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Debating African Philosophy

In African countries there has been a surge of intellectual interest in foregrounding

ideas and thinkers of African origin—in philosophy as in other disciplines—that
have been unjustly ignored or marginalized. African scholars have demonstrated
that precolonial African cultures generated ideas and arguments which were at
once truly philosophical and distinctively African, and several contemporary
African thinkers are now established figures in the philosophical mainstream.
Yet, despite the universality of its themes, relevant contributions from African
philosophy have rarely permeated global philosophical debates. Critical intel-
lectual excavation has also tended to prioritize precolonial thought, overlooking
more recent sources of home-grown philosophical thinking such as Africa’s intel-
lectually rich liberation movements.
This book demonstrates the potential for constructive interchange between
currents of thought from African philosophy and other intellectual currents within
philosophy. Chapters authored by leading and emerging scholars:

•• recover philosophical thinkers and currents of ideas within Africa and

about Africa, bringing them into dialogue with contemporary mainstream
philosophy;
•• foreground the relevance of African theorizing to contemporary debates in
epistemology, philosophy of language, moral/political philosophy, philoso-
phy of race, environmental ethics and the metaphysics of disability;
•• make new interventions within on-going debates in African philosophy;
•• consider ways in which philosophy can become epistemically inclusive,
interrogating the contemporary call for ‘decolonization’ of philosophy.

Showing how foregrounding Africa—its ideas, thinkers and problems—can

help with the project of renewing and improving the discipline of philosophy
­worldwide, this book will stimulate and challenge everyone with an interest in
philosophy, and is essential reading for upper-level undergraduate students, post-
graduate students and scholars of African and Africana philosophy.

George Hull is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Cape Town,

South Africa.
Debating African Philosophy
Perspectives on Identity, Decolonial Ethics
and Comparative Philosophy

Edited by George Hull

With a Foreword by Lungisile Ntsebeza

First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 selection and editorial matter, George Hull; individual chapters,
the contributors
The right of George Hull to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hull, George, editor.
Title: Debating African philosophy: perspectives on identity, decolonial
ethics, and comparative philosophy / edited by George Hull.
Description: New York: Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018036706 (print) | LCCN 2018042424 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780429796289 (web pdf) | ISBN 9780429796272 (epub) |
ISBN 9780429796265 (mobi) | ISBN 9781138344952 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138344969 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780429438189 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, African.
Classification: LCC B5303 (ebook) | LCC B5303 .D43 2019 (print) |
DDC 199/.6–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018036706
ISBN: 978-1-138-34495-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-34496-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-43818-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents

About the contributors viii

Foreword by Lungisile Ntsebeza x

Introduction 1
GEORGE HULL

PART I
Decolonising philosophy 23

1 Ottobah Cugoano’s place in the history of political philosophy:

slavery and the philosophical canon 25
ROBERT BERNASCONI

2 Decolonizing bioethics via African philosophy:

moral neocolonialism as a bioethical problem 43
REBECCA BAMFORD

3 A philosophy without memory cannot abolish slavery:

on epistemic justice in South Africa 60
MOGOBE RAMOSE

PART II
Race, justice, identity 73

4 Neville Alexander and the non-racialism of the Unity Movement 75

GEORGE HULL
vi Contents
5 Biko on non-white and black: improving social reality 97
BRIAN EPSTEIN

6 Black autarchy/white domination: fractured language

and racial politics during Apartheid and beyond via
Biko and Lyotard 118
SERGIO ALLOGGIO AND MBONGISI DYANTYI, WITH A POSTSCRIPT
BY BARNEY PITYANA

7 Impartiality, partiality and privilege: the view from South Africa 130
SAMANTHA VICE

PART III
Moral debates 147

8 Making sense of survivor’s guilt: why it is justified by

an African ethic 149
THADDEUS METZ

9 African philosophy and nonhuman nature 164

EDWIN ETIEYIBO

10 On cultural universals and particulars 182

UCHENNA OKEJA

11 The Metz method and ‘African ethics’ 195

TOM P. S. ANGIER

PART IV
Meta-philosophy 211

12 The edges of (African) philosophy 213

BRUCE B. JANZ

13 Is philosophy bound by language? Some case studies from

African philosophy 228
BERNHARD WEISS

14 African philosophy in the context of a university 248

ORITSEGBUBEMI A. OYOWE
 Contents  vii
PART V
Comparative perspectives 267

15 Relational normative thought in Ubuntu and

Neo-republicanism 269
DOROTHEA GÄ DEKE

16 African philosophy, disability, and the social conception

of the self 289
JULIE E. MAYBEE

Index 305
About the contributors

Sergio Alloggio is a lecturer in Philosophy at Rhodes University, Makhanda

Tom P. S. Angier is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Cape Town
Rebecca Bamford is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Quinnipiac University,
Hamden, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of Fort Hare,
East London
Robert Bernasconi is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy and African
American Studies at Pennsylvania State University
Mbongisi Dyantyi is a lecturer in Philosophy at Nelson Mandela University,
Port Elizabeth
Brian Epstein is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, Medford
Edwin Etieyibo is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Dorothea Gä deke is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Universiteit Utrecht,
the Netherlands, and a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg
George Hull is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Cape Town
Bruce B. Janz is Professor of Philosophy, Co-director of the Center for Humanities
and Digital Research, and core faculty in the Texts and Technology PhD
program at the University of Central Florida, Orlando
Julie E. Maybee is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Disability Studies
Program at Lehman College, City University of New York
Thaddeus Metz is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University
of Johannesburg
Lungisile Ntsebeza is Professor of Sociology and African Studies in the Centre
for African Studies at the University of Cape Town, and holds the A. C. Jordan
Chair in African Studies and the National Research Foundation Chair in Land
Reform and Democracy in South Africa
 About the contributors  ix
Uchenna Okeja is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Rhodes Univer­
sity, Makhanda
Oritsegbubemi A. Oyowe is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of
the Western Cape, Bellville
Barney Pityana is a professor and former vice-chancellor of the University of
South Africa, former president of the South African Students’ Organisation,
and currently a programme advisor at the Thabo Mbeki Foundation
Mogobe B. Ramose is a professor and member of the Department of Clinical
Psychology, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, Ga-Rankuwa
Samantha Vice is Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Witwaters­
rand, Johannesburg
Bernhard Weiss is Professor of Philosophy and Head of the Philosophy
Department at the University of Cape Town
Foreword

