Paulin Hountondji. African Philosophy as Critical Universalism

GLOBAL POLITICAL THINKERS Series Editors: Harmut Behr and Felix Rösch African Philosophy as Critical Universalism Franziska Dübgen Stefan Skupien Global Political Thinkers Series Editors Harmut Behr School of Geography Politics and Sociology Newcastle University Newcastle, UK Felix Rösch School of Humanities Coventry University Coventry, UK This Palgrave Pivot series presents ground-breaking, critical perspectives on political theory: titles published in this series present influential political thinkers on a global scale from around the world, with interpretations based on their original languages, providing synoptic views on their works, and written by internationally leading scholars. Individual interpretations emphasize the language and cultural context of political thinkers and of political theory as primary media through which political thoughts and concepts originate and generate. The series invites proposals for new Palgrave Pivot projects by and on authors from all traditions, areas, and cultural contexts. Individual books should be between 25,000 and 50,000 words long according to the Palgrave Pivot format. For more details about Palgrave Pivot, an innovative new publishing format from Palgrave Macmillan, please visit www.palgrave.com/pivot. Emphases shall be on political thinkers who are important for our understanding of: – – – – – – – – the relation between individual and society and conceptualizations of both; forms of participation and decision-making; conceptualizations of political deliberation and discourse; constructions of identity; conceptualizations of the ‘human condition’ of politics; ontologies and epistemologies of the political/of politics; conceptualizations of social and political change and/or tradition; and conceptualizations of political order, their rise and fall. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15014 Franziska Dübgen · Stefan Skupien Paulin Hountondji African Philosophy as Critical Universalism Franziska Dübgen University of Münster Münster, Germany Stefan Skupien WZB Berlin Social Science Center Berlin, Germany Global Political Thinkers ISBN 978-3-030-01994-5 ISBN 978-3-030-01995-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01995-2 (eBook) Library of Congress Control Number: 2018959879 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to first thank the editors Harmut Behr and Felix Roesch for accepting our proposal to their Palgrave Pivot Global Thinkers Series. Two anonymous reviewers have given us insightful comments and suggestions. A special thanks to Oliver Foster, Sneha Sivakumar, and Azarudeen Ahamed Sheriff from Palgrave Press for the good cooperation during the editing process. Without the support of many colleagues in African philosophy, this project would not have been feasible: Genuine opportunities to discuss the first draft of the book arose during workshops and lectures at the University of Johannesburg, UNISA Pretoria, and Stellenbosch University in March 2018. We would like to thank Thaddeus Metz, Pascah Mungwini, Ndumiso Dladla, and Dirk Loew for hosting us at their institutions and Kevin Behrens for his personal support during our stay in South Africa. A special thanks also to Sanya Osha, Motsamai Molefe, and Simphiwe Sesanti for their generous comments on earlier versions of this book. A related research project, supported by the Volkswagen Foundation, led Stefan Skupien to universities across several African countries, where colleagues at philosophy departments were willing to discuss their current views on the oeuvre of Hountondji. These included Thiémélé L. Ramsès Boa, Wilfried Lajul, Anthony Musonda, Oriare Nyarwath, and Mahamade Savadogo. In addition, Souleyman Bachir Diagne, Dismas Masolo, and Reginald Oduro have granted the authors their valuable time for interviews about the legacy of Hountondji. A warm thanks also to our German colleagues: Iwona Kocjan collected and systematized the large corpus of Hountondji’s v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS writings. Lotte Arndt has pointed us to valuable literature on the black communities in France, Mareike Heller has provided us with insights into the Rhodes Must Fall movement, and Franziska Dittrich has carefully edited the bibliography. The authors finally extend their sincerest thank to Paulin Hountondji, who has been willing to be interviewed thrice for this book, starting in 2016 in Bayreuth, in 2017 in Cotonou and eventually at the end of our writing process. Moreover, he has been immensely helpful by providing us with a complete bibliography and with texts that were not yet published or out of our reach. The book itself can hence be regarded as an ongoing discussion and dialogue, in which we learned from numerous conversations. Searching for these opportunities has thankfully always been supported by our