Black History Month 2020: why African philosophy matters and why we teach it

For Black History Month 2020, Lloyd Strickland, Professor of Philosophy and Intellectual History at Manchester Metropolitan University, explains how he learned to embrace the rich insights and challenges of African thought and why it is important such non-Western ideas are being taught to students

When I started my academic career 15 years ago, I would never have guessed that I would be teaching African philosophy in 2020.

In fact, 15 years ago, I had no idea there was such a thing as African philosophy.

Like virtually all philosophers educated in the West, I did not encounter African philosophy during my formal education, at any level.

Not a uniquely Western phenomenon

This is because for more than 200 years Western thinkers have treated philosophy as a uniquely Western phenomenon, denying that it has or could exist anywhere else.

This was a natural corollary of the scientific racism of the 18th Century, which divided the peoples of the world into different, colour-coded groups that reflected a colour-coded hierarchy of innate abilities, with reason being the preserve of white Europeans alone.

Starting with Immanuel Kant, heavyweight philosophical figures insisted that true philosophy was exclusively western (often exclusively European) and anything else was merely “wisdom” or “thought”, not true philosophy.

As a result of such thinking, where non-Western philosophies were taught in Western universities at all, it tended to be in religious studies or area studies departments.

No wonder that those educated in philosophy departments, as I was, were not exposed to anything beyond the western canon, leaving us with the view that philosophy and western philosophy were one and the same thing.

Changed way of thinking

Two things happened that changed my way of thinking.

First was the movement to decolonise the curriculum, which urged academics to change their courses to better reflect the ideas and experiences of peoples from all parts of the globe rather than one small part.

Second was a series of discussions with friends from Africa, who were puzzled and disappointed that while one could occasionally find Indian and Chinese philosophies taught in western universities, African philosophy was almost universally ignored.

So I immersed myself in reading everything I could find on African philosophy, especially as it pertained to my specialist area of philosophy of religion.

In truth, I didn’t expect to find much. Across most of Africa, the transmission of knowledge was until quite recently mainly through the oral tradition rather than via written texts.

A notable exception is Ethiopia, which has a written tradition going back thousands of years.

This tradition includes two important 17th century philosophical works by Zera Yacob and Walda Heywat. Yacob’s work is particularly significant.

While holed up in a cave for two years, he put his mind to work on a critical examination of religious ideas, eventually developing a true rational religion, that is, a religion in which the only acceptable doctrines are those that agree with reason.

Decades later, a number of European philosophers would attempt something similar, but few could match Yacob’s relentless application of reason in the sphere of religion.

What I had not expected to find in my survey of African philosophy was a clutch of recent monographs on the philosophies of various ethnic groups, such as the Shona (from Zimbabwe) and the Akan (from Ghana and the Ivory Coast).

Both groups offer a wealth of ideas that differ in philosophically significant ways from those commonly found in the west.

Wealth of different ideas

Take for example the concept of God. For decades, the west has struggled with the implications of a gendered God, due in no small part to Christianity’s long tradition of conceiving God in masculine terms.

The Shona God, Mwari, on the other hand, is conceived as being entirely genderless.

While many branches of Christianity have likewise claimed (at least in the last three decades) that God is genderless, their efforts have been thwarted by the lack of a suitable non-gendered pronoun to use when referring to God, as “he” and “she” typically imply gender whereas “it” implies being a thing rather than a person.

Thus when referring to God, Christians often default to using “he”, which implies gender and so gives the impression of a masculine God, with all the problems that entails.

The Shona, on the other hand, have no such problems. This is because the Shona language uses only gender-neutral pronouns that do not specify the gender of the person in question, which means that the Shona cannot slip into using masculine pronouns when referring to Mwari. 

Similarly rich insights can be found in the philosophy of the Akan.

Rich insights 

Take for example the notion of personhood, the status that gives humans moral worth.

The West typically envisages personhood as an either/or matter, such that one either has it or does not.

The Akan, on the other hand, conceive it as a matter of degree, such that personhood is something that develops across the course of a well-lived life.

This view underwrites the doctrine of selective rebirth found among the Akan, whereby rebirth is not something that repeatedly happens to everyone (as some Eastern religions teach) but is instead restricted to those who die before becoming a fully-realised person.

In such cases, rebirth gives someone the opportunity to live the complete life they are supposed to live.

Welcome alternative to Western ideas

Ideas such as these are a welcome alternative and indeed challenge to those often found and taught in the West.

So when I came to put together a new course on the philosophy of religion earlier this year, I had no hesitation in putting African philosophical ideas front and centre.

Such a focus is unusual in the UK, where the idea that philosophy is exclusively Western is still dominant, but has been welcomed by students.

And there is scope to do so much more: areas of philosophy such as ethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy can be enriched by including ideas from African philosophy.

For make no mistake: while there are many benefits of diversifying the philosophy curriculum, it is the richness of non-Western philosophies that serves as the best reason to do it.

See more of Manchester Metropolitan’s Black History Month 2020 event listings and content