Abstract
Let me straight from the beginning confess one thing: I am not happy with the phrase “African Philosophy” used to describe a subject-matter, a specific discipline in the university curriculum. Why? Because it seems to particularize a kind of intellectual production that takes place in Africa and to deny its universal validity. It apparently means, to use the words by Chimakonam himself, “a border-sensitive, culture-bound exclusive system that holds only in Africa and is not universally applicable » (Chimakonam JO, Chapter 3: The philosophy of African logic: a consideration of Ezumezu paradigm. In Horne J (ed) Philosophical perceptions of logic and order. IGI Global, Hershey, pp 96–121, 2018). This particularization, however, has its own story. I wish first in this paper to recall the earliest stage of this story briefly and then discuss alternative ways to remain authentically African while doing philosophy in Africa today.
Emeritus Professor at the National University of Benin. This is a revised version of a keynote lecture presented at the “2nd African Philosophy World Conference” organised at the University of Calabar, Nigeria, 12–14 October 2017 on “The State of African Philosophy in Africa Today”
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Notes
- 1.
For a Francophone reader, this is a reminiscence of a celebrated book by Joachim du Bellay in the sixteenth century, Défense et illustration de la langue française (A Defence and an Illustration of the French Language), a strong case for the use of French instead of Latin which was considered at that time as the only acceptable language for scientific and academic use (du Bellay 1549).
- 2.
This was the first sentence of my 1970 article, “Remarks on contemporary African Philosophy” which became the first chapter of the 1977 book under a new title: “An alienated literature”
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Hountondji, P.J. (2022). How African is Philosophy in Africa?. In: Chimakonam, J.O., Etieyibo, E., Odimegwu, I. (eds) Essays on Contemporary Issues in African Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70436-0_2
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