A great Philosopher of Ghana

THE FORGOTTEN AND NEGLECTED AFRICAN PHILOSOPHERS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT

Just now, I was thinking that why we did not find any mention of African philosophers anywhere. Do we all understand that Africans cannot become a philosopher? Are we given a belief that a black could not get wisdom as only white people have elected to become wise? I am surprised that most of the books of philosophers, writers, thinkers, and politicians are biographies, but even not get mention them. We know many players from various fields become famous. But no scientist but no wise man. Surprisingly, even after many philosophers have been deliberating the core of African philosophy they have a long and eminent past that seeks a connection as the element of African philosophical inquiry in a broad background of its intellectual and social history. These demands highlight how philosophical study addresses specific concerns and leitmotifs firmly recognized in academic philosophy's normative standards and tradition, but also realizes the accuracies that emerge from actual difficulties related to Black intellectual and social history. In this article, I am just making a small indevoured to highlight some of the ??African philosophers who defied time and prejudice to leave an indelible imprint on the philosophical world.

Kwasi Wiredu

He is often recognized as Africa's finest philosopher, who was born in Ghana in 1931 and was exposed to philosophy in his early adolescence, particularly practical psychology. He had for decades elaborated on a project he coined the term “conceptual decolonization” in contemporary African systems of thought.?By conceptual decolonization, Wiredu advocates a re-examination of current African epistemic (philosophy of the knowledge or cognitive) formations to accomplish two aims.?First, he wishes to subvert unsavory aspects of tribal culture embedded in modern African thought to make that thought more viable.?Second, he intends to dislodge unnecessary Western epistemologies that are to be found in African philosophical practices. At the time of colonized regions of the world, decolonization remains a contemporary issue both at the highest theoretical levels and at the basic level of everyday existence. After African countries attained political liberation, decolonization became an immediate and overwhelming preoccupation.?A broad spectrum of academic disciplines took up the conceptual challenges of decolonization in a variety of ways. The disciplines of anthropology, history, political science, literature, and philosophy all dealt with the practical and academic challenges of decolonization. It quite often looks as if that African philosophy has been quite limited in defining the horizons of the debate when compared with the achievements of academic specialties such as literature and cultural studies. Thus, decolonization has been rightly conceived as a vast, global, and trans-disciplinary enterprise. Therefore, an analysis to be done and an examination too to the limitations and enormous possibilities of Wiredu’s theory of conceptual decolonization. If we take a close reading of the theory itself and then locate it within the broader movement of modern African thought.?In several instances, Wiredu’s theory has proved pivotal to the advancement of contemporary African philosophical practices.?It is also necessary to be aware of the current imperatives of globalization, nationality, and territoriality and how they affect the agency of a theory such as ideological/conceptual decolonization.?Undeniably, the concept of decolonization is far more complex than is often assumed.?So, the epistemological resources by which it can be apprehended as a concept, ideology, or process are multiple and diverse.?As an Africa’s prime philosopher, Kwasi Wiredu has at length defined the discipline of philosophy, in its current form, as a credible area of intellection in most parts of the African continent and beyond.?To appreciate the theoretical and historical contexts of his work needs to hold some familiarity with relevant discourses in African studies and history, anthropology, literature, and postcolonial theory, particularly those advanced by Edward W. Said, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Abiola Irele, and Biodun Jeyifo.?Wiredu’s contribution to the making of modern African thought provides an interesting insight into the processes involved in the formation of postcolonial disciplines and discourses, and it can also be apprehended as a counter-articulation to the hegemonic discourses of imperial domination.