Lungisile Ntsebeza

The publication of this book compelled me to reflect on its gestation. As my

­colleague George Hull points out in the Introduction, the book is by and large
the product of a series of seminars that took place in 2016. These seminars were
in many ways our response to a critical moment in the history of higher educa-
tion in South Africa. The immediate cause was the entry of university-based stu-
dents into the political life of South Africa which manifested itself in the open on
9 March 2015, when a University of Cape Town (UCT) student activist, Chumani
Maxwele, flung “poo” onto the imposing statue of arch-imperialist and capital-
ist Cecil John Rhodes, which was mounted on UCT grounds. Soon thereafter his
student supporters, who organized themselves under the #RhodesMustFall move-
ment, demanded the removal of the statue. They alleged that the statue signi-
fied deep-rooted links between UCT and colonialism or, in the words of UCT
Emeritus Associate Professor Dave Cooper, “colonial capitalism” (Cooper 2015).
Within a month, the statue was removed, making this a significant victory for the
student-led effort.
By this time, students had added more demands, notably the “decoloniza-
tion of the curriculum”. They were vehemently opposed to what they loosely
referred to as “Euro-centrism” and expressed inclinations towards “Afro-centric”
approaches to teaching and research. Students and academics at a number of uni-
versities in South Africa, as well as elite American and British universities such
as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cambridge and Oxford, had pledged support for the
campaign. This clearly demonstrated that the protest was the proverbial spark
that started the prairie fire, highlighting as it did the urgency of problematizing
the African colonial past, not merely as a national issue, but as a continental and
global phenomenon.
It soon became clear to some of us that, while this was a period of great excite-
ment, offering opportunities for institutions of higher education in South Africa
and elsewhere to interrogate their past as they considered their future options,
there was an urgent need to stand back, reflect and harness the energies into a sus-
tained intellectual project that would bring clarity and critical analysis to the stu-
dent demands, most of which were expressed in the form of slogans. This is a call
similar to the one Archie Mafeje (1978) issued to students in his assessment of the
1976 Soweto Student Revolts.1 For him, “militant action” and “simple slogans”,
 Foreword xi
important as they are, are no substitute for a programme of action, whose task it is
to come up with clear, informed and well-justified demands and policies.
The clamour for the decolonization of the curriculum pushed to the fore the
thorny issue of African Studies, specifically at UCT. I use the word “thorny”
deliberately, drawing from the experiences of UCT’s past 27 years or so, a period
beginning with the demise of official apartheid in the early 1990s and the advent
of the democratic era beginning in 1994. A notable response from UCT was the
establishment in 1993 of the AC Jordan Chair in African Studies. The main aim
of the Chair was to provide a meaningful study of Africa by integrating African
Studies into research, teaching and learning. The Chair was appropriately located
in the Centre for African Studies (CAS). Having made such a good start, UCT lost
a golden opportunity in not appointing, under controversial circumstances, the
late Archie Mafeje when he applied for the Chair when it was advertised in 1993.
Mafeje was at the time by far the foremost scholar of African Studies.2 When
UCT eventually appointed Mahmood Mamdani, there was a fierce debate and
deadlock on the issue of Africa in the curriculum, which led to the resignation of
Mamdani after only three years (1996–99) at UCT (Mamdani 1998).3 This led to
a 13-year period when the Chair was not advertised and was vacant. During this
period, various attempts were made to “disestablish” CAS. The student campaign
beginning in 2015 thus forced African Studies and the role of CAS back on to the
UCT agenda.
CAS in its current form was relaunched in June 2012, with my appointment to
the AC Jordan Chair of African Studies, which carried with it the directorship of
CAS. The main mission of CAS under my charge has been to promote African
Studies across departments and faculties at UCT and beyond, particularly within
the African continent and the global South. This mission is in line with the notion
of CAS as creating an interdisciplinary environment facilitating discussions,
research and teaching on Africa, while at the same time taking a leadership role in
establishing and consolidating links with universities across the African continent
and the global South in particular.
Although CAS is not a teaching unit, its academic staff members are actively
involved in teaching at both under- and postgraduate levels. The commitment to
teaching is based on the vision of CAS that the best way of promoting African
Studies at UCT, or any academic institution in South Africa for that matter, is
through research, teaching and curriculum design and development. CAS’s
approach to teaching involves a three-pronged approach: a University-wide
course on the study of Africa, curriculum design of an undergraduate major and
to influence teaching within departments.
The prioritization and elevation of African Studies as a major degree subject
right from the undergraduate level has been the response of CAS to the student-
led campaign. There was a feeling among some of us that the undergraduate major
offered opportunities for us to systematically re-think the colonial and de-colonial
moments in Africa and the diaspora. In discussions within CAS and with col-
leagues outside CAS with whom we worked on the major, there was a strong view
that the major should not simply be about content. Nothing should be taken for
xii Lungisile Ntsebeza
granted and all assumptions should be scrutinized and re-thought with an empha-
sis on putting Africa at the core of research, teaching and learning.
It is in discussions on the African Studies major that I met George Hull from
the Department of Philosophy. I had been made aware of him by a colleague,
Kathy Luckett, who was part of a curriculum reform committee that CAS put
together when I became Director. I was particularly excited to learn that he was
a member of the Philosophy Department. I majored in philosophy and completed
Part One of the Honours degree at the University of South Africa in the late 1970s
and early 1980s.
I trace my interest in philosophy to my teens in the late 1960s when, as a
political activist, I was introduced to study groups whose purpose was to connect
political economy and political theory to political activism. By the mid-1970s, I
had established and led my own study groups. Our idea of political activism was
that a historical and theoretical understanding of oppression and exploitation was
a necessary prerequisite for constructive activism and militancy. We were draw-
ing from what was a well-established tradition within the liberation movements:
the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), later renamed the South African
Communist Party (SACP), the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), the
African National Congress (ANC) and the Black Consciousness (BC) move-
ment. These movements were known for setting up study groups, fellowships and
schools focusing on political education. We focused a great deal on close reading
and analysis of texts, in a bid to acquire a good grasp of complex theoretical mat-
ters, including historical and philosophical questions of justice, race, class, gender
and the meaning of emancipation.
At school and university, I studied commercial subjects with a focus on
accountancy/accounting. However, when I was arrested for my political activism
and, upon being sentenced, allowed to study in prison, I registered for philosophy
and not accounting. My reasoning was that the four years in prison would be better
spent engaging with ideas, rather than analyzing financial transactions. My inter-
est in philosophy had also been ignited by Emeritus Professor André du Toit’s
testimony in our trial. He was, at the time, Senior Lecturer in Political Philosophy
at the University of Stellenbosch. Although his evidence was dismissed by the
late Judge George Munnik, Du Toit, in our opinion, acquitted himself so well in
his testimony, which essentially dealt with analyses of concepts such as Marxism,
communism and Stalinism, that I did not struggle with my decision to switch to
philosophy, as an academic field of study.
When, in the late 1980s, I decided to continue with my studies on a full-
time basis, having been accepted at UCT in 1987, I thought that I would make
Philosophy my home department. I was adamant, though, that I would want to
apply the skills I developed in philosophy, especially logic and conceptual analy-
sis, to real-life situations, pretty much following the example of André du Toit.
South Africa in 1987 had emerged from a period (1984–6) that was generally
referred to as a period of “ungovernability and insurrection”, and I wanted to
do a deeper study of this period by focusing on the ideas that informed militant
tendencies of the time. My enthusiasm was unfortunately shattered when the then
 Foreword xiii
Head of Department, David Brooks, refused to accept me on the grounds that the
Department was rooted in analytic philosophy and would not be able to accom-
modate my interests.
Although rejected by the Philosophy Head of Department, my attitude to philos-
ophy, particularly its emphasis on conceptual analysis and clarity, never changed. In
many ways, I continued to use these tools outside formal philosophy departments.
I have, in the context of African Studies, argued and continue to do so, that philoso-
phy (and language) are key to African Studies and should one way or the other be
at the core of the study of Africa. When I met George Hull, I discovered that we
shared a lot of ideas in common about the role of philosophy in real-life situations.
To my surprise, a lot was happening in his Department that I was not aware of,
largely because of, I must say, loss of interest in the Department from past experi-
ence. Close discussions with George Hull, which are still continuing, reveal(ed)
that dramatic changes have and are taking place in the Department of Philosophy.
It strikes me as vastly different from the Department of the 1980s. Most notable is
the attempt to put philosophy at the disposal of society by analyzing, as I wanted
to in the 1980s, what I refer to as real-life situations. The employment of George
Hull in 2013, as I see things, contributed to this shift. His Philosophy of Race
course (PHI2045S) that he introduced in 2014 is a good example. This is how he
introduced the course in the outline:

