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The Manifestation of Reason in African Philosophy

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Abstract

I argue that the manifestation of reason in Africa’s intellectual space has been logocentric since colonial times which is detrimental to the development of the African idea. I propose a transition from logocentricism to okwucentricism as a reconstruction of the identity of reason in African philosophy. To do this, we are compelled to ask: what constitutes the foundation of African philosophy and by extension, the sundry disciplines in African studies? It is this innocent question that can lead us into the ultimate justification for the study of African philosophy as a distinct tradition. I argue that we do not study African philosophy to prove a point (that we can philosophise exactly as the Westerners do) or defend a territory (that we have a unique and culture-bound system)—this would be myopic to say the least. I contend that when we take up a handful of literature in African philosophy these days, hardly do we find anymore reason for their creation besides proving a point and a defence of some territory. I show that the purpose of the study of African philosophy has to be narrowed down to the use of reason in resolving social, political, economic and environmental challenges facing the continent and the management of its interaction with other peoples of the world—things that are acutely phenomenological rather than perverse encounters.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I conceive this as intellectual intoxication and unconscious addiction to logos .

  2. 2.

    One of the reviewers drew my attention to the fact that a world-view could be a passive mindview. I do not agree with this but I see the point. Whereas I conceive world-view as the state of the world as it impresses itself on the human mind, mindview on the other hand, is the state of the mind as it conceives the world. Notwithstanding the difference, it may be apt to also point out that they share important similarity i.e., they (the two visions of the world) both have connections with the human mind except that in the former, the mind is passive and in the latter, it is active. I would not subscribe to one being a version of the other since that will trivialise the ‘vision of the world’ which each attempts to capture.

  3. 3.

    This position may be regarded as individualistic in light of the on-going discussions on individual-community relationship in Afro-communitarianism . See. Menkiti (1984), Gyekye (1992).

  4. 4.

    Some translations would use ‘reason’ in place of ‘understanding.’

  5. 5.

    Michel Foucault (1972: 228) coins the term “logophilia ” to ridicule a sense of over commitment to logos or reason in the history of Western philosophy .

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Calabar, Calabar, Nigeria

    Jonathan O. Chimakonam

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Chimakonam, J.O. (2019). The Manifestation of Reason in African Philosophy. In: Ezumezu. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11075-8_1

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