African philosophy

African Philosophy is the philosophical discourse produced using indigenous African thought
systems. African philosophers are found in the various academic fields of present philosophy,
such as metaphysics, epistemology, moral philosophy, and political philosophy. It discusses
substantive issues from an African perspective.
An example of African philosophy is the concept of Ubuntu in moral philosophy. Ubuntu, often
summarized by the phrase “I am because we are,” emphasizes the interconnectedness of
individuals within a community. It contrasts with Western individualism by prioritizing
communal values and the well-being of the group over the individual.
African philosophy differs from Africana philosophy in that African philosophy focuses on
indigenous knowledge systems and philosophical traditions native to the African continent. In
contrast, Africana philosophy addresses the philosophical concerns, experiences, and identities
of Africans in the diaspora, particularly in regions outside Africa such as the Americas and the
Caribbean.
One particular subject that several modern African philosophers have written about is on the
subject of freedom and what it means to be free or to experience wholeness.
The term "Africana philosophy” covers the philosophy made by thinkers of African descent and
others whose work deals with the subject matter of the African diaspora. Philosophy in Africa
has a rich and varied history, some of which has been lost over time.[3] Some of the world’s
oldest philosophical texts have been produced in Ancient Egypt, written in Hieratic and on
papyrus, c. 2200–1000 BCE. One of the earliest known African philosophers was Ptahhotep, an
ancient Egyptian philosopher.
In general, the ancient Greeks acknowledged their Egyptian forebears,[1] and in the fifth century
BCE, the philosopher Isocrates declared that the earliest Greek thinkers traveled to Egypt to seek
knowledge; one of them Pythagoras of Samos, who “was first to bring to the Greeks all
philosophy”.[4] A philosophical tradition of Islamic scholarship emerged in medieval African
kingdoms such as Mali, Ghana and Songhai.[5] In the seventeeth century, a philosophical
literature developed in Ethiopia in relation to theodicy, principle of ethics and psychology under
the philosopher Zera Yacob, and that of his disciple Walda Heywat.”
In the 21st century, research by Egyptologists has indicated that the word philosopher itself seems
to stem from Egypt: “the founding Greek word philosophos, lover of wisdom, is itself a
borrowing from and translation of the Egyptian concept mer-rekh (mr-rḫ) which literally means
‘lover of wisdom,’ or knowledge.” In the early and mid-twentieth century, anti-colonial
movements had a tremendous effect on the development of a distinct modern African political
philosophy that had resonance on both the continent and in the African diaspora. One well-
known example of the economic philosophical works emerging from this period was the African
socialist philosophy of Ujamaa propounded in Tanzania and other parts of Southeast Africa.
These African political and economic philosophical developments also had a notable impact on
the anti-colonial movements of many non-African peoples around the world.

Definition
Western philosophy, African philosophy contemplates the perceptions of time, personhood,
space and other subjects. One of the implicit assumptions of ethnophilosophy is that a specific
culture can have a philosophy that is not applicable and accessible to all peoples and cultures in
the world. In A Discourse on African Philosophy: A New Perspective on Ubuntu and
Transitional Justice in South Africa, Christian B. N. Gade argues that the ethnophilosophical
approach to African philosophy as a static group property is highly problematic. His research on
ubuntu presents an alternative collective discourse on African philosophy that takes differences,
historical developments, and social contexts seriously. According to Edwin Etieyibo and
Jonathon O. Chimakonam in their article “African Philosophy: Past, Present, and Future”,
historical context plays an important role in African philosophy. History provides the framework
in which we can inspect philosophical problems. In terms of African philosophy, one must look
at the whole picture through the lens of African history. “There are no facts without history.”

African philosophy can be formally defined as a critical thinking by Africans on their

experiences of reality. Nigerian born Philosopher K.C. Anyanwu defined African philosophy as
“that which concerns itself with the way in which African people of the past and present make
sense of their destiny and of the world in which they live.
Nigerian philosopher Joseph I. Omoregbe broadly defines a philosopher as one who attempts to
understand the world’s phenomena, the purpose of human existence, the nature of the world, and
the place of human beings in that world. This form of natural philosophy is identifiable in Africa
even before individual African philosophers can be distinguished in the sources. Like Western
philosophy, African philosophy contemplates the perceptions of time, personhood, space and
other subjects

History
There is a rich and written history of ancient African philosophy – for example from ancient
Egypt, Ethiopia, and Mali (Timbuktutu, Djenne). When it comes to the modern era and the 20 th
century, a new beginning is linked to the 1920s, when African individuals who had studied in the
United States and Europe (“Western” locations) returned to Africa and reflected on the racial
discrimination experienced abroad. Their arrival back in Africa instigated a feeling of onuma,
which is an interpretation of “frustration.” The onuma was felt in response to legacies of
colonialism on a global scale. The renaissance of African philosophy in the 20 th century is
important because onuma inspired some who had traveled and returned to formulate a
“systematic beginning” of philosophizing the African identity, the space of African people in
history, and African contribution to humanity.