families. We therefore like to include Roman Graf and Marina Pizzo in our acknowledgements, who tolerated our absences during the writing and travelling and provided us with the necessary calmness to finish the book. PRAISE FOR PAULIN HOUNTONDJI “This is a superb presentation of a philosopher, Paulin Hountondji, and a philosophy that have exercised the greatest influence on African Humanities and Social Sciences. Hountondji’s thought is indeed a transcultural philosophy as he insists that philosophy is never the simple emanation of a culture or a language but a critical, questioning, pluralistic, way of aiming at the universal. Simply said, Paulin Hountondji’s transcultural philosophy is an important answer to the ethno-nationalisms and the tribalisms that are fragmenting today our world and our common humanity that we urgently need to hear.” —Souleyman Bachir Diagne, Professor in the Departments of French and Philosophy, Columbia University, USA “Paulin Hountondji is one of the most important elders in African philosophy, with this book providing a sympathetic overview of all his major works, covering more than 50 years of scholarship. The book is both intellectual history and systematic philosophy, with its authors convincingly arguing that Hountondji’s ideas continue to be relevant for contemporary global debates about epistemic injustice, knowledge production, identity politics and philosophical method.” —Thaddeus Metz, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Johannesburg, South Africa vii viii PRAISE FOR PAULIN HOUNTONDJI “Paulin J. Hountondji is a colossal figure in the field of African philosophy and yet there is hardly any definitive study (at least, in English) of his work. This book fills an obvious lacuna and firmly places Hountondji within a universal frame of reference.” —Dr. Sanya Osha, author of Postethnophilosophy “It is a profound introduction into African Philosophy which strengthens transculturally oriented philosophy.” —Lachhab Mohamed, Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Ibn Zohr, Agadir, Morocco CONTENTS 1 Introduction Part I 2 3 4 Critique of Ethnophilosophy, the Debate with Contemporaries and Hountondji’s Turn to Endogenous Knowledges Hountondji’s Critique of Ethnophilosophy and His Notion of African Philosophy 13 The Debate on Ethnophilosophy Between Hountondji and His Contemporary Critics 47 Path-Clearing: Philosophy and History, Scientific Dependency, and Hountondji’s Turn to Endogenous Knowledge 61 Part II 5 1 Hountondji’s Political Oeuvre Hountondji as a Public Intellectual and His Political Career 85 ix x CONTENTS Part III 6 7 8 9 Hountondji as a Global Thinker New Approaches to Scientific Dependency and Extraversion: Southern Theory, Epistemic Justice and the Quest to Decolonise Academia 109 Hountondji’s Notion of Culture and His Critique of Identitarian Politics 135 Debating the Universal as an Unfinished Project and Regulative Ideal 147 A Preliminary Conclusion 161 10 Appendix: Interview with Paulin J. Hountondji 165 References 179 Index 189 ABOUT THE AUTHORS Franziska Dübgen is a Professor in Political Philosophy and the Philosophy of Law at the University of Münster, Germany. She held fellowships at the New School for Social Research (New York), the IASS (Potsdam), and the Lichtenberg-Kolleg for Advanced Study (Göttingen). Her research interests include African philosophy, theories of justice, postcolonialism, gender, punishment/incarceration, and contemporary political philosophy. She is currently co-directing a research project on diversity, power, and justice in contemporary African and Arabo-Islamic philosophy. Stefan Skupien is a postdoctoral researcher focusing on the sociology and politics of North-South science cooperation. His research interests include constitutional politics, history of political thought, and solidarity in the European Union. He has been involved in international networks, working towards intercultural conversations and to radically extend the horizon in German debates about African issues. Together with Franziska Dübgen, he edited the first anthology on African Political Philosophy in German for Suhrkamp Press in 2015 (Afrikanische Politische Philosophie. Postkoloniale Positionen). xi CHAPTER 1 Introduction Abstract Approaching African philosophy from the perspective of the Beninese philosopher Paulin Hountondji has the advantage of elucidating the internal debates of what constitutes African philosophy and of transcending these local debates towards a critical universalism. Hountondji’s focus on philosophy as a form of a responsible, individual and rigorous critique offers to keep a distance from homogenising culturalist assumptions that influenced earlier as well as contemporary philosophical debates and political arguments. His rich work invites us to reassess the debate on ethnophilosophy, to re-appropriate marginalised local knowledge, to thereby