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Kwasi Wiredu

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Also known as Kwasi Wiredu

1931 – 2022 · Kumasi, Oxford, Legon (Accra), Tampa

Traditions: African & Africana

In brief

Kwasi Wiredu (1931–2022) was a Ghanaian philosopher trained in the analytic tradition at the University of Ghana and at Oxford. He taught for over twenty years at the University of Ghana and later at the University of South Florida. He asked what philosophy could do for a modern African culture. His answer had two sides. African thinkers should test traditional beliefs critically, as anyone should test their own folk ideas. They should also stop taking Western concepts for granted, and check them against African languages such as Akan. He called the second task ‘conceptual decolonisation’. He also wrote on mind, truth, ethics and a consensus-based form of democracy.

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Influences
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African and Africana philosophy step 5 of 7

Life

Wiredu was born on 3 October 1931 in Kumasi, in the Ashanti region of what was then the Gold Coast. He was reading philosophy books at school in Kumasi around 1947, and from 1948 attended Adisadel College. In 1950–51 he wrote political articles for The Ashanti Sentinel under the pen-name ‘J. E. Joad’. In 1952 he entered the University College of the Gold Coast (later the University of Ghana) to study philosophy. The teaching there was almost entirely Western; his interest in African thought he developed largely on his own. He graduated with honours in 1958 and went to Oxford, where he took the B.Phil in 1960, supervised by Gilbert Ryle. After being offered a lectureship at Leeds, he returned in 1961 to teach at the University of Ghana. He rose to professor and head of department, and taught there for 23 years. In those years he published Philosophy and an African Culture (1980). He held visiting posts at UCLA (1979–80), the University of Ibadan (1984), the University of Richmond (1985), Carleton College (1986) and later Duke. In 1987 he joined the University of South Florida, retiring in 2010 as Distinguished University Professor. He died in Tampa, Florida, on 6 January 2022, aged 90.

Problems

  • What philosophy can contribute to a modern African culture
  • How to separate what is of universal value in a tradition from what is merely local or out of date
  • Whether Western philosophical concepts, such as mind and truth, survive translation into African languages
  • Whether morality depends on religion
  • Whether government by consensus can replace rule by majority and party

Core ideas

Conceptual decolonisation

African philosophers, Wiredu noticed, had mostly been trained in English or French. Through those languages they took on Western categories without asking whether they made sense in their own. He proposed ‘conceptual decolonisation’ as a two-part task. First, remove what is unhelpful in inherited African thought. Second, purge African philosophy of Western assumptions that have been accepted without criticism. One method was to think a problem through in an African language. He observed, for example, that there is no single word in Akan for ‘truth’, nor one for ‘fact’. So, he argued, a philosopher should not simply test claims made in Akan against intuitions formed in English. A standard objection, raised by Sanya Osha in the IEP entry, is that his comparisons of Akan and English are too narrow and overlook the difference between oral and written cultures.

Traditional thought as folk philosophy

Wiredu distinguished three strands in African intellectual heritage: folk philosophy, written traditional philosophy and modern philosophy. He argued that the traditional thought of any society, Western ones included, is folk philosophy. It is pre-scientific and should be examined, not just admired. Some habits of thought, he said, become out of date even within the society that produced them. He was blunt: traditional medicine, he wrote, was weak in diagnosis and weaker in pharmacology. He also criticised Léopold Senghor for praising a supposed non-analytical bent in the African mind. For Wiredu, analysis and criticism belong to no single race or culture. Critics ask whether this leaves room for anything in tradition to be recovered, since Wiredu himself also wanted to keep its valuable parts.

The Akan concept of mind and person

In ‘The Akan Concept of Mind’ Wiredu contrasted English talk of mind with Akan thought. The Akan, he argued, separate the okra, ‘that whose presence in the body means life’, from adwene, the word nearest to ‘mind’. They do not treat mind as one of the things a person is made of. Mind is rather a capacity, dependent on the brain, and not a separate substance as in Descartes. On personhood he held that having an okra gives only a basic status. Being a person in the full sense is something achieved, in degrees, through how one lives in a community. Kwame Gyekye disagreed: for him one is a person because of what one is, not because of what one achieves.

Humanist ethics and sympathetic impartiality

Wiredu argued that Akan morality is logically independent of religion. Its first axiom, he wrote, is that a human being is the measure of all value, as the Akan saying ‘Onipa na ohia’ (it is a human being that has value) suggests. Morality exists to harmonise the interests of individuals so that human well-being is secured. Its central principle he called ‘sympathetic impartiality’ and took to be the same as the Golden Rule: put yourself in the shoes of others, and let your conduct show due concern for their interests. He thought this principle was universal, rooted in our common biology, while customs vary from culture to culture. Motsamai Molefe objects that strict impartiality clashes with African intuitions that we owe more to those close to us, as in ‘charity begins at home’.

Consensual democracy

In ‘Democracy and Consensus: A Plea for a Non-Party Polity’ Wiredu described the traditional Ashanti political system as a consensual democracy. Decisions were reached by talking until the parties reached agreement, not by counting votes. Consensus here meant settling grievances so that everyone could accept the outcome, not merely a formal show of hands. Multiparty majority rule, by contrast, rests on what he called ‘consent without consensus’: the losing side must obey decisions it never agreed to. He proposed that modern African states build on the consensual model and do without competing parties. The IEP entry judges this essay among his more convincing. The obvious open question is how talking to agreement works in a large, divided modern state rather than a council of elders.

