Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective

A collection of essays in which Wiredu asks what is shared by all human cultures and what is particular to some, and what follows for African philosophy. He argues that there are genuine cultural universals, grounded in our common biology and in the conditions of communication, which make cross-cultural understanding and criticism possible. At the core of morality, he suggests, is a principle of sympathetic impartiality, while much else is custom that can vary. Several essays practise what he calls conceptual decolonisation: examining concepts such as truth, mind, person and God by testing them against Akan language and thought, rather than accepting them from colonial languages unexamined. Others discuss consensus as a basis for non-party democratic government and the foundations of human rights.

It shows how to do philosophy from an African standpoint without either rejecting universal reason or swallowing foreign concepts whole.