Abstract

The history of the methodology of African philosophy can be divided into two periods: the nascent stage that’s characterized by a rigor-demand, and the contemporary stage that’s characterized by a relevance-demand. In this, paper, I argue for one way to strike the appropriate balance between relevance and rigor in African philosophy. Specifically, I argue that the unconscious rejection of conceptual analysis as a philosophical method by contemporary African philosophers played a major role in how African philosophy came to be characterized by a relevance-demand. Consequently, I submit that even though being only or excessively relevance-oriented is not bad, African philosophy would become rich enough to compete with other regional philosophies—Western, Chinese, and so on—if it re-installs conceptual analysis as part of its methodology.

摘要

非洲哲学方法论的历史可以分为两个时期：以严格要求为特征的新生阶段和以相关要求为特征的当代阶段。在这篇论文中，我提出了一种在非洲哲学的相关性和严谨性之间取得适当平衡的方法。具体来说，我认为当代非洲哲学家无意识地拒绝将概念分析作为一种哲学方法，这在非洲哲学如何以相关性需求为特征的过程中发挥了重要作用。因此，我认为，即使只关注或过度关注相关性也不错，但如果非洲哲学将概念分析重新安装为方法。