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What exactly is Odera Oruka’s sage philosophy, and how is it different from ethnophilosophy?

Wanjiru Njenga Fellow
· 4 replies
Evidence & testimonyAfrican & AfricanaH. Odera OrukaPaulin Hountondji#ethnophilosophy#oral-tradition#oruka#sage-philosophy
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I live in Nairobi, and Henry Odera Oruka taught at the University of Nairobi, so I feel I should understand his work better than I do. I build credit models for a living and came to philosophy through statistics, so I know almost nothing about the African philosophy debates of the 1970s and 1980s.

What I have picked up: Oruka identified several "trends" in African philosophy, and one of them was philosophic sagacity, the reasoned thought of individual wise people in communities, often people with no formal schooling, which he and his colleagues recorded through long conversations. I have also seen him contrasted with "ethnophilosophy", which seems to be a term of criticism, and with Paulin Hountondji, who was a critic of ethnophilosophy.

Could someone explain clearly:

  • what sage philosophy is and how Oruka's method worked;
  • what ethnophilosophy is and why it was criticised;
  • whether sage philosophy answers that criticism?

I am also curious, as someone who works with data, about the method: when a philosopher records and edits the words of a sage, whose philosophy is the result?

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4 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Kwame Asante

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Happy to.

    Ethnophilosophy is the label critics gave to works that present the collective worldview of a people, reconstructed from language, proverbs, myths and customs, as "the philosophy" of that people. The model case is Placide Tempels's Bantu Philosophy (1945). The criticism, made most sharply by Paulin Hountondji in African Philosophy: Myth and Reality, is that this treats philosophy as an unanimous, anonymous folk belief system, when philosophy is a critical, argumentative activity carried out by individuals. Calling a worldview "philosophy" sounds respectful but hides individual thinkers.

    Oruka's answer was to look for individuals. He distinguished folk sages, who know and transmit the community's wisdom well, from philosophic sages, who reflect critically on that wisdom, sometimes rejecting parts of it, and give reasons. His method was extended dialogue: he and his students interviewed sages, pressed them with questions, and published the conversations, naming the sages as thinkers.

    So yes, sage philosophy is designed to meet Hountondji's demand: individual, critical, reasoned thought, simply not written down.

    Your last question is the standing objection. Critics asked whether the philosophy is really the sage's or the interviewer's, shaped by his questions. Oruka's reply was that dialogue is how Socrates worked too, and that the sages often contradicted him. The debate continues.

    1. Wanjiru Njenga

      Fellow

      Kwame, thank you. That is very clear. So the difference is between "what does this people believe?" and "what does this particular person think, and why?"

      Titilayo, "publish the questions too" is exactly the rule we use for survey design. If you can't see the question, you can't interpret the answer. It's nice to find that philosophers got there first.

      Helpful · 2

Other answers

  1. Titilayo Adeyemi

    Fellow

    From Yorùbá studies: Oruka's method is very close to what Hallen and Sodipo did with Yorùbá healers, philosophical conversation with named experts, in their own language. Both were trying to escape the ethnophilosophy trap without pretending that thinking only happens in universities.

    Your data question is real, though. Every transcript is an edited object. The best practice I know is to publish the interviews at length and let readers see the questions as well as the answers.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Khady Sène

    Fellow

    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, often by intuition and participation rather than analysis. Hountondji's critique was aimed at that climate as much as at Tempels. Oruka's sages are almost a reply to both: these are people who analyse, doubt and argue, with no need of a special "African reason" to do it. My students find that liberating.

    Helpful · 3