?Wiredu, for many decades, was involved with a project he termed conceptual decolonization in contemporary African systems of thought. This term entailed, for Wiredu, a re-examination of current African epistemic foundations to realize two main objectives.?First, he envisioned undermining counter-productive sides of tribal cultures rooted in modern African, thought to make this form of thought both more sustainable and more rational.?Second, he proposed to deconstruct the unnecessary Western epistemologies which may be found in African philosophical practices. A broad spectrum of academic disciplines took up the conceptual challenges of decolonization in a variety of ways. In particular, the disciplines of anthropology, history, political science, literature, and philosophy all faced the practical and academic challenges intrinsic to decolonization. It is usually gainful to scrutinize the contributions and limitations of African philosophers comparatively (along with other African thinkers who are not professional philosophers) in relation to the history of the debate on decolonization.?In addition to the scholars noted above, the discourse of decolonization has benefitted from many valuable contributions made by intellectuals such as Frantz Fanon, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Cheikh Anta Diop, and Ngugi wa Thiongo.?In this perspective, African philosophy has been, at certain moments, limited in defining the horizons of the debate when compared with the achievements of academic specialties such as literature, postcolonial theory, and cultural studies. Thus, decolonization, as Ngugi wa Thiongo, the Kenyan cultural theorist and novelist, notes, must be conceived as a broad, continent-wide, and multidisciplinary venture. Within the Anglophone contingent of African philosophy, the analytic tradition of British philosophy continues to be dominant.?This informal supremacy led to an apparent degree of provincialism.?This in turn has led to the neglect of many other important intellectual traditions.?For instance, within this Anglophonic sphere, there is not always a systematic interrogation of the limits, excesses, and uses of colonialist anthropology in formulating the problem of identity.?The problem of identity does not only refer to the question of personal agency but more broadly, the challenges of informal identity.?This shortcoming is not as evident in Francophone traditions of African philosophy, which usually highlight the foundational discursive interactions between anthropology and modern African thought.?Thus, in this instance, there is an opening to other discursive formations necessary for nurturing a vibrant philosophical practice.?Also, within Anglophone African philosophy, a stringent critique of imperialism and contemporary globalization does not always figure is not always significant in the element of the discourse, thereby further underlining the drawbacks of parochialism.?As such, it is necessary for critiques of Wiredu’s corpus to move beyond its ostensible frame to include critiques and discussions of traditions of philosophical practice outside the Anglophone divide of modern African thought.?Accordingly, such critiques ought not merely to be a celebration of post-structuralist discourses to the detriment of African intellectual traditions.?Instead, they should be, among other things, an exploration of the discursive intimacies between the Anglophone and Francophone traditions of African philosophy.?In addition, an interrogation of other borders of philosophy is required to observe the gains that might accrue to the Anglophone movement of contemporary African philosophy, which, in many ways, has reached a discursive dead-end due to its inability to prevail over the inflexible problematic of identity, and its endless preoccupation with the question of its origins. These are the sort of interrogations that readings of Wiredu’s work necessitate. Furthermore, a study of Wiredu’s corpus identifies the necessity to re-assess the importance of other discourses such as colonialist anthropology and various philosophies of black subjectivity in the formation of the modern African subject.?These are some of the central concerns which appear in?Kwasi Wiredu and Beyond:?The Text, Writing and Thought in Africa?(2005).

He had his first exposure to philosophy quite early in life.?He read his first couple of books of philosophy in school around 1947 in Kumasi, the capital of Ashanti.?These books were Bernard Bosanquet’s?the Essentials of Logic?and C.E.M. Joad’s?Teach Yourself Philosophy.?Logic, as a branch of philosophy, fascinated Wiredu because of its affinities to grammar, which he enjoyed.?He was also fond of practical psychology during the formative years of his life.?In 1950, whilst vacationing with his aunt in Accra, the capital of Ghana, he came across another philosophical text which influenced him extremely.?The text was?The Last Days of Socrates?which had the following four dialogues by Plato:?The Apology,?Euthyphro,?Meno,?and?Crito. These dialogues were to influence, in a significant way, the final chapter of his first groundbreaking philosophical text,?Philosophy and an African Culture?(1980) which is also dialogic in structure. He studied at the University of Ghana, Legon in 1952, to read philosophy, but before attending he started to study the thought of John Dewey on his own. Even though C. E. M. Joad’s philosophy had a particularly powerful effect on him. Indeed, he employed the name J. E. Joad as his penname for a series of political articles he wrote for a national newspaper,?The Ashanti Sentinel?between 1950 and1951.?At the University of Ghana, he was instructed mainly in Western philosophy, and he came to find out about African traditions of thought through his own individual efforts.?He was later to admit that the character of his undergraduate education was to leave his mind a virtual?tabula rasa (is the theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content, and therefore all knowledge comes from experience), as far as African philosophy was concerned.?He had to develop and maintain his interests in African philosophy on his own.

One of the first texts of African philosophy that he read was J. B. Danquah’s?Akan Doctrine of God: A Fragment of Gold Coast Ethics and Religion.?Undoubtedly, his best friend William Abraham, who went a year before him to Oxford University, must have also influenced the direction of his philosophical research towards African thought.?A passage from an interview explains the issue of his institutional relation to African philosophy:

Prior to 1985, when I was in Africa, I devoted most of my time in almost equal proportions to research in African philosophy and in other areas of philosophy, such as the philosophy of logic, in which not much has, or is generally known to have, been done in African philosophy.?I did not have always to be teaching African philosophy or giving public lectures on African philosophy. There were others who were also competent to teach the subject and give talks in our Department of Philosophy.?But since I came to the United States, I have often been called upon to teach or talk about African philosophy.?I have therefore spent much more time than before researching in that area. This does not mean that I have altogether ignored my earlier interests, for indeed, I continue to teach subjects like (Western) logic and epistemology (Wiredu in Oladiop 2002: 332).

