A Companion to African Philosophy

Abstract

Several West-African intellectuals obtained great fame in the second half of the nineteenth century and are of lasting importance for African philosophy. Their work covered a range of fields, such as religion, culture, race, science, technology and politics, and addressed pressing issues related to the rapid rise of European domination. Such issues came up first in Liberia and in European colonial settlements along the West African coast, while becoming the central concern in most of Africa when European domination became established in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Key authors in this period, such as Edward Blyden, Africanus Horton, James Johnson, and Alexander Crummell, developed comprehensive arguments that can be considered classical positions on the issue of an African response to the West. The nineteenth century was an exceptionally turbulent age in African history. The established political and economic structures were overturned, Islam and Christianity gained influence. A wide variety of smaller political units were clustered into a limited number of states, such as the Fulani empire of Sokoto, the Tokolor, the Mandinka, and Asante empires in West Africa, as well as a number of large kingdoms in East and Central Africa. Western powers and ideas that remained in the margin of the physical and intellectual landscape at the beginning of the nineteenth century occupied the centre at its close. There has been elaborate philosophical thought in African societies at least since ancient Egyptian times, taking forms probably as diverse as African societies. The emergence of Western domination in the nineteenth century created a new situation, it raised a new and common agenda for reflection for African intellectuals. The ideas of these intellectuals who wrote in European languages have often been attributed to an influx of European ideas resulting from trade, mission, intermarriage, and studies abroad [Shepperson 1960; Clapham 1970]. Some African authors have