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Essays on Contemporary Issues in African Philosophy

  • © 2022
  • Jonathan O. Chimakonam   ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8913-1434 0 ,
  • Edwin Etieyibo 1 ,
  • Ike Odimegwu 2

Department of Philosophy, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

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Department of Philosophy, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Department of philosophy, nnamdi azikiwe university, awka, nigeria.

Covers multiple themes within African Philosophy unified by their contemporary relevance

Brings together a selection of vocal scholars composed of old and new African philosophers

Applies philosophical reasoning to such socio-political topics as failed state syndrome

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Table of contents (21 chapters)

Front matter, eight practical issues in contemporary african philosophy.

  • Jonathan O. Chimakonam, Munamato Chemhuru

How African is Philosophy in Africa?

  • Paulin J. Hountondji

Doing Philosophy in the African Place: A Perspective on the Language Challenge

  • Chukwueloka S. Uduagwu

The Fallacy of Exclusion and the Promise of Conversational Philosophy in Africa

  • Fainos Mangena

How Conversational Philosophy Profits from the Particularist and the Universalist Agenda

  • L. Uchenna Ogbonnaya

Examining the Method and Praxis of Conversationalism

  • Aribiah David Attoe

Why the Normative Conception of Personhood is Problematic: A Proposal for a Conversational Account

Jonathan O. Chimakonam

African Ethics and Agent-Centred Duties

  • Motsamai Molefe

On the One Concept and Many Accounts of African Ethics

Edwin Etieyibo

How to Report on War in the Light of an African Ethic

  • Thaddeus Metz

Taking African Virtue Ethics and Character Training Principles to the Schools

  • Jim Ijenwa Unah

Ubuntu as a Plausible Ground for a Normative Theory of Justice from the African Place

  • Victor C. A. Nweke

Remedial Approach to Cultural Globalization and Intercultural Competence

  • Isaiah A. Negedu, Solomon O. Ojomah

Decolonial Philosophical Praxis Exemplified Through Superiorist and Adseredative Understandings of Development

  • Björn Freter

Totality by Analogy; Or: The Limits of Law and Black Subjectivity

  • Leonhard Praeg

The African Philosopher and The Burden of Indigenous Knowledge System (IKS)

  • Olatunji Alabi Oyeshile

Changes, Adaptation and Complementary Noetic Transformation

  • Innocent I. Asouzu

Ageing, Ageism, Cultural Representations of the Elderly and the Duty to Care in African Traditions

  • Austin E. Iyare, Elvis Imafidon, Kenneth Uyi Abudu

The Struggle to Forgive: Some Philosophical and Theological Reflections

  • Mojalefa L. J. Koenane, Cyril-Mary P. Olatunji
  • Contemporary Issues in African philosophy
  • Conversational philosophy
  • Problems in African philosophy
  • Themes in African philosophy
  • New perspectives in African philosophy
  • Methods of African philosophy
  • Schools of thought in African philosophy

About this book

This volume is a collection of chapters about contemporary issues within African philosophy. They are issues African philosophy must grapple with to demonstrate its readiness to make a stand against some of the challenges society faces in the coming decade such as xenophobia, Afro-phobia, extreme poverty, democratic failure and migration. The text covers new methodical directions and there is focus on the conversationalist, complementarist and consolationist movements within the field as well as the place of the Indigenous Knowledge System.The collection speaks to African philosophy’s place in intellectual history with coverage of African Ethics and African socio-political philosophy. 

Contributors come from a variety of different backgrounds, institutions and countries. Through their innovative ideas, they provide fresh insight and intellectual energy.  The book appeals to philosophy students and researchers.

Editors and Affiliations

Ike Odimegwu

About the editors

Jonathan O. Chimakonam  Ph.D, was a senior lecturer (2016-2018) at the University of Calabar, Nigeria and is now at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is the convener of the professional African philosophy society, The Conversational School of Philosophy (CSP) and the founding editor of  Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions . He is winner of the Jens Jacobsen Research Award for Outstanding Research in Philosophy. He is the African philosophy Area Editor in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Jonathan propounded the theories of Ezumezu logic and Conversational thinking.