This course is a philosophical exploration of central issues in scholarly and

public debates about race. The approach will be both rigorous and open
minded. The course will have a particular focus on investigating currents of
thought about race that have arisen in the context of struggles against coloni-
alism and white supremacism—specifically, in North America, in the former
French colonies, and in South Africa. Thus some of the readings are detached
philosophical analyses, while others, as well as being pregnant with philo-
sophical ideas, are responses to contemporary political events or engage in
political advocacy. Yet others are a mixture of the two. The course will sys-
tematically examine the philosophical content of these currents of thought,
while always remaining sensitive to the contexts in which they emerged.

A course on “Xhosa for Philosophers”4 was also introduced in 2014, to accom-

pany two first-year courses: Ethics and Introduction to Philosophy. Hull recalled
that he collaborated with Mbulungeni Madiba in the Centre for Higher Education
Development (CHED) to set the “Xhosa for Philosophers” course in motion.
These courses, it must be noted, precede the #RhodesMustFall campaign and
discussions of an undergraduate major in African Studies by close to a year. At
the time, CAS was exploring the teaching of a university-wide course on Africa.
In the same year, the UCT Philosophy Department organized an international
conference on the topic of social equality, and hosted an engagement between
Professor Jonathan Wolff from University College London and Dr Mamphela
Ramphele, former VC of UCT, and former Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe
Madlala-Routledge, on “Dealing with Disadvantage”.5
xiv Lungisile Ntsebeza
It seems clear that there was a lot of internal discussion and dynamism taking
place in the Philosophy Department at least a year before the student-led cam-
paign which erupted into the open in 2015. Hull told me that in the context of
discussions about how to expand teaching and research in the department, they
came to the view that African philosophy was an important priority area. He went
on to state that as a result of these discussions, a proposal was submitted to the
Humanities Faculty to create a new post in the department with expertise specifi-
cally in African philosophy. This post would make it possible for the Philosophy
Department to devote a member of its staff to teaching in the proposed undergrad-
uate major in African Studies. The committee designing the undergraduate major
had unanimously agreed that the major should include a second-year semester-
long course on philosophy in an African context. Unfortunately, the Philosophy
Department’s proposal to employ an additional staff member for this purpose
was, for whatever reason(s), rejected by the Humanities Faculty.
What the above meant was that the undergraduate major would proceed
without exposing students to philosophy in the African context. This makes me
wonder how one can even begin to talk about African Studies without reference
to philosophy.
At the same time as we were discussing the role of philosophy in the under-
graduate major, Hull and I discussed the possibility of a seminar series that
ultimately had the title “Philosophy in Africa, Africa in Philosophy”. We had
observed that, much as the student-led protests had opened up valuable oppor-
tunities for transforming higher education, especially at the level of curriculum
reform, there was always the danger that the heat of the moment and the slogans
that were deployed would narrow the space for an open, rigorous debate and dis-
cussion about the precise meaning of the slogans and critical examination of the
arguments that were made. We sensed that there was a lot of intolerance and
refusal to listen to the other side of the debate. As the saying goes, there seemed
to be more heat than light in debates and discussions. The seminar series was our
attempt to create space for a more focused and open-minded examination of the
burning issue of the moment, specifically the notion of decolonization and what
philosophy could contribute.
The series, which was approved and supported by the Philosophy Department
and CAS, ran, as Hull states in the Introduction, throughout 2016. Integrally
linked to the series was a Postgraduate Conference on African Philosophy in
August 2016.6 The book you are reading is the product of these seminars, whose
realization, I must say, was almost the solo effort of George Hull. I was more of a
sounding board in the enterprise.
As I conclude, I want to make two points. First, we see this book as the start-
ing point of more intense debates and discussions of the issues highlighted in
this Foreword and the book itself. While the seminar series was well attended
and attracted a number of scholars, from South Africa and abroad, we were not
successful in drawing to the seminars some of our colleagues who were and are
especially active on the topic of decolonization. They were invited but, for var-
ious reasons, stayed away. I personally attribute this to the spirit of the time.
 Foreword xv
The year 2016 at UCT and in the Faculty of Humanities in particular was fraught
with tensions which were not conducive to constructive discussion among those
who did not see eye to eye on the issues at stake. Without going into the detail,
there was a lot that revolved around personalities. Things seem to have settled
down now and it may be time for a resumption of the debates and discussions that
have now been published in this book.
With this and other contributions, the issue of what philosophy is and who
defines the meaning thereof is now up for debate and discussion. In such moments
it is important to reflect on how our forerunners reflected on similar topics. I have
found re-reading Archie Mafeje’s booklet In Search of an Alternative (Mafeje
1992) pertinent to the issues we are dealing with, close to three decades later. The
central theme of his booklet is the “quest for an African identity in the world of
scholarship”, what Mafeje refers to as “the search for a lost identity or the attempt
to affirm an inner self” (1992: 3). Mafeje had concluded that “a true community of
African scholarship” had not been achieved in the early 1990s, largely as a result of
“three fronts” on which African intellectuals and their organisations had to struggle:

