International Journal of Innovative Research in Multidisciplinary Education, 2023

While in predicating and designating, quantifying and generalizing, and in numbering, English speakers use one/many figuring, Yoruba speakers do the same in whole/part as they, like their English counterparts, do the little embodied rituals (with hands, eyes, gestures) that go with these acts. Numbers as used in English and Yoruba languages reveal two systems of abstraction constructed in two diverse systems of categorization. The disparity in the two strings of abstraction is the divergence between Yoruba and English, regarding the forms of actions that bodies do, actions that are in turn coded as the language users engage in predication and designation. As a part of grammar, natural number is a historical product; an attempt at giving meaning. It has been naturalized, and is no longer seen as a social product. Establishing how the truths numbers form come into existence, Verran explains quantifying as resulting from ritualized and routinized collective embodied acting. She renders an account of generalization in the explanatory frame of "emergent worlds." She tells of the experience of doing quantification and managing diversity in a manner that allows a "going-on together" in Yoruba classrooms, markets, and civil administration. She tells of practicing diversity and telling about that practice, a responsible communication of diversity as practicable and amenable to matters of mutual concern. She also recounts an 'irresponsible' doing and telling of difference (conservativist universalism and liberalist relativism), a contriving that legislates a moral order, presenting difference as undoable and unmanageable. Contemplating worlds as outcomes of reciprocally rebelling and cooperating co-players, we find explanatory frames that not only celebrate difference and sameness, and appreciate the place of the inanimate in the animate (human), but also that do not radically sever the symbolic from the material.

AbstrAct This paper discusses culture as a unit of analysis within social science inquiry, and its more systematic treatment as a dynamic, idiosyncratic model for human development; one whose logical arrangement of interpretative " deep structural " cosmological and ontological axioms of existence for collective organization and functioning configures the scope and nature of overt social behaviors and praxes (including symbols, language, customs) and informs a general plan for living that guides individual behavior and group praxes. This behavioral approach allows for a richer elaboration of culture by clarifying its cosmological, ontological, and psychological foundations and influences on its nature and role in the formation, organization and functioning of human aggregates. In addition, it offers an examination of the theoretical implications for social stability of antithetical deep structural axioms that fragments an erstwhile teleological social existence into an assortment of disjointed cultural symbols and rituals ripe for commodification. And, through it, the contemporary phenomenon of globalization-and the neoclassical economic paradigm that grounds it-is found to engender an idiosyncratic, market-based model of reality and for living that is neither a commonly shared human conceptualization nor universally desired pursuit. La ciencia de la cultura: implicaciones para las investigaciones de las Ciencias Sociales en el fenómeno africano contemporáneo resumen Este artículo discute la cultura como una unidad de análisis dentro de la investigación en las ciencias sociales y su tratamiento más sistemático como un modelo dinámico e idiosincrático para el desarrollo humano, modelo cuya disposición lógica de axiomas interpretativos de " estructuras profundas " cosmológicas y ontológicas (axiomas de existencia para la organización colectiva y su funcionamiento) configura el objetivo y la naturaleza de conductas y praxis sociales abiertas (incluyendo símbolos, lengua, costumbres) e informa un plan general de vida que guía el comportamiento individual y las prácticas colectivas. Este enfoque conductista permite una rica elaboración de la cultura aclarando sus fundamentos cosmológicos, ontológicos y psicológicos, y las influencias en su naturaleza y papel en la formación, organización y funcionamiento de conglomerados humanos. Además, ofrece un examen de las implicaciones teóricas para la estabilidad social en axiomas antitéticos de estructura profunda, los cuales fragmentan una previa existencia social teleológica dentro de un arreglo de símbolos y rituales sociales fragmentarios lista para la cosificación. Y, a través de ello, se propone cómo el fenómeno contemporáneo de la globalización –y el paradigma económico neoclásico que lo sustenta—engendra un modelo de la realidad y del vivir idiosincrático basado en lo económico, modelo que no es ni una conceptualización humana comúnmente compartida, ni un objetivo universal deseado. Palabras clave: la cultura, los estudios culturales, estudios africanos, praxis africanos

