Filosofia Theoretica Journal of African Philosophy Culture and Religions
Journal Data
| Type | JOURNAL |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Calabar School of Philosophy (ZA) |
| ISSN | 2276-8386 / 2408-5987 |
| Scopus | 21100812553 |
| Wikidata | Q64508475 |
| OpenAlex | S4210202315 |
| Website | https://api.elsevier.com/content/serial/title/issn/2276-8386 |
| Total publications | 248 |
| Coverage period | 1970 - 2026 |
| Country | NG |
| Language | EN |
| Indexing | Scopus indexed |
| Cited by | 2 |
| Impact factor | 0.22 |
| SJR | 0.133 (Q3) |
| SNIP | 0.393 |
| CiteScore | 1.7 |
| h-index | 1 |
| Female authorship share | 23.1% |
This journal focuses on African philosophy, culture, and religions, which are core topics within cultural anthropology, the anthropology of religion, and African area studies. It frequently publishes work of direct interest to social anthropologists
Cultural Studies · Philosophy · Religious Studies · Sociology and Political Science · African cultural and philosophical studies · African Education and Politics · African history and culture analysis · African history and culture studies · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · African studies and sociopolitical issues
The Democracy Deficit, Global Capitalist System and Ubuntu
Many African countries are plagued by a democracy deficit associated with authoritarianism, neo-patrimonial systems, a lack of democratic accountability to the poor majority, and illegitimate accountability to corporations. There is a school of thought associated with the view of Patrick Chabal that maintains that the democracy deficit in Africa emanates from authoritarian rulers who adopt a neopatrimonial system. I will show that such a view is …
Ifá and Wayang as Posthuman Knowledge Machines
This article develops a conceptual-comparative reading of Yorùbá Ifá divination and Javanese wayang kulit as posthuman knowledge machines. It asks how both practices redistribute epistemic agency beyond the human, including what counts as an authoritative speaker, and how they produce veridiction that turns narrative into binding guidance. Rather than treating Ifá and wayang as folklore, heritage objects, or symbolic performances alone, the artic…
Sifting the Situated Self
Philosophical counselling proposes to examine life through philosophical frameworks and concepts. When practiced and actualised in postcolonial African contexts, however, this commitment encounters a specific challenge: the counselee who arrives at the session is not a neutral, universal, or ahistorical subject. They are a situated self, constituted through their relations to community, a living past, and a historical horizon shaped by the partic…
The Two Menkitis
Kwame Gyekye’s charge that Ifeanyi Menkiti’s account of personhood is a radical communitarianism that subordinates the individual to the group has framed a long debate in African philosophy. This article argues that the later iterations of the debate ignored a development in its central text: the 1984 essay subordinates rights to duties and the individual to the community, giving Gyekye’s label its purchase; the 2004 restatement abandons that ran…
Traditional Igbo Concepts of Death, Burial, Ancestors and Reincarnation
It is biological for every living thing to experience death, but not all living things face death with the intensity of grief and pain as man does. The unavoidability and inevitability of death generate fear and anxiety in man. In the Igbo worldview, just like many other cultures in Africa, death is conceived as a necessity which ensures continuity of life, a beginning of new life, a separation from the community of the living, a union with the l…
Moral Selfhood and Ubuntu in Curriculum
School curricula shape adolescents’ identity and moral selfhood, yet research on indigenising historically colonised curricula remains limited. This paper examines moral identity formation in Zimbabwe’s secondary education under HeritageBased Education using Ubuntu as a normative ethical lens. It argues that dominant psychological models and neoliberal schooling prioritise individual achievementin ways that can fragment relational moral developme…
Perspectives on Non-racial Philosophical Anthropology and African Philosophy
This article explores the possibility of developing a non-racial philosophical anthropology rooted in African philosophy. In contrast to the critical anti-racial tradition, which holds that race must be confronted directly through exposure, deconstruction, and critique, this study proposes a different approach: dissolving the idea of race by drawing on precolonial African intellectual sources. The article examines the historical and philosophical…
Is Destiny Determined? An Akan Perspective
Gyekye’s position claiming the unalterability of Akan destiny is contrary to the Akan folk conception, moral cognition and social practice. Generally, Akan people believe in the idea that our entire life is predetermined (fatalism), yet they accept that we are capable of making responsible choices. This paper conceptually clarifies the interchanging expressions of Hyεbrε (destiny) and Nkrabea (fate) and argues for the alterability of destiny base…
Reclaiming the Philosophical, Educational, and Psychological in African Initiation Schools through Afrocentric Education
