Conceptual Analysis and African Philosophy

Abstract

The history of the methodology of African philosophy can be divided into two periods: the nascent stage that's characterized by a rigor-demand, and the contemporary stage that's characterized by a relevance-demand. In this, paper, I argue for one way to strike the appropriate balance between relevance and rigor in African philosophy. Specifically, I argue that the unconscious rejection of conceptual analysis as a philosophical method by contemporary African philosophers played a major role in how African philosophy came to be characterized by a relevance-demand. Consequently, I submit that even though being only or excessively relevance-oriented is not bad, African philosophy would become rich enough to compete with other regional philosophies-Western, Chinese, and so on-if it re-installs conceptual analysis as part of its methodology. 1 I will use 'analytic tradition', 'analytic philosophy', and 'Western philosophy' interchangeably throughout. In doing so, I do not mean to eschew the fact that analytic philosophy is a type of Western philosophy alongside continental philosophy (see, e.g., Humphries, 1999); my focus is just on analytic philosophy.