Although Africa is extremely diverse, there appear to be some shared moral ideas across many ethnic groups.[6] In a number of African cultures, ethics is centered on a person's character, and saying "he has no morals" translates as something like "he has no character".[6] A person's character reflects the accumulation of her deeds and her habits of conduct; hence, it can be changed over a person's life.[6] In some African cultures, "personhood" refers to an adult human who exhibits moral virtues, and one who behaves badly is not considered a person, even if he is considered a human.[6]
While many traditional African societies are highly religious, their religions are not revealed, and hence, ethics does not center around divine commands.[6] Instead, ethics is humanistic and utilitarian: it focuses on improving social functioning and human flourishing.[6] On the other hand, social welfare is not a mere aggregate of individual welfare; rather, there is a collective "social good" embodying values that everyone wants, like peace and stability.[6] In general, African ethics is social or collectivistic rather than individualistic and united in ideology.[6] Cooperation and altruism are considered crucial.[6] African ethics places more weight on duties of prosocial behaviour than on rights per se, in contrast to most of Western ethics.[6
West Africa Edit The most prominent of West Africa's pre-modern philosophical traditions has been identified as that of the Yoruba philosophical tradition and the distinctive worldview that emerged from it over the thousands of years of its development. Philosophical concepts such as Omoluabi were integral to this system, and the totality of its elements are contained in what is known amongst the Yoruba as the Itan. The cosmologies and philosophies of the Akan, Dogon and Dahomey were also significant.
Islamic Edit Historically the West African philosophical traditions have had a significant impact on Islamic philosophy as a whole as much of the Islamic philosophical tradition was subject to the influence of scholars born or working in the African continent in centres of learning such as Djenne and Timbuktu in Mali. Many of these intellectuals and scholars created a philosophical tradition in these cities.
Logan Gray
Horn of Africa Edit In the Horn of Africa, there are a number of sources documenting the development of a distinct Ethiopian philosophy from the first millennium onwards. Among the most notable examples from this tradition emerge from the work of the 17th-century philosopher Zera Yacob, and that of his disciples.
Southern Africa Edit In Southern Africa and Southeast Africa the development of a distinctive Bantu philosophy addressing the nature of existence, the cosmos and humankind's relation to the world following the Bantu migration has had the most significant impact on the philosophical developments of the said regions, with the development of the philosophy of Ubuntu as one notable example emerging from this worldview.
Juan Campbell
Central Africa Edit Many Central African philosophical traditions before the Bantu migration into southern Central Africa have been identified as a uniting characteristic of many Nilotic and Sudanic peoples, ultimately giving rise to the distinctive worldviews identified in the conceptions of time, the creation of the world, human nature, and the proper relationship between mankind and nature prevalent in Dinka mythology, Maasai mythology and similar traditions.
Units often have no prescribed order and are interchangeable. Attention to the discrete units of the whole produces a form which is multifocal, with shifts in perspective and proportion... Such compositions (whether representational or not) mirror a world order of structurally different yet autonomous elements. It is a formal means of organizing diverse powers, not only to acknowledge their autonomy but, more importantly, to evoke, invoke, and activate diverse forces, to marshal and bring them in to the phenomenal world. The significance of segmented composition in Yoruba art can be appreciated if one understands that art and ritual are integral to each other.[2]
The paper notes that whereas the issue of capital punishment is very old and not alien to any human society, and whereas there is an abundance of literature on Western philosophy of punishment, very little philosophical work on punishment from the African perspective can be cited. By way of filling a part of the lacuna in the literature, the paper examines the Yorùbá culture for its perspectives on the death penalty.
The paper finds in the Ifá Literary Corpus, though implicit, a strong philosophical argument against capital punishment. The argument, explicated and analyzed, turns out to be an introduction of a skeptical epistemological consideration into the debate over capital punishment in a unique way that raises some other jurisprudential issues relating to judicial administration.
The paper concludes that although there may, as would be expected, be other positions on the issue of death penalty in Yorùbá culture, the particular argument examined validly makes its point for the abolition of capital punishment, especially when situated in the context of Yorùbá social ethic, which is essentially communal and humanistic. The enabling cultural context of the Ifá argument against capital punishment was extended beyond its immediate Yorùbá socio-cultural context to the pan-African humanistic social ethic conceptualized in Bantu languages of Southern Africa as ‘Ubuntu’, thereby giving the argument a contemporary universal relevance and applicability.
