Abstract Afropessimism has been critiqued for not aligning with postmodern thinkers by assuming Blackness to be an all-encompassing identity that ignores intersecting identities. The article exemplifies an Afropessimist analysis that does not disregard intersectionality by analyzing the absent Black father myth. Methodologically, this article seeks to align Afropessimism with sociological data concerning fatherhood. The flawed political, economic, and cultural atmosphere that allowed for Black slaves to be perceived as inferior animals persists in the contemporary cultural and economic landscape that frames Black men as inferior fathers. An analysis of fatherhood highlights how there are two ways to discuss issues of Black masculinity. The first is an intersectional approach, which asks Black men how they view their own masculinity as intersecting with their multiple identities. The second is by analyzing the relationship of Black men to the broader cultural notion of masculinity, which posits whiteness as prerequisite. This second method can be done with an Afropessimistic analysis without denying the intersectional thinking of the first method.
Abstract This article buttresses a trans-colonial critique of knowledge production in African Studies, emphasizing the ongoing colonial legacies of power, epistemology, and representation. It goes beyond postpositivist frameworks by proposing an epistemic model that recenters African subjectivity as a key philosophical and methodological resource. Scholars increasingly challenge who owns the epistemological and methodological authority in African Studies, raising urgent concerns about representation and the politics of data. Key questions arise: Who creates knowledge about Africa? Who owns the evidence? How is Africa represented, and by whom? These questions reflect deeper epistemic crises and call for critical engagement. Using a critical and interpretive approach, the article examines how colonial distortions continue to influence the production of knowledge about Africa. It explores the marginalization of African experiences in Western-dominated research and responds by proposing an indigenous knowledge framework, e.g., Igbo epistemology. The article analyzes how coloniality continues to shape African subjectivity, knowledge, and existence within the global order. It deconstructs persistent binaries and stereotypes found in academic and public discourse. Ultimately, the article presents a forward-looking framework and emphasizes the importance of African intellectuals in driving epistemic change.
Abstract The nature of colonial epistemology and ontology was, and in some ways remains, deeply rooted in universalist and absolutist ideologies. These ideologies legitimized and undermined other conflicting positions, as they were considered “barbaric,” “debased,” “primitive,” and “devoid of time” and were in need of civilization. These arguments justified all kinds of horrendous acts such as violence, assimilation, colonization, exploitation, and dehumanization. The commitments and philosophical engagements on decolonization have often focused on a departure from colonial epistemology and ontology. In an attempt to add, in a novel way, to existing discourse on decolonization, the article draws on Richard Turner’s The Eye of the Needle: Towards Participatory Democracy in South Africa and argues that the decolonial turn is also an invitation to engage in a new kind of violence, an internal kind.
Abstract This article begins by reflecting on the vital force as an endogenous African philosophical category and proceeds to examine a case where the philosophy of vitalism was employed as part of the practice of a West African medical doctor, surgeon, and educator, Prof. Dr. Henry-Valère Kiniffo. This article next examines Kiniffo’s use of the vital force in making sense of the presence of mysterious foreign objects in patients’ bodies, which led to diminishing vitality and illness. It argues that Kiniffo’s lecture from Paulin Hountondji’s 1987 seminar in Benin can be read as an existential cipher for the unknown because it produces in human beings a consciousness of our limits as knowers and therefore raises the question of epistemic virtue. This article concludes that the “reading” of such a cipher offers a methodological imperative for decolonial scholarship, as the central argument of Kiniffo’s lecture is that in the end, existence without mystery is dehumanizing.
Entropy, one of the laws of thermodynamics, is that the universe tends toward disorder. Cultural entropies or disharmonies are ipso facto unavoidable in human relationships: marriage, other gender relations, friendship, sibling dynamics, communal life, and so on. However, inasmuch as discord cannot be eliminated, the frequency, intensity, and destructive potential can be minimized. The issue then is how to relate to it. Instead of letting conflict widen gender gaps, rifts can be transformed into opportunities for dialogue, deeper understanding, healing, and progress. This article proffers Gynist philosophy as a transformative framework for addressing gender inequality, promoting harmony, and fostering sustainable development. Using the expository method, it highlights the foundational principles of Gynism and logically argues for the urgent need to institutionalize these principles in a Gynist Center for critical gender reflection, emancipatory education, and social healing. The cumulative effect of this praxis will definitely yield a harmonious and just society where both men and women will flourish.
The prevalence of cybercrime in Nigeria is frequently attributed to unemployment and economic hardship, with perpetrators often citing these factors as justification for their actions. This self-exonerating narrative facilitates moral disengagement and bad faith, as individuals dissociate from moral responsibility and attribute their conduct to external circumstances. Cybercriminals contend that their actions warrant less severe judgment because they are merely responding to external pressures. By employing an existentialist framework, this article examines how cybercriminals in Nigeria adopt false identities, deny personal agency, and shift blame to rationalize their illicit activities. The research critically analyzes the underlying incentives for cybercrime in Nigeria and addresses two primary research questions: How do Nigerian cybercriminals manifest the existentialist concepts of bad faith and moral disengagement? What is the relationship between moral laxity within Nigeria's institutions and the prevalence of cybercrime? The findings indicate that moral laxity within the nation's social, educational, religious, legal, and political institutions constitutes a principal cause of cyber threats. Accordingly, the article contends that effective mitigation of cybercrime necessitates a transition from exclusively legislative responses to a virtue ethics-based approach that emphasizes character development and moral responsibility.