1 The adverse effects on intellectual life arising out of the malaise of the post-
colonial state in Africa: bannings and imprisonment of intellectuals.
2 The role of donors who are “invariably politically and ideologically moti-
vated”, and “are hostile to, or at best suspicious of, independent-minded
African scholars and often accuse them of ‘ideological bias’ … . African
scholars are dependent for their research on donations from the North – they
are caught in a serious dilemma … their pride is hurt and the realization of the
power of veto of the North is hard to swallow … [leading] to bitter arguments
among African scholars.”
3 The attitude of intellectuals in the Northern hemisphere, who continue to
“rationalise their own desire to control and dominate by imputing that most
of the research proposals by African radicals or non-conformists are unsci-
entific or ‘below standard’. Given the fact that in such cases the criteria for
judgements are themselves in dispute, rationally, who is to say? … The issue
[is] not scientific; it ha[s] to do with racial super-ordination and subordina-
tion in an age of imperialism.” (1992: 20–21)

Mafeje’s observations are as relevant to our current conditions as they were when
he published his booklet. They are a challenge to us. Hopefully, this book makes
an important contribution to the quest.

Notes
1 The student-led revolts starting on 16 June 1976 were triggered by the introduction of
Afrikaans, a language that was associated with the oppressive apartheid regime, as a
medium of instruction in schools. Initially led by students from the township of Soweto,
the revolts spread to the rest of the country as a general challenge to Bantu Education
which was introduced in 1953 in particular, and the apartheid system in general.
xvi Lungisile Ntsebeza
2 See Ibbo Mandaza (1992) where he outlines the intellectual activities Mafeje was
involved in, in many ways an agenda for what he would do when he returned to South
Africa, which to him meant UCT. At the time, the political negotiations which would
end up with the democratic elections of 1994 had started and Mafeje was making
inquiries about a possible return to his alma mater, UCT – see Ntsebeza (2014).
3 See also responses by Johan Graaff and Martin Hall in the same issue of Social
Dynamics: Volume 24, Number 2.
4 www.n​ews.u​ct.ac​.za/a​r ticl​e/-20​14-11​-06-x​hosa-​cours​e-att​racts​-inte​r nati​onal-​philo​
sophy​-stud​ents.​
5 www.h​umani​ties.​uct.a​c.za/​news/​philo​sophy​-conf​erenc​e-she​ds-li​ght-s​ocial​-equa​lity.​
6 www.p​hilos​ophy.​uct.a​c.za/​sites​/defa​ult/f ​iles/​image​_tool​/imag​es/16​0/Afr​ican%​20Phi​
losop​hy%20​Postg ​radua​te%20​Confe​rence​%20Pr​ogram​me%20​and%2​0List​%20of​
%20Ab​strac​ts.pd​f.

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Hendricks, F. 2008. The Mafeje Affair: The University of Cape Town and Apartheid.
African Studies, Vol. 67, No. 3, pp. 423–451.
Mafeje, A. 1992. In Search of an Alternative: A Collection of Essays on Revolutionary
Theory and Politics. Harare: SAPES Books.
Mafeje, A. 1978. Soweto and its Aftermath. Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 5,
No. 11, pp. 17–30.
Mamdani, M. 1998. Teaching Africa at the Post-Apartheid University of Cape Town: A
Critical View of the ‘Introduction to Africa’ Core Course in the Social Science and
Humanities Faculty’s Foundation Semester, 1998. Social Dynamics, Vol. 24, No. 2,
pp 1–32.
Mandaza, I. 1992. Foreword. In Mafeje 1992, pp. iii–viii.
Ntsebeza, L. 2014. The Mafeje and the UCT Saga: Unfinished Business? Social Dynamics,
Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 274–288.
Introduction

