This response to Bruce Janz’s African Philosophy and Enactivist Cognition (2023) uses the work of Martin Heidegger and Stanley Cavell to understand the relationship among philosophy, thinking, and place and, most crucially, Africa as a place from which philosophy might be thought, that is, might be proposed as native to philosophy. Invoking the late Heidegger, for whom thinking presents itself as the question, and Cavell’s use of Ralph Waldo Emerson as a thinker native to America, the difficulty is raised as (...) to how these relations manifest themselves in Janz’s Enactivist Cognition. (shrink)

To liberate African philosophy from the remnants of the colonial style of thought, Kwesi Wiredu promotes the idea of the conceptual decolonization of African philosophy. He argues that, to accomplish this project, African philosophers must theorize in African vernaculars. This article attempts to show that the project of the conceptual decolonization of African philosophy by recourse to theorizing in African vernaculars is challenging. It examines a particular strategy that Wiredu deploys in “Conceptual Decolonization as an Imperative in Contemporary African Philosophy,” (...) in which he hopes to demonstrate that the Akan conception of mind is superior to the Cartesian conception of mind. It demonstrates that Wiredu’s attempt to show the superiority of the Akan conception of mind is unsuccessful and that his project of conceptual decolonization fails. Nevertheless, it concludes that Wiredu’s conceptual decolonization project still shows promise even in light of our criticisms. (shrink)

The author of African Philosophy and Enactivist Cognition: The Space of Thought responds to four critiques of his book. After giving some context and history of the book, he addresses points raised by each of the readers.

This article is a response to the new book by Bruce Janz, African Philosophy and Enactivist Cognition: The Space of Thought, published in 2023 in the Bloomsbury Studies in World Philosophies series. Enactivist Cognition opens up a new space of conversation in the field of African philosophy—and world philosophies more broadly—through an innovative approach that applies insights from the cognitive sciences to the humanities in order to highlight the relationship between thought and context, between theorization and experience. Through the interpretive (...) lens of enactivism, Janz ventures into new readings of well-known themes and personalities in African philosophy and also introduces interesting new themes and personalities to the African philosophical conversation. Janz also intentionally bridges African and Africana thought. While this article contests the application of enactivism to all the philosophers treated in Enactivist Cognition, it applauds Janz’s search for new, creative, and productive spaces for and of philosophy. (shrink)

In African Philosophy and Enactivist Cognition: The Space of Thought (2023), Bruce B. Janz introduces what he calls an enactivist African philosophy. The book makes a significant contribution to African philosophy as no other work has yet made the connection between African philosophy and enactivism. This article’s aim is to give a critical response to the book. It starts with some background by connecting Enactivist Cognition with Janz’s earlier Philosophy in an African Place (2009). This is followed by a brief (...) discussion of his introduction to enactivist African philosophy and its connection to texts in African philosophy. The article closes with a discussion of some issues that Enactivist Cognition raises. (shrink)

This article addresses Bruce Janz’s “enactivist” reading of African philosophy from two perspectives. The space in which African philosophy finds itself remains problematic, and, thus, this article attempts to unpack this issue. Janz argues that African philosophy allows for only a few or no possibilities for radical thought. However, his own reading of the Nigerian philosopher Sophie Oluwole serves to debunk this claim. Oluwole’s thought highlights the challenges of building a modern African philosophy within the context of postcoloniality, in which (...) problems of untranslatability are encountered when utilizing a metropolitan language, which, in her case, is English. But, beyond the problem of untranslatability, she is able to delineate a holistic cosmology that, in multiple ways, incorporates, complicates, and extends the borders of philosophy. (shrink)