Leye Komolafe

In this book chapter, I offer an individuated philosophical reflection on the persona, scholarship, and pedagogical legacy of Nigerian legal and political philosopher Dr. Jare Oladosu on the occasion of his retirement from my alma mater, Obafemi Awolowo University (Ile-Ife, Nigeria). I approach the discourse through a blend of literary and academic tones to draw from my lived experience as his former student. I utilize narrative prose and imagery alongside analytical critique to explore how our ordinary experiences and deep interpersonal bonds connect to high philosophical discourse within the African jurisprudential landscape. This style is deliberate, intending a move away from rigid biographical or highly curated autobiographical modes of reflecting on a retiree’s professional life. I analytically synthesize Oladosu’s theoretical positions, including political voluntarism, legal positivism, and liberalism, into a personal narrative of mentorship, quiet academic radicalism, and intellectual humility. Finally, I use the metaphor of ‘a thousand roasted brown beans’, a marker of our shared ‘coffee fellowship’, as a guiding trope in this festschrift.

The question of whether the state can be justified remains a persistent and contested problem in political philosophy. That the state exercises political power is not in dispute; what raises concern is whether, and under what conditions, that power amounts to legitimate authority. In some cases, appeals have been made to the functions performed by the state, which include the provision of security, resolution of coordination problems, the protection of rights, dissemination of justice, and the identification and furtherance of the common good. These tasks have been used to explain why political institutions are valuable or even necessary. Nonetheless, they do not, in isolation, and without further argument, establish a right to rule. The question of state justification is therefore beyond what the state does. It concerns what, if anything, morally warrants the authority it claims.

Political obligation remains one of the most discussed, and contested, topics in political philosophy. Whether there is a peremptory or prima facie duty to obey the state has been the subject of rigorous philosophical debate, with philosophers offering various theories both in support of and against political obligation. Many theorists argue that if individuals are obligated to obey the state, then the state must possess legitimate authority. Defending such authority requires that the state itself be justified. Thus, a foundational question in the debate on political obligation is whether the state can, in fact, be justified. Philosophical anarchists challenge this premise, arguing that the state cannot be justified, and therefore cannot claim a moral right to demand obedience. What grounds, if any, can be offered for the authority of the state, and citizens' duty to obey its laws? We will explore various recent attempts to justify state authority, as well as some efforts to claim that there is no justification. This edited volume includes contributions from researchers engaging with contemporary discussions on this question, focusing on developments from the 20th century to the present. The scope of the book is limited to the Western philosophical tradition.

African philosophy remains bedeviled by relics of Hegel’s racist chants against the rationality of Africans, and this situation deserves revisitation and reevaluation for reconstructive purposes. In this paper, I implicate Hegel’s concatenations as necessitating the reactive fervour within which a significant portion of the themes, thesis, and content of African philosophy is locked. This influence, which partially eclipses African philosophy, I term historical denialism. In an attempt to repudiate Hegel’s constructs, some philosophers in Africa seem ideologically contrived into developing or discovering an authentic philosophy for Africans, and in the process, advocate cultural essentialism as determinants of philosophy—at least logically. Averring that philosophy is not the sole representation of thought, I proceed by exploring other trajectories which could have informed a non-reactive African philosophy, while logically linking Hegel’s denialism to subtle silencing of his idealism within philosophical discourses in Africa. This subtle silencing, which shortchanges pedagogy of philosophy on the continent, forms the other half of the eclipse in philosophy in Africa. I conclude the discussion by asserting that while it may be imperative to exorcise Hegelian ghost in African philosophy, to use Olufemi Taiwo’s coinage, essentialising African philosophy would either further enmesh the field in a reactive predisposition, or limit its reflective and multifarious possibilities.

African jurisprudence, like African philosophy, continues to be hotly debated. This article contends that the debate straddles the uniqueness claim which either emphasises the existence or possibility of a peculiar legal framework on the continent, and a historical co-extensional position reiterating that African jurisprudence is a continuum of other legal traditions. The article argues that there is no uniquely African jurisprudence, and that what obtains within the structures of jurisprudence on the continent also exists within various legal traditions elsewhere, and as such can at best be described as ‘jurisprudence in Africa’ rather than ‘African jurisprudence’. It defends this thesis through analytic and comparative explications of the content of natural law theory and legal positivism as experienced on the continent. It concedes that relics of the colonial legal experience create contestations that inform scholars’ calls for a return to traditional legal systems. It concludes that a reconstructive jurisprudence in Africa must take cognisance of the continent’s historical and evolutionary legal experiences, but that a unified or monolithic theory may not be sufficient to address the choice of functional jurisprudence. Keywords African jurisprudence, jurisprudence in Africa, African legal evolution, diffused legal theories