What is ethno-philosophy
If the wealth and security of the community comes in conflict with personal luck or achievements, the former prevails over the latter. This type of ethics can be applied to both environmental concerns and the redistribution of wealth. Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
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Henry oruka biography pdf
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Henry oruka biography youtube: Henry Odera Oruka (1 June , in Siaya County – 9 December , in Nairobi) was a Kenyan philosopher who is best known for "Sage Philosophy". It was a project started in the ’s in an attempt to preserve the knowledge of the indigenous thinkers in traditional African communities.
Odera Oruka, E. Brill, , See D. See Peter O. Masolo, Dismas. In Zalta, Edward N. For him, true philosophy relies on analysis, definition, and explanation. Pre-Socratic knowledge has no place in strict philosophy. Philosophic sagacity, he believes, falls into the category of pre-Socratic philosophy. A mere discussion of a topic does not have the high degree of abstraction, conceptual analysis, and relation which, according to him, are the essence of strict philosophy.
Masolo also objects to the Afrocentric perspective inherent in Odera Oruka's approach to treating pre-literate African men and women as proto-philosophers. For Odera Oruka, Philosophic Sagacity lies between ethnophilosophy and professional philosophy and is simply a starting point in determining the nature of African Philosophy.
Bodunrin rejects Odera Oruka's notion that philosophic sagacity is philosophy because, for him, literacy is a necessary condition for philosophical reflections.
His second, related, objection is one common to anthropology: the influence of the observer. If a philosopher interviews a "sage", is the result really the work of the "sage" or a joint product? Who is the actual creator of the "philosophy"? Both involve the acquisition and usage of skills, but they are not identical. Sagacity involves wisdom of a practical nature which is achieved through experience.
It has a broader meaning than knowledge.
Henry oruka biography wikipedia
Within sagacity too, there is a sagacity that stops with common sense and a sagacity that transcends common sense. A point worth noting is the distinction between sages and prophets. They could be confused in that both are concerned with efforts to resolve problems that affect human society. It is also true that a sage can be a prophet and a prophet can be a sage but the critical fact is that they are not identical.
The basic difference — according to Odera Oruka — is that the prophet claims to predict the future based on past experience, whereas a sage is concerned with fundamental issues of ethics and other questions of immediate importance.
Henry oruka biography
A sage has the ability to offer insightful solutions to practical issues. Sages have existed in every society as custodians of its culture and values, regardless of literacy. Lesser known are Odera Oruka's contributions to ethical questions, such as protection of the environment and the justification of foreign aid. Hardin argues against helping poor nations because they will believe their problems are being solved, the population will grow, and the "boat" will sink.
Odera Oruka gave three possible reasons to justify foreign aid: charity common decency , promoting international trade, and historical rectification. He later added another argument: the "right to a human minimum". In his article "Parent Earth Ethics" Odera Oruka uses the metaphor of a family of six children with varying degrees of wealth and poverty to explain his argument.
He made the following distinctions:. Rule One: Parental Debt Principle a. Family Security Rule b. Parental Debt Rule c. Individual Family Survival Rule. Personal Achievements Rule b. Personal Supererogation Rule c. Public Law Rule. The entire system cannot be detailed within the scope of this article but, from the above outline, the main points are as follows: The Parental Debt Principle occurs prior to the Individual Luck Principle.
Three philosophical approaches can be seen in his works:a. Socio-economic deprivationOdera Oruka pointed on poverty and hunger in Africa as the greatest constrains to mental development and creativity. Such socio-economic deprivation should be addressed and remedies found.
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Instead of complaining about imperialism, colonialism, foreign cultural domination etc, the remedy should be looked for with stem from self-national examination and critique. Cultural racial mythologyThe fight against cultural and racial mythologies was one of his main topics. Odera Oruka differentiated two types of myths: Myths about civilisation and nobility of some races and backwardness and slave mentality of some races.
The other is myths about philosophic-scientific gifts of certain races and corresponding deprivation of other race, African being at the ungifted and uncivilised side of the scale. The illusion of appearanceOdera Oruka divided the meaning of appearance into three parts. The first part, he describes appearance as the disease of most people in the society, the second meaning is appearance as the secret of the business tycoons to boost their scale.
In the third description, the philosophical level, appearance becomes an obstacle to the intellectual activity. This type of appearance is achieved in the field of education, whereby people gain or acquire styles rather than substance. The consequence is not knowledge but prejudice, racism, tribalism, sexism and irrational indifference to other cultures.
This caused him to analyse concepts in order to arrive at generally accepted truth rather than mere appearance. The existence of philosophy in Africa The question about the existence of philosophy in Africa has caused raging debates that focus on the question whether African Philosophy exists and - if so - what its nature is.
Odera Ouka identified four trends in this discussion: "Ethnophilosophy": Ethnophilosophy describes a worldview or a thought-system of particular African communities as philosophy. Mbiti and Alexis Kagame. They reject Ethnophilosophy and take instead a universalistic approach to philosophy. In their opinion African philosophy should be approached with criticism and arguments as a better method for its acceptance and recognition.
A descriptive approach to African thought alone, a practice of Ethnophilosophy, would not pass it to a philosophical standard. Bodunrin and Odera Oruka. Sage philosophy Sage philosophy is the creation of Odera Oruka.
He formulated this research project, to preserve the thought of the traditional Kenyan sages in According to him sage philosophy is a movement on the African continent. The basic principles of Sage philosophy are that in both, traditional and modern Africa, there are a number of women and men, illiterate and literate, who commonly practice philosophical reflection on various problems of human life and its nature in general.
Unlike Ethnophilosophy which advocates communal thinking, sage philosophy searches for individual thinkers in the traditional community. The thought of the given individuals expresses and defends themselves as philosophical opinions on various issues of nature and human life. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice.
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