_Kwasi Wiredu was a pivotal modern African philosopher who passed on in 2022. In 2021, Barry Hallen published a monograph on this revered Ghanaian thinker that analyzes his various discursive preoccupations and conceptual development. However, Hallen seems more concerned with establishing Wiredu’s merits as an analytic philosopher than with focusing on his contributions to African philosophy as a whole. In evaluating Wiredu as a first-rate thinker_, _this essay critiques the somewhat limited focus of Hallen’s book while also offering a much (...) broader analysis of Wiredu’s contributions to modern African philosophy._. (shrink)

This book makes a bold announcement for the beginning of a postethnophilosophical phase in modern African thought.

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)

The Afro-Brazilian connections between the coast of West Africa and Brazil date back to the transatlantic slave trade and the Muslim uprising in Bahia in 1933. After this major rebellion, many former slaves returned to West Africa bearing a large Brazilian cultural imprint consisting of architectural skills, culinary traditions, and song and dance. They also brought back Brazilian names and cosmopolitan outlooks. From Africa, enslaved Africans carried with them to Brazil philosophical and cosmological outlooks and indeed, culture generally. Some of (...) these cross-fertilizations are what are interrogated in this intellectual and cultural exchange. (shrink)

The debates concerning what ought to be the nature and orientations of African philosophy are long drawn-out. These debates reflect the different conceptual approaches to the invention of contemporary practices of African philosophy between Anglophone and Francophone modes of philosophizing. This article reflects on these differences as well the continuing problems of creating modern African philosophical traditions. In doing so, it demonstrates why some methodological presuppositions are inadequate in grappling with some forms of sociality and the more general dilemmas of (...) modernity and also applauds the efforts of some contemporary African thinkers who have adopted a multidisciplinary approach to overcome internal discursive limitations within the field. (shrink)

The debates concerning what ought to be the nature and orientations of African philosophy are long drawn-out. These debates reflect the different conceptual approaches to the invention of contemporary practices of African philosophy between Anglophone and Francophone modes of philosophizing. This article reflects on these differences as well the continuing problems of creating modern African philosophical traditions. In doing so, it demonstrates why some methodological presuppositions are inadequate in grappling with some forms of sociality and the more general dilemmas of (...) modernity and also applauds the efforts of some contemporary African thinkers who have adopted a multidisciplinary approach to overcome internal discursive limitations within the field. (shrink)

Kwasi Wiredu (1931- ) Kwasi Wiredu is a philosopher from Ghana, who has for decades been involved with a project he terms “conceptual decolonization” in contemporary African systems of thought. By conceptual decolonization, Wiredu advocates a re-examination of current African epistemic formations in order to accomplish two aims. First, he wishes to subvert unsavory aspects […].