Introduction: The Shifting Focus of Philosophy in Africa

Abstract

The present volume, Themes, Issues and Problems in African Philosophy, contributes to the discussion about the shifting focus of the discourse of philosophy in Africa. To be sure, the history of philosophy in Africa since the publication of Placide Tempels’ La Philosophie Bantoue (1945), translated into English under the title Bantu Philosophy (1959), has been characterized by some rather general representations. Such representations find expression in works dealing with whether or not there is any body of thought that can be referred to as African philosophy, analyses and explications concerning the meaning of African philosophy, the relevance of African philosophy, as well as methodologies in African philosophy. When Tempels published his volume, however, it stood as a reaction to the writings of earlier missionaries and anthropologists, such as in Allier’s The Mind of the Savage (1929) and Brelsford’s Primitive Philosophy (1935) and The Philosophy of the Savage (1938). These anthropologists found “no philosophy or any meaningful sense in what they saw as ‘Mind of the Savage.’ Instead they detected in it a tendency for traditional unanimity typical of the animal instinct” (H. Odera Oruka, p.15). These missionaries and anthropologists had as their patron oracles the German thinkers Hegel and Kant. We find in Hegel’s Philosophy of History (1837) the argument that Africa, on account of its savageness and primitivity, is without history or proper philosophy and is regarded as a culturally homogeneous continent. Besides the high regard and nobility ascribed to the thoughts of Hegel and Kant, Tempels was able to provide in Bantu Philosophy a profound interrogation of these earlier writers with a philosophy capable of its unique and consistent logic (Oruka, p.17).