PHILOSOPHY AND PRAXIS

The question of the defining characteristics of Africanness, as is the nature of all philosophical questions, has remained intractable. The idea that Communalism provides the best characterization of the African’s ontological mode of being has equally been rejected by some scholars, in spite of its popularity. This paper is an exploratory and ontoexistential analysis of the views of two great African philosophers, J. Obi Oguejiofor and Ike F. H. Odimegwu, on this argument of the relationship between Africa and Communalism. Although this essay does not have a strict comparative objective, it observes that within the expressions of their essays, “How African is Communalism?” and “How Communalist is Africa?” respectively, there is an obvious ontological and existential conception of communalism. Using the expository and analytic methods, this paper, however, rejects Oguejiofor’s analysis of Communalism and his conception of it as a “system”, which resulted in his blurring and denial of its ontological import. The paper, then, accepts Odimegwu’s view, which is a preferable and correct conception of Africa’s communalist ontology, that individualism and communalism are tendencies of the same human person. The essay concludes by arguing that communalism is exclusively African because it is exclusively human.

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