IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/gdechp/978-3-030-11854-9_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

African Traditional Philosophies

In: Gender, Democracy and Institutional Development in Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Ahmed Ali Ilmi

    (University of Toronto)

Abstract

African traditional philosophies are multiple bodies of living comprehensive knowledges which encapsulate holistic ways of knowing. In its cosmological sense, it’s the common thread which connects African peoples with their African roots. It encompasses an intergenerational ancestral connection between the living, the dead, and the unborn. It is a moral and ethical communal existence which is built upon notions of collective social responsibility to one’s clan, family, and community, their ancestors, and the Creator. From a spiritual point of view, it is about giving thanks to the Creator, to the ancestors, and to the environment. In essence, African philosophies are an everyday embodiment of Wisdom as a being who is connected to a greater purpose in life. In this chapter, I will articulate my understanding of what constitutes African philosophies as well as provide synopses of the current contemporary debates on Africa philosophies. I will then highlight the dis-positioning of African philosophies within Eurocentric institutions. I will conceptualize the foundation of African philosophies. After that I will engage in a discussion about African communalism.

Suggested Citation

  • Ahmed Ali Ilmi, 2019. "African Traditional Philosophies," Gender, Development and Social Change, in: Gender, Democracy and Institutional Development in Africa, chapter 0, pages 7-35, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:gdechp:978-3-030-11854-9_2
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-11854-9_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:gdechp:978-3-030-11854-9_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.