critically assess global scientific production, to discuss identity politics and cultural relativism, and hence to contribute to a shared horizon of understanding the globally entangled world. Keywords African philosophy · Ethnophilosophy · Professional philosophy · Endogenous research · Universalism Paulin Jidenu Hountondji became famous in Africa, because of his reflections on the scope and content of African philosophy. This disciplinary contestation of how philosophy should be taught and practiced in Africa had its antecedents during the period of anti-colonial resistance. The debate took particular shape in the early period of the liberated nation states from the 1960s onwards, which needed to define and reform the content of their educational system. In the early years, © The Author(s) 2019 F. Dübgen and S. Skupien, Paulin Hountondji, Global Political Thinkers, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01995-2_1 1 2 F. DÜBGEN AND S. SKUPIEN African countries continued to rely heavily on the intellectual frameworks of the former colonial powers. Hountondji is most known for his fierce critique of anthropological approaches to the African systems of thought that appeared under the label of “African philosophy”, which had been mainly pursued by colonial and missionary agents from the early twentieth century onwards (AP). His main point of criticism centres on the fact that although these studies professed to aim at a positive appraisal of African intellectual history and local knowledge, in reality, they often projected their own ideological and racialised imaginaries on to the body of thought they meant to describe. Ethnophilosophy, as this approach was labelled by him and by others, relied on the idea that African philosophy was a collective undertaking, built on unanimously-held belief systems, conventions, and values. It was hence conceived as something radically different from philosophy in Europe. Accordingly, the task of the external European observer lied in systematizing this unconscious thought into a coherent “philosophy.” By projecting an image of primitive unanimity, these authors of ethnophilosophical texts misconceived the essential content of philosophical practice, which needs to rely on critical individual analysis and reflection—whether it is practiced in Europe, Africa or elsewhere. Not only did Hountondji criticise European ethnophilosophy, but also African colleagues who engaged in the emerging discipline, such as the Rwandan priest and philosopher Alexis Kagame (1902–1981). The main scope of his critique was to differentiate philosophy from anthropology, and, methodologically, to set critical analysis apart from descriptive, conventional thinking that runs the risk of leading to particularism and intellectual enclosure. The normative horizon of his definition of African philosophy remains an emancipatory project with a universal scope encompassing humanity as such, where philosophy could serve as an instrument for empowerment and social transformation. This implies that the praxis of African philosophy should be locally rooted in Africa, and engage with a particular set of problems of its time. However, its reflexive capacity needs to extend beyond the borders of the continent, and remain open to knowledge and influences from other cultures and intellectual genealogies (Hountondji 2017). In this sense, we prefer to describe Hountondji as a transcultural philosopher, who is critically engaging with a set of universalisable questions, with a global significance, from a defined location. For this reason, philosophers in general 1 INTRODUCTION 3 can learn from, and should engage with, his oeuvre, particularly if they are situated in the former metropolitan spaces. HOUNTONDJI’S LIFE AS INTELLECTUAL AND POLITICIAN Let us briefly recount the corner-stones of Hountondji’s intellectual biography, including his short interlude as a politician. Both mark him as a global thinker with a strong concern for a prosperous African continent. Hountondji was born in Treichville, in the Ivory Coast, in 1942. His family moved back to Dahomey (today Benin), where he received his school education at the Victor Ballot high school in Porto Novo, from which he graduated in 1960. In 1958, the former colony became the Republic of Dahomey, as a self-governed part of the French Union, and, eventually it became independent, in 1960. Hountondji’s subsequent academic formation started in metropolitan France. He moved to Paris, to visit, first, the Henri IV preparatory high school; then he decided to study philosophy at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure. His teachers included famous intellectual figures of this time, such as Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Paul Ricoeur and George Canguilhem. Hountondji was exposed to important philosophical currents at this period of political protest and