Wiredu started writing prolifically relatively late, during the early to mid-1970s, he often published as many as six major papers per year on topics ranging from logic to epistemology, to African systems of thought, in reputable international journals.?His first major book,?Philosophy, and an African Culture?(1980) is outstanding for its extensive range of interests.?Hountondji (1983; 2002) in those times of dangerous ideologizing, the required measure of socialist posturing.?Wiredu, not only evaded the temptation of socialism but went on to criticize it as an unfit ideology.?At that time, it appeared a reactionary even injurious posture to assume.?Despite this, he positioned the foundations of his project of conceptual decolonization at the theoretical level but had also begun to discover its various practical consequences through his analyses of concepts such as “truth,” and by his focused critique of some counter-productive effects of both colonialism and traditional culture. By conceptual decolonization, Wiredu advocates a re-examination of current African epistemic formations to achieve two objectives.?First, he wishes to subvert unsavory aspects of indigenous traditions embedded in modern African thought to make it more viable.?Second, he intends to undermine the unhelpful Western epistemologies to be found in African philosophical traditions. In this important formulation of his, he states: By this, I mean the purging of African philosophical thinking of all uncritical assimilation of Western ways of thinking. That, of course, would be only part of the battle won. The other desiderata are the careful study of our own traditional philosophies and the synthesizing of any insights obtained from that source with any other insights that might be gained from the intellectual resources of the modern world.?In my opinion, it is only by such a reflective integration of the traditional and the modern that contemporary African philosophers can contribute to the flourishing of our peoples and, ultimately, all other peoples. (Oladipo, 2002: 328)

Despite his invaluable aid to modern African thought argued that Wiredu’s schema lacks a feasible long-term epistemic project.?Due to the hybridity of the postcolonial condition, projects seeking to retrieve the precolonial heritage are bound to be flawed.?It would be an error for Wiredu or advocates of his project of conceptual decolonization to attempt to generalize his theory since, as Ngugi wa Thiongo argues, decolonization is a vast, global enterprise.?Rather, it is safer to read Wiredu’s project as a way of articulating theoretical presence for the de-agential zed and reterritorialized contemporary African subject.?In many ways, his project is like those of Ngugi wa Thiongo and Cheikh Anta Diop.?Ngugi Wa Thiongo advocates cultural and linguistic decolonization on a global scale and his theory has undergone little change since its formulation in the 1960s.?Diop advances a similar set of ideas to Wiredu about vibrant modern African identities. Wiredu’s project is linked in abstract terms to the broader project of political decolonization as advanced by liberationist African leaders such as Julius Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah, and Nnamdi Azikiwe.?But what differentiates the appearance of his theory is its links with the Anglo-Saxon analytic tradition. This dimension is important in differentiating his project from those of his equally illustrious generations such as V. Y. Mudimbe and Paulin Hountondji.?So, it is reasoned that Wiredu’s theory of conceptual decolonization has more similarities with Ngugi wa Thiongo’s ideas regarding African cultural and linguistic agency than Mudimbe’s archeological excavations of African traces in Western historical and anthropological texts.

When colonization was rampant in the world, decolonization was a topic of considerable academic interest.?Wiredu’s theory of conceptual decolonization is essentially what defines his attitudes and gestures towards the content of contemporary African thought.?Also, an insight that is inflected by years of engagement in British analytic philosophy.?Wiredu began his reflections on the nature, legitimate aims, and possible orientations in contemporary African thought not because of any awareness of the trauma or violence of colonialism or imperialism but by a conflict with the dilemma of modernity by the reflective (post)colonial African consciousness.?This clash origin can be juxtaposed with those of his contemporaries such as Paulin Hountondji and V. Y. Mudimbe.

