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. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Joseph Ushie’s argument for Neo-colonialism rather than Postcolonialism as the most appropriate theory for the criticism of what he calls Current African Literature. His proposition is based on the premise that Postcolonialism as a theory runs counter to the neo-colonial situation of Africa sincethe attainment of flag independence by different African nations. Hence, neo - colonialism answers directly to the socio-political and economic condition of mostAfrican countries and should be utilised in the appreciation of (...) most literatures from the continent. In this meta-criticism we proceed by making bare the crux of Ushie’s argument, then identify obvious contradictions in his logic and critically present the merit of Postcolonialism as a cultural theory fit enough for the critical engagement of Current African Literature. (shrink)

In this paper, I outlined and discussed the idea of deep ecology as defended by Arne Næss as well as Bill Devall and George Sessions. I specially looked at how deep ecology has responded to the dominant view in ecological ethics, especially its attendant theory – anthropocentrism or homo-centrism or simply the reason-based account – which I outlined and explained in the first section of this paper. In the final analysis, I looked at the feasibility of applying deep ecology in (...) Sub-Saharan African ecological contexts focusing particularly on the Shona ecological matrix of Zimbabwe. My intention was to answer the question: How applicable is the idea of deep ecology in the African context? Having reviewed Zimbabwean literature, I came to the conclusion that the Shona enviro nment had a different form of deep ecology that was not only anchored on spirituality but that it also interpreted cosmology and ecology from a communitarian viewpoint. (shrink)