social transformation in the 1960s, including the re-reading of Marx, the birth of the post-structuralist movement and the philosophy of deconstruction, as well as phenomenology and epistemology. Derrida and Ricoeur introduced him to the work of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, who defended a conception of philosophy as science, as a discipline marked by rigidity, clarity, and logic (SfM, pp. 4–12). Althusser inspired him to develop a non-dogmatic Marxism, and introduced him to contemporary thinkers such as Jacques Lacan, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Michel Foucault. Hountondji decided to write his Ph.D. thesis on Husserl, focussing on his epistemology, and choosing Paul Ricoeur as his supervisor. During his work on this thesis, which he finished in 1970, he found employment at the University of Besançon as an assistant professor in philosophy, where, above all, he lectured on Husserl. In the year of his thesis defence, Hountondji left for Zaire (today the Democratic Republic of Congo) and occupied a chair in philosophy at the University of Lovanium in Kinshasa, and later at the National University of Zaire in Lubumbashi. In 1972, he became the first professor of philosophy at the newly-founded National University of Benin in Cotonou. Fellowships enabled him to pursue his research internationally, 4 F. DÜBGEN AND S. SKUPIEN visiting the University of Düsseldorf, Germany (1980–1982), the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC (1997–1998), and the W.E.B. DuBois Research Institute at Harvard University (2009–2010). In addition, Hountondji taught as a guest professor in Louisville (USA) and, frequently, in Paris, where he became a programme director at the International College of Philosophy in 1987. He took a break from his duties as professor when he served for a short period as a politician in the first government of the newly founded Republic of Benin, becoming a Minister of Education (1990–1991) and subsequently serving as a Minister of Culture and Communication (1991–1993). In 1994, he returned to his academic life. Hountondji gained his doctorat d’état (habilitation) from the Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar for his critical scholarship on African philosophy and anthropology in 1995. His intellectual biography, The Struggle for Meaning. Reflections on Philosophy, Culture and Democracy (French text, 1997; English translation, 2002) is partly based on his own review of his academic career, written for this purpose. Although emeritus status was conferred upon him in 2007, Hountondji continues to direct the “African Centre for Advanced Study” in Porto Novo, and has continued to lecture and publish to this day. He also continues to serve as the president of the national education council, a position he was elected to in 2009. SITUATING HOUNTONDJI’S OEUVRE IN AN AFRICAN INTELLECTUAL LANDSCAPE Hountondji, situating himself as an African intellectual concerned with the struggle for black liberation, became interested in the intellectual currents that were celebrated during the anti-colonial and postcolonial era, including the literary and political movement, Négritude, propagated by eminent figures such as Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) and Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001) as well as African Socialism, developed as African versions of Marxism-Leninism by political intellectuals such as Julius Nyerere (1922–1999) and Kwame Nkrumah (1909– 1972). He warned that these Afrocentric schools of thought should not fall into the same trap of unanimity and cultural essentialism as their Eurocentric counterparts. Although black thought, in this early period of liberation, aimed at refuting the racism inherent in European civilisational and ethnographic narratives, it often duplicated racialised tropes when basing its ideological stance on a presumed African identity. 1 INTRODUCTION 5 There are different schools in contemporary African philosophy. For the unfamiliar reader, it might be helpful to situate Hountondji’s work within this intellectual landscape. Therefore, we will briefly introduce his understanding of how philosophy should be practiced, and compare it with approaches that gained prominence. This short excursus does not claim to be in any way comprehensive, but is meant to provide a preliminary insight into the rich diversity within contemporary African philosophy.1 Hountondji, and some of his contemporary philosophers on the continent, such as Kwasi Wiredu, Peter Bodunrin, and Henry Odera Oruka, are generally assigned to the professional school of African philosophy. Wiredu, Bodunrin, and Oruka stem from Anglophone Africa, where contemporary twentieth-century philosophy in general was shaped by the philosophy of language, logic, and analytic approaches. In addition, Oruka studied at the University of Uppsala, in