9 passages in English
· 1931–2022 · Africana Philosophy.
Overview
Kwasi Wiredu (1931–2022) was a Ghanaian philosopher trained in Accra and at Oxford under P. F. Strawson. He taught for decades at the University of Ghana and later at the University of South Florida. Philosophy and an African Culture and Cultural Universals and Particulars made him a central figure in analytic African philosophy.
Main ideas
Conceptual decolonization means shedding undue colonial categories while judiciously using indigenous schemes such as Akan. He distinguishes democracy by consensus from majoritarian consent without consensus, and argues that theories of truth must account for ‘being so’ rather than English lexical accidents.
Major works
Philosophy and an African Culture
Cultural Universals and Particulars
Conceptual Decolonization in African Philosophy
Legacy
Wiredu set the vocabulary for postcolonial African philosophy’s linguistic turn and for debates on non-party consensual democracy.
By decolonization, I mean divesting African philosophical thinking of all undue influences emanating from our colonial past. The crucial word in this formulation is "undue".
A language, most assuredly, is not conceptually neutral; syntax and vocabulary are apt to suggest definite modes of conceptualization.
On the negative side, avoiding or reversing through a critical conceptual self-awareness the unexamined assimilation in our thought of the conceptual frameworks embedded in the foreign philosophical traditions that have had an impact on African life and thought. And, on the positive side, exploiting as much as is judicious the resources of our own indigenous conceptual schemes in our philosophical meditations.
It was a democracy because government was by the consent, and subject to the control, of the people as expressed through their representatives. It was consensual because, at least as a rule, that consent was negotiated on the principle of consensus.
By contrast, the majoritarian system might be said to be, in principle, based on consent without consensus.
A theory of truth is not of any real universal significance unless it offers some account of the notion of being so.
Governments are not formed by parties but by the consensus of elected representatives. Government becomes a kind of coalition of citizens.
The African who has learned philosophy in English, for example, has most likely become conceptually westernized to a large extent not by choice but by the force of historical circumstances.