European colonialists not only physically dislocated Africans from their land but, also, dislocated them philosophically, educationally, psychologically, and epistemologically by displacing Afrocentric education, and replacing it with Eurocentric education. They projected initiation schools as centres promoting violence against young women and men, fully cognisant that initiation schools were aimed at transforming playful girls and boys into resp…
Engaging Emmanuel Ofuasia’s An Exploration of the Parallels between African and Process Metaphysics
In this paper, I engage Emmanuel Ofuasia’s An Exploration of the Parallels between African and Process Metaphysics: Introducing the Metaphysics of Force and Becoming, a twelve-chapter comparative study arguing that African metaphysics of force and Whiteheadian process metaphysics of becoming are structurally equivalent, and that classical bivalent logic distorted both traditions. The paper credits Ofuasia with a historically rich account spanning…
Personality Symbolism in African Philosophy and Religion
Human beings are inherently symbol-making, and this symbolic capacity is central to African philosophical and religious thought. In African traditions, symbolism is not a mere aesthetic element but a foundational ontological structure through which identity, personhood, and communal belonging are understood. Symbols— manifested in names, rituals, proverbs, totems, and cosmologies—do not merely reflect reality but actively construct it. Personalit…
A Response to Michael Eze on Decolonising African Political Philosophy
The call to decolonise African political philosophy by Michael Eze is necessitated by the question of rights and common good in the African conception of personhood initiated by Ifeanyi Menkiti and Kwame Gyekye. Eze sees this debate as influenced by Western thought and concerns. Eze points to a manifestation of the influence of Western dualistic categories in the delivery of the Menkiti-Gyekye debate on rights. A Western dualistic methodology is …
Tempering Irele’s “In Praise of Alienation”
In response to Africa’s tragic predicament, Abiola Irele advocates the emulation of Western science and technology, employing Hegelian alienation as a means of African development. However, this approach tends to overlook the significant difference between Hegelian primal Spirit and the condition of Africa. This article contends that while Irele claims it to be a pragmatic alternative to African development, it inadvertently risks reinforcing Eur…
A critique of Metz’s conception of development through dependency and Pan-Africanist thought
Metz diagnoses excessive individualism, excessive technocratic orientation, and excessive anthropocentrism as the main factors that undermine development globally. In this work, I seek to show that the application of Metz’s diagnosis in Africa exposes limitations associated with the silence on the condition of powerlessness of African countries in a world that is bifurcated into the dominant and exploiting capitalist, the Global North, on one han…
How conceptual articulation goes beyond the failure of conceptual mandelanisation in African philosophy
Conceptual mandelanisation is an Africanisation response to the challenge inherent in conceptual decolonisation, which is concerned primarily with the linguistic decolonisation project in African philosophy. Although conceptual mandelanisation is an Africanisation project, it fails by deflecting African philosophy’s focus from the language problem to an African personage problem. Conceptual articulation is a mechanism for developing concepts from…
Deconstructing colonial and religious interventions in indigenous musical expression in Zimbabwe
This paper critically explores the interrelationship between colonialism, religion, cultural hegemony, and indigenous music within the Zimbabwean context. It examines how missionary-led colonial enterprises not only dismantled African religious systems but also disrupted indigenous musical and cultural traditions, promoting Western values as superior through religious indoctrination and education. Specifically, the analysis demonstrates that colo…
The nomos of white settler-colonialism in South Africa
This paper provides a historical and legal philosophical analysis of the political and legal foundations of white settler colonialism in ‘South Africa’ since 1652, through the conceptual lens of the nomos as formulated by the legal philosopher Carl Schmitt. It relies on an Afrikan-centred theoretical framework and a historical comparative method in this qualitative study of the relationship between conquest and law. Literature review is used to a…
The Arab renaissance
This article takes a close look at the ideas that drove the Arab Nahda (Renaissance), by focusing on two central figures, Rifaʿa al-Tahtawi and Muhammad Abduh, while reading them against the backdrop of French colonial rule in Egypt. It shows that, although both men tried to reshape Arab-Islamic thought by welcoming Western liberal concepts, their effort fell short of producing a fully grown decolonial theory. Drawing on voices from decolonial wo…
Yoruba Ọbaship institution and its new religious paradigms
