A Companion to African Philosophy

Contents......Page 6
Notes on Contributors......Page 12
Preface......Page 20
Introduction: African Philosophy in Our Time......Page 22
PART I: HISTORY......Page 50
1 Egypt: Ancient History of African Philosophy......Page 52
2 African Philosophers in the Greco-Roman Era......Page 71
3 Precolonial African Philosophy in Arabic......Page 87
4 Some Nineteenth-Century African Political Thinkers......Page 99
5 Africana Philosophy: Origins and Prospects......Page 111
6 Contemporary Anglophone African Philosophy: A Survey......Page 120
7 Philosophy in South Africa Under and After Apartheid......Page 170
8 Philosophy in North Africa......Page 182
9 The Light and the Shadow: Zera Yacob and Walda Heywat: Two Ethiopian Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century......Page 193
10 Zera Yacob and Traditional Ethiopian Philosophy......Page 204
11 Anton Wilhelm Amo......Page 212
12 Amo’s Critique of Descartes’ Philosophy of Mind......Page 221
13 Albert Luthuli, Steve Biko, and Nelson Mandela: The Philosophical Basis of their Thought and Practice......Page 228
14 Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)......Page 237
15 Theory and the Actuality of Existence: Fanon and Cabral......Page 246
16 Alexis Kagame (1912–1981): Life and Thought......Page 252
17 Post-Independence African Political Philosophy......Page 264
PART II: METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES......Page 282
18 Some Methodological Controversies in African Philosophy......Page 284
19 Sage Philosophy: Its Methodology, Results, Significance, and Future......Page 295
PART III: LOGIC, EPISTEMOLOGY, AND METAPHYSICS......Page 304
20 Logic in the Acholi Language......Page 306
21 Yoruba Moral Epistemology......Page 317
22 Ifá: An Account of a Divination System and Some Concluding Epistemological Questions......Page 325
23 Toward a Theory of Destiny......Page 334
24 On the Normative Conception of a Person......Page 345
25 African Conceptions of a Person: A Critical Survey......Page 353
26 Quasi-Materialism: A Contemporary African Philosophy of Mind......Page 364
PART IV: THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION......Page 374
27 Religion in African Culture: Some Conceptual Issues......Page 376
28 Okot p’Bitek’s Critique of Western Scholarship on African Religion......Page 385
29 Islam in Africa: Examining the Notion of an African Identity within the Islamic World......Page 395
PART V: ETHICS AND AESTHETICS......Page 406
30 Some African Reflections on Biomedical and Environmental Ethics......Page 408
31 Ethics and Morality in Yoruba Culture......Page 417
32 Aesthetic Inquiry and the Music of Africa......Page 425
33 Art and Community: A Social Conception of Beauty and Individuality......Page 436
34 The Many-Layered Aesthetics of African Art......Page 446
PART VI: POLITICS......Page 454
35 Government by Consensus: An Analysis of a Traditional Form of Democracy......Page 456
36 Democracy, Kingship, and Consensus: A South African Perspective......Page 464
37 Fellowship Associations as a Foundation for Liberal Democracy in Africa......Page 471
38 Economic Globalism, Deliberative Democracy, and the State in Africa......Page 481
39 Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Violence......Page 493
40 Western and African Communitarianism: A Comparison......Page 504
41 Human Rights in the African Context......Page 520
42 The Politics of Memory and Forgetting After Apartheid......Page 530
43 The Question of an African Jurisprudence: Some Hermeneutic Reflections......Page 540
PART VII: SPECIAL TOPICS......Page 548
44 Knowledge as a Development Issue......Page 550
45 African Philosophy and African Literature......Page 559
46 Philosophy and Literature in Francophone Africa......Page 570
47 Feminism and Africa: Impact and Limits of the Metaphysics of Gender......Page 581
A......Page 591
B......Page 593
C......Page 594
D......Page 595
F......Page 596
G......Page 597
I......Page 598
K......Page 599
M......Page 600
O......Page 602
P......Page 603
R......Page 604
S......Page 605
T......Page 606
W......Page 607
Z......Page 608