Aribiah Attoe

This essay argues that Descartes’ cogito, although a significant contribution to so-called ‘Western’ epistemological and ontological traditions, reveals new insights when tested against an Ubuntu-relational framework. The framework that allows for Descartes’ method of doubt and the conclusions about being that follow is, for us, inadequate, as it fails to address some crucial presumptions that trail a relational perspective. It is in this inadequacy that the cogito loses its promise and bows to what we take to be a more comprehensive foundational truth from the African perspective; that relationality precedes thought and concretises existence. What follows, then, is our attempt to show that this thesis is plausible by re-examining the Cogito in light of the Ubuntu relational framework. To do this, we will provide a brief exposition of Descartes’ journey towards the Cogito, especially as presented in the Meditations and the Discourse on Method. Having done that, we will proceed to outline a metaphysical account of the Ubuntu relational framework, and, finally, place Ubuntu in conversation with Descartes’ cogito. It is in this conversation that new insights on (at least) one foundational truth would be revealed – ‘Konke kuyikho ngokunye’; that is, that ‘all things are, through other things’.

This book introduces fundamental questions and problems driving debates in contemporary African philosophy of religion, which has emerged recently as one of the most vibrant new fields of African philosophy. The chapters in this book respond to African God-talk and approach questions like the nature of God, the problem of evil, death and immortality, transhumanism, moral enhancement, atheism, meaningful existence, and the decolonisation of African religious concepts. This book reflects the diversity of voices and perspectives in the literature with its critical focus on such themes as the extent of the powers of the limited God, schools of thought in contemporary African philosophy of religion, the monotheistic credentials of African Traditional Religion (ATR), and the panpsychist presuppositions of African philosophy and ATR. The book addresses the possibility of immortality, the good life, decolonising the concept of Esu, Igbo notions of the person and the problem of evil, and transhumanist ideals and the limited harmony-God. Finally, the book highlights the significance of theosophical debate between the African perfect God perspective championed by philosophers like John S. Mbiti, Kwame Gyekye, and Ebunoluwa O. Oduwole, and the African limited God view defended by philosophers like Kwasi Wiredu, Okot p’Bitek, John A.I. Bewaji, Ada Agada, and Aribiah David Attoe. The book is of interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduate students active in the fields of African philosophy, African religious studies, African studies, comparative philosophy, global philosophy of religion, theology, and intercultural and comparative religious studies.

The question of life’s meaning is an important philosophical question and is a question that has received little attention within the African philosophical space. It is this gap that partly inspires the writing of this book. In this particular chapter, I provide a brief background to the inspiration(s) for this book, as well as the main issues that this book intends to tackle. Furthermore, I present the reader with an overview of the major ideas projected in the book, the method used to arrive at those ideas as well as the overall structure of the book. This chapter is an invitation to the reader to delve into the intriguing contents of The Question of Life’s Meaning: An African Perspective.

In this chapter, I provide an understanding of the underlying metaphysics that undergirds (especially) traditional African conceptions of meaning in/of life. This metaphysics is the dominant metaphysics that views reality as an interplay between spiritual realities and physical realities. This metaphysics is also based on the deeply relational metaphysics that permeates much of the written discourses in African philosophy. I take this dominant metaphysical view as the foundation on which traditional African views about the question of life’s meaning are grounded. Providing this overview of the dominant view allows the reader to properly contextualise what follows in the subsequent chapter(s) where I describe African views on the question of life’s meaning.

In this chapter, I present a concept of the meaning of life that I show is plausible. I argue that any ideas about the meaning of life (understood in the way I explained it in part one) would involve what I have now termed “ratio-structuralism”. This is the idea that talk of the meaning of life primarily involves claims about coherence and an overarching goal—one that is subjectively pursued and makes sense to the individual whose life is at stake. Despite this, I further show that a lack of coherence and/or the finality of death undercuts the meaning of life and consequently motivates meaninglessness.

