Start with the argument about the field itself
In 1945 a Belgian missionary, Placide Tempels, published Bantu Philosophy, claiming to have identified a coherent worldview shared across Bantu-speaking peoples, organised around vital force. It was influential and it's now the field's most contested founding text.
The objection, made most forcefully by the Beninese philosopher Paulin Hountondji, is that this is ethnophilosophy: it describes a collective worldview and calls it philosophy, when philosophy elsewhere means individuals making arguments other individuals can dispute. Attributing one shared philosophy to a whole continent, Hountondji argued, is precisely what nobody would do to Europe.
The counter-position holds that oral traditions carry real philosophical work, and that refusing to recognise it merely reimposes a European standard for what counts.
Both sides have a point, and that argument is the field's live centre rather than a preliminary to it.
| Thinker | From | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Kwasi Wiredu | Ghana | Conceptual decolonisation; consensual democracy; testing which philosophical problems survive translation into Akan. |
| Paulin Hountondji | Benin | The ethnophilosophy critique. Philosophy as argument by individuals, not as collective worldview. |
| Kwame Gyekye | Ghana | Defended communitarian ethics as genuinely philosophical, against Hountondji. |
| Ifeanyi Menkiti | Nigeria | Personhood as something achieved through community rather than given at birth. |
| Kwame Anthony Appiah | Ghana/UK/US | Cosmopolitanism, identity, and a sceptical eye on race as a category. |
| Achille Mbembe | Cameroon | Necropolitics; postcolonial power. The most cited living African theorist. |
Wiredu's test is the sharpest tool here
Kwasi Wiredu asked what happens to Western philosophical problems when you try to state them in Akan, his first language.
Some don't survive. The mind-body problem depends on a particular substance dualism that Akan vocabulary doesn't naturally produce, so the problem doesn't arise in the same form. Truth as correspondence runs into trouble because the Akan term functions differently.
His conclusion, conceptual decolonisation, isn't that Western philosophy is wrong. It's that some of its most stubborn problems may be artefacts of a particular language, and that you can only find out by trying them in another one. That's a genuinely useful contribution to philosophy generally, not only to African philosophy.
Ubuntu, carefully
Usually rendered as "a person is a person through other persons", from the Nguni languages of southern Africa. The philosophical claim is that personhood is relational and achieved rather than individual and given, which puts it directly against most Western accounts of the self.
Two cautions. It's been heavily commercialised into a management slogan, which has drained it. And its prominence owes a great deal to its use in post-apartheid South Africa, particularly around the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, so it carries a specific recent political history alongside the older idea.
Handled carefully, it's a real position with real defenders. Menkiti's work on personhood is the place to see it argued rather than asserted.
Where to start
Wiredu's Philosophy and an African Culture is the single best entry. The Companion to African Philosophy he edited is the reference work. Appiah's In My Father's House is the most readable book in the area by some distance.
Related: Frantz Fanon on the psychology of colonisation, and Egyptian mythology for the continent's older intellectual history. 365 Days of Philosophy includes Kwasi Wiredu among the 130+ thinkers.
Common questions
What is African philosophy?
Philosophical work from and about Africa, spanning oral traditions, the ethnophilosophy debate, and professional academic philosophy by thinkers such as Kwasi Wiredu, Paulin Hountondji and Kwame Anthony Appiah.
What is the ethnophilosophy debate?
The argument over whether describing a shared collective worldview counts as philosophy. Hountondji said no, since philosophy means individuals making disputable arguments. Others say refusing to count oral traditions just reimposes a European standard.
What does ubuntu mean?
Roughly 'a person is a person through other persons', from the Nguni languages. The claim is that personhood is relational and achieved rather than individual and given. It's been heavily commercialised, which has obscured the actual position.
Who is Kwasi Wiredu?
A Ghanaian philosopher who asked which Western philosophical problems survive translation into Akan. He found some don't, and argued that stubborn problems may be artefacts of a particular language. He called the project conceptual decolonisation.
What should I read first in African philosophy?
Kwasi Wiredu's Philosophy and an African Culture, or Kwame Anthony Appiah's In My Father's House, which is the most readable book in the area.