Barry Hallen

As an academic discipline, African philosophy has had to overcome obstacles that were not of its own making. Indigenous African cultures had been said to provide insignificant evidence of abstract thought arising from systematic critical thinking. Generations of African philosophers were therefore compelled to challenge this generalization as racially biased and empirically false. The Ghanaian philosopher, Kwasi Wiredu, was in the forefront of this movement. He has since produced a body of work that demonstrates that the analytic approach to philosophy is perfectly compatible with African cultural and linguistic content. Within academic philosophy as an international enterprise there are still issues to be resolved between Western and non-Western traditions of thought.

Reading Wiredu is the first comprehensive overview of the philosophical thought of Kwasi Wiredu. Born in Ghana in 1931, Wiredu, an important observer and critic of philosophy generally, remains an original and penetrating African thinker. Interrelating Wiredu's philosophical writings from across decades, Barry Hallen sets forth the basic tenets and the defining features of his philosophy. Wiredu's thought is divided into five distinct but interconnected areas: his response to the philosophy of Quine on issues of logic and ontology, issues of language in philosophical reflection, the nature of truth as a practical and philosophical concern, the principle of sympathetic impartiality that all human beings must live by to survive as a group, and finally, consensus building as rooted in intentional, negotiated, and rational exchanges that are part of everyday life. Reading Wiredu explores the scope and depth of Wiredu's philosophical thought, which can be framed through what he calls a genetic methodology-a methodology that privileges environmental considerations in the production of various forms of thought. Hallen's overview is intended to assist scholars and students in grasping Wiredu's complex philosophical thought.

Consensus has been highlighted by African philosophers as an element essential to African societies, past and present, that has not been assigned the importance it deserves. The philosophers involved have done this in part by drawing upon firsthand experience of their own indigenous cultures. Consensual governance presents a rather different view of the constitution of indigenous African societies and what should be their most appropriate form of political order today. A legitimate concern, therefore, is why this element supposedly foundational to sub-Saharan African societies came to be underrated.