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- How would you tell a wise elder from a well-stocked memory? Odera Oruka’s problem, revisited
My lycée students find Hountondji harsh the first time, because they hear him saying Africans had no philosophy. That isn't his point. His target is a genre that made philosophy anonymous: "…
- Teaching non-European philosophy as live positions, not museum pieces
Aroha's reversal is the one I hadn't considered: making one's own tradition arguable is as hard as making someone else's live. And Phạm is right about translations. My students rea…
- After reading Hamblin, should I still teach my prison class the list of fallacies?
A different angle from Dakar. In the French system we don't really teach a fallacy list. Students write a dissertation: a thesis, the strongest objection, and a resolution. What they learn is to…
- What exactly is Odera Oruka’s sage philosophy, and how is it different from ethnophilosophy?
From Dakar, the other side of the story. In francophone West Africa the dominant figure for a long time was Senghor, whose Négritude made strong claims about a distinctive African way of knowing, ofte…
- Moore’s “here is one hand” is not really an argument, and that is exactly why it works
Against, from a lycée in Dakar. My students study Descartes for the baccalauréat, and when I show them Moore they say he is cheating. Descartes at least takes the dream seriously and tries to get out…