Wiredu on How Not to Compare African Thought with Western Thought: A Commentary

Abstract

Kwasi Wiredu, a prominent African philosopher from Ghana, recently published an essay entitled “How Not To Compare African Thought to Western Thought” (1984) in which he criticized the prevalent method of comparing what is regarded as African philosophy with Western philosophy. Wiredu begins the essay with the assertion that all cultures are characterized by two levels of thought, namely, the traditional non-scientific and the theoretical or scientific thought (p. 149-50). He also notes, although without examples, that some contemporary philosophers both in Africa and the West are in the habit of comparing the traditional non-scientific thought of the African people with the highly theoretical and scientific thought of the Western world. He sees this type of comparison as improper and argues that since there is traditional folk thought in Africa as well as in the West, if there is to be any comparison at all, it must be with folk thought to folk thought and scientific thought to scientific thought (p. 157). Wiredu's essay is an excellent academic treatise in its own right, but as an African who is attempting to reflect philosophically and possibly attempting to provide leadership for the thrust of African philosophical search, there are some pitfalls in the essay which need to be pointed out. The purpose of this commentary is to highlight and hopefully clarify some of the misleading innuendoes in contemporary literature about African philosophy and the role of an African philosopher within the world of philosophy. The first problem in Wiredu's essay is that it is sympathetic to the misconceived view that Africans have no thought process except the non-scientific. Assertions like “African Societies are among the closest approximations in modern world to societies in the pre-scientific stage of intellectual development,” betray Wiredu's presupposition. This position creates a problem for Wiredu's project. If, as he has stated, the West is basically scientific in its thought process and Africans are basically folk-like in their thinking, then there is no basis for comparison. His argument that it is wrong to compare African folk thought to Western scientific thought is the arbitrator.