Edwin Etieyibo , Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand. He received his PhD from the Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta, writing a dissertation on David Gauthier’s Moral Contractarianism and the Problem of Secession, which presents a critical examination of Gauthier’s account of morality that links rationality with preferences explained by expected utility. He taught for a number of years at Athabasca University and the University of Alberta before moving to the University of the Witwatersrand. His teaching and research interest broadly covers ethics, social and political philosophy, social contract theories, history of philosophy, philosophy of education and children, and African socio-political economics and philosophy.

Ike Odimegwu,  PhD. is a Professor of Philosophy at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. He is widely published in learned journals and international presses. He is currently the Dean of Postgraduate School at his university.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Essays on Contemporary Issues in African Philosophy

Editors : Jonathan O. Chimakonam, Edwin Etieyibo, Ike Odimegwu

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70436-0

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Religion and Philosophy , Philosophy and Religion (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-030-70435-3 Published: 07 November 2021

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-70438-4 Published: 07 November 2022

eBook ISBN : 978-3-030-70436-0 Published: 06 November 2021

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XXII, 353

Topics : Philosophy, general , African History

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Introduction to African Philosophy Study Guide .pdf

Profile image of Ndumiso Dladla

This a 2007 version of a Study Guide the UNISA Philosophy Dept has used to introduce to students since 2007. It is intended to be used with a textbook it was written for published in 2002 under Oxford University Press as Philosophy from Africa: A Text with Readings and then since 2003 by Routledge as The African Philosophy Reader under the editorship of Coetzee and Roux . The latter version of the text is available online as a free pdf file download if you just type the title correctly . I make this publicly available with the hope of reaching students and interested readers beyond those formally registered with us. Another resource of great value is Barry Hallen's A Short History of African Philosophy which may be obtained at bookstores.

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Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua

The author discusses two schools of African philosophy: the holistic and the contemporarist. The holistic school looks into the past and present to find solutions to Africa's contemporary problems, while the contemporarist school looks at a Western standard of philosophy and ideas of civil society, human rights and development. The contemporarist school does not incorporate the cultural past of African traditions into African philosophy. The emphasis put by the contemporarist school on science and technology and rights as the originators of development is questionable. The author supports the holistic school in which African proverbs form part of African philosophy. The author uses Akan proverbs to illustrate how these are part of an African philosophy of human rights. Modern African philosophy should be diverse in outlook, but have a common core in the traditions that African societies have in common. In using African philosophy in the African rights struggle, it must become a tool that can be used by the oppressed, the deprived and the marginalised to regain their status in the development structures of their countries. The language of rights should be used as a tool for development, unmasking the disempowering effect of enjoying abstracted civil and political rights disconnected from the struggle for economic justice.

The present dissertation is a multi-disciplinary project that examines the relationship between human rights and development in Africa, with specific focus on Ghana. The proposition, which is expressed in a theory of community emancipation, is that human rights hold the key to the attainment of sustainable holistic development. The theory of community emancipation represents the Akan notion of rights which speak to the lived experiences (traditional, colonial and post-colonial) of Akan peoples. It is offered as a contribution to the evolution of distinct African notions of rights. The Akan perspective on rights aims at making human rights a more accessible concept that people can relate to and to use as an effective tool to attain development. The theory is used in a general context to analyse Western development foreign policies implemented in post-colonial Africa with the active collaboration of African leaders. It concludes that these policies "failed" due to the lack o...