Works

  • Philosophy and an African Culture 1980Essays (Cambridge University Press) on what philosophy can do for African culture, on folk thought, truth and Marxism. His first major book.In the Book corner
  • ‘Morality and Religion in Akan Thought’ 1983Essay arguing that the Akan moral outlook is logically independent of religion.
  • Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies 1992Collection edited with Kwame Gyekye (Council for Research in Values and Philosophy).
  • Conceptual Decolonization in African Philosophy: Four Essays 1995Four essays (Hope Publications, Ibadan) summing up his programme for testing borrowed concepts against African languages.
  • Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective 1996Essays (Indiana University Press) arguing that universals based on our common biology are compatible with cultural difference; includes the essay on consensus and a non-party polity.In the Book corner
  • A Companion to African Philosophy (editor) 2004A large reference volume (Blackwell) surveying the field.

Influences and relationships

6 sourced relationships. Open one to read why, and the source.

Shaped or answered Kwasi Wiredu 4

  • Influenced byJohn Dewey1859 – 1952

    The IEP entry says his theme of modernisation rests on a straightforward pragmatism that owes much to Dewey.

    Source: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy · stated on the profile of Kwasi Wiredu

    John Dewey’s relationships

  • Influenced byGilbert Ryle1900 – 1976

    Wiredu took the Oxford B.Phil in 1960 under Ryle’s supervision; his habit of testing philosophical claims through careful attention to language reflects that analytic training.

    Source: usf.edu · stated on the profile of Kwasi Wiredu

    Gilbert Ryle’s relationships

  • Criticised byKwame Gyekye1939 – 2019

    Gyekye, his colleague and co-editor, rejected Wiredu’s view that personhood is achieved by degrees, and disputed his reading of the okra and of Akan funeral practices.

    Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · stated on the profile of Kwasi Wiredu

    Kwame Gyekye’s relationships

  • Criticised byMotsamai Molefeno profile yet

    Molefe argues that Wiredu’s principle of impartiality conflicts with African moral intuitions about partiality, and that his rejection of a spiritual basis for ethics is not argued for.

    Source: scholar.ufs.ac.za · stated on the profile of Kwasi Wiredu

Kwasi Wiredu answered 2

Reception

His University of South Florida obituary notes that he was widely known as ‘one of the greatest of African philosophers’. With Paulin Hountondji he is placed in what Peter Bodunrin called ‘West-led universalism’: the view that philosophy is universal and that African philosophy must meet the same critical standards as any other. His idea of conceptual decolonisation became a common reference point, and his debate with Kwame Gyekye about personhood and community remains a standard topic. Critics have pushed back from several sides. Some say his analytic training kept him from engaging postcolonial theory, African feminisms and Afrocentric thought. Others think his criticism of tradition sits awkwardly with his wish to recover parts of it. Molefe and others have questioned his humanist, impartialist ethics.

Disputed interpretations

Is personhood achieved or given?

Wiredu held that having an okra confers a basic status, but full personhood is earned in degrees through moral life in a community. Kwame Gyekye replied that one is a person because of what one is, not what one acquires. Some critics went further and said Wiredu’s view risks a ‘tyranny’ of the community over the individual. The SEP entry notes that Wiredu also allows individuals to criticise communal values, so it is not clear that the charge sticks.

Universalism or a new parochialism?

Wiredu insisted that philosophy is universal, yet he asked African thinkers to rebuild concepts from their own languages. Sanya Osha’s IEP entry argues that the second project could become ‘epistemic nativism’, and that it conflicts with his sharp criticism of tradition. Defenders reply that the two belong together: testing borrowed concepts and testing inherited beliefs are both forms of the same critical reason.

Impartiality and partiality in African ethics

Wiredu built Akan ethics on sympathetic impartiality, a version of the Golden Rule. Molefe accepts the role of sympathy but argues that impartiality does not fit African intuitions that we owe special concern to family and community. The question of how far African ethics is impartial remains open.

Primary texts

  • Philosophy and an African CultureCambridge University Press, 1980. No free legal full text was found.
  • Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African PerspectiveIndiana University Press, 1996. No free legal full text was found.

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Cite this page

Written and kept up to date by the Coordinates of Thought editors. Each statement was checked against the sources listed above before publishing; this page is not peer-reviewed. Last updated 27 October 2026. How to cite this site.

APA (7th edition)

Coordinates of Thought Editors. (2026, October 27). Kwasi Wiredu. Coordinates of Thought. Retrieved [date accessed], from https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/kwasi-wiredu/

MLA (9th edition)

“Kwasi Wiredu.” Coordinates of Thought, 27 Oct. 2026, coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/kwasi-wiredu/. Accessed [date accessed].

Chicago (17th edition)

Coordinates of Thought Editors. “Kwasi Wiredu.” Coordinates of Thought. Last modified October 27, 2026. https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/kwasi-wiredu/.

BibTeX

@misc{cot-kwasi-wiredu-2026,
  author       = {{Coordinates of Thought Editors}},
  title        = {Kwasi Wiredu},
  howpublished = {Coordinates of Thought},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = oct,
  url          = {https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/kwasi-wiredu/},
  note         = {Last updated 27 October 2026}
}

RIS

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PB  - Coordinates of Thought
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For reference managers (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote): BibTeX file · RIS file

Where next

  1. On the Atlas · where they taughtAccraSee the place, century by century, and who else was there.
  2. Reading pathAfrican and Africana philosophyA book by Kwasi Wiredu is step 5 of 7.

Tradition: African & Africana philosophyThinkers A–Z