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African Philosophy

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Written and Edited by M.R.M. Parrott

Yorùbá African Art

African Philosophy is the study of the Human Experience, Reality, and Knowledge from the traditional cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa. Modern Northern Africa by contrast is too strongly influenced by the overlapping Middle-Eastern Religions to be included here as Philosophy. In traditional African Philosophy, harmony and peace are bound with the African cultural World-View, which is a focus on Participation and Integration, with no divisions between Humanity and Nature. Imagination, Intuitive Experience, and Personal Feeling guide African Philosophy through Oral Tradition. The Life-Force permeates the whole Universe in African Philosophy, and Matter and Spirit are inseparable. The Soul is the Individual Will, or thought, and when compatible with other individuals, it is pure and there is Peace and Harmony. Higher forces, such as Supreme Being(s), directly influence the lower, and Nature is a collection of these Life-Forces. Across African communities, people seen as wise developed what is called “African Sage Philosophy”, a way of seeing the World and passing it on. They examined basic questions such as the nature of any Supreme Being(s), as well as Life and Afterlife. They passed this down through sayings and proverbs rather than developing their ideas more formally.

The EthnoPhilosophy & Philosophical Sagacity Movements

In the 1930s, the “Négritude” movement, initiated by an essay written by Aimé Césaire in L'Étudiant Noir, a Parisian student newspaper, was championed by Caribbean and African intellectuals. The focus was on literary and poetic facets of “Who am I?”, a response to dehumanizing and unjust Colonialism and assimilation practices. Négritude was about exploring “Blackness” in a profoundly racist system which then, and still does, marginalize people of colour. Academic Philosophy is no different, and has been dismissive toward African Philosophy.

More recently, in the late Twentieth Century, “EthnoPhilosophy” involved the recording of beliefs found in African cultures. Such an approach treated African Philosophy as a set of shared beliefs, values, categories, and assumptions implicit in the languages, practices, and beliefs of African cultures as a uniquely African World-View. As such, it is seen as an item of communal property rather than an activity for the individual. One proponent of this form, Placide Tempels, argued in Bantu Philosophy that the metaphysical categories of the Bantu people are reflected in their linguistic categories. Thus, African Philosophy can be best understood via EthnoPhilosophy as springing from the fundamental assumptions about Reality reflected in the languages of Africa.

An “EthnoPhilosopher” holds that all people practice Philosophy, and believes that the study is incomplete if limited to the Western traditions. EthnoPhilosophy is an authentic, distinctive, and well-developed African orientation in Philosophy.^[1] “Philosophical Sagacity” is a related Individualist version of EthnoPhilosophy derived around the same time, in which one records the beliefs of certain special members of a community, such as Sages. Western critics say that no matter how interesting the beliefs of a people such as the Akan or the Yoruba may be to a philosopher, they remain beliefs, and not Philosophy, but this, again is quite biased given the mere utterances and even mere rumours which qualify as Early Western Philosophy.

In all, it is clear that actual African Proverbs should be studied, such as “more days, more wisdom”, and “what an old man sees seated, a youth does not see standing”. Truth is seen as eternal and unchanging (“truth never rots”), but people are subject to error (“even a four-legged horse stumbles and falls”). It is dangerous to judge by appearances (“a large eye does not mean keen vision”), but first-hand observation can be trusted (“he who sees does not err”). The past is not seen as fundamentally different from the present, but all history is contemporary history (“a storyteller does not tell of a different season”). The future remains beyond knowledge (“even a bird with a long neck cannot see the future”). History is seen as vitally important (“one ignorant of his origin is nonhuman”), and historians (known as “sons of the soil”) are highly revered (“the son of the soil has the python's keen eyes”).

Western Bias & African Philosophy

Thus, African philosophers, such as Kwame Anthony Appiah, Kwame Gyekye, Kwasi Wiredu, Oshita O. Oshita, Lansana Keita, Peter Bodunrin, and Chukwudum B. Okolo show that African Philosophy is distinctive by emphasizing the “African” and ignoring the “Philosophy”, at least, the academic Philosophy. The professional philosophers, of course, adopt the view that Philosophy is a particularly Western way of thinking, methodically reflecting and reasoning, and that such a way is relatively new to much of Africa, that African Philosophy must grow in terms of the philosophical work carried out by Africans. This academic view is decidedly patriarchal, which is perhaps the best that can be said about it.

Indeed, there is a deeply troubling common view of African Philosophy throughout the commentary of many Western academics which need not be spelled out further here, but equates to the dismissal of non-formal Philosophies from non-European cultures. The same academics accept the Philosophy of Greek Pre-Socratics, for example, while dismissing that of African Sages, despite very little difference between them in terms of activity and writings. The academics would emphasize there is no serious debate concerning whether African thinkers practiced philosophical thought. Given the nature of Humanity, it is difficult to see on what basis such a denial could rest. Yet, the standard academic view is still that the rise of philosophical and scientific thought is that it probably required a certain social structure, one in which, for example, a significant part of society had the leisure to think and debate. Even given what academics feel is a necessary background condition, they posit still other complex factors are needed, thus continually deferring their acceptance of African Philosophy. The resulting claim is often that Africa has developed no Philosophy and has no philosophers. This is unfortunate at best, xenophobia and racism at worst.

What Philosophy is meant to be is a coherent set of beliefs about the nature of the World and our place in it. No individual or culture lacks Philosophy, as generated by those who are living their truths. Such a Philosophy doesn't depend upon academics who proscribe methods, but only a people who experience the environment around them and come to form deeper ideas about it. This quality of Human cultures goes back as far as Humans do, at least a million years, and likely far longer. All lifeforms can be said to exhibit Epistemology^[2], and so in order to “do” Metaphysics, the individual only needs a Brain cortex to generate transcendent Ideas, which is what we find in advanced lifeforms over the last many millions of years.