Experience An Essay On African Philosophical Thought Articulated By Kwame Gyekye Format Digital Edition

not sure if everything Gyekye says is correct, but I deeply appreciate the ground being broken in this pioneering study of African, particularly Akan, philosophy.
Gyekye deals with broad methodological issues such as whether philosophy could take place in oral rather written traditions and what, if anything, could be said about "African philosophy" as a

whole.
Most of the book, however, is focused on the Akan people of Ghana, Gyekye's method involves an analysis of Akan sayings and proverbs as well as reports from his discussions with traditional sages in Akan communities to which he adds his own philosophical analysis.
You might call this "philosophical anthropology" not in the Kantian sense, but in the sense that it's part anthropology, part philosophy.


I particularly enjoyed learning about Akan views on personal identity a sort of threepart "dualism" and ethics a communitarian consequentialism in which the needs of the individual and the needs of the community do not necessarily conflict as they always seem to in Western political theory, which is an odd dogma if you think about it.


I'm not always completely sure about Gyekye's methods or conclusions for example, how much philosophical content can you really read off of folk sayings, but his aim is to provide a foundation for the study of African philosophy and I think he's definitely succeeded in doing just that.
Defining the main principles of a distinct African philosophy, this work rejects the idea that an African philosophy consists simply of the work of Africans writing on philosophy.
It argues that critical analyses of specific traditional African modes of thought are necessary to develop a distinctively African philosophy.
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