Aristotle in Africa : Ethics and the African Philosophical Tradition

Abstract

How best to bring the genius of African traditional philosophy into dialogue with the European and global traditions of thought? The philosophy of Aristotle – ‘baptised’ by medieval Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas – has been formative in premodern European thought. Now this frame of thinking, predating the skepticism and relativism that has accompanied the culture of modernity, has been re-expressed in a contemporary vein by Bernard Lonergan and Alasdair MacIntyre. Patrick Giddy shows how the critical realism of Lonergan (d. 1984) and the communitarian ethic of MacIntyre (d. 2025) – both counter-cultural thinkers – are in tune with the African traditional understanding of the world. Aristotle, he argues, ‘belongs’ to Africa.Refereeing Giddy’s PhD thesis, Ethics and Human Nature (1994) MacIntyre commented, “this is the best account I have read of my philosophy”. In Aristotle in Africa, Giddy brings the Aristotelian tradition to bear on fundamental topics in African thought and applies these ideas to various areas of ethics as well as to rethinking the university curriculum.