Themes, Issues and Problems in African Philosophy

Isaac E. Ukpokolo

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9783319407951
• eBook ISBN: 9783319407968
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

This volume provides the key to a deepened discourse on philosophy in Africa. Available literature and academic practice in African philosophy since the 1960s have largely featured discourses in the areas of origin, general meaning and nature of the discipline, with little attention given to specialized areas. By contrast, this book examines a noticeable shifting focus from such general concerns to more specific subject-matter, in such areas as epistemology, moral philosophy, metaphysics, aesthetics, and social and political philosophy in the light of the African experience. The volume includes specific discourses from expert contributors on the nature, history and scope of African ethics and metaphysics, while also discussing particular themes in African epistemology, philosophy of education, existentialism and political philosophy. Researchers seeking for new perspective on African philosophy will find this work thought-provoking, instructive and informative.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• 1: Introduction: The Shifting Focus of Philosophy in Africa
• 2: Revisiting the Terms of African Philosophy
• 3: African Metaphysics: Traditional and Modern Discussions
• 4: Critical Notes on the Metaphysics of Metallurgy in an African Culture
• 5: An Overview of African Ethics
• 6: Transnational Ethics, Justice and Anyiam-­Osigwe’s Philosophy of the Family
• 7: Toward an African Moral Theory (Revised Edition)
• 8: An African Theory of Knowledge
• 9: Epistemic Insight from an African Way of Knowing
• 10: The Imperative of Epistemic Decolonization in Contemporary Africa
• 11: A Gendered Interrogation of Virtue Ascription in an African Thought System
• 12: Women’s Agency and the Re-negotiation of Gender Depiction in an African Media Space
• 13: The Imperative of Developing African Eco-philosophy
• 14: The Nature of African Aesthetics
• 15: Philosophy and Existence in an African Condition
• 16: Human Life and the Question of Meaning in African Existentialism
• 17: Western Specifications, African Approximations: Time, Colour and Existential Attitudes
• 18: Probable Limits of Particularism in African Existential Discourse
• 19: Philosophy and the Challenge of Development in Africa
• 20: Political Philosophy in the African Context
• 21: Concepts of Justice in Africa: Past and Present
• 22: African Worldview and the Question of Democratic Substance
• 23: Philosophy: Interrogating the Public Space and Culture
• 24: Mandela’s Legacy for Political Philosophy in Africa
• Index