Victor Nweke

Campbell Shittu Momoh is widely known among his academic peers and protege as the first scholar in the world to obtain a PhD in African philosophy. In this essay, we show how Momoh blazes a trail as one of the foremost indigenous Nigerian professional philosophers that attempts to substantiate the possibility of doing African philosophy as a critical reflection of an individual on the historical and existential experiences of the African as documented in the oral and written intellectual heritage of Africa. This claim has its éclat encapsulation in Momoh’s theory of many-many truths. Generally, Momoh’s theory is a systematic repudiation of the fundamental propositions of the founding-fathers of modern philosophy that give credence to the view that philosophy is an unbiased quest for the truth, and the Eurocentric approach to philosophy is the only legitimate approach to the truth. Momoh’s position is that there is no absolute truth in the history of academic philosophy. What exists is the projection of a context-biased theory of truth to the status of the truth by leading philosophers. The idea of the truth or a method for the truth is inherently deceptive. In view of this, we argue that Momoh’s of many-many truths is an exemplar of postmodern thinking in African philosophy because its core propositions have a sort of family resemblance with the position of postmodern thinkers in philosophy. To ground the above contention, we adopt a fundamentally expository and argumentative approach. First, we present a lucid exposition of Momoh’s theory of many-many truths, and then proceed to explicate why the theory of many-many truths is an exemplar of postmodern thinking in African philosophy. We strengthen the plausibility of this argument by unveiling how the basic propositions of Momoh’s theory of many-many truths necessarily incorporate, corroborate and amplify the position of notable postmodern thinkers in philosophy and vice versa. Consequently, we proceed to conclude that Momoh’s theory of many-many truths is a prototype of postmodern thinking in African philosophy because it fundamentally repudiates the hegemonic projection of the Western philosophical tradition as the sole legitimate paradigm of philosophy and universal truth.

Micas Zandamela

African Philosophy is the thought and practice of African Philosophers who have devoted a good deal of their life and time, in a frequent and habitual way, reflecting on the fundamental issues and problems of Africa or about Africa. As long as we admit that Africans are human beings, we have also to admit that they reflect on the basic problems of life, and there would be some who would devote much of their life and time on such an activity. These latter are philosophers whether or not their philosophy is preserved in writings. How can we know their thought then?

Philip Higgs

The liberation of Africa and its peoples from centuries of racially discriminatory colonial rule and domination has far-reaching implications for educational thought and practice. The transformation of educational discourse in Africa requires a philosophical framework that respects diversity, acknowledges lived experience and challenges the hegemony of Western forms of universal knowledge. In this article I reflect critically on whether African philosophy, as a system of African knowledge(s), can provide a useful philosophical framework for the construction of empowering knowledge that will enable communities in Africa to participate in their own educational development.

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COMMENTS

  1. (PDF) On Defining African Philosophy: History ...

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  5. (Pdf) African Philosophy: a Definition, Evaluation and New Prospects 1

    This a 2007 version of a Study Guide the UNISA Philosophy Dept has used to introduce to students since 2007. It is intended to be used with a textbook it was written for published in 2002 under Oxford University Press as Philosophy from Africa: A Text with Readings and then since 2003 by Routledge as The African Philosophy Reader under the editorship of Coetzee and Roux .

  6. PDF The Meaning and Nature of African Philosophy in a Globalising World

    A paper presented at the 2014 Conference of the Association of African Traditional Religion and Philosophy Scholars. Held at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Chike Okoli Multi-Purpose Hall. 25th-28th June 2014. 1. INTRODUCTION The question of the nature of African philosophy has engaged the minds of African philosophers for decades.

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  9. Introduction: The Meaning of African Philosophy

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  11. Essays on Contemporary Issues in African Philosophy

    Jonathan O. Chimakonam Ph.D, was a senior lecturer (2016-2018) at the University of Calabar, Nigeria and is now at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.He is the convener of the professional African philosophy society, The Conversational School of Philosophy (CSP) and the founding editor of Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions.

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  17. A Companion to African Philosophy

    African philosophy does indeed have critical resources in dealing with the challenges of democrati- zation, party politics, and nation-building in Africa. With regards to moral judgment, Wiredu's leitmotif is the golden rule—a procedural standard to judge what action is right or wrong that is an invitation to a subjective empathy.

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  19. PDF Course Code: Phl 126 Course Title: Introduction to African Philosophy

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  21. An essay on African philosophical thought

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    African Philosophy has branched out to cover the philosophical activities of various groups: of people of African origin in the Diaspora (mostly the US), called "Africana Philosophy", the philosophical thought of African women ("womanism"), African aesthetics, ethics, etc. This course gives an introduction to this discipline.

  23. Introduction to African Philosophy Study Guide .pdf

    This a 2007 version of a Study Guide the UNISA Philosophy Dept has used to introduce to students since 2007. It is intended to be used with a textbook it was written for published in 2002 under Oxford University Press as Philosophy from Africa: A Text with Readings and then since 2003 by Routledge as The African Philosophy Reader under the editorship of Coetzee and Roux .