Abstract
Current works on the philosophy of sex are restricted to European culture. There are no systematic and comprehensive works on the philosophy of love and sex in Africa and other cultures. Some Western writers have presented distorted views concerning African sexualities. They characterized African sexualities as primitive, exotic, immoral, bestial, lascivious, insatiable, alien, and deviant. Accordingly, Africans were considered as primitive, immoral, hypersexual, promiscuous, less intelligent, and close to animals. This chapter therefore seeks to correct these misconceptions by not only exploring African conceptions of love and sex, but also bringing an African philosophy of sex into scholarly reputation. Since the African philosophy of sex and love, in its broad sense, is expressed in African history, folktales, sayings, proverbs, sex-love songs, riddles, dance, folk art, body markings, clothing, jewellery, names and naming systems, cosmologies, and religious conceptions, Kelbessa suggests that African philosophers and other scholars already have their tasks laid out, which is the critical study of the oral traditions of African societies to reconstruct African philosophy of love and sex.
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Kelbessa, W. (2017). Africa and the Philosophy of Sexuality. In: Afolayan, A., Falola, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59291-0_24
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