| dc.description.abstract | In chapter one, I consider the two aspects of
philosophy: the folk/traditional and the critical
'elements. I show that the claim made by Professor
L.S. Senghor that 'emotion is African as reason is
Greek' ~s unwarranted. I then argue that philosophy
became a second-order enterprise in Greece with the
philosopher, Thales in the Sixth Century B.C. and before
then, the Greeks explained things in terms of myths
and poetry. I suggest that there is no one method common
to.philosophy. On the theoretical aspect, I argue that
there are two main classes of questions in philosophy:
formal relations; a~d questions of fact. Following
Professor R.M. Hare of Oxford, I place evaluative
questions under logic, i.e. formal relations. The
argument for this is basically that moral concepts have
two properties which may be taken to produce a logic
for moral arguments: prescriptivity and universa~izability .
.In Chapter two, I present a review of literature in
the research in African philosophy. But first, I show
that there is a relationship between philosophy and
African philosophy. I examine and reject some claims
to the effect that philosophy in Africa is or ought
to be a unique enterprise in which the practitioners
of philosophy and others only need to compile chronicles
of folk/mythical beliefs. I argue that chronicles never
make serious philosophical treatise anywhere!
Therefore only those literature which are critical,
rigorous and second-order in nature may be accepted
as relevant provided only that they are grounded in
African culture. From this point of view, I ask the
very interesting question whether there is truly
anything like British or American philosophy, i.e.
whether the philosophies hitherto described and
recognised as British and American do in fact have an
affinity with the British and American cultures. I
conclude that the literature which corne under the
general purview of these two heads are universalist
and therefore not culturalist in nature. I then argue
against Professor Hountondji's view that because
philosophy is rigorous, critical, etc., it is science
or like science. I trace this view in Hountondji to
that of those logical positivist followers of
Wittgenstein who wrongly thought that the certainty of
logic and mathematics is compatible with the
empiricist view that 'all intelligible propositions
are based upon experience'. I make the strong claim
that Induction is not Deduction.
In chapter three, I examine" the phenomenon of sagephilosophy.
But first, I analyse the concept
•sagacity' : I show that to be sagacious is to possess
the ability to put practical knowledge into good use,
- xiamong
other things. I make a distinction between
folk and philosophic sagacity because a person, as in
fact Ogotemmeli, the Dogon sage was, may be wise and
versed in the knowledge of the belief system of his
people without being a philosopher. For,to be
philosophic, I argue, a sage must also be able to
distance_ himself from the communal views of his people
in order to espouse a personal, individual philosophy.
This second-order quality is possessed by the selected
Kenya sages in this work. I show that both Fr.
Placide Tempels and Professor John Mbiti misrepresent
African Philosophy in their respective works. For,
both scholars concerned themselves, in the main, only
with the first-order communal ideas and even then, they
were not often accurate in what they claim represents
the content of African communal ideas. I explain the
'modus operandi' of the methodology which I use in the
collection of data in this research, Here, I adopt the
Socratic 'question and answer' method which Professor
H. Odera Oruka used so successfully in his own
researches.
In chapter four, the most significant chapter, I
reconstruct and present the reasonings of the three
selected sages: (1) Sage Mbuya shows that the Luo
concept of time is linear. That all the peoples of
the world must hold one God in common for nature is
uniform. With many Gods, the universe would be pulledxii
in different directions thus creating chaos. He
argues for equality of sexes. Then, he shows that
man is superior to animal and that there is a
cleavage between freedom and happiness. (2) Sage
Ranginya shows that God is an idea, albeit a useful
idea from pragmatic point of view. Thus God
'resides' in the wind for if it is true that God is
everywhere, He cannot logically be a physical entity
in whose image man is made .. Now, Ranginya considers
death as nature's way of easing congestion in the
universe. Therefore, heaven is an illusion. ( 3) Unlike
Ranginya, Sage Oigara argues for the view that God is
a creation factor because of the mystery which the
'person' embodies. However, Oigara rejects the Kisii
practice of explaining events through the activities
of spirits as a ploy of encouraging good behaviour in
society. It is better, he reasons, to appeal directly
to the rational judgement of individuals. Finally, he
points out that unwillingness to discard obsolete ideas
is the greatest drawback symptomatic of the
traditional society.
In chapter five, first I give an exposition of analysis
and then show the significance of reconstruction in
philosophy. Analysis, I argue, culminates in integrity
of meaning or Occam's razor thus removing splurge from
discourse. I show that philosophical reconstruction,
xiii _
analogically, is like reform and reorganisation in
s~ciety. For, it encourages deliberate thinking.
I express the hope that other philosophers will
critically examine this study with a view to producing
further reconstructions. In my analysis and commentary,
I show not that the sages' arguments are unassailable,
but that the wise men are involved in critical
deliberate thinking which is what second-order
philosophy requires. Therefore, the fundamental
question is not whether a sage-philosopher is an
Af~ican Plato.
In chapter six, the concluding chapter, I present
this Study as making three main contributions to
scholarship. First, it gives a coherent and
systematic exposition of philosophy in general and
African philosophy in particular; secondly, it
provides a methodology for research which will not
breakdown because it is neither rigid nor dogmatic;
and finally, this study places on permanent record
the ratiocinative thoughts of three African sages in
the traditional milieu. The Study thus refutes the
view that there are no non-academic Africans capable
of second-order reasoning. | en |