Criteria
According to some, two conflicting components are deemed integral to a work for it to be
considered African philosophy. First, the piece must have a racial focus. This facet is valued by
Traditionalist groups, who posit that African philosophy should be an expression of the world
experienced by African individuals. African philosophy must be produced by African authors. In
contrast, Universalist groups suggest that African philosophy should be analyses and critical
engagement of and between individual African thinkers. A work is African philosophy based on
a focal point of tradition. African philosophy must pull from African cultural backgrounds or
thought processes, but it should be independent from racial considerations and use “African”
only as a term of solidarity.

Methods
Communitarian method
The communitarian method of African philosophy emphasizes mutualism in thought. It is most
commonly used by researchers following ubuntu. The common expression of ubuntu is that “a
person is a person through a person.” Leonhard Praeg, Mogobe Ramose, and Fainos Mangera
implement the communitarian method.
Complementary method
The complementary method focuses on the prospect of a missing link. All variables are
important in consideration of histories and identities, and no variable should be overlooked or
under-considered. Additionally, all variables affect one another, so the relationship between them
and their affects on other variables should be scrutinized. Mesembe Edet implements the
complementary method.

Conversational method
The conversational method creates thought by assessing a relationship between oppositional
works. The defender or proponent is named “nwa-swa,” and the nwa swa is questioned and
doubted by a disagreeing party, known as “nwa nju.” The conversational method emphasizes the
interconnectedness of networks within reality; the more accurate a thought should be, the more
specific a location should be. This method is endorsed by the Conventional School of
Psychology, and it is used by Victor Nweke and Msembe Edet.

Types
Pre-modern

North Africa
In North Africa, arguably central to the development of the ancient Egyptian philosophical
tradition of Egypt and Sudan was the conception of ma’at, which roughly translated refers to
‘justice’, ‘truth’, or simply ‘that which is right’. One of the earliest works of political philosophy
was The Maxims of Ptahhotep, which were taught to Egyptian schoolboys for centuries.
Ancient Egypt have several philosophical texts that have been treated by scholars in recent years.
In the 2018 podcast “Africana Philosophy”, the philosophers Peter Adamson and Chike Jeffers
devoted the first eight episodes to Egyptian philosophy.[14] The American Philosophical
Association (APA) has published a text on the classical text The Immortality of Writers (“Be a
Writer”), ca. 1200 BCE. The Blog of the APA article also covers The Dispute Between a Man
and His Ba from the 19th century BCE; The Teaching of Ani, 13 th century BCE, which gives
advice to the ordinary man; The Satire of the Trades by Khety; and the text of Amennakht
(active in 1170–1140 BCE) from Deir el-Medina, whose teaching states that “it is good to finish
school, better than the smell of lotus blossoms in summer”.
Ancient Egyptian and other African philosophers also made important contributions to
Hellenistic philosophy and Christian philosophy. According to Busiris by the ancient Greek
philosopher Isocrates, who was born before Plato, “all men agree the Egyptians are the healthiest
and most long of life among men; and then for the soul they introduced philosophy’s training
[…]”. In the Hellenistic tradition, the influential philosophical school of Neoplatonism was
founded by the Egyptian philosopher Plotinus in the third century CE. The Church Father and
philosopher Augustine of Hippo (born in Thagaste, today’s Algeria, in 354) had a Christian
mother, Saint Monica, who was an Amazigh (Berber), and Augustine defined himself as an
African (or Punic, of Phoenician descent).

West Africa
The most prominent of West Africa’s pre-modern philosophical traditions has been identified as
that of the Yoruba philosophical tradition and the distinctive worldview that emerged from it
over the thousands of years of its development. Philosophical concepts such as Ifá, Omoluabi,
Ashè and Emi Omo Eso were integral to this system, and the totality of its elements are
contained in what is known amongst the Yoruba as the Itan. The cosmologies and philosophies
of the Akan, Dogon, Serer and Dahomey were also significant.

In pre-colonial Senegambia (modern Gambia and Senegal), the 17 th-century philosopher Kocc
Barma Fall (b. 1586) stood out as one of the renowned philosophers in Senegambian history. His
proverbs are still recited by Senegalese and Gambians alike, including in Senegambian popular
culture – for example in Ousmane Sembene’s films such as Guelwaar[17][18] Other notable
philosophical thinkers include the Gambian historian Alieu Ebrima Cham Joof, and the Malian
ethnologist Amadou Hampâté Bâ.
One of the foremost scholars of Timbuktu was Ahmed Baba (1556–1627), who argued against
what he called “racial slavery”.[19] One of the leading women philosophers and writers of the
Sokoto Caliphate, in present-day Nigeria, was the princess Nana Asma’u (1793-1864).

