6 - African philosophy

Summary

It could easily be argued that we have been discussing African philosophy throughout, if by that is meant the work of or pertaining to Africans both on the continent and in the diaspora. Although that is partially true, the fact remains that Africa itself as a point of departure raises unique questions in Africana philosophy, especially that, as we have seen at the beginning of this book, of modernity. There are several implications of modernity in the African context. One of them is the question of African modernism. Although we have discussed modernism at the outset, we will, in this chapter, explore it further. An implication of modernism is that the human being, whether as fixed or unstable, increasingly becomes the subject of study in reflections on reality. Another is that admission of the human being as the condition by which a human world is created leads to the question of how such a being or beings create such worlds. And finally there are the consequences of such actions on the kinds of world people live in. We could formulate these as problems of humanism, invention, and politics. African philosophy, as understood through the lens of Africana philosophy, offers creative insights into these problems.

The reader may, however, wonder why we will not be devoting much attention to ancient African philosophy. The answer is that the focus of this book is Africana philosophy, which requires us to focus on Africana African philosophy.