Book Review: African Philosophy, a Historic-Hermeneutical Investigation Of The Conditions Of Its Possibility

Abstract

The need for this work has arisen as a result of the persistent and honest “search for an African Philosophy" “(p.1), by Black Africa, which is closely identified with and readily traced back to “the ongoing artistic and intellectual renaissance in Black Africa” (Ibid. p.1). The author of this book holds that “Philosophy is a unique cultural form” (Ibid p.1) it should not “be confused with other forms such as myth, weltanschauung and religion” (Ibid. p.1). Instead, some standards or criteria need to be fulfilled if African Philosophy is to be a reality. He buys the view that Philosophy “grows out of a cultural background and depends on it” (Ibid. p.1) and that “discovering and studying this relationship will also be the condition for the development of a Black African Philosophy” (Ibid p.1). The book, is divided into five chapters, with pages numbering up to one hundred and thirty five (135), excluding the introduction which has eight (8) pages. The contents of each of the five chapters are carefully and lucidly epitomized, such that one gets the stuff in the book without having gone through the body of the work. The introduction leaves no reader in doubt as to what conclusive argument the philosophical venture would make. In the conclusion, the reader is reassured of the lesson the work had successfully put across.