Kwame Gyekye offers a philosophical interpretation and critical analysis of the African cultural experience in modern times. Critically employing Western political and philosophical concepts to clear, comparative advantage, Gyekye addresses a wide range of concrete problems afflicting postcolonial African states, such as ethnicity and nation-building, the relationship of tradition to modernity, the nature of political authority and political legitimation, political corruption, and the threat to traditional moral and social values, practices, and institutions in the wake of rapid (...) social change. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper I argue that the economistic conception of development which has all along been touted by development ‘experts’and which has been made the monolithic framework for understanding and tackling the problem of development, is lopsided and terribly inadequate. That conception, it seems to me, fails to come to grips with the complex nature of human society and culture. That complexity, I argue, calls for a comprehensive, not segmented, approach to the development of human society. I therefore argue (...) also that development must be perceived in terms of adequate responses to the entire existential conditions in which human beings function, conditions which encompass the economic, political, social, moral, cultural, intellectual and others. It is pointed out that these conditions are greatly helped by a congenial political climate and a viable ethical and cultural framework. (shrink)

On the denial of traditional thought as philosophy Scholars, including philosophers, tend to squirm a little at the mention of African philosophy, ...

The more passages one examines in the translations from Arabic to Latin and from Arabic to English and other modern languages, the more mistakes one comes across in the translation of the Arabic expression ‘alā al-qaṣd al-awwal . The mistakes stem from the failure to distinguish between two senses of the expression, one an adverb, and the other a famous philosophic concept. Failing to distinguish between the two senses, the translators translated the phrase literally, often with unsatisfactory results. In this (...) paper, I shall indicate a Greek word which was rendered by the Arabic ‘alā al-qaṣd al-awwal. I shall refer to some English translations from the Arabic and show how wrong they are. I shall suggest that in Arabic philosophy itself al-Fārābī, rather than Avicenna, may have been the origin of the philosophic concepts of “first and second intentions.” I shall point out that although these concepts may have been introduced into Latin scholasticism by Raymond Lull, he could not have derived them from the Logic of al-Ghazālī, as has been alleged. (shrink)

In this paper i argue that the bundle-theory, the theory that substance is nothing but a collection of qualities, bristles with difficulties. i show that a conjunction of the so-called essential qualities would primarily yield a conception not of an individual substance socrates, for instance, but of a species, i.e., the concept 'man', and that only the addition of some uniquely determining accidental qualities to the essential ones would yield an individual substance. but, then, these accidental qualities and infinite in (...) number and are therefore only potential and unknowable. thus, the "bundle" can never be 'actualized'. nor can the notion of substance be eliminated in favor of descriptions, since these should include negative descriptions which are infinite in number because expressible in terms of the whole universe. since not all descriptions apply to a thing, where they do, they must have been antecedantly 'derived' from that thing. hence, i conclude that there are grounds for at least a limited defense of a substance ontology. (shrink)

Even though the subject of my paper is ‘Technology and Culture in a Developing Country’, it seems appropriate to preface it by examining science itself in the cultural traditions of a developing country, such as Ghana, in view of the fact that the lack of technological advancement, or the ossified state in which the techniques of production found themselves, in the traditional setting of Africa and, in many ways, even in modern Africa, is certainly attributable to the incomprehensible inattention to (...) the search for scientific principles by the traditional technologists. I begin therefore with observations on how science and knowledge fared in the traditional culture of a developing country. (shrink)

This translation of Ibn-al-Tayyib’s work on Porphyry’s Eisagoge brings to the English readers a significant book in Near Eastern logic that has been discussed and excerpted by major philosophers such as Tusi, Averroes, and Avicenna. It has also been the source of philosophical discussions on topics of logic by Boethius, Abelard, Ockham and others. Gyekye has clarified the Arabic link between Greek and Latin traditions with his translation, detailed explanations and text analysis of this 11th century philosopher’s commentary on (...) the Eisagoge, a work which is itself based on Aristotle’s Categories and Metaphysics. (shrink)

This article examines Kwame Gyekye’s critique of normative cultural relativism. It argues that the implications of normative cultural relativism mentioned by Gyekye do not necessarily undermine the theory. Nevertheless, the article concedes that the fact that Gyekye’s arguments do not undermine normative cultural relativism does not make the theory itself plausible.

Kwame Gyekye has been called a dualist to the extent that he accepts the ontological distinction between mind and matter, with both phenomena interacting with each other. I argue in this article that Gyekye’s presentation of the sunsum as a universal animating principle that is itself nonmaterial and irreducible to a material base warrants a second look at his philosophy of mind to determine whether he can be considered a pan-psychist and whether a pan-psychist reading can resolve (...) the Gyekyean problem of interaction. I assert that, while Gyekye’s interpretation of the Akan notion of sunsum invites a pan-psychist scrutiny, the interpretive difficulties surrounding the concept, as highlighted by Kwasi Wiredu and Safro Kwame, render a pan-psychist conclusion problematic even if persuasive. I recommend that the notion of sunsum as a nonmaterial principle that underlies material entities is significant enough to warrant further interrogation by African philosophers of mind. (shrink)

This article undertakes a critical examination of Kwame Gyekye’s main arguments for moderate communitarianism. Contrary to the general belief among African scholars, it contends that Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism, as he presents it in Tradition and Modernity (1997), is not as moderate as he believes it to be. The article also seeks to show that the gap which Gyekye claims exists between moderate or restricted and unrestricted communitarianism is not as wide as he suggests.

An avowed communitarian, Gyekye follows the lead of such African communitarians as Menkiti who believe that the community is ontologically prior to the individual. However, unlike Menkiti and other...

In this paper I compare Kwame Gyekye’s transcendentalist interpretation of the Akan conception of God with Kwasi Wiredu’s immanentist interpretation. I highlight the tension between the two thinkers’ interpretations of Akan religious thought within the broader conflict between transcendence and immanence. Using the analytic, critical, and interpretative method, I show how the reconciliation of Gyekye and Wiredu’s divergent, yet paradoxically overlapping visions can be effected in the idea of panpsychism. In the process of effecting this reconciliation, I (...) open up a new area of research in African philosophy of religion that African philosophers will find rewarding to engage. (shrink)

In this paper I compare Kwame Gyekye’s transcendentalist interpretation of the Akan conception of God with Kwasi Wiredu’s immanentist interpretation. I highlight the tension between the two thinkers’ interpretations of Akan religious thought within the broader conflict between transcendence and immanence. Using the analytic, critical, and interpretative method, I show how the reconciliation of Gyekye and Wiredu’s divergent, yet paradoxically overlapping visionscan be effected in the idea of panpsychism. In the process of effecting this reconciliation, I open (...) up a new area of research in African philosophy of religion that African philosophers will find rewarding to engage. (shrink)