Despite criticisms, to form a tradition for the practice of modern African philosophy, his contributions have been crucial. He has also been very consistent in his output and the quality of his reflections. As noted earlier, he has trained in a particular tradition of Western philosophy: the analytic tradition.?This fact is reflected in his corpus.?A major charge held against him is that his contributions could be made perfect by his dealing with other relevant discourses: postcolonial theory, African feminisms, contemporary Afrocentric discourses, and the global dimensions of projects and discourses of decolonization. His interests and philosophical importance are not just restricted to conceptual decolonization.?He has offered some useful insights on Marxism, mysticism, metaphysics, and the general nature of the philosophical enterprise itself. Although his latter text,?Cultural Universals, and Particulars?have a more Africa-centered alignment, his first book,?Philosophy and an African Culture?present a wider range of discursive interests: a vigorous critique of Marxism, reflections on the phenomenon of ideology, analyses of truth and the philosophy of language, among other preoccupations. It is interesting to see how Wiredu weaves together these different preoccupations and to observe how some of them have endured while others have not.

The volume?Conceptual Decolonization in African Philosophy?is an apt summation of his philosophical interests with a decidedly African problematic while his landmark philosophical work,?Philosophy, and an African Culture, published first in 1980, should serve as a fertile source for more detailed elucidation. In the second essay of?Conceptual Decolonization in African Philosophy?entitled “The Need for Conceptual Decolonization in African Philosophy”, he writes that “with an even greater sense of urgency the intervening decade does not seem to have brought any indications of a widespread realization of the need for conceptual decolonization in African philosophy”.?Now to examine some of the ways he has been involved in the unnerving task of conceptual decolonization.?Decolonization itself is a problematic exercise because it necessitates the discarding of certain conceptual attitudes that inform one’s worldview.?Secondly, it usually entails an attempt at the retrieval of a fragmented historical heritage.?Decolonization in Fanon’s conception entails this necessity for all colonized peoples. Additionally, it is “a program of complete disorder.?This understanding is purely political and has therefore a practical import.?This is not to say that Fanon had no plan for the project of decolonization in the intellectual sphere.?Also associated with this project as it was then conceived was a struggle for the mental liberation of the colonized African peoples.?It was indeed a program of violence in disguise.

However, he isn’t a direct commendation of violence, as decolonization amounts to conceptual subversion.?As a logical consequence, it is necessary to stress the difference between Fanon’s conception of decolonization and Wiredu’s.?Fanon is sometimes regarded as belonging to the same philosophical persuasion that harbors figures like Nkrumah, Senghor, Nyerere, and Sekou Toure, “the philosopher-kings of early post-independence Africa,” as he referred.?Because they had to live out the various dramas of existence and the struggles for self and collective identity at the same colonial/postcolonial moment.?Those “spiritual uncles” of professional African philosophers were engaged, as he writes, in a strictly political struggle, and whatever philosophical insight they possessed was put at the disposal of this struggle, instead of a merely theoretical endeavor.?Obviously, Fanon was the most astute theoretician of decolonization.?Fanon and the so-called philosopher-kings, decolonization was invested with a pan-African mandate and political appeal.?This crucial difference should be noted alongside what shall soon be demonstrated to be his conception of decolonization.?Africans, generally, will have to continue to ponder the entire issue of decolonization if unsolved questions of identity remain and the challenges of collective development linger.?

The end of colonialism in Africa and other Third World countries did not entail the end of imperialism and the dominance of the metropolitan countries.?Instead, the dynamics of dominance assumed a more complex, if subtle, form.?African economic systems struggled alongside African political institutions, and, as a result, various crises have intensified the ostensibly perpetual issue of underdevelopment. A significant portion of the post-colonial theory involves the entry of Third World scholars into the Western archive, as it were, with the intention of dislodging the erroneous epistemological assumptions and structures regarding their peoples.?This, arguably, is another variant of decolonization.?He contributes of this type of activity, but sometimes he carries the program even further.?Accordingly, he affirms: Until Africa can have a lingua franca, we will have to communicate suitable parts of our work in our multifarious vernaculars, and in other forms of popular discourse, while using the metropolitan languages for international communication. This conviction has been a guiding principle for him for several years.?This is not just a principle; there are several instances within the broad spectrum of his philosophical corpus.?Two of such attempts are his essays “The Concept of Truth in the Akan Language” and “The Akan Concept of Mind.”?In the first of these articles, Wiredu states “there is no one word in Akan for truth”.?Similarly, “another linguistic contrast between Akan and English is that there is no word “fact” (Ibid.).?It is necessary to cite the central thesis of the essay; he writes that he wants “to make a meta doctrinal point which reflection on the African language enables us to see, which is that a theory of truth is not of any real universal significance unless it offers some account of the notion of being so” (Ibid.).

