Preliminary communication

https://doi.org/10.21464/sp33114

How Not to Do African Epistemology

Peter Aloysius Ikhane ; University of Ibadan, Faculty of Arts, Sango-Ojoo Road, NG-OY–200284 Ibadan

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Abstract

African epistemology is a discourse of culture philosophy; and culture philosophy, in turn, is a discourse of a people’s conception and perception of reality. To this extent, it reflects on the conceptualisation of a people’s lived-world. In this vein, the content, method and tools for analysis of culture philosophy are largely inclusive of materials that are indicative of a people’s worldview (what is here referred to as “culture specifics”) that are the markers of the identity of a culture. In doing culture philosophy, say, African epistemology, therefore, it is the “culture specifics” that marks a particular philosophical reflection as belonging to the discourse of African epistemology. In explicating what it considers to be the method of doing African epistemology, the paper first articulates the nature, character and method of culture philosophy, and then engages a number of published works on African epistemology, with the intent of appraising the method(s) usually deployed to examine the subject-matter of African epistemology (as evident from engaging selected published works on African epistemology). Having engaged selected published works on African epistemology vis-à-vis the analysis of the nature, character and method of culture philosophy, the paper draws attention to the fractures between the method(s) deployed in the analysis of African epistemology, on the one hand, and the requirements of the method for doing African epistemology as culture philosophy, on the other. The paper concludes with a proposal of a method for doing African epistemology, which may be made to bear on African philosophy in general.

Keywords

African epistemology; African philosophy; culture philosophy; culture specifics; method

Hrčak ID:

219851

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/219851

Publication date:

6.11.2018.

Article data in other languages: french german croatian

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