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.
