This article proffers a personhood-based conception of a meaningful life. I look into the ethical structure of the salient idea of personhood in African philosophy to develop an account of a meaningful life. In my view, the ethics of personhood is constituted by three components, namely (1) the fact of being human, which informs (2) a view of moral status qua the capacity for moral virtue, and (3) which specifies the final good of achieving or developing a morally virtuous character. (...) In light of the ethics of personhood, I will propose the view that a meaningful life is a function of achieving moral excellence or perfection. The moral perfection proposed here, to embody a meaningful life, is of a deontological and satisficing kind. The achievement of satisfactory levels of moral excellence, within sociopolitical and moral limits, captures the essence of a meaningful life. I conclude the article by considering objections against the view proposed here. (shrink)

When the “object” gazed at is called Africa and when the gazing subject is Africa, the observer cannot help but conclude that any gaze that is related to Africa is an intersection of gazes calling forth several questions: Who is looking at Africa? What is Africa looking at? Who looks at the one who is looking at Africa? Two problems emerge from this: the identification of the subject, and the discrimination among objects and themes produced by the limited scope of (...) these gazes. If the gaze at (or of) Africa is an intersection of perspectives, these perspectives will only find stability if they are related to the African history that is in the making. This is a plural history, for geographic diversity, and the multiplicity of acting figures and sociopolitical organizations give African history a “changeable and diverse” character. Any evaluation of the relationship of Africans to their history must be an attempt, a sketch that makes no pretense of providing a unique and certain interpretation of the African lived experience (Erlebnis) by implementing the kind of controlling philosophy of history that fixes the beginning, the length, and the order of a people's history. It is more a question of restating, with the uncertainty that characterizes any evaluation of a specific history, the problem of the relationship of African history to its becomings. How, by which conditions and through which actors does this plural history speak its moments of creation today? At its heart, how does it articulate the conflicting overlap of the gravity of existing institutions and the audacity of creation? The exploration of these questions first centers around the often discussed theme of African identity (self). The stakes at this level involve the detachment of the conditions of a dynamic re-appropriation from this notion of identity - at the very moment when globalization is conjugating itself by turns in the imperative, the indicative, and the conditional. Next, the examination will focus on relationships to otherness (the other). How can intersubjective relations be declined differently? (shrink)

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. (shrink)

In architecture, the concept of Critical Regionalism gained popularity as a synthesis of universal, “modern” elements and individualistic elements derived from local cultures. Critical Regionalist alternatives are more than a postmodern mix of ethno styles but integrate conceptual qualities like local light, perspective, and tectonic quality into a modern architectural framework. In order to “critically” root architectural works in their corresponding traditions, Critical Regionalists base their conceptual stances on those philosophers that have produced a critical consciousness in European culture like (...) Kant, Ranke, Niebuhr, Humboldt, and others. It must appear as surprising that philosophy, the field from which architectural Critical Regionalism extracted its theoretical foundations, has never developed its own Critical Regionalist tradition. The present article attempts to formulate the relationship between regionalism and philosophy in a different fashion: is it possible and useful to retrospectively use the philosophical insights gained by architectural Critical Regionalism for a definition of the practice of regionalism in contemporary philosophy? (shrink)

A distinctive characteristic of D.O Fágúnwà’s novels is the manner in which they invoke the framework of ideas and beliefs through which the Yorùbá interpret the world. Previous works on D.O. Fágúnwà’s novels dealt with themes, styles, characterization and the use of symbols and language with little reference to the Yorùba worldview about man, nature and the society. The paper therefore examined Yorùbá worldview on family institution as encapsulated in D.O Fágúnwà’s novels in order to expose the influence of Yorùbá (...) philosophy on his work, which has not been much discussed in literature. The paper adopted textual analyses of data. The five novels of Fágúnwà, namely: Ògbójú Ọdẹ nínú Igbó ìrúnmọlẹ̀, Igbó Olódùmarè, Ìrèké Oníbùdó, Ìrìnkèrindò nínú Igbó Elégbèje and Àdììtú Olódùmarè, consitute the primary sources of data, while library and archival materials were used as secondary data to complement the texts. Explorations were made into a wide scope of general philosophy as a guide to unveiling the relationship between the philosophical impressions in the novels and the conventional philosophical concepts. The paper established the interrelationship between literature and philosophy. (shrink)