Jonathan O Chimakonam

In the aftermath of the great debate in African philosophy, questions have been asked which triggered what we would call post-debate disillusionments. One such question posed to the advocates of Philosophical Universalism who ridiculed ethnophilosophy is: having disestablished the episteme of what they ridiculed as ethnophilosophy, what do they offer in its place? The second question posed to both the advocates of Philosophical Universalism and Philosophical Particularism2 is: in the absence of any other point to debate about and in the absence of any commonly accepted episteme, what constitutes the concern and the future direction of African philosophy now? The fact that none of the two schools had any definite answers to these questions created unexpected disillusionments which saw many who had expended great intellectual energy during the debate silently exit the stage of African philosophy. One of our goals in this essay shall be sketching a brief outline of systematic African philosophy. In doing this, we shall show how the conversational school has evolved as a new school of thought that takes phenomenological3 issues as its concern in the contemporary period. Understandably, the promise of this new school shall be the centerpiece of this essay as we engage Bruce Janz in a conversation on the concept of »philosophical space.« Our methods shall be evaluative, critical and prescriptive.

In this paper, I consider how the discourse on global epistemic justice might be approached differently if some contributions from the African philosophical place are taken seriously. To be specific, I argue that the debate on global justice broadly has not been global. I cite as an example, the exclusion or marginalisation of African philosophy, what it has contributed and what it may yet contribute to the global epistemic edifice. I point out that this exclusion is a case of epistemic injustice. I observe that the absence of a philosophical technique that prevails on philosophers to engage with others from other traditions might be responsible for this epistemic lopsidedness and marginalisation. I go beyond the re-statement of this problem of marginalisation of African philosophy to point out relevant doctrines from the African place. I show how they are united under the methodological and ideological disposition of conversationalism. I argue that this ideology might be a better model for realising the goal of global epistemic justice which is the overcoming of all forms of exclusions and lopsidedness in global epistemic discourses through fair allocation of intellectual spaces.

That African philosophy began with frustration and not with wonder as it is in Western tradition is a radical statement with far-reaching implications. Implications that are, as challenging as they are intellectually refreshing thus reinvigorating interest in the African discourse. As the discipline of African philosophy vitiated in the post debate disillusionment met with a new generation critical fire; methodic, technical and theoretic demands and issues unresolved in the old order surface. Old questions re-emerge with new and daunting toga while new questions present fresh challenges for thought. With a carefully selected pool of emerging, original, African thinkers, the editor brought a creatively fascinating illumination upon the African episteme to herald the new era of African thought. The essays in this collection remark a sort of radical break from a long standing convention that requires serious critical reconstruction. Presenting a paradigm of creative individual philosophizing, the history, dating, criteria, logic and periodization imbroglio in African philosophy were resolved to give shape and direction to a hitherto formless discipline. Fundamental questions in ontology, epistemology, ethics and political thought gave birth to stunning metanarratives to inaugurate the conversational orientation in African philosophy. It provides a systematization that has been missing for almost a century and upon it defines an intellectually exciting future for the discipline. Whoever that wants to do African philosophy and understand it and make input must read this corpus. Carefully articulated and written, the essays in this collection constitute dependable research resources for students and researchers in all areas of African philosophy and studies.