Henry Watson
The problem of gerontocracy in Africa: The Yorùbá perspective as illustrated in the Ifá corpus
In the field of African philosophy, there exists the belief among the modernists or professional philosophers that gerontocracy is coterminous with authoritarian traditions in traditional Africa which, supposedly, are responsible for the lack of sustained curiosity to look at issues from different perspectives. Drawing from the Ifá literary corpus as a store-house for Yorùbá philosophy, I argue in this paper that gerontocracy in Africa does not construe the idea that the elderly in Africa are rigid in thoughts or have immutable authority which discourages independence of thought. I conclude that the position of the modernists on the supposed manifestation of authoritarianism in Africa derives its continuing force from a conception of philosophy which gives special overtones to the ideas of individuals as opposed to a collectivistic system of thought and the assumption that the multitude cannot produce philosophy.
i imagine only a few tribes could delve into the fields of philosphy i remember reading an article that studied the pre colonial languages of africa and for many of the ethnic groups their languages were extremely primitive
Ethan Perry
Most of west africa had complex and developed Language
The idea of what makes a person is interesting from the Asante and Yoruba perspective The Asante think that the group makes the individual while the Yoruba believe that it's both individuals and society as a whole the small peices make up the society while society gives these pieces meaning
Ryan Johnson
who is paying you to keep making threads? I noticed you and the mesoamerican guy working triple time the past few weeks
Wyatt Rodriguez
>The idea of what makes a person is interesting from the Asante and Yoruba perspective Daily reminder that both groups have and still do sacrifice humans in rituals
Thomas Harris
What's with all the niggerloving on Veeky Forums all of a sudden? Are we under invasion?
is article, focusing on the operation and abolition of human sacrifice in eastern Yorubaland, examines a key aspect of the dialogue and conflict between Yoruba chiefs and their opponents .
Brandon Martinez
Among the African Asante, the victims sacrificed as first-fruit offerings during the Festival of New Yams were usually criminals, though slaves also were killed.
Albino children take a break in a recreational hall at the Mitindo Primary School for the blind(Image: Getty) “Normally the villagers or the families of the victims do that for us. But there is little we can doto stop it. These people are living in the dark ages.”
Human sacrifice also continues across the border in Bangladesh. In 2010 a brickmaker was arrested for killing one of his labourers and pouring the blood on his field to improve the quality of his mud bricks.
On the opposite side of the planet in Mexico, human sacrifice is usually associated with the ancient Aztec civilization, where priests would cut out the still-beating heart of a victim at the top of a pyramid.
But three years ago a sickening triple murder raised fears that a similar ritual is making a comeback. Eight members of one family were charged with kidnapping and murdering two boys aged 10 and a woman of 55 in the copper mining town of Nacozari a few miles from the US border. The victims had been sacrificed to Santa Muerte (Saint Death), a rapidly growing cult in Mexico which is popular with drug smugglers and cartel hitmen. The victims’ throats and wrists had been slashed so the blood could be collected and spread on a sacrificial altar.
Two of the bodies were buried near the family’s home, but one of the boys was buried in the dirt floor of their shack.
Andrew Chesnut, chairman of Catholic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, says there have been other recent reports of human sacrifice in Mexico. He said: “With no clerical authority to stop them, some practitioners engage in abhorrent rituals.”
Brayden Bennett
There's a lot of inaccuracies on that page btw as someone who studies Mesoamerica.
Like this: >The Aztecs claimed that they sacrificed 84,000 people over a period of four days. During the reign of the Aztecs, an estimated 250,000 people were sacrificed across Mexico during an average year.
Grayson Perry
explain why this is an inaccuracy
Liam Lewis
In one particularly gruesome example one couple were so desperate for a son they consulted a local shaman.
On his advice Madan and Murti Simaru kidnapped six-year-old Mona Kumar from a neighbouring family, took him to a river bank and mutilated his body as the priest chanted over them. Then they killed the boy and washed themselves in his blood to complete the fertility ritual.
In May this year a “tantric sorcerer” was lynched after he beheaded five-year-old Sanatan Bag in front of his parents on a tea plantation in the north-eastern state of Assam. And in the south-eastern province of Andhra Pradesh a boy of 14 was abducted by a sect searching for hidden treasure in 2012.
They took him to an abandoned fort and slaughtered him under a new moon, believing that this would please ancients spirits who would then show them how to find the treasure.
David Parker
far more common in countries like India where a minority of tantric shamans still promote it to gullible communities of uneducated peasants.
Best known in the West as techniques to prolong and intensify sexual pleasure, in remote areas tantric rituals loosely derived from the Hindu faith can also include animal, and, in extreme cases, human sacrifice to please the gods and guarantee good luck.
It is so widespread that in 2006 there were 28 cases of human sacrifice in just four months in the northern province of Uttar Pradesh.
Lincoln Adams
The Aztecs inflated their own numbers as it made them appear stronger. They even did studies and found 84,000 sacrifices in a day is just not feasable. Also 250,000 a year is a wildly outrageous number. I don't believe any serious academic finds those figures credible. Hernan Cortes himself gave an estimate of 4000 sacrifices a year. Seriously, if you want to prove others practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism thats fine but don't spout bs of your own.
>Cartels being in anyway related to Mesoamerica. You can maybe say they were inspired but that's just ignorant larping especially since most cartels aren't even Aztec descendants and the majority are mestizos and whites from the north (outside of Mesoamerica).
Daniel Baker
I don't know what this has to do with my post.
Austin White
I agree, plus the Aztecs were not able to count to 250,000
Luis Bell
I'm pretty sure they could given their numerical system. They celebrated the new fire ceremony which was every 18,980 days. And the Maya long count calendar counted days thousands of years in the past and future. Or much earlier (millions of years) as some stelae dates have shown.