The institution of Ọbaship in Africa is not only sacred but also revered and exalted as a traditional institution because the Ọba (king), who ascends the indigenous stool of Ọbaship, is regarded not as an ordinary person but as a 'ritualised human being'. In Yorubaland, Ọba is regarded as 'next to God Almighty'. He is worshipped and adored as one of the deities. He is an institution in his own right. Ọbas are the custodians of the relics of histo…
Globalisation and coloniality
As global forms inhabit local spaces and draw the local into the global, previous deliberate mechanisms of system transform into fluid processes that require constant investigation. The globalisation of knowledge raises an old challenge: the standardisation of knowledge. What and who determines knowledge system as a universal model? This research analytically interrogates the nature and outcomes of the divide between the production of knowledge a…
Avoiding misanthropic sacrifice in African environmental ethics
Holist nonanthropocentric approaches in ethics face the challenge of avoiding the misanthropic sacrifice objection. Those who raise the objection do so on the basis that holist nonanthropocentric ethics imply that it might be permissible to sacrifice individual humans, groups of humans, or even humanity as a whole, for the sake of preserving broader ecological wholes. The misanthropic sacrifice objection is thus relevant to African environmental …
Orality, epistemic exclusion and wisdom of Indongos in contemporary Angola
This article examines the role of African orality in philosophical thought, analysing how the wisdom of the Indongos challenges dominant epistemic hierarchies. Through a qualitative and hermeneutic approach, this study reviews philosophical and literary sources to show how oral traditions embody ontological and ethical intuitions. The analysis of Angolan authors such as Xitu and Pepetela —within the framework of the Philosophy of Sagacity and Fou…
Indigenous Gendered Practices and Beliefs for Climate Mitigation in Bududa and Bulambuli Districts, Eastern Uganda
This paper examines how indigenous knowledge systems and proverbs, which promote peace and social harmony, can serve as pathways to contemporary peacebuilding. Participants were selected from two case studies: Bulambuli and Bududa in the Bugisu region of eastern Uganda, severely affected by mudslides and volcanic eruptions. An ethnographic study, through in-depth interviews, reveals tensions that spread from the family to the wider community. Imp…
Exploring the integration of Ubuntu in secondary schools curricula
This article examines the integration of Ubuntu education, known as Ubuntugogy, as a pedagogical framework into Zimbabwean secondary schools, rather than solely as a stand-alone subject. It addresses significant gaps in the literature concerning the persistence of a Eurocentric curriculum, gender imbalances in school leadership, and the marginalisation of indigenous knowledge systems in formal education. A qualitative case study was conducted, in…
A critique of J.S. Sanni’s argument on the role of religion in promoting silence and extortion in contemporary African (Nigerian) society using the name of God
This study examines J.S. Sanni’s argument on the role of religion in promoting silence and extortion in contemporary African (Nigerian) society, leveraging on the name of God, with a view to determining the strengths and weaknesses of this argument. Sanni posits that religion (Christianity and Islam) have played crucial roles in promoting silence and extortion in Africa, with particular reference to Nigeria. He argues that the colonial debris of …
Rethinking Monotheism
The Igala religion believes in the supreme God (Ọjọ) as well as the ancestral spirits (Ibegwu). This belief system gives rise to the question of whether the Igala religion is monotheistic or polytheistic. Isaiah Negedu has recently argued that the Igala is a peculiar form of monotheism, namely inclusive monotheism. In contrast, this essay compares the Igala understanding of ancestral spirits with the Christian notions of angels and patron saints,…
Maat and the rebirth of Kmt ‘Land of Black People’
In this paper we examine Ɔbenfo Mario H. Beatty’s chapter, ‘Maat the Cultural and Intellectual Allegiance of a Concept’ in terms of its articulation of MꜢꜤt ‘Maat’. This examination sets out to delineate how a return to the principles inherent in MꜢꜤt ‘Maat’ can serve to bring about the Wḥm Mswt ‘Rebirth/Renaissance’ of Kmt ‘Land of Black People’ and Kmt(yw) ‘Black People’ economically and politically. This research is significant in that it poin…
Understanding the difference between African magic and African science
In the spirit of conversational philosophy endorsed by the Conversational School of Philosophy (CSP), I am oblige not to venerate ideas but to interrogate and scrutinize them in search of loopholes to be filled and weak points that needed to be strengthened in order to achieve what Jonathan Chimakonam calls theoretic sophistication and promote Global Expansion of Thought (GET). To promote GET in African philosophy which has to do with embedding t…
Mesembe Edet’s conversation with Innocent Onyewuenyi
The basic thesis of this essay is that the progressive development of any discipline is propelled by incessant constructive criticisms, creative emendation and articulate reconstruction of established positions and received opinions in the discipline. Accordingly, the essay argues that the method and canons of Conversational Philosophy (CP) are very significant to the progressive development of African philosophy. This is because they are fundame…