George Hull

Some intellectual questions are especially live and inescapable for those doing
philosophy in African contexts.
As a sequel to political decolonisation, does the discipline of philosophy
need to be decolonised? Have African philosophy and philosophical problems
relevant to Africa been unfairly marginalised in philosophy? What place do
questions of racial and ethnic identity have in debates about social justice in
Africa’s former settler colonies? If a philosophical problem or thesis, expressed
in English, French, German or Portuguese, appears not to translate into an
indigenous African language, what does that tell us about language—and
about philosophy?
But these questions are also important for philosophy conducted outside
Africa. Increasingly, questions such as these are occupying the attention of phi-
losophers throughout the world. Of the sixteen new philosophical essays col-
lected here, some participate in and advance on-going debates within African
philosophy. Others are penned by scholars who specialise not in the subdis-
cipline of African philosophy, but in areas—such as philosophy of language,
social ontology or political philosophy—on which much African philosophy
has been written. A guiding aim of the volume is to show that much African
philosophy on these topics can and should be debated not only by African phi-
losophy specialists, but by any philosophers working on the relevant topics.
All of the chapters contribute to contemporary debates particularly relevant to
philosophical reflection in African contexts, and to reflection worldwide on the
place of Africa in philosophy.
Each chapter, bar one,1 was originally drafted as a seminar paper for a series
hosted by the Philosophy Department and the Centre for African Studies at the
University of Cape Town (UCT), which ran throughout the 2016 academic year.
This was a time when the student-led Rhodes Must Fall movement had cap-
tured public imagination in South Africa and inspired similar campaigns abroad
(Mpofu-Walsh 2016). Initiated in March 2015 at UCT, the protest movement
demanded ‘decolonisation’ of the university’s research and teaching, with the
removal of the statue of English imperialist Cecil Rhodes on its Rondebosch cam-
pus as a symbolic starting point (Naidoo 2016). Some of the seminar papers were
2 George Hull
presented in hidden locations to the nearby accompaniment of struggle songs, as
groups of students and workers protesting outsourcing and fees advanced along
University Avenue, interrupting lectures and ejecting academics and administra-
tors from their offices as they went.2
The call for intellectual decolonisation of the academy, and of the discipline
of philosophy in particular, is nothing new in postcolonial African scholarship3—
although it remains important. What is new, however, is a palpable mood of
soul-searching and self-criticism in parts of the North American and European
philosophical establishments. Peter K. J. Park has recently called attention to
the role of explicit racism, including that of Immanuel Kant and his exponents,4
in the formation of the mainstream philosophical canon (Park 2013). Bryan W.
Van Norden now argues that the persisting exclusion of African, Asian and South
American philosophical thought from teaching and research in the Global North is
due to ignorance and tacit racism on the part of contemporary practitioners (Van
Norden 2017). Prominent philosophers in the United States of America, including
Robert L. Bernasconi, Jay L. Garfield and Charles W. Mills (Mills 2014), have
claimed that without ‘decolonizing the philosophy canon’,5 American philosophy
departments have little hope of addressing the notorious skew towards the white
and male ends of the spectrum in their staff and student demographics. In an
opinion piece for the New York Times published on 11 May 2016, Garfield and
Van Norden wrote that too many U.S. philosophy departments do nothing to belie
the perception that they are ‘temples to the achievement of males of European
descent’ (Garfield et al. 2016).
In convening the series ‘Philosophy in Africa, Africa in Philosophy’, our inten-
tion was not to replicate in the seminar room the bluster of the open meetings
through which the Rhodes Must Fall movement was asserting itself on campus.
Rather, the Director of the Centre for African Studies, Prof. Lungisile Ntsebeza,6
and I aimed to create a forum for critical, informed and open-minded philosophi-
cal discussion of a series of topics which—partly due to the student-led move-
ment—were once again receiving enthusiastic attention in South Africa. At the
same time, acknowledging that these topics featured prominently in established
currents of philosophy elsewhere on the continent, as also in the ongoing soul-
searching of philosophers from the Global North, we resolved that the series
should be an international conversation involving scholars with relevant expertise
from South Africa, other African countries and elsewhere in the world.
In this chapter, I introduce some of the overlapping themes which unite the
essays collected here.7

