Thinker

Sophie Oluwole quotes

4 passages in English · 1935–2018 · Africana Philosophy.

Overview

Sophie Bosede Oluwole (1935–2018) was a Nigerian philosopher and the first woman to earn a doctorate in philosophy in Nigeria. She taught at the University of Lagos and argued that Yoruba oral traditions, especially Ifá, contain rigorous classical philosophy comparable to Greek sources.

Main ideas

In Socrates and Ọ̀rúnmìlà she compares the Greek and Yoruba sages as oral teachers whose ideas must be recovered from tradition. She contrasts Western binary opposition with African binary complementarity, insisting that matter and idea co-belong in phenomena and that African sayings deserve critical philosophical analysis.

Major works

  • Socrates and Ọ̀rúnmìlà: Two Patron Saints of Classical Philosophy
  • Witchcraft, Reincarnation and the God-Head
  • essays on Yoruba philosophy of mind and ethics

Legacy

Oluwole made Yoruba thought audible in global philosophy curricula and modeled comparative work that refuses the myth of Africa without philosophy.

Themes in this archive

Being (1) · Knowledge (1)

  1. What needs to be characterized and critically examined are African ideas and beliefs… philosophy is about what people say rather than what they do.
  2. There is nothing that is absolutely material. There is nothing that is absolutely non-material. And in all phenomenons in the world, the two are there together.
  3. It would be ridiculous to raise the question as to whether or not Ọ̀rúnmìlà was religious. He was the leader of a religious cult which established a school structured like Plato's Academy.
  4. Look at Christianity and Islam. They have the Bible and the Koran… Now, where is our own book on Orunmila? It is a question that should worry all rational Yoruba and African people.