Lansana Keita was a well-regarded Sierra Leonean philosopher who passed on recently. His contemporaries include Kwasi Wiredu from Ghana, Paulin J. Hountondj from Benin, and his good friend and colleague Abiola Irele from Nigeria. All these illustrious African philosophical figures and scholars have since passed on, and Keita joins their ranks as an ancestor. Arguably, although he is probably the least well known of them outside African philosophical circles, he pursued, and probably committed to paper, the most radical ideas of the lot. In terms of vision, consistency, and boldness, his thought emphasized the primacy of Kemetian philosophical traditions and civilization to human culture. This article explores Keita’s thoughts on Sanya Osha’s “Dani Nabudere’s Afrikology: A Quest for African Holism.”
How can educational institutions, from primary to higher, engage in the development of Black students’ racialized self-knowledge? Research has shown that deeper self-realization (self-knowledge) in Black students yields positive results regarding student success (Miquelon and Vallerand 2006; Austin 2018). However, philosophically speaking, what self-knowledge (via one’s Blackness) is, and how we develop it across educational spaces, is still unclear. This article uses the terms Kujitambua (Swahili for “self-knowledge”) and Busara (Swahili for “practical wisdom”) to describe educational aims for schools that desire to seriously engage in Black student’s development through the examination of Blackness. This article utilizes James Baldwin’s and Alain Locke’s assertions about perception, justice, and education to argue that deepening one’s Kujitambua and Busara are critical for Black student success in and beyond school.
In postcolonial times, the independent thought of the Luo of Kenya and Tanzania is reflected in the abundant critique exhibited in their pop music, as evident in the musical productions of Ogwang’ Lelo, Gabriel Omolo, Ochieng’ Kabaselleh, George Ramogi, and Daniel Owino Misiani, among others. This article assesses the political critique in the works of Daniel Owino Misiani, arguably one of the most prolific and politically conscious Luo Benga musicians. It argues that in line with Odera Oruka’s final conception of the philosophic sage, Misiani qualified as a cosmopolitan philosophic sage, for he was not only grounded in his traditional Luo culture, but also acutely aware of contemporary sociopolitical events, dissatisfied with the state of affairs in his day, and offered prescriptions for effecting positive change.
Too much emphasis on the differences between scholars, their ideas, and theories has created some form of rift that seems to becloud the unity of purpose underlying these ideas, theories, and their proponents. This is the case both in the Western and African philosophical traditions. Against this backdrop, our aim in this work is to deemphasize the differences in the works of Innocent Asouzu, Godfrey Ozumba, and Jonathan Chimakonam, all of the Calabar School of Philosophy, by unveiling the similarities evident in their ideas and theories. This article argues that the similarities of their theories are more pronounced than their differences. The article identifies, among others, three major areas of convergence in complementary reflection, integrative humanism, and conversational thinking. First, the article shows that the theories are culturally inspired having been drawn from Igbo-African ontological and cultural worldview. Second, the article argues that the three theories are founded on the African idea of relationship. Third, this article demonstrates how the theories present themselves as viable alternatives to intercultural philosophy.
This article inserts the novel notion of the human being as a melancholy being, or homo melancholicus, into the African discourse on the human person and promotes the perspective as an Afro-existentialist contribution to the understanding of human nature from an African angle. The article analyzes the concept of consolation and exhibits certain emotions and orientations of the melancholy being in relation to the key questions of the philosophy of consolationism. The key questions raised for discussion here are as follows: (1) Is human life futile? (2) Is the universe pointless? The article identifies such emotions and orientations of the melancholy being as anxiety, joy, sadness, and homelessness. It proposes that for a consolation-seeking entity like the melancholy being, death may serve as a kind of home. It argues that human life is ultimately futile even as the universe may well have a purpose that, tragically, humans cannot know with certainty although they may speculate about it.
This article explores W. E. B. Du Bois’s social philosophy as encapsulated in his seminal work, The Philadelphia Negro, the first comprehensive triangulated sociological research in the United States in which quantitative, qualitative, and archival data were used to arrive at conclusions. Du Bois asserts that while historians clarify facts, philosophers interpret them for social reform guidance. Central to Du Bois’s commitment to truth and social reforms is the humanity of all humans. He conceptualizes the Negro Problem as a human problem emanating from exclusion and lack of human-to-human recognition. But unlike Du Bois and other scholars of the “Negro Problem” such as Washington, Myrdal, and Bailey, this article attempts a differentiation between “the Negro problem,” psychosocial recognition, and “Negro problems,” the manifest social problems, and posits that what is often termed the Negro problem is not a Negro problem. This differentiation and panaceas are the contributions the author makes and submits for further debate.