His contention needs to be firmer, and he is only comparing component parts of the English language with the Akan language and not always with a view to drawing out “any real universal significance” as he says.?The entire approach seems to be irrevocably restrictive.?This is the distinction that lies between an oral culture and a textual one.?Most African intellectuals usually shine over this difference, even though they may acknowledge it.?The difference is indeed incredibly significant, because of the numerous imponderables that come into play.?Abiola Irele has been able to demonstrate the tremendous significance of orality in the constitution of modern African forms of literary expression. He is more convincing in his essay “Democracy and Consensus in African Traditional Politics: A Plea for a Non-Party Polity”.?In this essay, Wiredu argues that the: The Ashanti system was a consensual democracy. It was a democracy because the government was by the consent, and subject to the control, of the people as expressed through the representatives. It was consensual because, at least, as a rule, that consent was negotiated on the principle of consensus. When he proposes the issue of politics and its present and future contexts in postcolonial Africa, it compelled me to visit a whole range of debates and discourses, especially in the social sciences in Africa.?These are possibly more directly concerned with questions pertaining to governance, democracy, and the challenges of contemporary globalization. Another essay by him, entitled “The Akan Concept of Mind” is also an attempt at conceptual recontextualization.?He is restricting himself to a study of the Akans of Ghana in order “to keep the discussion within reasonable anthropological bounds.”?His objective is modest but important since it fits quite well with his entire philosophical project which, as noted, is concerned with ironing out philosophical issues “on independent grounds” and possibly in one’s own language and the metropolitan language bestowed by the colonial heritage. It is therefore appropriate to proceed gradually, traversing the problematic interfaces between various languages in search of satisfactory structures of meaning.?The immediate effect is a radical diminishing of the entire concept of African philosophy, a term that under these circumstances would become even more problematic.?The consequence of his position is that to arrive at the essence of African philosophy, it would be necessary to dismantle its monolithic structure to make it more context-bound.?First, Africa as a spatial entity would require further re-drawing of its often-problematic geography.?Second, a new thematic to mediate between the general and they would have to be found.?Third, the critique of unanimism and ethnophilosophy would be driven into more contested terrains.?Further, in dealing with the traditional Akan conceptual system, for that matter, it should be borne in mind that what is in contention is “a folk philosophy, a body of originally unwritten ideas preserved in the oral traditions, customs and usages of a people.” So, after scrutinizing more closely his article “The Akan Concept of Mind.” He reckons the ways in which the English conception of mind differs decidedly from that of the Akan, due in a large part to certain fundamental linguistic contrasts.?He also makes the point that “the Akans most certainly do not regard the mind as one of the entities that go to constitute a person.”?It is significant to note this, but concurrently, it is hard to imagine the ultimate viability of this approach.?Indeed, after reformulating traditional Western philosophical problems to suit African conditions, it remains to be seen how African epistemological claims can be corroborated using the natural and logical procedures available to African systems of thought.?As such, it is easy to argue that this conceptual maneuver would finally debase into a dead-end of epistemic nativism. As such, inherent in the thrust for complete decolonization is the presence of colonial violence itself.?In addition, there is essentially a latent desire for epistemic violence and difficulties concerning the negotiation of linguistic divides. In the following quotation, he efforts to establish the significance of some of those differences: By comparison with the merging of two ideas of concepts of mind and soul prevalent in Western philosophy, the Akan separation of the “Okra” from “adwene” suggests a more analytical awareness of the sanctification of human personality. It is necessary to substantiate more rigorously claims such as this because it would be commitment an error in creating certain troublesome linguistic or philosophical messages between two disparate cultures and traditions. Another crucial, if distressing, feature of decolonization as advanced by he is that it always must measure itself up with the colonizing Other, that is, it finds it almost impossible to create its own image so to speak by the employment of autochthonous strategies.?This is not to assert that decolonization always must avail itself of indigenous procedures, but the very concept of decolonization is in fact concerned with breaking away from imperial structures of dominance to express a will to self-identity or presence.?To be sure, the Other is always present, defacing all claims to full presence of the decolonizing subject.?This is a contradictory but inevitable trope within the postcolonial condition.?The Other is always there to present the criteria by which self-identity is adjudged either favorably or unfavorably. There is no getting around the Other as it is introduced in its own latent and covert violence, in the hesitant counter-violence of the decolonizing subject, and invariably in the counter-articulations of all projects of decolonization. His later attempts at conceptual decolonization have been quite interesting.?An example of such an attempt is the essay “Custom and Morality: A Comparative Analysis of some African and Western Conceptions of Morals.”?He can explore at greater length some of the conceptual confusions that arise because of the uprooting of Western ideas within an African frame of reference.?This wholesale transference of foreign ideas and conceptual models has caused the occurrence of severe cases of identity crises and, to borrow a more apposite term, colonial mentality.?Indeed, one of the aims of Wiredu’s efforts at conceptual decolonization is to indicate instances of colonial mentality and determine strategies by which they can be minimized.?Accordingly, he is quite convincing when he argues that polygamy in a traditional setting amount to efficient social thinking but is most inappropriate within a modern framework.?He is offering a critique of a certain traditional practice that ought to be discarded on account of the demands and realities of a modern economy. It seems that he has not sufficiently interrogated the distance between orality and textuality.?If indeed he has done so, he would be rather more skeptical about the way he thinks he can dislodge certain Western philosophical structures embedded in the African consciousness.

