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African Philosophy and the Quest for Autonomy

African Philosophy and the Quest for Autonomy
Author: Leonhard Praeg
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2022-06-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 900445795X

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As academic subject African philosophy is predominantly concerned with epistemology. It aims at re-presenting a lost body of authentic African thought. This apparently austere a-historical concern is framed by a grand narrative of liberation that cannot but politicise the quest for epistemological autonomy. By “politicise” I mean that the desire to re-cover an authentic African epistemology in order to establish African philosophy as autonomous subject, ironically re-iterates Western, enlightenment notions of the autonomous subject. Here, in the pursuit of an autonomous subject the terms of historical oppression are necessarily duplicated in the terms of liberation. In this study I use the term disfigurement to refer to the double-bind - peculiar to post-coloniality - in which the African subject finds itself when it has to establish and affirm a sense of apartheid (in order to confirm the assumption of difference) by inventing its own autonomy in a way that ironically conflicts with an African conception of the autonomous subject. The transcendental concern with epistemological authenticity and autonomy - indicative of an oppressive desire for Western style autonomy - necessary as it may be in a post-colonial context, is placed in an ethical framework that seeks to remain faithful to the African dictum of identity and autonomy “I am because we are”. Whereas the first three chapters are concerned with the transcendental question ‘what is African philosophy?’, the fourth and last chapter situates the ethical framework within which this question arises in the context of the recently “completed” South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.


Clinical Trials and the African Person

Clinical Trials and the African Person
Author: Ike Iyioke
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2018-05-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004366946

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Clinical Trials and the African Person offers an account of the African notion of the self/person within the clinical trials context. As opposed to autonomy-based principlism, this other-regarding/communalist perspective is touted as the preferred alternative model particularly in multicultural settings.


Paulin Hountondji

Paulin Hountondji
Author: Franziska Dübgen
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2018-12-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030019950

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Paulin J. Hountondji is one of the most important and controversial figures in contemporary African philosophy. His critique of ethnophilosophy as a colonial, exoticising and racialized undertaking provoked contentious debates among African intellectuals on the proper methods and scope of philosophy and science in an African and global context since the 1970s. His radical pledge for scientific autonomy from the global system of knowledge production made him turn to endogenous forms of practising science in academia. The horizon of his philosophy is the quest for critical universality from a historical, and situated perspective. Finally, his call for a notion of culture that is antithetical to political movements focused on a single identitarian doctrine or exclusionary norms shows how timely his political thought remains to this day. This book gives a comprehensive overview of Hountondji’s philosophical arguments and provides detailed information on the historical and political background of his intellectual oeuvre. It situates Hountondji in the dialogue with his African colleagues and explores links to current debates in philosophy, cultural studies, postcolonialism and the social sciences.


Consolationism and Comparative African Philosophy

Consolationism and Comparative African Philosophy
Author: Ada Agada
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2021-11-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000476553

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In a major challenge to African philosophy, this book demonstrates the importance of the universalisation question for every committed African philosopher. Rooted in Africa’s colonial legacy, the universalisation question challenges the African thinker to show how authentically African philosophical concepts and phenomena can be universally applicable in a globalising world. In this highly original book, the author inserts the philosophy of consolationism into African philosophical discourse, constructing a unique philosophical system that is at once African and universally relevant. The book engages major African and Western philosophers of diverse ideological leanings in a compelling dialogue that announces the future of world philosophy as one of interculturality, in which a common philosophical horizon is forged out of the cultural diversities of the world for the edification of humanity in a continually changing world. This book will be an important read for researchers in the fields of African Studies, intercultural philosophy, philosophy of mind, and existentialism.


A Short History of African Philosophy, Second Edition

A Short History of African Philosophy, Second Edition
Author: Barry Hallen
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2009-09-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0253003482

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A Short History of African Philosophy discusses major ideas, figures, and schools of thought in philosophy in the African context. While drawing out critical issues in the formation of African philosophy, Barry Hallen focuses on recent scholarship and relevant debates that have made African philosophy critical to understanding the rich and complex cultural heritage of the continent. This revised edition expands the historical perspective, takes account of recent discoveries and new canonical figures, highlights new discussions about gender as a cultural and philosophical phenomenon, clarifies issues regarding indigenous cultures and human rights, and builds on the notion that African philosophy shares methods and concerns of philosophy worldwide. This short reference is an essential resource for students, scholars, and general readers.


A Discourse on African Philosophy

A Discourse on African Philosophy
Author: Christian B. N. Gade
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2017-04-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1498512267

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Many have argued that ubuntu was a formative influence on the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), South Africa’s famous transitional justice mechanism. A Discourse on African Philosophy: A New Perspective on Ubuntu and Transitional Justice in South Africa challenges and contextualizes this view in a way that not only provides new findings and reflections on ubuntu and the TRC, but also contributes to the field of African philosophy. One of Christian B. N. Gade’s key findings, founded on qualitative interviews in South Africa, is that some former TRC commissioners and committee members question the importance of ubuntu in the TRC process. Another is that there are several differing and historically developing interpretations of ubuntu, some of which have evident political implications and reflect non-factual and creative uses of history. Thus ubuntu is not a shared cultural heritage, in the ethnophilosophical sense of a static property characterizing a group. In fact, throughout this book Gade argues that the ethnophilosophical approach to African philosophy as a static group property is highly problematic. Gade’s research presents an alternative collective discourse on African philosophy (“collective” in the sense that it does not focus on any single individual in particular) that takes differences, historical developments, and social contexts seriously. This book will be of interest to scholars in African philosophy, transitional justice, politics and cultural heritage, and law in South Africa.