African philosophy8
Because the question of the nature of African philosophy has itself been a
major preoccupation of modern African philosophy,9 it is almost impossible
to say anything general about African philosophy without saying something
highly controversial.
 Introduction 3
It is important to appreciate how this situation came about. Around 1960, most
African countries achieved political independence from their erstwhile European
colonisers. The generation of African philosophers active in the decades that
followed spent much of its energy resisting two tendencies in European social-
scientific thought. The first was an ethnographic approach—epitomised by the
work of Lucien Lé vy-Bruhl (see e.g. Lé vy-Bruhl 1923; Lé vy-Bruhl 1926)—
which held that African cultures exhibited insufficient rationality to support
genuinely philosophical thinking (Hountondji 1984: 24; Oruka 1991: 47; Osha
2011: 31). The second was an assumption on the part of some missionaries and
theologians10 that, though African cultures did exhibit philosophical thinking, this
resided exclusively at the level of an uncritical communal consciousness—pos-
sibly shared by all Africans—and owed its acceptance to the authority of tradi-
tion, rather than to any individual ratiocination (Oruka 1991: 47–50; Hountondji
1996: 55–56). Belgian missionary Placide Tempels’ influential Bantu Philosophy
(Tempels 1959) straddles both tendencies: though he insists that the metaphysic
of ‘vital forces’, which he describes, informs the perceptions and actions of all
Africans, Tempels claims that Africans themselves lack the cognitive and linguis-
tic resources to articulate it (Hallen 23–24).
In response to the first tendency, African scholars mined the orature of their
cultures for theses and conceptions which were both unquestionably African and
recognisably philosophical:11 ethical views, cosmogonies, conceptions of causa-
tion or personal identity. In response to the second tendency, a war was declared
on scholars who presented mere collections of proverbs or descriptions of tradi-
tional practices as ‘African philosophy’. Paulin Hountondji, who led the charge,
exhorted his peers to reject the ‘myth of primitive unanimity’ (Hountondji 1996:
61) (the doctrine that all Africans fundamentally think alike) and cease their quest
for ‘an implicit, unexpressed world-view, which never existed anywhere but in
the anthropologist’s imagination’ (op. cit.: 63).
Naturally, the two lines of resistance came into conflict:12 scholars combating
the second tendency denounced bodies of traditional or folk philosophy com-
piled to combat the first tendency as constituting mere ‘ethnophilosophy’. Yet,
several philosophers pioneered new syntheses, combining the wisdom of both.
Hountondji announced that his African colleagues pursuing ‘ethnophilosophy’
were philosophers after all, only they were imprisoned by a false self-conception:
‘looking for philosophy in a place where it could never be found’, they had pro-
jected their own philosophical views onto ‘the collective unconscious of African
peoples’ (1996: 63). Now it was time for them to stand up and defend those views
as their own, in the face of counterargument and critique. Meanwhile, philos-
ophers such as Kwasi Wiredu, J. Olubi Sodipo and K. Anthony Appiah have
blazed a different path. Demurring from Hountondji’s condemnation of ‘[e]thno-
philosophy’ as ‘an indeterminate discourse with no object’ (op. cit.: 62), they
hold that African cultures, like all other cultures, possess a collectively under-
stood ‘folk philosophy’ (Appiah 1992: 101)—a ‘traditional philosophy’ (Wiredu
1984: 32) or ‘pervasive world outlook’ (Sodipo 1984: 75)—which does qualify as
4 George Hull
genuine philosophy. Where they converge with Hountondji is in urging contem-
porary African philosophers to do more than simply describe this folk philosophy.
Though purely descriptive ethnophilosophy is not without value (Appiah 1992:
100), African philosophers ought also to approach folk philosophies in a ‘criti-
cal and reconstructive spirit’ (Wiredu 1984: 33), bringing theoretical coherence
to bodies of folk beliefs, testing their justifiability, and being willing to discard
beliefs which do not pass rational muster.13
All philosophy is self-conscious about method. The particular focus of
African philosophy’s self-consciousness is, though, a distinguishing trait. Time
and again, African philosophers return to the question of the right relationship
between theory construction by contemporary practitioners and the folk philoso-
phies of African cultures; as they do to the concomitant question of precisely
where in that relationship ‘African philosophy’ is to be located. One reason for
this focus is the role of resistance to tendencies in European social science in
modern African philosophy’s trajectory—‘the Levy-Bruhl syndrome’ (Falaiye
2017: 142); another reason is the predominance, until relatively recently, of oral
rather than written transmission in sub-Saharan African cultures;14 no doubt
there are others.15 Controversies over such matters as whether in ascertaining
folk beliefs it is good practice to canvas philosophical opinion from the popu-
lation at large or only from pre-identified ‘sages’ (see Kalumba 2004),16 and
whether a philosophical doctrine reconstructed from African folk philosophy
must be applicable only locally or can be of universal application (see Bello
2004: 263–64), remain live.
In his essay for this volume, Edwin Etieyibo seeks to defend African philoso-
phy from the charge that it exhibits a problematic anthropocentrism—and to do so
without succumbing to theoretical ‘unanimism’ himself. Based on the testimony
of philosophers from many sub-Saharan African countries, who have worked up
the folk philosophy of several different cultures, Etieyibo argues that the view
most prevalent in African philosophy is that individual nonhuman beings have
intrinsic moral value, and are not merely valuable insofar as they can be beneficial
to human individuals and human communities. This view may not be found ‘in
every nook and cranny of Africa’, and is certainly not attributable to an African
collective unconscious, but it is the view which prevails. Like Wiredu,17 Etieyibo
is willing to credit Bantu Philosophy as a reasonably reliable record of the folk
philosophy of some Africans, despite Tempels’ problematic framing of his work.
He argues that the ‘hierarchy of beings’ described by Tempels does not necessi-
tate a purely instrumental view of nonhuman beings, and may even permit view-
ing all beings, human and nonhuman, as fundamentally of equal value. Etieyibo
concludes that African ethics generally comes closer to biocentrism or ecocen-
trism than to anthropocentrism.
Thaddeus Metz is a scholar who has pursued a version of the critical recon-
struction approach recommended by many African philosophers in their writ-
ings on methodology. Beginning with twelve prevalent folk ethical beliefs, six
of them ‘more widespread in the sub-Saharan part of [Africa]… than in Europe,
 Introduction 5
North America or Australasia’ (Metz 2007: 324), he has constructed a normative
ethical theory which, in its latest form, holds that an agent becomes a ‘real’, or
ethically fully developed, person by ‘prizing identity and solidarity with others’:
that is to say, by ‘honour[ing] relationships of sharing a way of life with others
and caring for their quality of life’ (Metz, this volume). Metz has presented his
theory as a ‘theoretical interpretation’ (Metz 2007: 328) or ‘construal’ (op. cit.:
330) of the Nguni language-group concept ubuntu. A striking difference between
this reconstructed African ethic and other moral theories such as utilitarianism
and Kantianism, argues Metz in his contribution to this volume, is that the for-
mer holds some instances of ‘survivor’s guilt’ to be morally justifiable. In other
words, it holds that there can be good moral reason for a person to feel bad about
themselves because their associates died and they did not, even when they are not
morally culpable for the deaths. While mainstream Western moral theories typi-
cally count survivor’s guilt as unreasonable, Metz’s reconstructed African ethic
views it as, at least sometimes, a manifestation of good character—because it is
‘one way of honouring communion’. Since Metz now advocates for the recon-
structed ubuntu ethic as a universal moral theory superior to its rivals (Jones et al.
2015: 539), his claim is not that just Africans, or just some Africans, can be mor-
ally justified in feeling survivor’s guilt, but that every human could, in the right
circumstances, be morally justified in feeling survivor’s guilt.
Metz’s critical reconstruction has come in for healthy criticism.18 Recently,
Dylan Futter has questioned the form of Metz’s reconstructed ubuntu. He argues
that Metz’s twelve folk beliefs will remain an inadequate starting point for recon-
struction until it is established what kind of ethical subject matter they give voice
to—whether a set of principles for moral rightness, a single character virtue, a set
of character virtues or something else (Futter 2016).19 In this volume, Tom P. S.
Angier casts doubt on the content of Metz’s reconstruction. Angier writes that
he has no qualms about the ‘Metz method’ of philosophical reconstruction per
se; however, he is concerned that in Metz’s hands it has been misapplied, since,
according to Angier, Metz has cherry-picked the distinctively African ethical folk
beliefs least offensive to ‘mainstream Western liberal commentators’. Homing in
on what he suggests are some further pervasive African ethical beliefs—includ-
ing acknowledgement of ‘the value of hierarchy’ and the ‘notion that poverty has
value’—Angier offers a blueprint for a revised reconstruction of a distinctively
African ethic, which he believes is both ‘truer to the cultural and philosophical
resources of Africa’ and more distant from ‘the nostrums of Western liberal egali-
tarianism’ than Metz’s.
Bruce B. Janz and Oritsegbubemi A. Oyowe’s chapters both tackle the ques-
tion of the nature of African philosophy head-on. Janz warns against setting up
Western currents of philosophy as a standard and then asking how well or how
badly African philosophy lives up to it.20 Taking as his case study the prominent
South African philosopher Mogobe B. Ramose’s treatment of ubuntu (Ramose
2005), Janz renews his advocacy for a ‘platial’ (see Janz 2009) philosophy. He
argues that in Ramose’s work, ubuntu is not a metaphysical or ethical theory, but
6 George Hull
rather a ‘cognitive strategy’—an ‘open-ended structure for new creation’, includ-
ing creation of concepts—and that this provides a stimulating example of how
philosophy can ‘explore its edges’. Oyowe, on the other hand, argues that insofar
as African philosophy is a practice involving teaching and research which occurs
at a university, ‘the idea of a university’ should play a regulative role in our think-
ing about its nature. This regulative idea would, according to Oyowe, rule out
conceptions of African philosophy which exclude otherwise qualified practition-
ers on the basis of their ‘ethnic, racial, gendered etc. identities’, or which would
‘fail to provide the platform for members of the local community to be part of
the discursive tradition’. It would not, however, rule out a conception of African
philosophy on which it can play ‘a key role in African liberation politics’.

