Sagacity in African philosophy

Abstract

This work attempts to evaluate the contentious issue among both African and non-African scholars about the existence or non-existence of African philosophy. The first position to be taken on the question of African philosophy was expressed by European Scholars and especially anthropologists who argued that since African people were not as civilized as Europeans, they therefore had not developed thought systems to a level where they could be said to have a systematized body of knowledge that demonstrated the logical and critical approach of philosophy.

Africans were therefore condemned as illogical, irrational and primitive. However, African scholars have strongly refuted this Eurocentric view of Africa and demonstrated in their various works that Africa is not without critical thought as wrongly believed.

Their contention is that African philosophy exists, both in its traditional and modern form. The various philosophical positions discussed in this work attest to this. The general argument in this work is that there exists African philosophy and one form in which it is presented is philosophic sagacity.

The arguments presented in sagacity in support of this are then critically assessed to see if they can stand the test as philosophy in the first place and African philosophy in the second. The question we are then left asking is, if African philosophy exists, in what ways is philosophic sagacity a true representation of it and how convincing is its position? It is my belief that the assessment given in this work fully answers this question.