In the discussions related to the question of the meaning of life, I hinted that the idea of death would play a crucial role in talk about the potential meaninglessness of life. In this chapter, I elaborate on this premise. First, I provide an overview of what I take to be a general understanding of the concept of death, which considers it as the decline and decay of a biological entity to the point where regeneration is impossible, and an irreversible decay is inevitable. I also consider African notions of death, which view death as a transition event or process of disembodiment in which the human spirit continues to live on in some way. Following this, I then show the implausibility of the idea of disembodiment, arguing that there is nothing more to the human person than her physical components. In this way, I conclude that the finality of death implies nothingness and a deep plunge into meaninglessness. Furthermore, I note that even if disembodiment were a possibility the tedium of immortality still stands to render our lives meaningless.

In this chapter, I attempt to present some plausible theories of meaning in African thought. Achieving this would involve proffering answers to the question: what are the African conceptions of the meaning in/of life? To do this, I present three salient accounts of meaningfulness, viz., the African God-purpose theory of meaning, the vital force theory of meaning and the communal normative function theory of meaning. I provide some of the underlying assumptions undergirding these theories and show how they work.

In the available literature on African conceptions of meaning, the focus has mostly been on traditional African conceptions of meaning in life, or conceptions of meaning that appeal to those traditional views. My concern, in this chapter, is to present to the reader some conceptions of meaning that can either apply to contemporary African life and/or are inspired by contemporary African life. To achieve this goal, I begin by first identifying two prominent accounts of meaning that appeal to contemporary African life. The first account is what I refer to as the “living a religious life (LRL)” theory. This account conceives meaningfulness in terms of living and/or pursuing certain religious ideals that reflect the values of one’s religious institution or sect. The second theory that we shall discuss is what I term the “Cluster theory” of meaning. Mirroring the “Yoruba cluster view”, this view conceives of meaning as the pursuit of a cluster of certain specific ideals—self-sufficiency, raising child(ren) and achieving socio-cultural milestones as well as a high status in society.

In this chapter, I frame what I believe to be a plausible account of meaning in life—the passionate yearning theory. This view loosely draws inspiration from Ada Agada’s metaphysical system, which he calls “consolationism” (specifically the idea of yearning) and draws from my contestation with traditional African conceptions of meaning (especially the communal normative function theory). Within the context of this view, meaning is conceived as the internally derived passionate yearning and striving, for an ideal, or a particular state of affairs that corrals a plausibly objective claim to facticity, that is not immoral and that is worth pursuing for its own sake. To argue for this theory of meaning, I begin by presenting an analysis of what I take to be the foundational criteria for the view. These criteria, I take to be: the lack of immorality, intrinsic subjectivity, passion, yearning and striving. I will then show how these foundational ideas coalesce to form the passionate yearning theory. Finally, I shall defend the view against possible criticisms and distinguish it from other views that appear to bear a similarity to it.

In this chapter, I engage in a conversation with the dominant understanding of African metaphysics, which views God as a personalised entity that is spiritual, and also views reality as being composed of, and influenced by spiritual agents/entities/realities. I reject this view for its implausibility and, instead, propose a materialistic understanding of the world. Based on this critique of the underlying metaphysics undergirding traditional African conceptions of meaning, I also make the first real critique of African conceptions of meaning in the literature.

If we grant the fact that life is ultimately meaningless, one question that might arise is: How does one live with the meaninglessness of life? In this chapter, I introduce the philosophy of indifference as a way of living (or dying) with meaninglessness. I identify two mutually exclusive and equally plausible modes of indifference—suicide and living for living sake. While suicide serves as the ultimate acknowledgement of meaninglessness, living for living sake involves an unwillingness to hope for meaning as well as a comic understanding of the absurdity of our existence. I argue that both suicide and living for living sake are equally viable modes of/for living with meaninglessness.

In the previous chapter(s) I had made certain claims about meaning in life, the meaning of life and the meaninglessness of life. It is only pertinent that in this section of this work, I take the principle of indifference, and indeed all that I have said, to its logical conclusion. In other words, I shall be asking questions that relate to human existence in general. The two major questions that I shall attempt to answer are the following: If life is meaningless, is it then moral to procreate? And if life is meaningless, is it valuable or is it immoral to advocate for (what I term) species suicide? In my answer to these questions, I claim that one must adopt an indifferent approach—i.e. one that is not averse to procreating or not procreating, living as a species or dying as a species.

