How Conversational Philosophy Profits from the Particularist and the Universalist Agenda

In Jonathan O. Chimakonam, Edwin Etieyibo & Ike Odimegwu, Essays on Contemporary Issues in African Philosophy. Springer Verlag. pp. 63-78 (2021)
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Abstract

In this chapter, I contend that conversational philosophy has benefited immensely from the particularist and universalist projects in African philosophy tradition. As a result, it has been able to overcome the lapses inherent in particularism, universalism and eclecticism/pluralism. I argue that conversational philosophy is a more robust approach than the above-mentioned approaches, which have the problems of uniqueness, aping of Western philosophy and vagueness, respectively. I claim that conversational philosophy conceives African philosophy not as a tradition peculiar to a given place, nor as one that apes Western tradition, nor as an eclectic discipline enshrouded in vagueness; but as a philosophical tradition that is both selectively particular and universal in nature in which ideas are conceptualized using linguistic resources from African worldviews but with universal applicability. I conclude by demonstrating that the mechanism of conversational philosophy is one that carefully approaches discourse on African philosophy by borrowing a leaf from both the particularist vision and the universalist vision in order to establish the discipline of African philosophy as a tradition in its own right.

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L. Uchenna Ogbonnaya
University of Calabar, Calabar-Nigeria (Alumnus)

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