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Can Philosophy Be Intercultural?

An African Viewpoint

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Kwasi Wiredu
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As we push closer to the twenty-first century, it is relevant to speculate whether the different peoples of the world can have any prospect of a more peaceful coexistence in the coming millennium than hitherto. It seems reasonable to suppose that intercultural dialogue in philosophy can be of service in the pursuit of this ideal and ought therefore to be promoted or, at least, cherished by all philosophers of goodwill. In this way they would be playing their part in the re-education of humankind. But if “ought” implies “can” then whether philosophy can be intercultural is a prior and more fundamental question.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 46 , Issue 184 , December 1998, pp. 147 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

Notes

1. I hope the reader will not assume that this asserts any sort of verificationism, for one might know what it means for a proposition to be true without know ing how to reach the circumstances in which they are seen to be true, or, in conceptual matters, to rehearse them. This last disjunct, by the way, shows the enormity of the distance between our remark and logical positivism, for logical positivism construes the relevant verification in an exclusively empirical sense.

2. I have argued that human beings by nature share some basic common canons of reasoning in Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective and also in my "Canons of Conceptualization," Monist 76, 4 (October 1993) and "Knowledge, Truth and Fallibility" in I. Kucuradi and R. S., Cohen (eds.), The Concept of Knowledge (Boston, 1995).

3. E. Bolaji Idowu, Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief (London, 1962), chapter 3: "In the Beginning."

4. Kwame Gyekye, An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Concep tual Scheme, Second Edition (Philadelphia, 1995), p. 70.

5. For the purposes of a certain kind of logical formalization, one might subtract the time factor from statements and relativize their truth value to time. How ever, this is only a technical maneuver compatible with the point just made.

6. See, for example, Kwame Gyekye, An Essay on African Philosophical Thought, chapter 6 "The Concept of a Person"; Kwasi Wiredu, "The Concept of Mind with Particular Reference to the Language and Thought of the Akans" in G. Floistad, Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 5: African Philosophy (Boston, 1987).

7. See Kwasi Wiredu, Cultural Universals and Particulars, chapter 10: "The Need for Conceptual Decolonization in African Philosophy."

8. David Mitchell, Introduction to Logic (London, 1962), p. 146.

9. Metaphilosophy 28, 4 (October 1997); Special Issue: Internationalism in Philoso phy, Guest Editor: Richard Shusterman.