Phronesis and the epistemological journey through research undertakings involving human participants in the context of Sierra Leone
This article has provided some philosophical thoughts concerning the journey of research undertakings involving human participants, with consideration given to both natural / physical and human / social science fields, and with a focus on the situation in Sierra Leone (where ‘ethical prudence’ seemed to be lacking for various reasons). In the process of professional engagement, researchers must seek to give serious reflective thoughts on how thei…
The African predicament and a case for Singer’s ‘Samaritanism’
Africa has always been viewed as a land of the world’s greatest potential. It has been described ad nauseam as a land of abundant natural and human resources, the cradle of civilization and the bastion of man’s natural spirituality. In spite of this apparent superlative richness, the present African condition is also well documented as a paradox. If Africa is this resource rich, why is it so backward and economically poor? In line with the existe…
Hermeneutics in African philosophy
The aim of this paper is to re-examine the hermeneutic in the ongoing discourse on methodology in African philosophy. The diverse understanding of hermeneutics is not only limited to Western philosophy; in the few decades of its history in African philosophy, hermeneutics has also assumed different meanings. This paper discusses not only the historical evolution and development of hermeneutists in the West, but also the African hermeneutists: Tse…
Beyond Irredentism and Jingoism
In this article, I attempt once more to revisit the subject of logic in African philosophy or as some would have it, African logic. I discuss the views of those I call jingoists and irredentists and distance myself from them. I argue that there is logic in every human culture and language. I argue also that even the ancient Africans had logic in their languages. My goal is to show that logic as the tool of thought is universal and not culture-bou…
African Philosophy and the Search for an African Philosopher
There are contending reasons why the rationale, qualification and justification for becoming an African philosopher are still facing the problem of ontology. One reason, as Didier Kaphagawani posits, is premised on the challenges by anthropology and colonialism (1986, 86). Given Oruka, Makinde, Oladipo, Oke, and Hallen’s perception of these challenges, they concede that these challenges gave birth to the postcolonial search for a distinct African…
Scientific progress and postmodern culture
Scientific discourse grew out of various philosophical puzzles raised by human beings from the period of antiquity; and each age always comes with a renewed vigor for development over previous schools of thought with their attendant theories. With the speed of scientific progress and scientific awareness, there is no doubt that scholars from various disciplines fashion out theories to meet with the demands of the scientific spirit. It is this ver…
Postmodernism and the Objectivity of the Social Sciences
No Abstract
The culture-oriented bias of African philosophical inquiry
African philosophers with Levy Bruhlian disposition like Appiah, Masolo, and Wiredu posit that African philosophy is culture-biased. Some other African philosophers like Nkrumah, Janz, Hountondji, and Makinde assert that Africa’s precolonial indigenous culture is ahistorical and the dependence of contemporary African philosophy on culture cannot be de-emphasized. However, these views, though opposing, undermine two things; the way African philoso…
Religion, postmodernism and postmodern scholarship in Africa
There is a somewhat agreement among the world academia and intellectuals that the world has moved beyond the stipulated margins of modernism into what is called the postmodern era. Consequently, postmodernism as a school of thought has become a subject of scholastic discourse among its protagonists and antagonists. What is done in this paper is an appraisal of postmodernism in a broader sense and specifically postmodern scholarship in the discipl…
Mental Surgery
No Abstract
The post-modern scientific thoughts of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend
Postmodernism is like a spectre hunting the intellectual world, and there is a sense in which the attitude is, first and foremost, against modern science. This essay is, therefore, an expository analysis of the thoughts of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, as classical representations of the postmodern reaction against modern science. The paper argues that the colossal image of science, as well as the idea of a “unity of sciences” had to be jettis…
Addressing Uduma’s Africanness of a Philosophy Question and Shifting the Paradigm from Metaphilosophy to Conversational Philosophy
This conversation is inspired by Uduma O. Uduma’s essay entitled “The Question of the ‘African’ in African Philosophy: In search of a Criterion for the Africanness of a Philosophy”. In this essay, Uduma coined what he calls “the Africanness of a Philosophy Question which consists in the ultimate criterion for African philosophy. He was not the first to dwell on the Africanness issue in African philosophy but he was the first, to my knowledge, to …