He has always believed that traditional modes of thought and folk philosophies should be interpreted, clarified, analyzed, and subjected to critical evaluation and assimilation.?From the beginning of his philosophical reflections, he puts forth the crucial formulation that there is no reason why the African philosopher “in his philosophical meditations […] should not test formulations in those against intuitions in his own language.”?rather than merely discussing the possibilities for evolving modern traditions in African philosophy, African philosophers should begin to do so. To understand, the African philosopher has a few available methodological approaches.?First, he is urged to “acquaint himself with the different philosophies of the different cultures of the world, not to be encyclopedic or eclectic, but with the aim of trying to see how far issues and concepts of universal relevance can be unraveled from the contingencies of culture”.?He also adds that “the African philosopher has no choice but to conduct his philosophical inquiries in relation to the philosophical writings of other peoples, for his ancestors left him no heritage of philosophical writings.”?The use of translations is a fundamental aspect of contemporary African philosophical practices.?However, on the dilemmas of translation in the current age of neoliberalism, it has been noted: “translations are [..] put ‘out of joint.’?However, correct or legitimate they may be, they are all misadjusted, as it were unjust in the gap that affects them.?This gap is within them, to be sure because their meanings remain necessarily equivocal; next, it is in the relation among them and thus their multiplicity, and finally or first in the irreducible in adequation to the other language and to the stroke of genius of the event that makes the law, to all the virtuality’s of the original”.?Wiredu does not contemplate the implications of this kind of indictment in his formulations of an approach to African philosophy. ??In relation to the kind of philosophical heritage at the disposal of the African philosopher, he finds three main strands: “a folk philosophy, a written traditional philosophy, and a modern philosophy.”?His approach to such questions “. It is a function, indeed a duty, of philosophy in any society to examine the intellectual foundations of its culture.?For any such examination to be of any real use, it should take the form of reasoned criticism and, where possible, reconstruction. No other way to philosophical progress is known than through criticism and adaptation.”

The drive to attain progress is not limited to philosophical discourse alone.?Entire communities and cultures usually aim to improve upon their institutions and practices to remain relevant.?Societies can lose the momentum of growth and “various habits of thought and practice can become anachronistic within the context of the development of a given society, but an entire society too can become anachronistic within the context of the whole world if the ways of life within it are predominantly anachronistic.?The theme of modernization occurs frequently in his corpus.?He does not fully hypothesize it nor relate it to the various ideological histories it has encountered in the domains of social science, where it became a fully-fledged discipline. Modernization, for him, is based on an uncomplicated pragmatism that owes much to Deweyan thought. It is as true in Africa as anywhere else that logical, mathematical, analytical, and experimental procedures are essential in the quest for the knowledge of, and control over, nature and therefore, in any endeavor to improve the condition of man.?Our traditional culture was somewhat wanting in this respect, and this is largely responsible for the weaknesses of traditional technology, warfare, architecture, medicine….” ?Also, “one of the powerful strains on our extended family system is the very extensive poverty which oppresses our rural populations. Owing to this, people working in the towns and cities are constantly burdened with the financial needs of rural relatives which they usually cannot entirely satisfy.” ?The point is, in Africa, forms of sociality exist that can no longer be found in the North Atlantic civilization. If this civilization (the North Atlantic) is characterized by extreme individualism, African forms of social existence on the other hand tend towards the gregarious in which conceptions of generosity, corruption, gratitude, philanthropy, ethnicity and even justice take on different slight forms from what obtains within the vastly different North Atlantic context. The colonized is abused, brutalized, silenced, and?reconstructed against her/his own will.?Colonialism causes the destruction of the agency. On de-genitalization, he states, “any human arrangement is authoritarian if it entails any person being made to do or suffer something against his will, or if it leads to any person being hindered in the development of his own will”.?The period of colonial struggle was […] a period of cultural affirmation. It was necessary to restore in ourselves our previous confidence which had been so seriously eroded by colonialism. We are still, admittedly, even in post-colonial times, in an era of cultural self-affirmation”. Marxist theory and discourse generally provided many African intellectuals with a platform on which to conduct many sociopolitical struggles which served as the only ideological tool. But not all scholars found Marxism acceptable. He was one of the scholars who has deep reservations about it. But he is not in doubt about the philosophical significance of Marx: “I regard Karl Marx as one of the great philosophers”. The Marxist inheritance was- and remains, and so it will remain- absolutely and thoroughly determinate. One need not be a Marxist or a communist to accept this obvious fact. We all live in a world, some would say a culture, that bears, at an incalculable depth, the mark of this inheritance, whether in a directly visible fashion or not”.

