Abstract
When persons from different cultural backgrounds meet to discuss philosophy, this raises, right from the outset, the issue of ‘cultural universals’. In this paper I reexamine the notion of cultural universals and then seek to identify what I wish to refer to as ‘cultural fundamentals’ in philosophy and philosophical debate. Then, I assess the extent to which such fundamentals are obstacles not just to the fulfillment of a meaningful philosophical dialogue, but also to the “birth” of potential philosophers, however gifted.
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Notes
Paper presented at a Symposium of the XVIIIth World Congress of Philosophy, Brighton, 21–27 August, 1988.
John Rawls in A Theory of Justice (1971) postulates ‘rationalism’ and ‘egoism’ coupled with the ‘veil of ignorance’ as the factors behind the fact that persons in a `state of nature’ would agree to unite and form a ‘civil state’. As egoists each one of them cares only for his own welfare. But as rationalists each realizes his own welfare cannot survive without the respect for the welfare of others.
A summary of the ‘Conversation with P. Mbuya Akoko and Oruka Ranginya’ in H. Odera Oruka (ed.), Sage Philosophy (African Center for Technology Studies, Nairobi 1991, p. 119 and E.J. Brill, The Netherlands, 1990, p. 118).
‘Stephen M. Kithange’, ibid., pp. 128–134.
‘Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract was a bible for the pioneers of the French Revolution, one of the most dramatic historical events in the bourgeois revolution.
‘Oruka Ranginya’, in H. Odera Oruka (ed.), op. cit., pp. 118–128.
R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) and Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (1975).
R.J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (1983) and Philosophical Profiles ( 1986 ), P. Putnam, Realism and Reason (1983).
Two recent papers that I have read offer an interesting explanation of this position: Ronald Lee Jackson, “Cultural Imperialism or Benign Relativism”, International Philosophical Quarterly, xxvii, Dec. 1988, No 4 and R.J. Bernstein, ‘Metaphysics, Critique and Utopia’, Review of Metaphysics 42, Dec, 1988.
Barry Hallen and John O. Sodipo: Epistemology, Belief and Witchcraft, Ethnographica (London, 1986 ).
Kwame Gyekye: An Essay on African Philosophical Thought, (CUP, 1987 ).
Kwasi Wiredu: ‘How not to Compare African Thought with Western Thought’, in Philosophy and an African Culture, (CUP, 1980 ). Comparison, Wiredu warned, should be between individual thinkers in the two cultures, not between a mass culture and beliefs and individual thoughts.
In a paper ‘Philosophy and Anthropology in African Thoughts’, for a seminar on Philosophy and Anthropology, Smithsonian Institute April, 18–19, 1989, I have explained the need for African philosophers to go through the anthropological fogs, but to get out and not be swallowed by the fogs (see also Sage-Philosophy, op. cit., introductory chapters).
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Oruka, H.O. (1995). Cultural Fundamentals in Philosophy Obstacles in Philosophical Dialogues. In: Kuçuradi, I., Cohen, R.S. (eds) The Concept of Knowledge. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 170. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3263-5_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3263-5_13
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