Pearce's "African Philosophy and the Sociological Thesis" a Response

Abstract

Carole Pearce's argument against African philosophy is founded on a set of factual flaws and the fallacious assumption that African philosophy is equivalent to ethnophilosophy, which she defines as a form of intellectual apartheid founded on irrational belief systems. I argue that African philosophy is in no way qualitatively different from, say, French or Chinese philosophy, and that ethnophilosophy is merely one aspect of it But ethnophilosophy could play the important role of critically evaluating African ethnic belief systems and the interpretation of such by Western anthropologists. In general, African philoso phy is nothing more than the philosophical research (of whatever order) carried out by African philosophers in the context of African research paradigms.