Horn of Africa
In the Horn of Africa, there are a number of sources documenting the development of a distinct
Ethiopian philosophy from the first millennium onwards. Among the most notable examples
from this tradition emerge from the work of the 17 th-century philosopher Zera Yacob, and that of
his disciple Walda Heywat. Yacob in his writings discusses religion, morality, and existence. He
comes to the belief that every person will believe their faith to be the right one and that all men
are created equal.
Southern Africa
Edit
In Southern Africa and Southeast Africa the development of a distinctive Bantu philosophy
addressing the nature of existence, the cosmos and humankind’s relation to the world following
the Bantu migration has had the most significant impact on the philosophical developments of
the said regions, with the development of the philosophy of Ubuntu as one notable example
emerging from this worldview.

Central & East Africa

Many Central African philosophical traditions before the Bantu migration into southern Central
Africa have been identified as a uniting characteristic of many Nilotic and Sudanic peoples,
ultimately giving rise to the distinctive worldviews identified in the conceptions of time, the
creation of the world, human nature, and the proper relationship between mankind and nature
prevalent in Dinka mythology, Maasai mythology and similar traditions.

African diaspora
Some pre-modern African diasporic philosophical traditions have also been identified, mostly
produced by descendants of Africans in Europe and the Americas. One notable pre-modern
diasporic African philosopher was Anthony William Amo in the 18th century, who was taken as a
slave from Awukenu in what is now Ghana, and was brought up and educated in Europe where
he gained doctorates in medicine and philosophy, and subsequently became a professor of
philosophy at the universities of Halle and Jena in Germany.

Modern
Kenyan philosopher Henry Odera Oruka has distinguished what he calls four trends in modern
African philosophy: ethnophilosophy, philosophical sagacity, nationalistic–ideological
philosophy, and professional philosophy. In fact it would be more realistic to call them
candidates for the position of African philosophy, with the understanding that more than one of
them might fit the bill. (Oruka later added two additional categories: literary/artistic philosophy,
such as the work of literary figures such as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe,
Okot p’Bitek, and Taban Lo Liyong, and hermeneutic philosophy, the analysis of African
languages in order to find philosophical content.) In the African diaspora, American philosopher
Maulana Karenga has also been notable in presenting varied definitions for understanding
modern African philosophy, especially as it relates to its earliest sources
One notable contributor to professional philosophy is Achille Mbembe. He interacts with a
multitude of modern subjects, including thoughts on statehood, death, capital, racism, and
colonialism. He invokes attention to moral and political arguments through a tone of morality in
his works. Many recent pieces from Mbembe, including Critique of Black Reason, suggest that
understanding Europe as a force not at the center of the universe is a point from which
philosophy and society should view the world. Mbembe asserts that he positions himself in
multiple worlds of existence at one time. This method creates an empathetic point from which
the world can be viewed.[26]

Ethnophilosophy and philosophical sagacity

Henry Odera Oruka of Kenya came up with Sage Philosophy and philosophic sagacity is
attributed to him. Ethnophilosophy has been used to record the beliefs found in African cultures.
Such an approach treats African philosophy as consisting in a set of shared beliefs, values,
categories, and assumptions that are implicit in the language, practices, and beliefs of African
cultures; in short, the uniquely African worldview. 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. According to this view,
African philosophy can be best understood as springing from the fundamental assumptions about
reality reflected in the languages of Africa.

Another example of this sort of approach is the work of Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa of the University
of Port Harcourt in Nigeria, who argues for the existence of an African philosophy of history
stemming from traditional proverbs from the Niger Delta in his paper “An African Philosophy of
History in the Oral Tradition.” Alagoa argues that in African philosophy, age is seen as an
important factor in gaining wisdom and interpreting the past. In support of this view, he cites
proverbs 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”).
Nevertheless, it is said, “God will outlive eternity.” 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”). However, these arguments must be
taken with a grain of cultural relativism, as the span of culture in Africa is incredibly vast, with
patriarchies, matriarchies, monotheists and traditional religionists among the population, and as
such the attitudes of groups of the Niger Delta cannot be applied to the whole of Africa.

