Philosophic Sagacity
from 1970
Find individual thinkers in oral communities, record their arguments, and settle whether Africa produced philosophers or only cultures.
- Active
- from 1970
- Where
- Kenya
- Status
- living
- Tradition
- African
The claim
Philosophy requires an individual who reasons critically, and such individuals exist in oral cultures. The way to prove it is to go and find them, interview them, and publish what they say.
What it held
Oruka's project was designed to settle an argument. Ethnophilosophy had presented African thought as a collective worldview; critics said a worldview held by everyone is not philosophy, since philosophy requires someone who examines what everyone believes.
So Oruka went looking for such people. He and his students conducted recorded interviews across Kenya with elders identified locally as wise, and distinguished two kinds: folk sages, who transmit the community's beliefs accurately, and philosophic sages, who reason critically about them and sometimes reject them.
The second kind is the point. Paul Mbuya Akoko argued about the nature of God in ways his community did not share. Others questioned inherited customs on grounds they could state. These are individuals dissenting with reasons, in cultures with no writing, and the interviews document it.
The objections are real and Oruka engaged them. How much did the interviewer's questions shape the answers? Does translation into a philosophical vocabulary import the philosophy it claims to find? Is one dissenting elder a philosopher or an eccentric?
What is not in doubt is that the recordings exist and can be read.
How it argued
Structured interview, recorded and transcribed, with the interviewer's questions published alongside the answers.
What it was arguing against
Ethnophilosophy's collective worldview, and the colonial claim that Africa produced no individual thinkers.
Where it disagreed with itself
Whether the interviewer's framing produces the philosophy it finds. Whether the sage-versus-folk distinction can be drawn without begging the question.
Common misconceptions
That it romanticises elders. Oruka's whole method depends on distinguishing those who merely transmit from those who argue, and most of his interviewees fell into the first group.
How it began
Henry Odera Oruka at the University of Nairobi in the 1970s, responding to a debate about whether African philosophy exists.
What became of it
Living, with the interviews now a documented archive and the method taken up elsewhere.
Lasting influence
African philosophy's self-understanding. The method has been applied in other oral traditions, and the archive is a resource that did not previously exist.
Why it still matters
The question of whether philosophy requires writing is a real one, and this is the most direct attempt to answer it empirically.
Put another way
A tape recorder under a tree, and one man disagreeing with his neighbours for reasons he can state.
Where to start
Sage Philosophy itself. The interviews are the argument.
The surprising bit
Oruka published the sages' names, arguments and disagreements with each other, so the material can be checked. Very little philosophy is presented in a form that allows that.
In their own words
A sage is one who is versed in the wisdom and traditions of his people, and who can think independently of them.
Philosophy does not require writing; it requires reasoning.
Connections
- Opposed by
- Ethnophilosophy
The verdict
A philosophical argument settled, as far as it could be, by going out and collecting evidence.