PLS1502 - Introduction to African Philosophy (PLS1502)
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University Of South Africa (Unisa)
It is a simple, digestible summary of the required essay by Biakolo "struggle for reason in Africa. The review makes the article easier and more logical to digest in a first-year language.
PLS1502 - Introduction to African Philosophy (PLS1502)
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Module PLS1502
BIAKOLO
The struggle for reason in Africa, from Philosophy from Africa: A Text with
Readings, / P.H. Coetzee / p. 297-312
SUMMARRY
The pursuit of philosophy has historically been based on the individual, once colonization and
globalisation began (15th century) this widened to include ‘other’ from an anthropological view
point, i.e. how the established individual morals and ethics could be applied when confronted by
those of a different race (non-Caucasian).
Morgan’s 7 stages of development:
• Lower savagery
• Middle savagery
• Upper savagery
• Lower Barbarism
• Middle Barbarism
• Upper Barbarism
• Civilisation,
Were determined by:
• Family and kinship relations
• Subsistence systems, and
• Technology
• Writing and phonetic alphabet,
…at the time only Euro-American societies achieved this status. It was understandable then that
`Africans were viewed as ignorant, brutish, superstitious, treacherous and thievish. It was only in
the 18th century that a study into the differences between the different races and cultures was
undertaken to understand Africans outside of the context of western thinking. Even when more
extensive anthropological studies were undertaken in the 19th century, Africa was still viewed as
savage and barbaric.
Sadly, when the above criteria of what was deemed ‘civilised’ was applied to Africa, the judgement
of an ‘under developed’ people as western society termed it, brought with it the label of a ‘pre
logical mentality’. This brought rise to ‘pre-logical versus logical’ ideas and when looked at the
rules of logic as commonly known in western traditions (i.e. the law of non-contradiction and
modus ponens), it formed the basis of understanding the differences in culture and evolutionary
paths between savage and civilized cultures.
However, even with the new understanding – the old paradigm of ‘savage’ and all the sub-standard
viewpoints attached to it, had not fallen away. We can see the different application of ‘superior’
European thinking towards the ‘savage’ African manifest by the different cultures who colonized
Africa:
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