Africa’s Quest for a Philosophy of Decolonization

Africa’s Quest for a Philosophy of Decolonization
Author: Messay Kebede
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401200874

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This book discovers freedom in the colonial idea of African primitiveness. As human transcendence, freedom escapes the drawbacks of otherness, as defended by ethnophilosophy, while exposing the idiosyncratic inspiration of Eurocentric universalism. Decolonization calls for the reconnection with freedom, that is, with myth-making understood as the inaugural act of cultural pluralism. The cultural condition of modernization emerges when the return to the past deploys the future.


The Shade of New Leaves

The Shade of New Leaves
Author: Manfred O. Hinz
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2006
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9783825892838

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"Omudile muua ohapo; epangelo liua ohamba". Freely translated, this proverb of the Ovakwanyama of northern Namibia means: "New leaves produce a good shade; the laws of a king are always as good as new". The proverb paints a picture of wisdom to express the dialectical relationship between continuity and change in customary law. Since royal orders are supposed not to change from one king to the next, they are always as good as new, reads the explanatory note to the proverb by the anthropologist Loeb, who recorded the proverb. Traditional authority is like a tree standing on its roots, rooted in the tradition created by the ancestors of the ruler and the community. These roots remain firm, stable and unchanged, not so the concrete manifestation of authority that changes and responds to changes of the environment. This makes that new leaves are produced by the rooted tree. The new leaves are new and old. They are old, because in structure, colour and their capacity to protect by giving shade, they are more or less like the leaves of last year and the year before; they are new because they react to the challenge of seasons. The Shade of New Leaves emerged out of an international conference on the living reality of customary law and traditional governance held in Windhoek in 2004. The conference was organised by the Centre for Applied Social Sciences and the Human Rights and Documentation Centre, both affiliated to the Faculty of Law of the University of Namibia, in co-operation with the Law Departments of the Universities of Bremen, Germany, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. The contributions to this book are grouped into six parts: Part 1: Legal pluralism, traditional governance and the challenge of the democratic constitutional order * Part 2: Traditional administration of justice revisited * Part 3: Ascertaining customary law: prerequisite of good governance in traditional authority * Part 4: Legal philosophy, African philosophy and African jurisprudence * Part 5: Research, training and teaching of customary law * Part 6: Afterthoughts


Self and Community in a Changing World

Self and Community in a Changing World
Author: D. A. Masolo
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2010-07-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0253004527

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Revisiting African philosophy's classic questions, D. A. Masolo advances understandings of what it means to be human -- whether of African or other origin. Masolo reframes indigenous knowledge as diversity: How are we to understand the place and structure of consciousness? How does the everyday color the world we know? Where are the boundaries between self and other, universal and particular, and individual and community? From here, he takes a dramatic turn toward Africa's current political situation and considers why individual rights and freedoms have not been recognized, respected, demanded, or enforced. Masolo offers solutions for containing socially destructive conduct and antisocial tendencies by engaging community. His unique thinking about community and the role of the individual extends African philosophy in new, global directions.


Ka Osi Sọ Onye: African Philosophy in the Postmodern Era

Ka Osi Sọ Onye: African Philosophy in the Postmodern Era
Author: Jonathan Chimakonam
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2018-02-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1622733665

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This collection is about composing thought at the level of modernism and decomposing it at the postmodern level where many cocks might crow with African philosophy as a focal point. It has two parts: part one is titled ‘The Journey of Reason in African Philosophy’, and part two is titled ‘African Philosophy and Postmodern Thinking’. There are seven chapters in both parts. Five of the essays are reprinted here as important selections while nine are completely new essays commissioned for this book. As their titles suggest, in part one, African philosophy is unfolded in the manifestation of reason as embedded in modern thought while in part two, it draws the effect of reason as implicated in the postmodern orientation. While part one strikes at what V. Y. Mudimbe calls the “colonising structure” or the Greco-European logo-phallo-euro-centricism in thought, part two bashes the excesses of modernism and partly valorises postmodernism. In some chapters, modernism is presented as an intellectual version of communalism characterised by the cliché: ‘our people say’. Our thinking is that the voice of reason is not the voice of the people but the voice of an individual. The idea of this book is to open new vistas for the discipline of African philosophy. African philosophy is thus presented as a disagreement discourse. Without rivalry of thoughts, Africa will settle for far less. This gives postmodernism an important place, perhaps deservedly more important than history of philosophy allocates to it. It is that philosophical moment that says ‘philosophers must cease speaking like gods in their hegemonic cultural shrines and begin to converse across borders with one another’. In this conversation, the goal for African philosophers must not be to find final answers but to sustain the conversation which alone can extend human reason to its furthermost reaches.