This article reacts to Oyowe's understanding of the personal existence of ancestral persons as real mind-dependent entities. The article's author's contention is that Oyowe has not managed to rule out the alternative that the author is sympathetic to, namely, that ancestral persons are real mind-independent entities that continue to exist even when, through forgetfulness, they cease to exist in the memory of humans. This article calls Oyowe's mind-dependent alternative the "safe" one, as it appears easier to defend than the "unsafe," mind-independent alternative, which the article's author has yet to develop convincing reasons for.
In Menkiti's Moral Man, Oritsegbubemi Oyowe aims to provide a sympathetic interpretation of the works of Ifeanyi Menkiti as they address personhood, community, and other facets of morality. This article maintains that while Oyowe's Menkiti is more plausible than the way Menkiti has often been read, there are still respects in which the account of personhood advanced invites criticism. One criticism is that it is implausible to think that personhood is constituted by others recognizing one as a person. Instead, insofar as community constitutes one's personhood, it is insofar as one has lived up to norms of interpersonal morality. A second criticism is that there are intuitively some dimensions of personhood that are not constituted by the community or other-regard at all. In particular, this article argues that there are moral duties to oneself that exist and that are not well captured by any sensible understanding of the view that community alone constitutes personhood, such that part of what it is to be a full person is to treat oneself in certain ways. In sum, personhood, while admittedly social, is not as social as Oyowe's Menkiti believes.
This article examines two issues raised and addressed by Oyowe in his book, Menkiti's Moral Man. The first involves two of Oyowe's criticisms of Menkiti: One criticism is that his conception of personhood is unfairly gendered; the other is that Menkiti's view involves the priority of the community over individuals. The second issue involves Oyowe's criticisms of Ikuenobe's analysis of some aspects of Menkiti's view in the context of the above criticisms. Oyowe indicates that, although he is "a repentant critic" of Menkiti, he does "not deny the merits of these criticisms." On page 15, He indicates that he is "convinced that there are resources in Menkiti's general account for tackling them [criticisms]." This article highlights how his criticisms of Ikuenobe indicate his failure to appreciate fully the relevant robust resources in Menkiti for addressing these criticisms that Ikuenobe's analysis highlights.
In Menkiti's Moral Man, Oyowe argues that Menkiti's persons are "soft persons." They are different in kind from human beings in that they find their existence in a social ontology, whereas humans find theirs in a natural ontology, but this does not make them any less real. This understanding, Oyowe contends, is consistent with Menkiti's texts and allows for a satisfying explanation of a possibly problematic relationship between human being and person. He acknowledges that their placement in social ontology makes them (at least partly) conventional entities and so opens Menkiti's account to some of the threats that face conventionalism, but he goes on to argue that these can be overcome. This article argues against Oyowe that Menkiti's persons are resistant to the interpretation as soft entities. Though Menkiti continually stresses the importance of the community to personhood, much of what he has to say suggests he ascribes neither to the distinction between social and natural ontology that is central to Oyowe's interpretation nor to the conventionalism that comes with it. This article argues that the soft-person reading does not solve problems of conventionalism as neatly as Oyowe hopes but that Menkiti's view is not vulnerable to those problems.
Abstract In Menkiti’s Moral Man, Oritsegbubemi Oyowe aims to provide a sympathetic interpretation of the works of Ifeanyi Menkiti as they address personhood, community, and other facets of morality. This article maintains that while Oyowe’s Menkiti is more plausible than the way Menkiti has often been read, there are still respects in which the account of personhood advanced invites criticism. One criticism is that it is implausible to think that personhood is constituted by others recognizing one as a person. Instead, insofar as community constitutes one’s personhood, it is insofar as one has lived up to norms of interpersonal morality. A second criticism is that there are intuitively some dimensions of personhood that are not constituted by the community or other-regard at all. In particular, this article argues that there are moral duties to oneself that exist and that are not well captured by any sensible understanding of the view that community alone constitutes personhood, such that part of what it is to be a full person is to treat oneself in certain ways. In sum, personhood, while admittedly social, is not as social as Oyowe’s Menkiti believes.
This article examines Oyowe's highly distinctive socio-ontological account of ancestral existence. According to Oyowe, ancestors are intentional objects. Ancestors thus constitute a social kind and are ontologically distinct from natural kinds. The article critiques and rejects Oyowe's distinction between social and natural kinds. The article then goes on to outline a possible alternative approach that draws on quasi-materialist and pan-psychic metaphysics to argue that ancestors exist as a natural kind-more specifically, ancestral existence consists in the this-worldly survival of the mentalistic aspects of a human person's biological death. Throughout, the article is concerned with the rationality of belief in ancestral existence rather than with their de facto existence as such.
In this article, Oritsegbubemi Oyowe responds to seven critics of Menkiti's Moral Man on a range of issues and questions and, along the way, clarifies further some of the ideas and proposals in the book. Some of these issues and questions concern what it means to interrogate other cultures, what social recognition really entails, whether persons are social kinds, and, by extension, whether Oyowe's appeal to a special social ontology is superfluous, whether Oyowe's account of the existence and persistence of ancestral persons is plausible, and finally, whether and to what extent the terms of these engagements exemplify exogenous discourse.