In the previous chapters, I alluded to the fact that although death does not allow us to talk about the meaning of life, a longer life or an eternal life would equally not grant us the meaningfulness we desire. In the case of a longer life, death still plays the role of establishing nothingness and in the case of an eternal life (so far, an impossible reality), issues bordering around boredom, the higher chance of susceptibility to constant harm and the eventual redundancy of our values and sources of meaning (due to the infinite nature of our now eternal lives), generally make personal immortality unattractive. These conclusions leave me inclined to consider the view that life is ultimately meaningless and as such deny a meaning of life considered as a whole. From the foregoing, I shall in this chapter examine some responses to meaninglessness and why they fail. I shall also consider Ada Agada’s consolationism—the idea that the moments of joy in our lives should stand as a consolation for us in the face of our futile and tragic existence—as a plausible but inadequate way of dealing with the tragedy of existence. Thus, setting the stage for my eventual proposal of indifference as the proper mode/mood for living with meaninglessness.

In this book, we have sought to answer the question(s): what are the African conceptions of the meaning of life? Which one, if any, is defensible? And what does it entail for how to live? In answering the primary questions of this book I have not only delineated what I mean when I speak about the meaning in/of life, I have also painstakingly discussed theories of meaning that I have drawn from contemporary and traditional African thought. I have also shown why I take human life to be inescapably meaningless and proposed the philosophy of indifference as a way of dealing with this meaninglessness. What follows, in this concluding chapter, are my closing remarks on the matter.

Philosophers, from the time of Socrates have made various insightful inroads into understanding human nature. Paramount to this understanding of human nature is the understanding of the human intellect and its mode of operation. Generally, most scholars approach this issue from the standpoint of a dualistic ontology, identifying the human mind, assumed to be a mental non-spatial entity, as the seat of human intellect, with the human body the thoughtless “other”. Identifiable with this mode of thought is a massive problem. In simple terms, this problem arises from the difficulty in understanding how two entities, said to operate in two very different dimensions, interact with each other, such that when the mind wills, the body acts. The difficulty does not lie in the fact that different dimensions are involved, it subsists in the incompatibility that the essential differences of these two dimensions, presupposes—that is, the difference between matter and spirit. This problem, commonly known as the “mind-body problem” is one of the central focal points of this essay. I shall attempt to address this problem by adopting what I refer to as “proto-phenomenalism”, as an alternative explanatory model. This model eliminates the idea of a “mind”, largely approaching the mind-body problem from a materialistic point of view. The implications of this approach on consciousness, the meaning(lessness) of our existence, the possibility of thought engineering as well as its religious implications, are at the very least puzzling. I adopt the conversational method in African philosophy as my preferred method of research. Through rigorous and critical questioning, interrogations, protestations and contestations (hallmarks of the conversational method), I, in conversation with previous explanatory models, reconstruct—what I consider to be—a more robust explanatory model with regards to the mind-body problem.

This insightful book is the first edited book volume in the literature to concern itself, primarily, with the question of life’s meaning from the, largely under-explored, African perspective. In this collection, the authors have undertaken to answer this question, and other related questions, by showing some of the possible conceptions of life’s meaning that can be derived from traditional African perspectives. African Perspectives to the Question of Life's Meaning will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of philosophy, African studies, psychology, and religion. This book was originally published as a special issue of South African Journal of Philosophy.

The literature on the question of life’s meaning has primarily focused on agent-centred paths to meaningfulness. This path involves an individual making a concerted effort towards achieving meaningfulness in life. Thus, even in defining meaning or presenting a concept of meaning, philosophers often approach such a description from an agent-centred perspective. In this essay, I articulate a patient-centred approach to meaning particularly from the African philosophical perspective. Drawing chiefly from African relational viewpoints, I develop the “patient-centred variable”, which ought to be contemplated by any definition of what meaningfulness entails. This patient-centred variable is the idea that a life can be meaningful (at least, momentarily) if it receives from other people acts that are considered (within a particular societal context) acts of love, communion and/or kindness, which transcend normal relationality among human beings and elicit personal feelings of esteem and worthiness. I begin by extracting clues from African metaphysics and from practical ethical values, which all suggest the plausibility of received meaning. Then I conceptualise what I call the patient-centred variable (PcV), and present it as a plausible and necessary addition (not a stand-alone concept of meaning) to any conceptual analysis of meaning.

