Polycarp Ikuenobe. Philosophical Perspectives on Communalism and Morality in African Traditions

African American Review, Winter, 2007 by Babacar M'Baye

Polycarp Ikuenobe. Philosophical Perspectives on Communalism and Morality in African Traditions. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006. 329 pp. $27.95.

This book is a much-needed conceptual and pragmatic study of the existence and significance of African communalism and philosophy. Ikuenobe discusses the theories of various scholars of African philosophy and culture, including Peter Bodunrin, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Kwasi Wiredu, and Kwame Gyekye, and criticizes them for denying both the existence of a rational, systematic, and epistemic African philosophy and the subsistence of a moderately liberal African communalism that allows the individual to engage in critical reasoning and acquire rational beliefs within the normal strictures that oral tradition and elders provide for the well-being of the community.

Ikuenobe conceptualizes communalism as both an African conceptual framework and a set of cultural practices that prioritize the role and function of the collective group over the individual in a worldwide context. Using the African saying "it takes a village to raise a child," which Hillary Clinton chose as the title of one of her books and the key theme of her 1996 presidential speech, he suggests the importance of African communal belief and philosophy and the education that Westerners could gain from learning them. Ikuenobe supports his argument with a conception of personhood and the relations between the individual and community in various African cultures as dynamics that reflect legitimate and critical African modes of inquiry and representation of morality; the latter demonstrate the existence of an African philosophical tradition comparable to its Western counterpart. He writes, "I argue that moral thought in African cultures, as a reflection of communalism, has features of rationalism, naturalism, humanism, and rational authoritarianism, and that these features compare to some features and notions of moral thought in Western philosophy" (3). Later, he makes a strong case for the existence of a pervasive African philosophical tradition that transcends the variety of cultures and ethnic groups in Africa. Opposing the Western conception of Africa as a monolithic continent, he argues that "it is as reasonable to talk about a philosophical theme in African cultures, and hence African philosophy, as it is to talk about Western culture or philosophy, American cultures or philosophy, continental or analytic philosophy, in terms of a dominant or common theme, even though Western or American cultures and continental philosophy are by no means monolithic" (5).

To understand the significance of Ikuenobe's study, one must examine the originality of its metaphilosophical and comparative methodology. The first concept calls attention to the legitimate ways that common themes in African cultures and traditions can be discussed, or ought to be discussed, in their own particular and unique historical and cultural contexts. The second term identifies the method of using the same criteria that have traditionally been used to analyze dominant themes in Western cultures as standards for studying African philosophy. The major questions that the author asks could be summarized as follows: If Western thoughts and the theories about them are considered as philosophy, cannot their African counterparts be viewed in similar ways, especially when African cultures reflect vibrant systems of beliefs and knowledge that establish the existence of African philosophy? The author's insightful question is a response to critics such as Bodunrin, Appiah, and Wiredu, who have either denied the existence of African philosophy or have placed it beneath Western philosophy.

Addressing a major issue in recent Africanist scholarship, Ikuenobe criticizes the unscientific requirement that the explanation of an African concept be done only from a Western perspective. For example, according to Ikuenobe, Appiah maintains that African worldviews can only be called philosophy in "the 'folk' and 'debased' sense of philosophy that represents a set of unsystematic ideas, beliefs, dogmas, myths, sayings, and values that people have or share in common as a basis for living" (25). Using a metaphilosophical methodology that seeks to understand how the above critics arrived at their conclusions, Ikuenobe identifies the recurring elements that the critics discriminately consider as being particular to Western philosophy. These include (1) conceptual and abstract questions and issues; (2) analytic, critical, systematic, and adversarial approaches; (3) a rigorous and rational method of science; and (4) the documentation of individual persons' thoughts as opposed to the thoughts of a group of people (25). Ikuenobe describes these criteria as promoting a reductionist, analytic, circular, and parochial conception of philosophy. Alternatively, Ikuenobe calls for a methodology that regards African ethnophilosophy (or the so-called African 'folk' philosophy) as a valid and legitimate philosophy about African categories of thoughts and modes of reality. To Ikuenobe, Africans must take pride in their cultures and abandon the "colonial mentality" that preaches individualistic, liberal, and autonomy-based values and epistemology over communalism. (46).