doing this, they are doing African philosophy. On the second conception, when African philosophers engage in critical conversations with one another and in construction of new thoughts in matters that concern Africa but which are nonetheless universal and projected from African native thought systems, they are doing African philosophy. So, the authentic African philosophy is not just a future project, it can also continue from the past.
On the whole, this essay discussed the journey of African philosophy from the beginning and focused through to the criteria, schools and movements in African philosophical tradition. The historical account of the periods in African philosophy began with the early period through to the middle, the later and finally the new periods of African philosophy have also been covered taking particular interest in the robust, individual contributions. The history of systematic African philosophy is a child of frustration, not wonder. This does not however, imply that African philosophers do not initiate some of their reflections from wonder; they actually do, particularly the emerging conversational school. There are still some questions which trail the development of African philosophy, many of which include, “Must African philosophy be tailored to the pattern of Western philosophy, even in less definitive issues? If African philosophy is found to be different in approach from Western philosophy, — so what? Are logical issues likely to play any major roles in the structure and future of African philosophy? What is the future direction of African philosophy? Is the problem of the language of African philosophy pregnant? Would conversations in contemporary African philosophy totally eschew perverse dialogue? What shall be the rules of engagement in African philosophy?” These questions are likely to shape the next lines of thought in African philosophy.
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- Wiredu, Kwasi. Philosophy and an African Culture. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
- A discussion of the philosophical elements in an African culture and a call for a universalizable episteme for African philosophy.
- Wiredu, Kwasi. “How Not to Compare African Thought with Western Thought.”Ch’Indaba no. 2 ( July–December): 1976. 4–8. Reprinted in African Philosophy: An Introduction, edited by R. Wright. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1977; and in African Philosophy: Selected Readings, edited by Albert G. Mosley. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1995.
- A critique of Robin Horton’s comparison of African and Western thought.
- Wiredu, Kwasi.“Our Problem of Knowledge: Brief Reflections on Knowledge and Development in Africa”. African Philosophy as Cultural Inquiry. Ivan Karp and D. A. Masolo (ed). Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2000.
- A discussion on the role of knowledge in the development of Africa.
- Wiredu, Kwasi. Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.
- A collection of essays on sundry philosophical issues pertaining to comparative and cross-cultural philosophy.
- Wiredu, Kwasi. Conceptual Decolonization in African Philosophy. Ed. Olusegun Oladipo. Ibadan: Hope Publications, 1995.
- A discussion of the importance and relevance of the theory of conceptual decolonization in African philosophy.
- Wiredu, Kwasi. “On Defining African Philosophy”. C. S. Momoh ed. The Substance of African Philosophy. Auchi: APP Publications, 1989.
- A discourse on the parameters of the discipline of African philosophy.
- Wright, Richard A., ed. “Investigating African Philosophy”. African Philosophy: An Introduction. 3rd ed. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984.
- A critique of the existence of African philosophy as a discipline.
Jonathan O. Chimakonam
University of Calabar