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1. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Jonathan C. Okeke An Investigation into the Nature of Mathematical Meaning
2. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Innocent I. Asouzu “Ibuanyidanda” and the Philosophy of Essence
3. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Mamadu T. Titus Kant's Idea of Space and Time in Relation to African Notion of Reality: Making Sense out of a Senseless World
4. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Agu N. Sunday Philosophy and Method of Integrative Humanism
5. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Godfrey O. Ozumba Integrative Humanism and Complementary Reflection: A Comparative Analysis
6. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Ejikeme Dennis Igwe Igbo Jurisprudence: A Discourse on the Nature of Punishment in Traditional African Society
7. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Adekunle A. Ibrahim Inquiry into the Defining Conditions of Knowledge Claim: An Exercise From the Perspective of Integrative Epistemology
8. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Udobata Onunwa Humanistic Basis for African Traditional Religious Theology and Ethics: (A Challenge to the Church in Nigeria)
9. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Chris O. Ijiomah Humanistic Epistemology
10. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 1 > Issue: 1
Jonathan C. Okeke Mental Surgery: Another Look at the Identity Problem
11. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Ovett Nwosimiri Orcid-ID COVID–19 and Job Losses: Should Affirmative Action and Preferential Hiring still be Applicable in South Africa?
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The SARS-COVID-2 virus that causes the Coronavirus (COVID-19) has been having a challenging and devastating impact on finances and jobs worldwide. More specifically, in South Africa, the COVID-19 pandemic is having a crippling effect on jobs. Companies and businesses are struggling to operate and retain workers as revenue streams are drying up. Owners of companies and businesses have been forced to make difficult decisions. An example is the retrenchment of workers by some organizations because of the financial fall-out due to the coronavirus pandemic. Also, before the pandemic, South Africa had unemployment challenges, economic downgrading, and high levels of inequality (within the employment sector). These challenges bring to mind what the employment method and strategy will look like during the (post)-COVID-19. In view of these challenges, one question that comes to mind is: given the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that the job losses affected people of all races, should the policies of affirmative action and preferential hiring still be considered in South Africa? Thus, this paper is a philosophical reflection on COVID-19, job losses, affirmative action, and preferential hiring in South Africa. In reflecting on the above, this paper aims to show that affirmative action and preferential hiring should not be considered in South Africa during the (post)-COVID-19. I conclude that in the face of this tragedy, for the sustainability of the economy, everyone needs to work together to re-establish and reconstruct the country and build an inclusive economy.
12. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Adeolu Oluwaseyi Oyekan Orcid-ID John Mbiti on the Monotheistic Attribution of African Traditional Religions: A Refutation
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John Mbiti, in his attempt to disprove the charge of paganism by Euro-American ethnographic and anthropological scholars against African Traditional Religions argues that traditional African religions are monotheistic. He insists that these traditional religious cultures have the same conception of God as found in the Abrahamic religions. The shared characteristics, according to him are foundational to the spread of the “gospel” in Africa. Mbiti’s effort, though motivated by the desire to refute the imperial charge of inferiority against African religions ran, I argue, into a conceptual and descriptive conflation of ATRs with monotheistic faiths. In this paper, I challenge the superimposition of Judeo-Christian categories upon African religions. I argue that monotheism is just a strand, out of many, that expresses belief in God(s), and that it differs substantially from the polytheistic pre-colonial African understanding of religion. I provide a panentheistic paradigm using traditional Igbo ontology and religion to refute Mbiti’s generalization.
13. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Frederick Ochieng’-Odhiambo Orcid-ID Césaire’s Contribution to African Philosophy
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The essay explicates Aimé Césaire’s contribution to the discipline of African philosophy, which ironically, is unknown to many scholars within African philosophy, especially in Anglophone Africa. In his Return to my Native Land, Césaire introduced two new concepts: “négritude” and “return”. These would later turn out to be crucial to the discourse on African identity and African philosophy. In his Discourse on Colonialism, Césaire raised two very closely related objections against Placide Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy. His first dissatisfaction was that Tempels merely followed Lévy-Bruhl and his adherents by proposing another point of view in support of the misguided theory of the prelogical. Secondly, in so doing, his aim was nothing more than to make a presentation of an argument in support of European imperialism and colonialism. His Discourse on Colonialism, therefore, set the ground for later criticisms that were levelled against ethnophilosophy as an approach to African philosophy.
14. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Dunfu Zhang, Richard Atimniraye Nyelade Orcid-ID The Racial and Olfactory Origin of Social Distancing
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With the rise of the coronavirus crisis, "social distancing," has emerged as a new buzzword. Politicians, journalists, commentators, news readers, senior executives, and experts use this term blindly. However, scrutinizing the word reveals a terminological mismatch between "physical distancing" and "social distancing." While revisiting the history of physical distancing and social distancing, this article attempts to show how the term "social distancing" moved through time and winded up floating in the atmosphere. This study is based on Critical race theory, which has as its aim to uncover the ideologies that have been constructed to perpetuate the oppression of some social categories on the fallacious pretext of race superiority and purity. After going down to the ancient roots of physical distancing practices, this work will recall social distancing behaviors during the slave trade era before delving into the current confusion between both terms in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This work stresses the importance of social scientists to assess some official terminologies before their popularization.
15. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
John Sodiq Sanni Orcid-ID In the Name of God? Religion, Silence and Extortion
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This article critically analyses the role religion (I refer here to Islam and Christianity) has played in promoting silence and extortion in Africa with particular reference to Nigeria. In my philosophical analysis, African and Western literatures will guide my reflection on religion, the role it played in advancing the colonial agenda and its use in today’s African societies. This analysis seeks to present a case for the position that the colonial debris of disempowerment, injustices, manipulation, and extortion are still very much part of African society. They have only assumed new outlooks and language, thus plunging many Africans into silence in the face of what is often presented as sacred and unknown. The desired aim of this article is to present a philosophical critique of religion by comparing it with existing use of religion in Africa, especially Nigeria.
16. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Eric Ndoma Besong Orcid-ID Exploring the Logic of Gender Complementarity using Chimakonam’s Ezumezu System
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In this essay, I want to argue that the existence of gender most times translated as gender binary, is a biological fact. What is at stake is a framework for transcending unequal gender binary to gender complementarity. Here, I propose to use Chimakonam’s Ezumezu logic as a mechanism for disclosing gender complementarity. The illogical, irrational and subjective perspectives on lopsided gender differences between men and women will be challenged in this essay. I will analyze the thrust of Ezumezu logic, its major principles, structures, and pillars of thought. I will also demonstrate its global and contextual relevance. I will submit that Ezumezu logic can ground gender complementarity across global cultures. I argue that regardless of the physical differences between males and females, it is illogical to exploit such differences to promote gender stereotype.
17. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Innocent I. Enweh Orcid-ID “The Community and the Individual – Revisiting the Relevance of Afro-Communism”: A Response to MF Asiegbu and AC Ajah
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In a carefully and strongly worded critique, Asiegbu and Ajah have sought to close the dossier on Afro-communalist project by extolling solipsistic individualism which makes the individual an anarchic unit. Using the Okonkwo saga in Achebe’s [Things Fall Apart] to justify this type of individualism Asiegbu and Ajah bypassed, on the social plane, the ethical principle of individualism and Afro-communalism as forms of humanism. According to these critics, Afro-communalism is conformist, counter-productive, ambiguous, unsuccessful and irrelevant, and therefore should be discarded. The objective of this response is to show that an interpretative rehabilitation of Afro-communalism is opportune for elaborating a form of egalitarian society that would be responsive to the exigencies of African social-economic condition in a globalized world. The paper defends the view that while Afro-communalism in its ideological form was partly successful as an instrument for decolonization, its failure to achieve emancipation makes it an incomplete project. In its philosophical outfit, it appears despite its contributions, trapped in a vicious cycle because of the inability of some of its interpreters to provide it with a robust foundation. While as an ideology, it appropriated the economic relation model of scientific socialism, as a philosophy, it has under certain forms, continued to insist on the kinship/tribal relation model. Unfortunately, these two models lack the requisite institutional mechanisms for making Afro-communalism leverage on state or national life. Using descriptive and analytic methods, the paper argues that while Western individualist cultural attitude safeguarded by a contractual social relation model remains an authentic form of humanism, Afro-communalism in its traditional form needs, if it has to respond adequately to contemporary human experiences, to transit from the kinship/tribal model to amity of ethnic nationalities model.
18. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Motsamai Molefe Orcid-ID The “Normative” Concept of Personhood in Wiredu’s Moral Philosophy
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The article explores the place and status of the normative concept of personhood in Kwasi Wiredu’s moral philosophy. It begins by distinguishing an ethic from an ethics, where one involves cultural values and the other strict moral values. It proceeds to argue, by a careful exposition of Wiredu’s moral philosophy, that he locates personhood as an essential aspect of communalism [an ethic], and it specifies culture-specific standards of excellence among traditional African societies. I conclude the article by considering one implication of the conclusion, which is that personhood embodies cultural values of excellence concerning the place and status of partiality in Wiredu’s moral philosophy.
19. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Simphiwe Sesanti Orcid-ID Studying and teaching ethnic African languages for Pan-African consciousness, Pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance: A Decolonising Task
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In order to conquer and subjugate Africans, at the 1884 Berlin Conference, European countries dismembered Africa by carving her up into pieces and sharing her among themselves. European colonialists also antagonised Africans by setting up one ethnic African community against the other, thus promoting ethnic consciousness to undermine Pan-African consciousness. European powers also imposed their own “ethnic” languages, making them not only “official”, but also “international”. Consequently, as the Kenyan philosopher, Ngũgῖ wa Thiong’o, persuasively argues, through their ethnic languages, European colonialists planted their memory wherever they went, while simultaneously uprooting the memory of the colonised. Cognisant of efforts in some South African institutions of higher learning to promote African languages for the purpose of promoting literacy in African languages, this article argues that while this exercise is commendable, ethnic African languages should be deliberately taught to “re-member” Africa and rediscover Pan-African consciousness. By doing this, African scholarship would be aiding Africans’ perennial and elusive quest for Pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance.
20. Filosofia Theoretica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Chrysogonus Okwenna Orcid-ID An African Response to the Philosophical Crises in Medicine: Towards an African Philosophy of Medicine and Bioethics
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In this paper, I identify two major philosophical crises confronting medicine as a global phenomenon. The first crisis is the epistemological crisis of adopting an epistemic attitude, adequate for improving medical knowledge and practice. The second is the ethical crisis, also known as the “quality-of-care crisis,” arising from the traditional patient-physician dyad. I acknowledge the different proposals put forward in the quest for solutions to these crises. However, I observe that most of these proposals remain inadequate given their over-reliance on the Western biomedical tradition (WBT) and the medical hegemony that underpins the proposals themselves. Contrary to the approach employed in these proposals, I propose medical pluralism as a viable platform for resolving the philosophic crises in medicine, by critically engaging non-Western medical traditions (NMTs) and thought systems. Ultimately, I make a push for the deliberate inauguration of an African philosophy of medicine and bioethics (APMB) and other context-specific or indigenous philosophies of medicine and bioethics that will ensure continuous investigations into NMTs and their contribution to global medical issues.