IBE journals of Philosophy, KSU Anyigab , 2023

The notion of morality within the African society is embedded in their ideas and beliefs of nature and their interaction with culture, which distinguish wrong from rights, what is ought to be good or bad as characterized within the frame work of their cultures. It is also embedded in the conceptions of satisfactory social relations and attitudes held by the members of the society. Thus, for clear understanding of this idea, this work adopted an analytic method. This method was specifically chosen to analyze, the moral foundations in African as embedded in its culture, religion and rationality. This work concludes that, a lively concern in moral philosophy among contemporary African philosophers is to clarify and evaluate the claims of individuality in the context of African communitarianism, because, the African person is naturally moral by nature. Key Words: African, African philosophy, Being, Culture, Justice, Morality,

This paper traces the development of “cultural philosophy,” distinguishes it from the “philosophy of culture,” discusses African and Filipino philosophical dimensions, and then makes the concluding remarks. This paper argues that while cultural philosophy is a significant development in the history of ideas, any given culture must opt to develop its own philosophical tradition.

2009

Yoruba Studies Review, 2021

A collection of critical essays on Professor Segun Gbadegesin, one of the most preeminent figures in African philosophy, is by no mean an insignificant feat. This is all the more so because the volume has the objective of achieving a multidisciplinary interrogation of Gbadegesin’s philosophical oeuvre. This is a herculean task because Gbadegesin’s philosophical outputs straddles philosophy of culture, bioethics, social and political philosophy, ethics, and African philosophy. With his African Philosophy: Traditional Yorùbá Philosophy and Contemporary African Realities (1991), Professor Gbadegesin effectively brought deep philosophical insights into significant issues in Africa’s postcolonial malaise. The 16-chapter volume has a sufficiently wide array of significant scholars whose different perspectives provide a wide context within which to situate the brilliant scholarship of Segun Gbadegesin. These chapters all attempted to unravel the core of Gbadegesin’s multifaceted philosophi...

2010

characterization in African literature: A critique of

2019

The question of African identity has always been quite instigating and raised many debates, especially when it comes to assessing first works produced by Europeans on African philosophy. In the 70s, many philosophers wrote on Ethno philosophy criticizing its methods and the western perspective of its “philosophical?” works. In fact, according to scholars there are many cons than pros; very little positive contribution to the current African philosophy is credited to ethno philosophy. This paper gives an overview of ethno philosophy and then briefly presents the key criticisms as well as critics to ethno philosophy, and somehow counterparts the positions put forward by many philosophers toward ethno philosophy.

46th Annual Ugnayang Pang-Aghamtao Conference, 2024

During the advent of philosophy in the Philippines breaking away from its western philosophical roots, the Philosophico-Anthropological method was the dominant approach towards indigenization. While groundbreaking in a time when philosophers in the Philippines were often limited to measly contributions to foreign discourse, this method, in the hands of giants like Leonardo Mercado and Florentino Timbreza, has been repeatedly criticized for its tendency towards essentialization. In its attempt to find what is “natural, unique, and pure,” critics say, the Philosophico-Anthropological method transforms into an attempt to pin down a universal Filipinoness resting on hasty generalizations, thereby silencing marginalized subnational communities and opening doors for mythologization rather than identity-building. Thus, the question for the Philosophico-Anthropological method today is clear: how do we recognize localized experiences and decolonize our categories of thought while also rejecting attempts to erase the inner diversity of Filipino thought? In this paper, I attempt to chart Filipino philosophy’s journey towards this question, moving from the essentializing discourses of Mercado to the dynamic decolonization of the present day. I analyzed 76 Filipino philosophy articles published since the year 2000 to assess how newer articles respond to the methodological critiques levied against the traditional philosophico-anthropological tradition in Filipino philosophy.