Decolonising philosophy
Both in the Global South and in the Global North, there are calls for the discipline
of philosophy to be decolonised.21 Several of the essays written for this volume
address, indirectly or directly, the theme of intellectual decolonisation. As with
other evocative slogans, those who speak of the ‘decolonisation’ of philosophy
mean different things by it; but that is not to say the notion is fundamentally
empty or incoherent.
Conceptions of decolonising philosophy have a common core: the conviction
that Eurocentric colonial influences have had a harmful or otherwise objection-
able effect on the discipline of philosophy as it exists in Africa (and other regions
of the world) today, and the call for this to be put right. Below, I outline five dif-
ferent focuses or emphases in calls for the decolonisation of philosophy, not all
mutually exclusive. Each one spells out the objectionable effect of Eurocentrism
in a different way, and, accordingly, recommends remedies of a different type.

Decolonising for identity

It is possible to view decolonising philosophy as simply a matter of ‘ours’ versus
‘theirs’. In European countries—on this conception—it is fine for the philosophies
of Europeans to be most prevalent in teaching and research; but in Africa, the
philosophies of Africans should be most prevalent. This line of thought becomes
more seductive, the more ‘philosophy’ can be made to sound synonymous with
‘general cultural outlook’.22 It would, after all, be odd if African researchers inter-
ested in compiling and itemising general cultural outlooks were studiously to
ignore the general cultural outlooks of African people around them.
Of course, many would contest the notion of a clean divide between African
cultural outlooks and European ones, given the common historic influences on
both regions, and the cross-fertilisation between African and European societies
at various points in history.23 But it is not wrong to speak of cultural differences
between African countries and European countries—as of cultural differences
among, and within, both African and European countries: differences of lan-
guage, religion, dress, cuisine, manner of greeting and hospitality, and prevailing
 Introduction 7
concepts and ideas. It is normal and appropriate for these cultural differences to
influence the institutional culture of universities in different parts of the world
and, to some extent, to influence the topics and types of problem focused on in
philosophical teaching and research (see Metz 2015).
However, the idea that one should adhere to or teach a doctrine simply because
it is part of one’s culture sits uneasily with philosophy’s self-image as a critical
discipline with a special commitment to discursive justification. For this reason,
many scholars who are committed to decolonising philosophy mention this sim-
plest identitarian conception of intellectual decolonisation only in order to dis-
miss it.24

Decolonising for universal truth

Kwasi Wiredu has put forward a model of ‘conceptual decolonization’ (2007: 76)
for philosophy whose ultimate goal is attaining to truth.
According to Wiredu, there is nothing wrong with Africans adopting words,
concepts and beliefs from elsewhere in the world per se (Wiredu 1984: 32).
However, Wiredu argues that there is an urgent need for African philosophers to
weed out the false doctrines introduced to Africa by the colonising powers’ ‘reli-
gious evangelism… and political tutelage’, and to do away with whatever wrong-
headed concepts and ‘categories of thought’ have been imposed upon Africans
through ‘philosophical education… in the medium of foreign languages’ (Wiredu
2007: 76).
Since he takes it that the rightful aim of philosophy is to discover universally
true answers to fundamental questions, conceptual decolonisation, as Wiredu
conceives of it, is as relevant to philosophers in Europe and other non-African
parts of the world as it is to African philosophers. He acknowledges that some-
times it will be the African doctrine, and not that of the colonial powers, which
is in need of correction, and that in some areas African languages will prove in
need of ‘revision or enrichment’ (Wiredu 1984: 40); but the principal focus of
Wiredu’s conceptual decolonisation programme is to excise as much ‘philo-
sophical deadwood’ (Wiredu 2007: 76) as has been inherited from colonial doc-
trines and languages.
As regards conceptual dead wood with a linguistic origin, Wiredu offers the
following ‘simple recipe for decolonization’:

