Kwasi Wiredu Kwame Gyekye
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CULTURAL HERITAGE AND CONTEMPORARY CHANGE SERIES II. AFRICA, VOLUME 1 General Editor George F. McLean PERSON AND COMMUNITY Ghanaian Philosophical Studies, I Edited by KWASI WIREDU KWAME GYEKYE Published with the support of CIPSH/UNESCO THE COUNCIL FOR RESEARCH IN VALUES AND PHILOSOPHY Copyright © 2010 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Box 261 Cardinal Station Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies, I/ edited by Kwame Gyekye, Kwasi Wiredu. p. cm. -- (Cultural heritage and contemporary change, George F. McLean, Gen. ed.; Series II, Africa; vol. 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: Crisis in African cultures; Sources of African identity / by W. Emmanuel Abraham -- Problems in Africa’s self-definition in the contemporary world / by Kwasi Wiredu -- Knowledge and truth ; African symbols and proverbs as sources of knowledge and truth / by N.K. Dzobo -- Person and community in African thought / by Kwame Gyekye -- The image of man in Africa / by N.K. Dzobo -- Death and the afterlife in African culture / by Kwasi Wiredu -- Immortality and the nature of man in Gra thought / by Joyce Engmann -- Moral foundations of an African culture / by Kwasi Wiredu -- Towards moral development in contemporary Africa / by J.N. Kudadjie -- Values in a changing society / by N.K. Dzobo -- Traditional political ideas, their relevance to development in contemporary Africa / by Kwame Gyekye. 1. Philosophy, Ghanaian. 2. Philosophy, African. I. Gyekye, Kwame; II. Wiredu, Kwasi; III. Series. B5619.G4P47 1992 91-58172 199’.677--dc20 CIP ISBN 1-56518-004-6 (pbk.) (Second Reprint) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The editors wish to state their gratitude to Professor Jean d’Ormesson, Secretary General of The International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies (CIPSH) and to its parent organization, UNESCO, Paris, for the signal honor of their judging this project to be of such international importance as to be worthy of the support of those august world bodies. They wish also to acknowledge the pioneering work of The International Society for Metaphysics and The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy in bringing together representatives of the various philosophical communities in Africa to design the broad project on the philosophical foundations of social life, of which this is the first volume. It is being published along with a volume from Uganda. Other volumes from Zaire and elsewhere will follow in a coordinated effort to identify the philosophical resources of the African cultures and to apply them in new ways for new times in the process of developing an adequate philosophical insight for Africa in the XXIst century. Finally, the editors would like to express their thanks to Professor George McLean without whose help, encouragement and patience this book would never have come into existence, and to the James A. McLeans for their continued support in the realization of this broad project. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: The Ghanaian Tradition of Philosophy 1 by Kwasi Wiredu PROLOGUE: Crisis in African Cultures 13 by W. Emmanuel Abraham PART I AFRICAN IDENTITY Chapter 1. Sources of African Identity 39 by W. Emmanuel Abraham Chapter 2. Problems in Africa’s Self-Definition in 57 the Contemporary World by Kwasi Wiredu PART II KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING Chapter 3. Knowledge and Truth: Ewe and Akan Conceptions 71 by N.K. Dzobo Chapter 4. African Symbols and Proverbs as 83 Sources of Knowledge and Truth by N.K. Dzobo Part III ANTHROPOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS Chapter 5. Person and Community in Akan Thought 101 by Kwame Gyekye Chapter 6. The Image of Man in Africa 123 by N.K. Dzobo Chapter 7. Death and the Afterlife in African Culture 137 by Kwasi Wiredu Chapter 8. Immortality and the Nature of Man in Gra Thought 153 by Joyce Engmann PART IV ETHICS AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Chapter 9. Moral Foundations of an African Culture 193 by Kwasi Wiredu Chapter 10. Towards Moral Development in Contemporary Africa: 207 Insights from Dangme Traditional Moral Experience by J.N. Kudadjie Chapter 11. Values in a Changing Society: Man, Ancestors and God 223 by N.K. Dzobo Chapter 12. Traditional Political Ideas, Their Relevance to 241 Development in Contemporary Africa by Kwame Gyekye INDEX 257 CONTRIBUTORS 261 INTRODUCTION THE GHANAIAN TRADITION OF PHILOSOPHY KWASI WIREDU Ghanaian culture is a highly philosophical culture. This is seen in the fact that ‘traditional life in our country is guided at many points by conceptions that might broadly be called philosophical.’ 