Marxism during the era of the Cold War was the major ideological issue and in the present age of neoliberalism, it continues to haunt (Derrida’s precise phrase is?hauntology) us with its multiple legacies. His critique of Marx and Engels is located within the epoch of the Cold War. But from it, we get a glimpse of not only his political orientation but also his philosophical preferences. He claims, “the food one eats, the hairstyle one adopts, the amount of money one has, the power one wields- all these and such circumstances are irrelevant from an epistemological point of view”. He writes, “many everyday practices (talking, reading, moving about, shopping, cooking, etc.) are tactical in character. And so are, more generally, many “ways of operating”: victories of the “weak” over the “strong” (whether the strength is that of powerful people or the violence of things or of an imposed order, etc.), clever tricks, knowing how to get away with things, “hunter’s cunning,” maneuvers, polymorphic simulations, joyful discoveries, poetic as well as warlike. The Greeks called these “ways of operating”?metis. ?As a philosopher versed in analytic philosophy, truth is a primary concern and this concern is incorporated into his analysis of Marxist philosophy. Hence, he identifies the following points, “the cognition of truth is recognized by Engels as the business of philosophy; (2) What is denied is absolute truth, not truth as such; (3) The belief, so finely expressed, in the progressive character of truth; (4) Engels speaks of this process of cognition as the ‘development of science.’ (5) That consciousness of limitation is a necessary element in all acquired knowledge.” He explains that these various Marxian assertions on truth are no different from those of the logician, C. S. Peirce who had expounded them under a formulation he called “fallibilism.” John Dewey also expounded them under the concept of ‘pragmatism. ?“How is it that a philosophy which advocates such an admirable doctrine as the humanistic conception of truth tends so often to lead in practice to the suppression of freedom of thought and expression? Is it by accident that this comes to be so? Or is it due to causes internal to the philosophy of Marx and Engels”. ?In other words, there is a difference between “the dogma machine and the “Marxist” ideological apparatuses (States, parties, cells, unions, and other places of doctrinal production)”, and the necessity to treat Marx as a great philosopher. We need to “try to play Marx off against Marxism so as to neutralize, or at any rate muffle the political imperative in the untroubled exegesis of classified work.”?But, he doesn’t belong to the communists, to the Marxists, to the parties, he ought to figure within our great canon of […] political philosophy”.

His view about Marxism generally is quite damaging. First, he states, “Engels himself, never perfectly consistent, already compromises his conception of truth with some concessions to absolute truth in?Anti-Duhring”.?He then makes an even more damaging accusation that a form of authoritarianism lies at the heart of the conception of philosophy propagated by Marx and Engels.?On what he considers to be a deep-seated confusion in their work, he writes, “Engels recognizes the cognition of truth to be a legitimate business of philosophy and makes several excellent points about truth. As soon, however, as one tries to find out what he and Marx conceived philosophy to be like, one is faced with deep obscurity. The problem resolves around what one may describe as Marx’s conception of philosophy as ideology”. ?He makes the crucial distinction between Marx as a philosopher and the effects of his numerous spectrality and for this reason, he offers the most important criticism of his general critique of Marxism. He also accuses Marx of instances of “carelessness in the use of cardinal terms” which he says “may be symptomatic of deep inadequacies of thought”. This charge, which relates to Marx’s conception of consciousness is indeed serious since it borders on the question of conceptual clarification as advanced by the canon of analytic philosophy. He argues that Marx and Engels are unclear about their employment of the concept of ideology: “Marx and Engels are […] on the horns of a dilemma. If all philosophical thinking is ideological, then their thinking is ideological and, by their hypothesis, false” (Ibid.76). Wiredu’s insights are very important here: “He and Engels simply assumed for themselves the privilege of exempting their own philosophizing from the ideological theory of ideas” (Ibid.77). Consequently, Marx commits a grave error “in his conception of ideology and its bearing upon philosophy” (Ibid.81).

