Review of Barry Hallen’s A Short History of African Philosophy, (Second edition 2009)

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Debating the Autonomy of Reason

This paper questions the assumption of the bulk of Western philosophy that reasoning in general, and moral reasoning in particular, can be undertaken without any consideration of the unique cultural experiences of those who engage in it. It proposes a communitarian alternative for thinking about subjecthood. It further contends that there is need for professional African philosophers to assist their people in the quest for solutions to current pertinent socio-economic challenges facing them

Narrative and Experience of Community as Philosophy of Culture

This paper argues that the distinctive feature of African philosophising is a communitarian outlook expressed through various forms of narrative. The paper first illustrates the close relationship between narrative and community in the African cultural milieu. It then goes on to examine the way in which African academics in various fields have employed the narrative technique in their works. Next, the paper urges that through migration to European and American institutions of higher learning, African philosophers have had a significant impact on Western philosophy. Thereafter, the paper argues that while a communalistic outlook is part and parcel of African philosophising, it does not imply an insular approach to identity, but rather accommodates the fact of the dynamism of the sources of identity. Finally, the paper points out that one implication of the communalistic and narrativistic approach of African philosophy is that the dichotomy between “analytic” and “continental” philosophy, so common in the West, is not applicable to it

African Communitarianism and Difference

There has been the recurrent suspicion that community, harmony, cohesion, and similar relational goods as understood in the African ethical tradition threaten to occlude difference. Often, it has been Western defenders of liberty who have raised the concern that these characteristically sub-Saharan values fail to account adequately for individuality, although some contemporary African thinkers have expressed the same concern. In this chapter, I provide a certain understanding of the sub-Saharan value of communal relationship and demonstrate that it entails a substantial allowance for difference. I aim to show that African thinkers need not appeal to, say, characteristically Euro-American values of authenticity or autonomy to make sense of why individuals should not be pressured to conform to a group’s norms regarding sex and gender. A key illustration involves homosexuality

Foreword Thought and Practice: Taking Stock, Re-engaging

Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous “Orphée noir” (1948) still ranks among the most memorable Prefaces aimed at capturing the significance of the moments of historical regeneration of interrupted cultural expressions. For that piece, simultaneously celebrated and controverted, Sartre borrowed the idea from the ancient Greek religious movement now widely referred to as “Orphism”, associated there with the mythical poet or singer, Orpheus, from about the 6th. Century B.C.E. The movement led to several mystery cults as well as to a theogony whose key objective was the poetic laudation of the birth, death, and re-birth of the gods. In the original Greek myth, and therefore in the sense that Sartre had hoped to apply to his revaluation of the novel Negritude poetry, the account begins with the idea of “night” as the primal entity from which a series of “kings” or gods springs?

Toward a Postcolonial Universal Ontology: Notes on the Thought of Achille Mbembe

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Animal rights and environmental ethics in Africa : From anthropocentrism to non-speciesism?

The claim is frequently made on behalf of African moral beliefs and customs that African cultures do not objectify and exploit nature and natural organisms, unlike Western (or Northern) moral attitudes and practices. Through exploration of what kind of moral status is reserved for other-than-human animals in African ethics, I argued in my recent book Animals and African Ethics that moral perceptions, attitudes and practices on the African continent have tended to be resolutely anthropocentric, or human-centred. Although values like ubuntu (humanness) and ukama (relationality) have, in recent years, been expanded to include non-human nature, animals characteristically have no rights, and human duties to them are almost exclusively ‘indirect‘. Taking into account the brutal and dehumanizing ravages of colonialism, racism and political, cultural and moral apartheid that Africans have historically been subjected to, it does not seem to be wholly off the mark to invite people in sub-Sahara Africa, especially, to reflect on an even longer, more deeply-entrenched historical process of discrimination, oppression and exploitation, namely that of species apartheid. Yet, adoption of a more enlightened stance vis-à-vis the non-human world and animals in particular would almost certainly involve giving up the moral anthropocentrism that characterizes many attitudes and practices on the African continent. This need not entail surrendering what is arguably at the core of sub-Saharan morality – the emphasis on community and harmonious communal relationships. ‘I am because we are’ could reasonably be interpreted as not being confined to the human realm, as transcending the species barrier. I have in mind here something like a relational approach to animal rights and environmental ethics that is neither anthropocentric nor speciesist. The multifarious historical and geographical relationships we have with other-than-human animals give rise to a multitude of moral obligations that differ according to the kinds of relationships we find ourselves in. There is an increasing awareness among African scholars of the untenability of a rigidly species-governed ‘us-against-them’ thinking, that anthropocentrism shares many relevant features with ethnocentrism, and that speciesism is relevantly like racism. It is my aim in the proposed contribution to explore these ideas and conceptual tools in more detail