1 Thus customs relating to procreation, work, leisure, death and sundry circumstances of life are based on or reflect doctrines about God, mind, goodness, destiny and human personality that most adult Ghanaians will articulate at the slightest prompting. And if one were to come in contact with the genuine philosophers among our traditional folk, one would hear not only articulations but also explanations, elaborations, and critiques of these doctrines and much else besides. Readers of W.E. Abraham’s The Mind of Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962) or Kwame Gyekye’s An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987) will get an idea of the contours of that public philosophy. Given that Ghanaian life is suffused with speculative thought, it is not surprising that many of our eminent contemporary public leaders have attached the greatest importance to philosophy by both word and work. J.B. Danquah wrote The Akan Doctrine of God (London: Frank Cass & co. Ltd, 1944, second edition with an introduction by Kwesi Dickson 1968) in a busy life of legal practice, public service, political agitation and variegated literary productivity. He was, to the last, given to philosophical meditation and writing and produced, at the close of his life, a voluminous manuscript, The Akan Philosophy of Man, which, unfortunately appears to be missing.2 He prepared himself for his life work with a training in law and history, but most of all, in philosophy in which he took a Ph.D. in 1927 as John Stuart Mill Scholar in the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at London University with a thesis on The Moral End as Moral Excellence. Kwame Nkrumah, the man who led the final phase of Ghana’s struggle for independence and became her first president, disagreed with 1 Kwasi Wiredu, Philosophy and an African Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 16. 2 This information was given to me, in conversation, by Professor Kwesi Dickson, formerly of the Department for the Study of Religions at the University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana, who edited the re-issue of Danquah’s Akan Doctrine of God. He said he was personally shown the multi-volume manuscript by Danquah himself not long before his death. But nobody seems to know where it is or whether it still exists. 2 Kwasi Wiredu Danquah on many things, but one thing he did not disagree with him about was the practical importance of philosophy. Nkrumah lived in the United States of America for many years and studied Philosophy, Theology and other subjects in American universities, including Lincoln University and the University of Pennsylvania before moving to England in the mid- forties. But his interest in philosophy was not something he acquired from abroad; his mind was already impregnated with a philosophic curiosity and, to be sure, also with a nationalistic passion before he left our shores. While in the U.S he wrote an M.A. thesis on ethnophilosophy. He, of course, did not use the word ‘ethnophilosophy’ with the pejorative significance which it now has acquired among many current African philosophers. In Britain he completed a doctoral dissertation on Knowledge and Logical Positivism at the London School of Economics under the supervision of A.J. Ayer--an odd combination, since Nkrumah was a convinced Marxist, while Ayer, the leading advocate at that time of sanguine positivism in English speaking- philosophy, was not known for either a sympathy for, or an expertise on, Marxism. Be that as it may, history stood between Nkrumah and the oral defence of his dissertation. In 1947, just before that was scheduled to take place there came the historic call from the United Gold Coast Convention. The nationalist organization in Ghana (then known as The Gold Coast) which had just begun demanding self-government from Britain, called him home to become its General Secretary. Nkrumah immediately obliged--to the doom of colonialism in Ghana and Africa at large. The interplay, in Nkrumah’s mind, between philosophy and practice, more specifically, the practice of radical nationalism, was, in any case, already evident in his Towards Colonial Freedom, 3 which he published in London in 1947 before returning to Ghana. In that work he adopted Marxist-Leninist philosophy and adapted it to the purposes of the anti-colonial struggle. There is no reason why a Ghanaian philosopher may not make a creative use of a foreign philosophy in the service of Ghana, whether or not that philosophy has any affinity with Ghanaian traditional philosophy. But later, as President of Ghana, Nkrumah published Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization and Development with Particular Reference to the African Revolution, in which it was argued that Marxism was, in fact, in harmony with African Traditional thought. Ghanaian traditional thought was not explored in any detail in that work, but that did not necessarily detract from its possible relevance to Ghana or to Africa, in general. The detailed exploration of Ghanaian traditional thought has, however, been a notable concern among contemporary Ghanaian philosophers, a fact to which the above mentioned books by Danquah, Abraham and Gyekye bear eloquent testimony. This demonstrates that however deeply the Ghanaian mind has gone into Western philosophy or 3 The publisher of the second edition, which came out in 1962, was Heinemann Educational Books, London.