Marx “confused moral philosophy with moralism and assumed rather than argued a moral standpoint”. He had precious little to say on the nature of the relationship between philosophy and morality. Engels does better on this score as there is a treatment of morality in?Anti-Duhring. Nonetheless, Engels is charged with giving “no guidance on the conceptual problems that have perplexed moral philosophers. ?In one of his most damaging assessments of Marxism, he declares: “Ideology is the death of philosophy. To the extent to which Marxism, by its own internal incoherences, tends to be transformed into an ideology, to that extent Marxism is a science of the unscientific and a philosophy of the unphilosophic. If the readability of a legacy were given, natural, transparent, and univocal, if it did not call for and at the same time defy interpretation, we would never have anything to inherit from it. Electoral representativity or parliamentary life is not only distorted, as was always the case, by a great number of socio-economic mechanisms, but it is exercised with more and more difficulty in a public space profoundly upset by techno-tele-media apparatuses and by new rhythms of information and communication, by the devices and the speed of forces represented by the latter, but also and consequently by the new modes of appropriation they put to work, by the new structure of the event and of its spectrality that they produce. The instructive point is that new information technologies have radically transformed the possibilities of the?event?and the modes of its production, reception, and interpretation. But there is a far more radical change that has occurred and which signals a profound crisis of global capitalism and the neoliberal ideology that underpins it: “For what must be cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelize in the name of the ideal of liberal democracy that has finally realized itself?as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. Also, “never have so many men, women, and children been subjugated, starved, or exterminated on the earth.

?CONCLUSION

?Wiredu’s contribution to the debate on the origins, status, problems, and future of contemporary African philosophy resides in his formulations regarding his theory of conceptual decolonization. His approach to formulating this theory of discursive agency and more specifically philosophical practice involves the incorporation of form biculturalism. In other words, his approach entails analyses of the canon of Western philosophy and the manifestations of tribal cultures as a way of attaining a conceptual synthesis. Indeed, this schema involves a forceful element of bi-culturalism as a matter of logical consequence as well as a high level of [multi] bi-lingual competence. As such, it is not only an exercise in conceptual synthesis but it is also a project involving comparative linguistics. His experience and research in teaching African philosophy have had tremendous significance. The positive aspect of this is that the study of African philosophical thought has in positive moments transcended the problem of identity or what has been termed as the problem of origins. The less complimentary dimension of this equation is that Wiredu’s discoveries have given rise to (most undoubtedly unwittingly) a somewhat hegemonic school of disciples that is fostering a delimiting academicism and which is contrary to his essential spirit of conceptual inventiveness. As such, it might become necessary not only to critique his corpus but perhaps also his school of disciples which rather than appreciate the originality of his formulations falls instead for the pitfalls of over-ideologization. Undoubtedly, he discovered a challenging path in modern African thought in which he sometimes takes the meaning of the existence of African philosophy for granted. In addition, it has been observed that also lacking at some moments in his?oeuvre?is an attempt to de-totalize and hence particularize the components of what he regards as the foundations of African philosophy.?In other words, African philosophy finds its form, shape, and its conceptual moorings above the discursive platform provided by Western philosophy. In addition, the theoretical space made available for its articulation is derived from the same Western-donated pool of unanimism. Part of recent interrogations of Wiredu’s work includes questioning the legitimacy of that space as the only site on which to construct an entire philosophical practice for the alienated, hybrid African consciousness. Indeed, terms such as?reflective integration?and?due reflection?offer critical spaces for the theoretical articulation of something whose existence has not yet been concretely conceived. So, in his corpus, we see the very familiar problem involving the tradition/modernity dichotomy being played out. Finally, it can be argued that this tension is not quite resolved but fortunately it is also a tension that never jeopardizes his philosophical inventiveness. Rather, it seems to animate his reflections in unprecedented ways.

HIS THEORY OF COLONIZATION AND CRITIQUE, SHOWS THE TRUTH OF SOCIALISM, AND CAPITALISM, MORE IMPORTANT AGAINST COLONIZATION. FOR ME, HIS VIEW IS MORE CONVINCING FOR ME. HIS VIEW IS RADICAL AND REVOLUTIONARY.