Ethnophilosophy, although glorified by some African philosophers, remains a problem in our undertakings in African philosophy. In its infancy, the problem revolved around the call for a total decolonization of African thought and philosophy, which eventually led to the proliferation of a vast array of mostly descriptive literature about the cultural views and practices of the African, sold to us as not only philosophy but genuine African philosophy. In more recent times, due to the growing development of African philosophy, this drive towards description is gradually waning and from its dying flames, a new and more subtle problem has arisen. This problem lays in the call by most African philosophers, to make philosophy done in Africa to be more African in nature, the methodology and/or logic of African philosophy becomes a narrow discourse which is based on the dogma of descriptive story telling of ethnophilosophy. This is the problem which this essay seeks to address. Thus I shall in this essay, expose the myth of ethnophilosophy and thereafter suggest that African philosophy builds its foundation on criticality rather than ethnophilosophy. As an addendum to this, it is also suggested here that the narrow nature of the false descriptive methodology of mainstream African philosophy be at the very least, de-emphasised. I shall employ conversationalism as the method of my inquiry. Keywords : Ethnophilosophy, myth, African philosophy, conversationalism, conversational school.

In line with the tradition of the Conversational School of Philosophy, this essay provides a rare and unique space of discourse for the authors to converse about the place of the ‘ethno’ in African philosophy. This conversation is a revisit, a renewal of the key positions that have coloured the ethnophilosophy debate by the conversers who themselves are notable contributors to arguments for and against the importance of ethnophilosophy in the unfolding of African philosophy particularly in the last decade or so. There are four key positions that have been argued for in the pages of this paper: ethnophilosophy is not African philosophy and it is useless and inimical to the growth of African philosophy and should thus be jettisoned – Matolino; ethnophilosophy is the foundation for African philosophy as it provides the raw materials for African philosophical discourse – Ogbonnaya and Agada; ethnophilosophy has some value for African philosophy but it is definitely not the foundation for genuine African philosophy the way criticism and rigours are – Attoe; and ethnophilosophy can be adequately conceived as African philosophy particularly in terms of its etymology as culture or race philosophy, dealing with a philosophical or critical reflections on, and exposition of, immanent principles in African thought – Mangena and Etieyibo. These conversers provide good arguments for the positions they hold, arguments that are of course, open for further interrogation. Two points can be concluded from the ethnophilosophy debate provided in this essay: the disparities in views among conversers it seems, stem ultimately from the understanding of ethnophilosophy that each converser holds, which varies from the notion of a method used at some point in the history of African philosophy, to an etymological understanding as culture philosophy; and the debate about ethnophilosophy in the spirit of any philosophical tradition remains a perennial one that is yet to be concluded. This essay certainly concretises what is on ground and paves the way for further discussions.

In line with the tradition of the Conversational School of Philosophy, this essay provides a rare and unique space of discourse for the authors to converse about the place of the ‘ethno’ in African philosophy. This conversation is a revisit, a renewal of the key positions that have coloured the ethnophilosophy debate by the conversers who themselves are notable contributors to arguments for and against the importance of ethnophilosophy in the unfolding of African philosophy particularly in the last decade or so. There are four key positions that have been argued for in the pages of this paper: ethnophilosophy is not African philosophy and it is useless and inimical to the growth of African philosophy and should thus be jettisoned – Matolino; ethnophilosophy is the foundation for African philosophy as it provides the raw materials for African philosophical discourse – Ogbonnaya and Agada; ethnophilosophy has some value for African philosophy but it is definitely not the foundation for genuine African philosophy the way criticism and rigours are – Attoe; and ethnophilosophy can be adequately conceived as African philosophy particularly in terms of its etymology as culture or race philosophy, dealing with a philosophical or critical reflections on, and exposition of, immanent principles in African thought – Mangena and Etieyibo. These conversers provide good arguments for the positions they hold, arguments that are of course, open for further interrogation. Two points can be concluded from the ethnophilosophy debate provided in this essay: the disparities in views among conversers it seems, stem ultimately from the understanding of ethnophilosophy that each converser holds, which varies from the notion of a method used at some point in the history of African philosophy, to an etymological understanding as culture philosophy; and the debate about ethnophilosophy in the spirit of any philosophical tradition remains a perennial one that is yet to be concluded. This essay certainly concretises what is on ground and paves the way for further discussions. Keywords: Ethno, African philosophy, Foundationalist, Universalist, Particularist, The common moral position, Ethnophilosophy