Another more controversial application of this approach is embodied in the concept of Negritude.
Leopold Senghor, a proponent of Negritude, argued that the distinctly African approach to reality
is based on emotion rather than logic, works itself out in participation rather than analysis, and
manifests itself through the arts rather than the sciences. Cheik Anta Diop and Mubabinge
Bilolo, on the other hand, while agreeing that African culture is unique, challenged the view of
Africans as essentially emotional and artistic, arguing that Egypt was an African culture whose
achievements in science, mathematics, architecture, and philosophy were pre-eminent. This
philosophy may also be maligned as overly reductionist due to the obvious scientific and
scholarly triumphs of not only ancient Egypt, but also Nubia, Meroe, as well as the great library
of Timbuktu, the extensive trade networks and kingdoms of North Africa, West Africa, Central
Africa, the Horn of Africa and Great Zimbabwe and the other major empires of Southern,
Southeast and Central Africa.
Critics of this approach argue that the actual philosophical work in producing a coherent
philosophical position is being done by the academic philosopher (such as Alagoa), and that the
sayings of the same culture can be selected from and organised in many different ways in order
to produce very different, often contradictory systems of thought.
Philosophical sagacity is a sort of individualist version of ethnophilosophy, in which one records
the beliefs of certain special members of a community. The premise here is that, although most
societies demand some degree of conformity of belief and behaviour from their members, a
certain few of those members reach a particularly high level of knowledge and understanding of
their cultures' worldviews; such people are sages. In some cases, the sage goes beyond mere
knowledge and understanding to reflection and questioning—these become the targets of
philosophical sagacity.
Critics of this approach note that not all reflection and questioning is philosophical; besides, if
African philosophy were to be defined purely in terms of philosophic sagacity, then the thoughts
of the sages could not be African philosophy, for they did not record them from other sages.
Also, on this view the only difference between non-African anthropology or ethnology and
African philosophy seems to be the nationality of the researcher.
Critics argue further that the problem with both ethnophilosophy and philosophical sagacity is
that there is surely an important distinction between philosophy and the history of ideas,
although other philosophers consider the two topics to be remarkably similar. The argument is
that no matter how interesting the beliefs of a people such as the Akan or the Yoruba may be to
the philosopher, they remain beliefs, not philosophy. To call them philosophy is to use a
secondary sense of that term, as in "my philosophy is live and let live."
Professional philosophy
Professional philosophy is usually identified as that produced by African philosophers trained in
the Western philosophical tradition, that embraces a universal view of the methods and concerns
of philosophy. Those philosophers identified in this category often explicitly reject the
assumptions of ethnophilosophy and adopt a universalist worldview of philosophy that requires
all philosophy to be accessible and applicable to all peoples and cultures in the world. This is
even if the specific philosophical questions prioritized by individual national or regional
philosophies may differ. Some African philosophers classified in this category are Odera Oruka,
Paulin Hountondji, Peter Bodunrin, Kwasi Wiredu, Tsenay Serequeberhan, Marcien Towa and
Lansana Keita.
Nationalist and ideological philosophy

Nationalist and ideological philosophy might be considered a special case of philosophic

sagacity, in which not sages but ideologues are the subjects. Alternatively, it has been considered
as a subcategory of professional political philosophy. In either case, the same sort of problem
arises with retaining a distinction between ideology and philosophy, and also between sets of
ideas and a special way of reasoning. Examples include African
socialism, Nkrumaism, Harambee and Authenticité
African ethics
Although Africa is extremely diverse, there appear to be some shared moral ideas across many
ethnic groups. In a number of African cultures, ethics is centered on a person's character, and
saying "he has no morals" translates as something like "he has no character. A person's character
reflects the accumulation of their deeds and their habits of conduct; hence, it can be changed
over a person's life. In some African cultures, "personhood" refers to an adult human who
exhibits moral virtues, and one who behaves badly is not considered a person, even if he is
considered a human.
While many traditional African societies are highly religious, their religion are not revealed, and
hence, ethics does not center around divine commands Instead, ethics
is humanistic and utilitarian: it focuses on improving social functioning and human
flourishing. On the other hand, social welfare is not a mere aggregate of individual welfare;
rather, there is a collective "social good" embodying values that everyone wants, like peace and
Stability. In general, African ethics is social or collectivistic rather than individualistic and united
in ideology. Cooperation and altruism are considered crucial. African ethics places more weight
on duties of prosocial behaviour than on rights per se, in contrast to most of Western ethics.
Africana philosophy

Africana philosophy is the work of philosophers of African descent and others whose work deals
with the subject matter of the African diaspora. This is a relatively new (since the 1980s) and
developing name given to African thought, and it is given credible attention by professional
organizations, including the American Philosophical Association.
Africana philosophy includes the philosophical ideas, arguments and theories of particular
concern to people of African descent. Some of the topics explored by Africana philosophy
include: pre-Socratic African philosophy and modern day debates discussing the early history
of western philosophy, post-colonial writing in Africa and the Americas, black resistance to
oppression, black existentialism in the United States, and the meaning of "blackness" in the
modern world.