Death is man's ultimate challenge. It is his ultimate puzzle. It is at the center of man's quest for the meaning of his existence. Different cultures at various eras have approached death from their gamut of meanings. The Igbo African society like other cultures in the world have confronted death in their attempt to philosophically give meaning to their experiences. Ndigbo like the majority of the human race, have refused to accept the finality of death. No. Man shouldn't just disappear. Among the Ndigbo, death is a continuum. The dead continue to live in the memory and activities of the community. Their status in the land of the dead, which by the way is not far removed from the community depends on how well they had lived and how well their progeny had discharged their duties towards them, especially by according them a befitting burial. In the Igbo ontology, the society is the center of existence. Even in the world of the dead, the dead exist for the society. They must continue to bid well for the community by granting it favorable auspices from the gods. Even when the dead don't make it into the comity of the ancestors, they don't just disappear. They hang around the community, causing great nuisances to their immediate family and the community at large. When the Igbo dies, he does not desire to be united to any god in any heaven nor to be punished by any demon in a hellfire. His being is essentially defined as "being with the community". This work x-rays t the Igbo unique way of approaching death, relying on library research, oral traditions and interviews, direct observations of the community's customs in practice and analyses of lived experiences in the community. It aims at bringing out distinctly in philosophical formation, the uniquely Igbo conceptualization of death as it relates to the meaning of life.
Ndigbo have a peculiar way of being as a people. They have a peculiar way of relating among themselves and establishing social affinities; they have their unique idea of relatedness. This peculiar sense of relatedness bound them together as a people despite the absence of a central government in the pre-colonial era. Kinship was cherished and was in some situations elevated to the sacred. It was the sacred bond that established as well as defined social relations among Ndigbo. The Igbo social web of relatedness generally revolved around the father. Patriarchy was ubiquitous in the Igbo society. The mother was important but was not the pivot of kinship relations among Ndigbo. However, Afikpo, Ohafia and Abiriba stand out as notable exceptions due to their matrifocal kinship practices. Although kinship is generally expressed by proximity and consanguinity, Ndigbo have their peculiar ways of interpreting and expressing consanguinity in their cultural milieu. Ndigbo express certain levels of relatedness with people in their proximity but definitely do not ipso facto see such people as kith and kin. Although, Igbo kinship is mostly patrilineal, it certainly does have significant bi-lineal components. This work showcases Igbo kinship system in philosophical formations. It is essentially a philosophical investigation of the Igbo idea and practice of kinship using the analytic method of inquiry. The work will systematically explore the subject matter in logical formation.
The world has always been, and will always be a fascinating enigma to man. Generations of thinkers have struggled to fathom the world and explain it in an intelligible formation. Till date, a thoroughly satisfactory explanation of the cosmos has not been finagled. The search for a comprehensive explanation of the world continues. Dominating the interpretations of the world are the materialistic and idealistic schools of thought. These are diametrically opposed cosmological systems without a middle ground. The materialists see the world as essentially material, devoid of any god or maker. The idealists see the world as a product of a spirit or mind. They believe the world to be fundamentally non-material in nature. Nkrumah, a thorough going materialist, believes the world to be fundamentally material in nature, Berkeley who was the most radical advocate of idealism, however, believes the world to be fundamentally spiritual. But the cosmos is, irrespective of man's interpretation of it. It is fundamentally one in our experience. The problem lies with our conception of some phenomena as material; and some others as spiritual. How can the material and non-material interact? If the world is material, it is definitely not spiritual. If it is made of ideas only, it is definitely not material. But supposing the world is neither material nor spiritual? It could as well be that our definition of matter does not encompass some of the properties inherent in the phenomena we regard as 'matter". It could as well be that what we refer as "spiritual" are properties inherent in but not encompassed by the definition of what we call matter. We could as well be living in a "matserial" cosmos, a world that is fundamentally made up of substances whose properties include those we conceive as "material" and some of those we consider as "spiritual". Perhaps it is time to reexamine our concept of matter and our concept of spirit. Perhaps, we should be talking of "matser" rather than matter and spirit. This work is a product of library research, philosophical analysis and systematic philosophical speculation. It addresses the problem of the interpretation of the world which encompasses the problem of language and the mind/matter dichotomy. It is the finding of this work that the cosmos is neither made up solely of matter or spirit. Phenomena exhibit characteristics which we traditionally describe as spiritual and material. Our conceptualizations of mind and spirit logically leads to a dual cosmos of mind and spirit, which obviously is fallacious. We are in one cosmos. The cosmos is only doubled in our language, not in our experience. Our experience of the cosmos remains one. It is the recommendation of this work that "matser" rather than mind and spirit should be used to characterize phenomena. Ours is a matserial cosmos.
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