Sweden, with Ingemar Hedenius, who stressed also the social dimension of philosophical concepts. Hountondji, on the other hand, received his education in the French academy, where phenomenology, hermeneutics, post-structuralism, deconstruction and psychoanalytic theory prevailed—what is now known as “continental philosophy.” Hountondji’s fluency in English allowed him, from early on, to converse with his Anglophone colleagues. He used this intellectual background and these theoretical tools in order to turn to philosophical issues that were pertinent in an African, postcolonial context. Professional philosophy in Africa, transcending the analytic-continental divide, urges clarity of argumentation, stresses the ability of critical thinking, and is based mostly on textual analysis. It needs to be compared with other important philosophical trends, such as Sage philosophy, African hermeneutics and African feminist philosophy. Sage philosophy was founded by the “professional” philosopher, Henry Odera Oruka (1981, 1990). This philosophical school is based on the oral knowledge and reflective capacity of African “sages.” Oruka distinguished between folk-sages, who simply transmit the knowledge of the previous generations, and so-called “philosophical sages”, who reflect on such knowledge and develop their own insights. Oruka and his colleagues in Kenya interviewed and transcribed the words of philosophical 1 Oruka was the first to differentiate different trends within African philosophy (cf. Oruka 1981, 1990). 6 F. DÜBGEN AND S. SKUPIEN sages, in order to make African sagacity available as a source for the critical scrutiny of contemporary African philosophy. This approach is different from ethnophilosophy, insofar as it emphasises individual thought processes and unconventional perspectives that are not necessarily representative of, but reflective on, African ethics, metaphysics, politics, and society (such as gender relations). In this way, Sage philosophy extends the body of written material on African philosophy, by transcribing and conserving oral philosophy for future generations. Tsenay Serequeberhan (1994), a philosopher from Eritrea, endorsed the approach of Critical Hermeneutics. Philosophy always departs from a specific life world and a historicity, from which it starts exploring its being-in-the-world. In the case of Africa, this historical experience is marked by enslavement, colonialism, the liberation struggle, and the continuity of exploitative structures. A critical hermeneutic situates her own thoughts and reflects on the contemporary situation. Finally, feminist thinkers can be said to add an intersectional approach to African philosophy, demanding that it should also reflect on the situation of women and gender relations, besides questions of race and imperialism (e.g. Nzegwu 2006; du Toit and Coetzee 2017). Hountondji can be said to be strictly opposed to ethnophilosophy (at least during the early stage of his career) and to caution against the essentialist and ideological traits of political theories such as Négritude and African Socialism. However, he is sympathetic to Sage philosophy, hermeneutics and feminist approaches—even though he rarely explicitly dealt with gender issues in his own oeuvre. BOOK OUTLINE This book opens with a first part systematically presenting the most important philosophical ideas of Hountondji, starting with his famous critique of ethnophilosophy (Chapter 2) and the controversial debate he subsequently held with contemporaneous scholars (Chapter 3). As a next step, we will turn to Hountondji’s engagement with indigenous knowledge sources, and his notion of re-appropriating and transcending the “indigenous” through a critical assessment, transforming it into “endogenous” knowledge (Chapter 4). This part also deals with Hountondji’s understanding of philosophy as science. The second part of this book will then turn to the political dimension of Hountondji’s life, and demonstrate how he became involved as a 1 INTRODUCTION 7 public intellectual in his home country, Benin, and how he participated in shaping the process of democratization (Chapter 5). Throughout his life, he continued to be a fierce critic of any form of authoritarianism and unequal power relations, on an international, but also African level. He reflects on the political events of his time in journalistic publications, as well as in his academic work. In the third part of the book, we focus on the consequences of Hountondji’s philosophical thought for contemporary debates in political philosophy, social philosophy, cultural studies, postcolonialism and the sociology of sciences, and seek to demonstrate how enriching his conceptual work can be for these disciplines. This part starts by considering the implications of Hountondji’s work for the structures and institutions of global academia. We set out his underlying vision of epistemic