Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy

The Kenyan philosopher H. Odera Oruka's answer to the question whether there was philosophy in Africa before writing. Against both ethnophilosophy, which attributed a single worldview to whole peoples, and critics who held that philosophy requires a written tradition, Oruka set out to find individual thinkers in rural Kenya and record their views in conversation. He distinguishes folk sages, masters of their community's received wisdom, from philosophic sages, who reflect critically on that wisdom and sometimes reject it. The book presents interviews with sages from several Kenyan communities on questions such as God, death, justice and the good life, alongside Oruka's essays on method and on the main trends in African philosophy, and contributions by other scholars to the wider debate.

It is the most sustained attempt to show philosophy at work in oral cultures without romanticising them, and its method of critical interview remains a model for comparative philosophy.