UCLA

Philosophical research has been geared toward the epistemological, metaphysical, and physical as denoted only in written systems. I want to challenge this framework by using several case examples in the field African Philosophy, which I will describe in the next paragraph. African Philosophy has not been accepted as readily by the departments as a whole. I will discuss two reasons why this happens. The first is within written systems in Africa. Philosophers who use written language like Ibn Rushd’s (and Acquinas) place in geography has been categorized in Spain, although the empire he and his father were working in were the African Almoravid and Almohad empires. Second, when it comes to philosophers who work in non-written philosophy, the same arguments that Goody and Watts have used in their work “the consequences of Literacy” in the 60’s repeat in differing ways to denounce the non-written as mystical and non-logical; therefore not belonging in the philosophy department at all. Some in the field have carved out paths for logic in symbols and others have recorded oral narratives in writing to justify the field of African Philosophy in Philosophy writ-large.