An inquiry into the ontology of critical gender consciousness in Africa Philosophy is long over due. “Hitherto a discourse on Gender problems has lost focus because of the tendency to leave out the gaps in culture created by colonial experience, modernity’s assaults and unAfricaness in ontology and essence. It is argued that the fulcrum for a legitimate feminist doctrine is Theistic Humanism, the philosophy of African philosophy that exposes the epistemological and metaphysical basis of the rightful and ethical place of (...) women in the society without injury, injustice and abuse on womanhood. Theistic Humanism as an ontology and cosmology abhors class struggle between husbands and wives, sons and daughters etc. Class struggle between men and women degenerated from the oneness of being ontology and Gender community where husbands and wives were happily married with different complementary social roles for the preservation of society. (shrink)

In the literature on African moral philosophy, it is common to find normative conclusions about the way we ought to act directly drawn from purported metaphysical facts about the nature of ourselves and the world. For example, Kwame Gyekye, the most influential sub-Saharan political philosopher, attempts to defend moderate communitarianism, roughly the view that agents have strong duties to support others in ways that do not violate human rights, by contending that it follows from the dual nature of the self (...) as both social and individual. In this article, I critically analyze this sort of rationale, and contend that it is unsound. I propose several reconstructions, but conclude that they cannot plausibly bridge the ‘is-ought gap’, and that similar arguments found in the field of African ethics, such as the frequent claim we must treat nature with respect since everything in the universe is interdependent, also fail to do so. (shrink)

In the literature on African moral philosophy, it is common to find normative conclusions about the way we ought to act directly drawn from purported metaphysical facts about the nature of ourselves and the world. For example, Kwame Gyekye, the most influential sub-Saharan political philosopher, attempts to defend moderate communitarianism, roughly the view that agents have strong duties to support others in ways that do not violate human rights, by contending that it follows from the dual nature of the self (...) as both social and individual. In this article, I critically analyze this sort of rationale, and contend that it is unsound. I propose several reconstructions, but conclude that they cannot plausibly bridge the ‘is-ought gap’, and that similar arguments found in the field of African ethics, such as the frequent claim we must treat nature with respect since everything in the universe is interdependent, also fail to do so. (shrink)

An historical and contemporary survey of African philosophy and philosophers, with chapters organized for the most part on the basis of methodological approaches.

La síntesis de la filosofía africana aporta datos sorprendentes sobre el origen de la cultura occidental. Ni los filósofos y literatos griegos surgieron de la nada, ni la civilización egipcia nació en sí misma, como un milagro. El hilo conductor, la fuente nutricia de ambos “milagros” culturales “egipcio y griego” está en la cultura africana. Y no podía ser de otra manera ya que nuestra especie, el homo sapiens, surgió en África hace tan sólo 200 milenios. Allí se dieron los (...) primeros logros esenciales de la condición humana: el lenguaje oral y escrito y la emergencia del pensamiento sistematizado, de la dimensión ética y artística del género humano. Con gran profundidad Eugenio Nkogo demuestra que la civilización humanista vino desde África a Occidente a través de Egipto y Roma. Después de sufrir el esclavismo y el colonialismo, el pensamiento africano se está convirtiendo en la vanguardia de un nuevo movimiento que sigue ayudando al género humano en su ruta hacia un mundo más civilizado y libre. (shrink)

" Mamoussé Diagne essaie de nous faire sentir une réalité qui demeure, au sens strict du terme, impensée.

Jesus Christ may be regarded as the chief spirit of agitation and innovation. He himself declared, “I come not to bring peace, but a sword.” One cannot delve seriously into the centuries of activism and scholarship against racism, Jim Crowism, and the terrorism of lynching without encountering the legacies of Timothy Thomas Fortune and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Black scholars from the 19th century to the present have been inspired by the sociological and economic works of Fortune and Wells. Scholars of (...) American philosophy, however, continue to ignore their writings, their theoretical contributions and their ethical aspirations, preferring instead the insipid declarations of white turn of the century .. (shrink)

In this contribution I articulate a theory of national reconciliation informed by salient sub-Saharan ideas about community, and apply it to a variety of topics salient in South African and other discourses on the topic, such as truth-telling, apology, forgiveness and amnesty, in order both to illustrate and motivate the theory and to shed light on these topics.