Professor Katrin Flikschuh is professor of political theory in LSE's School of Government.he joined the LSE Government Department in 2003, having previously held positions in philosophy at the University of Essex and the University of Bristol, and in political theory at the University of Manchester. Here, she selects important readings in the field of post-colonial philosophy.
Pauline Hountondji is a Beninois philosopher and scholar of Edmund Husserl. His book caused a stir when it was first published: it unleashed a methodological debate as to whether there is such a thing as 'African Philosophy' (as opposed to just 'Philosophy'). In the book, Hountondji takes to task Placide Tempels' book, Bantu Philosophy (1952) Temples was a Belgian missionary in the then Belgian Congo and claimed to be able to expound the metaphysical system of 'the Bantu'. Hountondji argues that Temples simply delivers a type of Western ethnography dressed up as philosophy. Houtnindji calls this 'ethnophilosophy' and claims that it is myth that does not correspond with actual African philosophical thought.
Wiredu (who died 2021) was a Ghanaian philosopher and the foremost thinker in the analytic tradition on the continent. Hugely respected, he made major contributions to the question of method in African thinking but also to a range of substantive issues, from questions about the meaning of the person, the concept of truth, and the idea of consensual democracy. The earlier book is a collection of essays dealing mainly with the question of how African philosophy does or does not relate to Western philosophy. The later book asks whether there can be convergence between the two traditions (a question which Wiredu answers in the affirmative).
Kwame Gyekye was another Ghanaian philosophical giant and contemporary of Wiredu. Similar in method he was broadly analytic but focused more on substantive issues than on questions of method. But like Wiredu, he was primarily concerned with negotiating the African / Western philosophical relationship rather than in repudiating the latter completely. Gyekye had primary philosophical interests in the relation between personhood and community.
Nigerian thinker. Somewhat less prolific and well-known than the three above, but still an important thinker. Especially interesting in his philosophical interpretation of aspects of the Ifa divination system, as regards the concept of destiny.
Nigerian by origin, a naturalised American who died prematurely. Highly original thinker, if at times a bit hard to read. Eze tried to situate African philosophical thinking within the wider context of philosophy's self-understanding as a 'universal' validity. He basically asks, in a sense, what would have to change about philosophy as it conceives itself for forms of thought other than Western thought to find a place within the discipline.
Anything by Ifeanyi Menkiti
Nigerian philosopher and poet. I don’t think he ever published a book, but he wrote a series of philosophical papers – especially on personhood, the state, community – that are hugely influential. One of the most original and unorthodox thinkers one can read. Unfortunately, no easy references, but he is especially well known for his controversial 'On the Normative Conception of the Person' in A Companion to African Philosophy.