The exclusion of the African contribution to the conceptual development of reality, appearance and knowledge in the history of philosophy

Abstract

Few histories of philosophy have probed the contributions of Africans or people of
 African descent. A significant section of modern and contemporary intellectual
 historians, unlike their classical counterparts, regards civilization to have been
 transmitted only by white privileged males (Keita 1994, p. 147). This is what Cornell
 West coins “malestream” history (West 1990, p.94). The problem lies squarely on
 Eurocentrism, according to which the “Eurocentric west is trapped, even in its best
 intentions, by its concentration on itself, its selfishness, its inability to draw a wider
 picture” (Asante quoted in Akafor 1991, p. 253).
 Undoubtedly, this has relegated significant other participants to the sidelines. Thus,
 the contribution of non- Europeans, of women, and children to global history has
 neither been fully scrutinized nor appreciated. Furthermore, the issue of race came to
 be used as an index of civility, much to the detriment on Africans who occupied the
 least place in the racial taxonomy. The net result, according to Keita, is that, "the
 voice of civilization elaborated over millennia has been stilled" (Keita 1994, p.147).
 The work is a commitment to pluralism. Pluralism is the view that there are many
 possible mature human ways of thinking about the world, not just one privileged one.
 Pluralism allows several intellectual perspectives to feed into some kind of global
 history. In science, pluralistic methodology is the integration of the various methods
 and insights into the investigation of scientific phenomena (Barnes 1998, p. 31). Also
 when it comes to speaking about the knowledge of reality, numerous possibilities
 abound (Jackson 1999, 12.) The pluralistic vision encapsulated here is generally
 integrationist. It is the view that in the writing of history in general and history of
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 philosophy in particular other voices matter. As such, the work challenges the notion
 that “human reason best expresses itself within terms of Western male gender norms”
 (Sherry Turkle and Seymour Papert 1990, p.141)
 The work pads through these less frequently chartered frontiers of knowledge. Does it
 mean that Africans are intellectually sterile to a point that they have made no
 intellectual achievements – no science, no technological innovation, no discoveries,
 no meaningful philosophy? While there are seemingly unending debates about
 whether or not African philosophy exists (Oyeshile 2008; Taiwo 1998), the present
 work focuses on how the records of African philosophy have been produced.
 This thesis argues that this is not the case. A substantial amount of intellectual
 resources that belong to the Africa continent either went unnoticed appropriated
 without acknowledgement or simply discarded. This scenario was largely a result of
 the politics of knowledge. Powerful communities, with dominant ideologies,
 technologies and philosophies have ensured that the African and other voices either
 remained unheard or expropriated, but with no due recognition given to the authors of
 such knowledge. The net result was the existence of African philosophy under
 ‘erasure’. Thus, there is need to unlock this hegemonic intellectualism. A prospective
 interpretation of world history does not thrive on polarization and binary opposition.
 An integrative approach to human history allows for the celebration of the
 achievements of Africans, Europeans and other players in the processes of history
 making. This is what this thesis seeks to demonstrate from Chapter 1 through to
 Chapter 7.
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 The thesis also seeks to argue that Africans have some
 untapped worldviews, which when appropriated and utilized enrich our understanding
 of the world would provide alternative solutions to some of the world’s burning
 problems. Western philosophy does not encompass universal knowledge (Taiwo
 1998, p.4). There is need to glean through the cultural resources of various other
 communities of the world. This ensures a rich mosaic of perspectives of worldviews
 and sensibilities. In this way, the world is enriched with diverse perspectives and
 solutions to some of the fundamental problems of human history.
 Thus it would be risky and unprofitable to reject wholesale, the cultural resources of
 other communities, as their contributions will not be brought to bear in combating
 global challenges. The best that the history of philosophy can do is to mine from the
 global cultural ore and work out how all these resources may be utilized in solving the
 problems of the contemporary world. This, in the end is the moral benefit of history –
 the promotion of human wellbeing.