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On the Non-worshipping Character of the Akan of Africa

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Abstract

According to Wiredu, the Akan profess secular esteem rather than religious worship to supra-natural beings (including the Supreme Being), who they perceive in an empirical sense. He backs this up by re-reading what he sees as the Akan general ontology in a way that denies them of the concepts of the supernatural, the transcendental, the mental, the spiritual, and an ontologically distinct mind. At the end of denying the three criteria of worship as well as all of these other concepts which might otherwise be available to the Akan, one might struggle to find any evidence that the Akan even had a religion. I dispute this secular reading, and I more generally demonstrate that the characterizations of the Akan attitude to divinity as non-worshipping, non-supernatural, non-transcendent, and non-spiritual, are either conceptually flawed, factually incorrect, or both.

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Notes

  1. This paper is titled “Do we originate our moral codes whilst believing in the supernatural?” It is being considered for publication in the journal Critical Research on Religion.

  2. Superstitious tendencies increase with circumstances involving stressful and uncertain events, such as the tendency of college athletes toward being superstitious in sports competitions (Bleak and Frederick 1998) and inhabitants of war zones becoming superstitious about their personal safety (Keinan 1994).

  3. My article on moral codes and supernaturalism.

  4. See Ajei 2012, pp. 191-98

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  1. Department of Philosophy and Classics, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana

    Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani

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  1. Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
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Ani, E.I. On the Non-worshipping Character of the Akan of Africa. SOPHIA 58, 225–238 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-017-0583-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-017-0583-z

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