El Barroco: el contexto cultural

The fourth trend in this list, which is the focus of Oruka’s own distinguished work and this dissertation, is ‘philosophic sagacity’ or ‘sage philosophy’. This was introduced to the debate on African philosophy during the Dr William Amo Conference in Accra, July 1978. In order to define philosophic sagacity, it is nec- essary to explain what sage philosophy is about. According to Oruka:

Sage philosophy consists of the expressed thoughts of wise men and women in any given community and is a way of thinking and explaining the world that fluctuates between popular wisdom (well-known communal maxims, aphorisms and general common sense truths) and didactic wisdom (an expounded wisdom and a rational thought of some given individuals within a community). While popular wisdom is conformist, didactic wisdom is at times critical of the communal set-up and popular wisdom. Thoughts can be expressed in writing or as unwritten sayings and arguments associated with some individual(s). (Oruka 1991: 33-34)

Some of Oruka’s critics have disparagingly called his sage philosophy ‘culture philosophy’, suggesting that it cannot be distinguished from ethnophilosophy. Oruka makes it clear, however, that his aim is to

[...] invalidate the claim the traditional African peoples were innocent of logical and critical thinking’ and thus also the belief that ‘traditional African philosophy does not go beyond folk-wisdom and non-critical thought. (Oruka 1987: 51-52)

Serequeberhan sees sage philosophy as Oruka’s attempt to carve out a middle way between ethnophilosophy and professional philosophy, and describes it as the thought of indigenous wise men ‘who critically engage the established tradi- tion and culture of their respective ethnic groups and/or societies’ (Serequeber- han 1991a: 19). These sages, says Serequeberhan, occupy a critical space in their culture; they are not merely preservers of tradition.

Practitioners of this fourth trend attempt to extract the philosophical wisdom from these sages through dialogue. After conducting interviews with his sages in Kenya, Oruka identifies two main categories of sage philosophy (Oruka 1991):

1) First of all, there is the folk sage, who is well versed in the popular wisdom, culture, and beliefs of his people. He is essentially a conformist in relation to the communal set-up. He is a folk sage because he does not transcend the celebrated folk wisdom of his people. He remains at the first order of sage philosophy, which is popular wisdom and includes all the accepted customary and conven- tional beliefs and practices of the people.

2) The philosophic sage individually expresses rational thoughts and moral teachings. Such a sage is at times critical of the culture, beliefs, and popular wis- dom of his people. He is able to reflect on and evaluate what prevails and is commonly accepted in the first order. Such a sage is an exponent of second-order

philosophy,24 which is didactic wisdom. This second-order philosophy is what is referred to as philosophic sagacity.

Philosophic sagacity is the reflection of a person who is a sage and a thinker. As a sage, a person is - as already pointed out - well versed in the wisdoms and traditions of his people. As a thinker, he is critical and transcends the communal wisdom. Philosophic sagacity, therefore, is the expounded and well-reasoned thought of some individuals in a given culture.

In searching for philosophic sagacity, traditional individual African sages are identified and dialogue is carried out with them orally. Traditional Africa here refers to an era when the dominance of beliefs and practices in an African setting, as shown by the sages who represent a domain or sphere of life, was constituted prior to the penetration by North Atlantic and/or global post-17th-century tech- nology, a domain that has managed to more or less survive as a relatively auton- omous, relatively intact domain of thought and action ever since. It is against this background that Oruka postulates the main argument for philosophic sagacity.

Philosophic sagacity maintains that African philosophy in its pure traditional form does not begin and end in a folk talk and consensus. It maintains that Afri- cans, even without outside influence, are not strangers to logical and dialectical, critical inquiry. Philosophic sagacity proceeds on the supposition that the ability to read and write is not a necessary condition for philosophical reflection and exposition. Oruka’s project demonstrates that one is likely to find indigenous thinkers who are illiterate. They are critical, independent thinkers who oversee their thoughts and opinions by the power of reason and innate ingenuity rather than by the influence of community wisdom. They are capable of taking a prob- lem or concept and offering a more or less rigorous philosophical explanation of it, thereby making clear rationally where they accept or reject the communal judgement on the matter. Oruka is so thrilled by the idea that he declares:

Writing is not a great issue. Writing is a good way to store thought and so to store philosophy. But writing is not thinking and Philosophy is thinking and one can think even if one is incapable or has no facilities for writing. (Oruka 1991: 6)25

24 _{This categorization made by Oruka should not be confused with the philosophy journal of that name.} 25

I think writing is a very important issue and Oruka cannot afford to ignore it. Why are African sage philosophers different from, say, the Pre-Socratics, Descartes, Kant, or Hountondji? The reason is that the former were not embedded in a world of text production and textual accumulation. The Pre- Socratic Greek philosophers, for example, largely operated in an early-literate environment and large- ly taught orally - though some left texts (e.g. Parmenides), and many of their sayings have been rec- orded in later traditions (collected by Plato and Aristotle and brought together, especially in modern times, by the German classical scholar Hermann Diels (1848–1922) in The Fragments of the Presocratics). Since the mid-20th century, there has been a widespread and profound debate on how literacy and text do violence to the world and to human beings, and how they totally transform the ex- perience of reality. Advocates of literacy, such as Jack Goody, Walter Ong, and Eric Havelock, stress

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