justice, and discuss recent trends for turning to Southern theories and marginalised epistemologies. We also look at the current debates around the need for a profound reform of the higher education, debates that particularly take shape in South Africa’s post-apartheid context, but which also have reverberations in Europe and the USA (Chapter 6). As a next step, this part discusses Hountondji’s concept of “culture” and his critique of essentialism and identity politics (Chapter 7). Finally, we turn to his vision of transcultural philosophy, and the debate around particularisms and universalism in an African philosophical context (Chapter 8). The third part points to possible avenues of scholarship on Hountondji, and how a reading of his texts can enrich contemporary academic work in many of the disciplines mentioned above. However, the last word will be given to Hountondji himself, in an interview conducted in 2018, after this manuscript was completed. EDITORIAL NOTES BY THE AUTHORS On an editorial level, we would like to note that we always use the English version of Hountondji’s writings, if a translation is available; if not, the quotations are translated by the authors and directly inserted into the text. It is, however, worthwhile to turn to the French sources, as the English publications, in particular that of African Philosophy: Myth and Reality (first edition in French, 1976; English translation, 1983), often deviate slightly from the original text. As Hountondji also stresses the place and context he is coming from, we find it appropriate briefly to situate the authorship of this 8 F. DÜBGEN AND S. SKUPIEN small volume as well. Both of us are educated and situated in German academia, both in philosophy and the social sciences. We have researched and taught African philosophy for many years—both out of intellectual curiosity, and for political and epistemic reasons, seeing a necessity to transcend the narrow canon of Western theorizing in order to try to adequately grasp the present. Both of us have had opportunities to visit numerous African countries for research stays, conferences, and talks, and to host African colleagues in Germany. However, we are deeply aware of our limited knowledge of the lifeworld of African societies, and, hence, of the contexts of their philosophies. We none the less aimed at conversing as much as possible with our African colleagues, by presenting early drafts of this book in South Africa, and by conducting interviews with philosophers concerning the legacy of Hountondji’s work, at universities in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Senegal, and Zambia. We are very grateful for this support and intellectual exchange. HOUNTONDJI AS A GLOBAL THINKER Finally, being aware that Hountondji directed his publications decidedly at an African audience, in order to end what he called “scientific extroversion,” by doing African philosophy dedicated to the progress of the African continent, we nevertheless consider him to be a global thinker, from whom the non-African reader can learn a great deal. Hountondji makes convincing arguments for separating philosophy from anthropology, and the normative from the descriptive. He proves to be a thinker of hybridity and of cultural entanglement, reflecting on the continuing post-colonial structural dependencies on an economic, but also on an epistemological, level, that mark contemporary scholarship today. His works offer strong arguments for more epistemic justice in global academia, and for substantial transcultural encounters among scholars. He is a fierce critic of any sort of identity politics that excludes, degrades, and discards minorities. In addition, Hountondji calls for a decentralised, global debate on the universals that should inform the local and the international. Viewed in this way, his philosophical work has a significance that transcends the African context, and that makes his thought an indispensable element of any contemporary philosophy curriculum. 1 INTRODUCTION 9 REFERENCES Hountondji, P. J. (2017). Construire l’universel: un défi transculturel. African Review of Social Science Methodology, 2(1–2), 155–168. Nzegwu, N. U. (2006). Family Matters: Feminist Concepts in African Philosophy of Culture. Albany: SUNY Press. Oruka, H. O. (1981). Four Trends in Current African Philosophy. In A. Diemer (Ed.), Symposium on Philosophy and the Present Situation of Africa (pp. 1–7). Wiesbaden: Steiner. Oruka, H. O. (1990). Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy. Amsterdam: Brill. Serequeberhan, T. (1994). The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy: Horizon and Discourse. New York: Routledge. du Toit, L., & Coetzee, A. (2017). Gendering African Philosophy, or: African Feminism as Decolonizing Force. In A. Afolayan & T. Falola (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy (pp. 333–347). New York: Palgrave.