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Companion African Philosophy » (1st Edition)

Book cover image of Companion African Philosophy by Wiredu

Authors: Wiredu, William E. Abraham (Editor), Abiola Irele
ISBN-13: 9781405145671, ISBN-10: 1405145676
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
Date Published: December 2005
Edition: 1st Edition

Author Biography: Wiredu

Kwasi Wiredu is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Florida. His books include Philosophy and An African Culture (1981).

Book Synopsis

This volume, comprised of 42 newly commissioned and 5 adapted essays, provides comprehensive coverage of African philosophy, ranging across disciplines and throughout the ages.

The essays encompass all the main branches of philosophy – logic, epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, religion, and politics, among others – as these have occupied the African mind in both communal and individual conceptions. A special feature of the volume is its historical dimension, including a substantial treatment of ancient African philosophy as encountered in ancient Egypt, an extended study of medieval North African thinkers, an enlightening discussion of pre-colonial African philosophy, and a history of African political thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

A Companion to African Philosophy is unique in its depth and breadth of coverage. It is an invaluable resource for anyone wishing to learn about African philosophy and its rich history.

	Notes on Contributors
	Preface
	Introduction: African Philosophy in Our Time	1
1	Egypt: Ancient History of African Philosophy	31
2	African Philosophers in the Greco-Roman Era	50
3	Precolonial African Philosophy in Arabic	66
4	Some Nineteenth-Century African Political Thinkers	78
5	Africana Philosophy: Origins and Prospects	90
6	Contemporary Anglophone African Philosophy: A Survey	99
7	Philosophy in South Africa Under and After Apartheid	149
8	Philosophy in North Africa	161
9	The Light and the Shadow: Zera Yacob and Walda Heywat: Two Ethiopian Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century	172
10	Zera Yacob and Traditional Ethiopian Philosophy	183
11	Anton Wilhelm Amo	191
12	Amo's Critique of Descartes' Philosophy of Mind	200
13	Albert Luthuli, Steve Biko, and Nelson Mandela: The Philosophical Basis of their Thought and Practice	207
14	Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)	216
15	Theory and the Actuality of Existence: Fanon and Cabral	225
16	Alexis Kagame (1912-1981): Life and Thought	231
17	Post-Independence African Political Philosophy	243
18	Some Methodological Controversies in African Philosophy	263
19	Sage Philosophy: Its Methodology, Results, Significance, and Future	274
20	Logic in the Acholi Language	285
21	Yoruba Moral Epistemology	296
22	Ifa': An Account of a Divination System and Some Concluding Epistemological Questions	304
23	Toward a Theory of Destiny	313
24	On the Normative Conception of a Person	324
25	African Conceptions of a Person: A Critical Survey	332
26	Quasi-Materialism: A Contemporary African Philosophy of Mind	343
27	Religion in African Culture: Some Conceptual Issues	355
28	Okot p'Bitek's Critique of Western Scholarship on African Religion	364
29	Islam in Africa: Examining the Notion of an African Identity within the Islamic World	374
30	Some African Reflections on Biomedical and Environmental Ethics	387
31	Ethics and Morality in Yoruba Culture	396
32	Aesthetic Inquiry and the Music of Africa	404
33	Art and Community: A Social Conception of Beauty and Individuality	415
34	The Many-layered Aesthetics of African Art	425
35	Government by Consensus: An Analysis of a Traditional Form of Democracy	435
36	Democracy, Kingship, and Consensus: A South African Perspective	443
37	Fellowship Associations as a Foundations for Liberal Democracy in Africa	450
38	Economic Globalism, Deliberative Democracy, and the State in Africa	460
39	Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Violence	472
40	Western and African Communitarianism: A Comparison	483
41	Human Rights in the African Context	499
42	The Politics of Memory and Forgetting After Apartheid	509
43	The Question of an African Jurisprudence: Some Hermeneutic Reflections	519
44	Knowledge as a Development Issues	529
45	African Philosophy and African Literature	538
46	Philosophy and Literature in Francophone Africa	549
47	Feminism and Africa: Impact and Limits of the Metaphysics of Gender	560
	Index	570