7 passages in English
· 1942–2024 · Africana Philosophy.
Overview
Paulin J. Hountondji (1942–2024) was a Beninese philosopher educated in Paris (including under Althusser) and long associated with the National University of Benin. African Philosophy: Myth and Reality (French 1976; English 1983) attacked the myth of a collective, unanimous African worldview presented as philosophy.
Main ideas
African philosophy is a literature of texts by Africans who call their work philosophy—not ethnological reconstruction of a people’s silent Weltanschauung. He coined ‘ethnophilosophy’ for Tempels-style projects and insisted that sage thought is not automatically the thought of all Africans.
Major works
African Philosophy: Myth and Reality
The Struggle for Meaning
essays on Amo, Nkrumah, and scientific culture
Legacy
Hountondji’s critique redirected Francophone and Anglophone African philosophy toward argumentative pluralism and away from exotic unanimism.
By 'African philosophy' I mean a set of texts, specifically, the set of texts written by Africans and described as philosophical by their authors themselves.
So for us African philosophy is a body of literature whose existence is undeniable, a bibliography which has grown constantly.
In fact, it is an ethnological work with philosophical pretensions, or more simply, if I may coin the word, a work of 'ethnophilosophy'.
I observe that it does exist, by the same right and in the same mode as all the philosophies of the world: in the form of a literature.
Contemporary African philosophy, inasmuch as it remains an ethnophilosophy, has been built up essentially for a European public. The African ethnophilosopher's discourse is not intended for Africans.
The thought of an African sage, even if he purports to be the spokesman for a group, is not necessarily that of all the individuals in that group, and still less that of all Africans in general.
Philosophy, by definition, is an individual critical activity; the myth of a collective, unanimous African philosophy must be discarded.