For a long time, some African thinkers have sought to project communalism—or, more specifically, ubuntu—as the face of social life in African thought. Unfortunately, rather than emphasizing ubuntu, the reality of things in Africa portrays contextualization and exclusion in some of its most destructive form. One of the more prominent examples of this is the Afrophobic sentiments that have pervaded and continue to pervade the continent. Often, ubuntu is touted as the solution to these types of problems since it emphasizes belongingness and a certain camaraderie that involves mutual caring and sharing. However, this article proposes conversationalism as an alternative to ubuntu, which is too bordered, in one sense, or too utopic, in another. It begins by properly mapping out a general overview of the sociopolitical and existential context in which most Africans live today. It then shows how the current iteration of ubuntu fails. Finally, borrowing from conversationalism, it proposes arumaristics (or creative struggle) as the more viable solution to the problem of Afrophobia and other related forms of exclusion.

Oftentimes, we have been informed that democracy is the best form of government possible. In African politics, this view has mostly been adopted and pursued as true. Surprisingly, democracy has mostly failed as a system in most parts of the continent—with most democratic governments undermining the mandates of the citizens who are supposed to have placed them in power, and also escalating the already spiralling decline of the continent through bad leadership and corruption. In this article, and with Nigeria as the primary case study, I offer explanations regarding why democracy fails in most African countries. Specifically, I argue that mass miseducation and false self‐interestedness are the main culprits that limit the success of democracy in Africa. I further propose that democracy in Africa can only be salvaged when there is proper moral ideology guiding the informal education of citizens, when citizens are offered proper quality formal education that would grant them the necessary skills and aid them to make informed decisions, and when citizens take a turn from false self‐interestedness to true self‐interestedness (which is fealty to collective interests).

In our contemporary and futuristic times, immortality is slowly being extracted from the divine/spiritual arena by means of science and technology. There is the optimism that through the scientific and technological revitalization of human nature, humans would probably attain eternal existence in this world. This optimism, and its underlying philosophy, is based on something known as transhumanism. In this chapter, we examine the implications of transhumanism for the question of life’s meaning, especially from an African perspective. Specifically, we pit transhumanism against three dominant traditional African notions of meaning viz. the God’s purpose theory, the vital force theory and the communal normative function theory in a bid to decipher which theory, amongst the three, best undergirds a meaningful transhuman existence. We conclude that the communal view is the most attractive of the three theories in terms of answering the question of how to live meaningfully as a transhuman/post-human being. According to the communal view, a meaningful life is one that strives to acquire personhood of the highest level by performing those acts that ensure harmonious living, communal flourishing, and the common good. Attaining personhood, thus, presents itself as one plausible overarching purpose for a transhuman existence.

In answering the question of life’s meaning, the African perspective is only just beginning to emerge. While this is true, a critical examination of African theories of meaningfulness, the possibility of life’s meaninglessness, as well as ideas about the proper mode/mood for living with the meaninglessness of life are largely underexplored within the African philosophical tradition. This book provides several plausible accounts of meaning in/of life from an African perspective, examines the relationship between death and life’s meaningfulness, and explores the possibility of life’s meaninglessness, proposing the “philosophy of indifference” as the proper mode/mood for living with the meaninglessness of life.