Try to think [the concepts] through in your own African language and, on the
basis of the results, review the intelligibility of the associated problems or the
plausibility of the apparent solutions that have tempted you when you have
pondered them in some metropolitan language.
(Wiredu 2007: 77)

When a philosophical idea is intelligible or plausible in one of the languages but

not in the other, the next step is ‘to try to reason out the matter on independent
grounds’ (ibid.). A concept should be used, or a doctrine adopted, only if doing so
8 George Hull
is supported by reasons ‘fathomable in both the African and the foreign language
concerned’ (ibid.).
In his contribution to this volume, Bernhard Weiss, like Wiredu, endorses the
practice of confronting one’s own ‘parochial way of speaking’ with another as a
valuable philosophical heuristic. But he takes a critical look at a further thesis of
Wiredu’s: that this practice reveals some philosophical problems to be ‘language
relative’ or ‘[t]ongue-dependent’ (Wiredu 2004b: 49), because one and the same
statement can be ‘correct and philosophically interesting’ in one language but
‘truistic’ and ‘of no philosophical interest’ in another (op. cit.: 48). Wiredu has
claimed that a statement of the correspondence theory of truth is ‘conceptually
informative in a philosophical way’ in English, but ‘an uninformative tautology,
sans all philosophical pretences’, in his mother tongue Akan (ibid.). Weiss criti-
cally discusses Wiredu’s treatment of this case, arguing that Wiredu has not suc-
ceeded in providing an example of a tongue-dependent philosophical problem,
because an accurate statement of the correspondence theorist’s distinctive thesis
is as non-trivial in Akan as it is in English. Though he agrees with Wiredu that
there could be tongue-dependent problems in cases where two languages differ
in their conceptual resources, he concludes that an example of natural languages
differing in their ‘repertoire of fundamental concepts’ has yet to be provided.
Weiss’s critique does not discredit Wiredu’s overarching project of conceptual
decolonisation, but it does cast doubt on an important corollary thesis to it.

Decolonising for relative truth

Wiredu believes relativism is false (Wiredu 2007: 77). He hopes that with his
version of intellectual decolonisation implemented, it will soon ‘no longer be
necessary to talk of the Akan or Yoruba or Luo concept of this or that, but
simply of the concept of whatever is in question with a view to advancing
philosophical suggestions that can be immediately evaluated on independent
grounds’ (op. cit.: 81).
But some scholars embrace relativism. If relativism is granted, a relativ-
ist variant of Wiredu’s conceptual decolonisation programme suggests itself.
Decolonising philosophy would consist in stripping away philosophical material
which is true, or at any rate plausible, relative to the languages, cultures or con-
ceptual frameworks of the colonial powers, and replacing it with material which
is true or plausible relative to those of indigenous Africans—wherever the two
do not coincide. Since prominent versions of relativism hold that what is true
depends on who you are, this conception of intellectual decolonisation combines
a focus on identity with a focus on truth, showing that they are not necessarily
in tension.
Barry Hallen and J. Olubi Sodipo have made a detailed case for philo-
sophical relativism, based on their investigation of the concepts and beliefs
of Yoruba speakers. In Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft, Hallen and Sodipo
argue that the Yoruba propositional-attitude terms ‘mo’ and ‘gbagbo’ have no
exact equivalents in English (they are usually inaccurately rendered as ‘know’
 Introduction 9
and ‘believe’); they conclude ‘that propositional attitudes are not universal’
(Hallen et al. 1997: 84).
However, Weiss in this volume points out an equivocation in Hallen and
Sodipo’s conclusion. While non-Yoruba speakers may not have at their disposal
individual terms which pick out the precise propositional attitudes designated by
‘mo’ and ‘gbagbo’, this does not mean they do not have those propositional atti-
tudes; indeed, the paraphrases supplied by Hallen and Sodipo suggest that English
speakers, say, regularly have the propositional attitudes in question and can refer
to them. Weiss argues that if Hallen and Sodipo have identified a significant dif-
ference between Yorubu speakers and English speakers, it is a difference not
in propositional attitudes exhibited, but in relative epistemic value assigned to
first-hand as opposed to second-hand knowledge. Yet this difference, if it exists,
entails not that we should embrace ontological or conceptual relativism, but
rather that there is a principled choice to be made—on Wiredu-type ‘independ-
ent grounds’—about the epistemic value that ought to be assigned to beliefs of
second-hand as opposed to first-hand provenance.

Decolonising for justice

An alternative view says that what is primarily at stake in intellectual decoloni-
sation is not truth or identity, but justice. It might initially be jarring to see the
word ‘justice’ applied to matters of knowledge and belief; however, a body of
philosophical work has recently grown up25 which articulates a variety of different
ways in which ‘a wrong’ can be ‘done to someone specifically in their capacity as
a knower’ (Fricker 2007: 1).
In her chapter of this book, Rebecca Bamford advocates for intellectual
decolonisation of theoretical biomedical ethics, on the basis that ‘neocoloni-
alism’ in theories of biomedical ethics unjustly harms people on the receiving
end of certain types of research and aid interventions. According to Bamford,
‘moral neocolonialism’ involves proceeding on the basis that the moral val-
ues one recommends are universally agreed upon, or are of universal appli-
cability, when in fact they are not universally agreed upon, or not universally
applicable. Besides indirectly working to the advantage of commercial and
political interests in the Global North, moral neo-colonialism—in Bamford’s
view—can also do wrongful harm of distinctively epistemic kinds: for exam-
ple, it may impede the development of theoretical problem-solving resources
based upon moral values adhered to locally, and it may result in patients
and research participants who adhere to different moral ideals being ignored
or ‘silenced’.
Forward-looking justice requires the avoidance of wrongful harm in pros-
pect. Backward-looking justice requires the redress or rectification of wrongs
committed in the past. Some contemporary writers argue that there should be
an epistemic component to redress for colonialism, since many of the wrongs of
colonialism had an epistemic character. For example, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni
states that European colonialists committed ‘epistemicides’—an epistemicide
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