Ududo reasoning in African thought
The dominance of methods of mathematical reasoning such as the axiomatic method in modern logic has taken a toll on the independent development of logic as a separate discipline. However, the emergence of other non-standard systems of logic which could be described as postmodernist shows how a radical break might be necessary in salvaging logic from the grip of mathematics. Our goal in this essay would be to propose and articulate a post modern f…
Neo-Colonialism, Postcolonialism and the Bane of Neoessentialist Theorising in Current African Literature
This paper is a response to Joseph Ushie’s argument for Neo-colonialism rather than Postcolonialism as the most appropriate theory for the criticism of what he calls Current African Literature. His proposition is based on the premise that Postcolonialism as a theory runs counter to the neo-colonial situation of Africa since the attainment of flag independence by different African nations. Hence, neo - colonialism answers directly to the socio-pol…
The question of objectivity, its implications for the social sciences in the era of postmodernism
This paper problematizes the question of objectivity as it pertains to the social sciences. The paper accentuates the difficulty with postmodernism which tries to deny the possibility of objective truth in the social sciences. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to evaluate the postmodernists’ quest for relativity and subjectivity of truth and to expose whether objectivity is attainable in the social sciences in the same way it is attainabl…
The prefix “African” and its implication for philosophy in Africa
Philosophy today is often regionalized unlike science and other disciplines. Thus we talk of Western, Eastern, American and African Philosophy. To speak or write philosophy within the ambit of the prefix “African” would elicit two major responses. First is the affirmative response which believes that indeed there exists some form of philosophy in Africa although distinct from Western philosophy in approach, procedure and methods but not in kind. …
Can Africana women truly embrace ecological feminism
My starting point in this essay is that, if it can be ascertained that there is something called Black African feminism (which represents the interests of some Black African women) as claimed by feminists and other like-minded African women, then the existence of Black African ecological feminism should be a matter of deduction. In this essay, I interrogate this position using Karen Warren’s version of ecological feminism which holds that there a…
How Applicable is the Idea of Deep Ecology in the African Context
In this paper, I outlined and discussed the idea of deep ecology as defended by Arne Næss (1973) as well as Bill Devall and George Sessions (1985). I especially looked at how deep ecology has responded to the dominant view in ecological ethics, especially its attendant theory – anthropocentrism or homo-centrism or simply the reason-based account – which I outlined and explained in the first section of this paper. In the final analysis, I looked a…
Finding a Place for Interrogatory Theory
No Abstract
Conversations in African Philosophy
Conversational philosophy is articulated by Jonathan O. Chimakonam as the new wave of philosophical practice both in “place” and in “space”. This journal adopts and promotes this approach to philosophizing for African philosophy. Readers are encouraged to submit their conversational piece (maximum of 2000 words) on any essay previously published in this journal or on any controversial topics, thoughts or authors for publication. It is recommended…
An essay concerning the foundational myth of ethnophilosophy
Ethnophilosophy, although glorified by some African philosophers, remains a problem in our undertakings in African philosophy. In its infancy, the problem revolved around the call for a total decolonization of African thought and philosophy, which eventually led to the proliferation of a vast array of mostly descriptive literature about the cultural views and practices of the African, sold to us as not only philosophy but genuine African philosop…
Postmodernism and objectivity in the Social Sciences
opening topic whose thesis needs clarification is, The Question of Objectivity, its Implications for the Social Sciences in the Era of Postmodernism: Africa in Perspective, published in the Special Issue of this journal on Postmodernism and African Philosophy (Volume 3, Number 2, July-December 2014, pp.50-61). sequence of the argument in this paper which was meant to create a liberating ground from the suspicious position of the African mind in r…
Modernity, Islam and an African Culture
The human quest for the meaning of life is an unending one marked by undulating landscapes. In order to confront the flux of experience generated by this quest for meaning, the human embraces science, morality, politics and religion. Religion is said to provide the basis for transcendental values which give humans succour after the physical and material struggles have ended. At the same time, religion also uses the observable social world as the …