The question of life’s meaning is a universal question that not only cuts across various cultures but also resides at the back of the mind of almost every individual that has ever existed. The very desire to continue striving in this world suggests that there is something about life that makes it worth living. Even in the throes of despair and suicide, there is something that drives the existential angst that awakens such despair. Both striving and despair in life stand as subtle and benign answers to questions about whether one considers his/her life meaningful. In African philosophy today, answer to the question of life’s meaning from an African perspective is receiving more attention now than it has in the last few decades. This chapter is a summary of some of the dominant views in the current literature on African conceptions of meaning. Specifically, it explores traditional conceptions of meaning such as the love view, the God’s purpose view (destiny and divine law view), the vital force view, the communal view, and the (Yoruba) Cluster view, as well as the more contemporary views such as living a religious life and the contemporary cluster view.

Current studies of anti/‐natalism have been carried out mainly in the context of western philosophy. In this article, we offer a pro‐natalist view based on Confucian and Afro‐communitarian philosophy (Sino‐African ethics). Grounded in this Sino‐African perspective, we uphold that there is, at least, one reason to believe that not only is it morally permissible to procreate, but also that on some occasions, procreating is what morality prescribes. Specifically, we contend that, from a Sino‐African perspective, procreating sometimes is the best way to fulfil duties of reciprocity and care towards our parents.

Philosophy of mind as a branch of philosophy has been growing. With a vast array of literature stemming from Plato to Descartes, down to Daniel Dennett and Paul and Patricia Churchland, there is no doubt that a lot has been said in that area regarding the mind-body problem, consciousness, the role of the human brain, etc. More so, with the advancement in neuroscience, newer and more interesting discussions linking neuroscience to philosophy of mind is inevitable. Equally as interesting, is the philosophical work that is done in relation to the development of Artificial Intelligence in terms of robotics, artificial intelligence systems, technology-based human enhancements, etc. In all these, the African perspective has been largely underexplored and the salient perspectives of modern and contemporary African philosophers are rarely engaged. What we do in this chapter is to present an overview of the general concerns of this book. This concern is two-fold – the first part tackles issues related to consciousness, identity, and the mind-body problem, and the second part generally deals with issues related to Artificial intelligence and human enhancement.

This book offers a first glimpse into contemporary African Philosophical thought, which covers issues related to the mind-body relationships, the problem of consciousness, the ethics of artificial intelligence, the meaning of life and other topics. Taking inspiration from the conversational tradition in African philosophy, this book not only engages with and takes inspiration from traditional African thought, but also engages with philosophical views outside the philosophical tradition in a bid to present a holistic understanding of the problems that are central to the book. The volume is relevant for professional African philosophers, philosophers of mind, philosophers of AI, undergraduate and postgraduate philosophy students, and African Studies scholars.

In response to the question about what the most attractive method for African philosophy is, we consider conversational thinking as an alternative to pre-existing methods in African philosophy, especially in contemporary times. We shall show in this essay that the heavy critique of the ethnophilosophical method–concerning its inadequacy–left a gap that both philosophic sagacity and hermeneutics have failed to fill. In the contemporary period, Innocent Asouzu developed what he calls complementary reflection, which is a framework for bridge-building between old and new, weak and strong, local and alien and in all aspects of reality, which he claims constitute missing links of reality. Unfortunately, Asouzu’s method of complementary reflection appears to say little about resolving conflicts among dissenting variables, and in this regard, his method, though promising, also remains inadequate. Our goal here is to demonstrate that conversational thinking is a viable attempt at a systematised and well-developed methodology for doing African Philosophy – one which proceeds from an African place and discovers its relevance in the global space. To properly articulate the relevance and viability of conversational thinking, we begin by examining, in some detail, the various flaws of the pre-existing methodologies of African philosophy. We go a step further to explicate the tenets of conversational thinking and present it as a viable method(ology) borne out of the African experience for African philosophy. Furthermore, we introduce the up-down movement of thought as a novel description of conversational thinking at the level of what we refer to as the sub-micro level of conversational thinking. We conclude by identifying the ways in which conversational thinking situates African philosophy and can drive its discourses in contemporary time.