Under Construction @ Keele 2018 Vol. IV (II) | Page 10

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Ethnophilosophy and African ‘Sage’ philosophy
At Nairobi University in the early-1970s, Henry Oruka began ground-breaking research into
the thought of indigenous tribes in his part of Africa. 1 Oruka’s research had led him to the
conclusion that what was counted as philosophy largely depended not upon the content and
quality of the work, but upon who was creating it. Racial prejudice is exemplified by Oruka’s
near contemporary, Husserl, who claimed that ‘ “Western philosophy” is tautologous and “non-
Western philosophy” is an oxymoron’. 2 This in isolation might not be unexpected, but Oruka
contrasted the treatment of African tribal thinkers, known as ‘Sages’, with that of the early
Greek philosophers, known as Presocratics, making the point that the Greek thinkers ‘became’
philosophers by virtue of being discussed by Western academic philosophers, and were thus
included in the canon of literature considered as philosophy. 3
The terms ‘ethnophilosophy’, ‘African Sage philosophy’ and ‘African philosophy’ are
used differently by many different writers and have also changed in their meaning over time. 4
Interestingly, in the case of the word ‘ethnophilosophy’, a word which was originally intended
disparagingly has been taken up by academics within the discipline it describes and is now
the preferred terminology, something which has taken place with many marginalised or
oppressed groups. 5 Other examples of this phenomenon include the Quakers (the Society of
Friends), first described as ‘Quakers’ by Gervase Bennet in 1650 when the founder of
Quakerism, George Fox was tried for blasphemy by Bennet. Fox later stated in his
autobiography that Bennet "was the first person that called us Quakers, because I bade them
tremble at the word of the Lord." 6 Similarly, an early-nineteenth-century group of amateur
idealist philosophers were ridiculed as ‘transcendentalists’ in the press, but soon became
known as American Transcendentalists even amongst themselves. 7
Henry O. Oruka, Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy
(Nairobi: Africa Centre for Technological Studies Press, 1991).
2 Husserl quoted in Bina Gupta and Jitendra N. Mohanty (eds.), Philosophical Questions East and
West (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc, 2000), xi.
3 Oruka, Sage Philosophy, 42.
4 Bruce B. Janz, Philosophy in an African Place (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2009), 74-79.
5 ‘Ethnophilosophy’ is now the preferred term. See Theophilus Okere, African Philosophy: A Historico-
Hermeneutical Investigation of the Conditions of its Possibility (Lanham, MD: University Press of
America, 1983), 174
6 G. Fox in John L. Nickalls (ed.), The Journal of George Fox (Cambridge University Press, [1694]
1952), 126
7 Philip F. Gura, American Transcendentalism: A History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), 80.
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