Abstract

The reigning, disjunctive view of cultural relations holds that one either belongs to culture A or B. The alternative conjunctive view argues that the world contains many cultures and people inhabit the world within and between some, many or all of these actual cultures. The conjunctural point of view posits a historically derived shared core of transcultural meanings and denies that the elements of a people's tradition are all autochthonous in their genesis. A coherent conjunctural reading of culture depends on a coherent theoretical account of two related theses: the language thesis, which holds that language is not a barrier to cultural exchange because all languages are intertranslatable, and the social thesis, which holds that every adequate philosophical thesis is also an adequate social thesis. African philosophers have undoubtedly grasped a significant truth as they see rationality as at least partly embedded in cultural structures from which it derives its many normative nuances. The reconstruction of rationality by Kwame Gyekye, Kwasi Wiredu, Paulin Hountondji, and Anthony Appiah shows how they actually confirm the conjunctural logic of culture in their writing and thus make strong cases for a conjunctural relationship between rationality and custom in Africa.