ESSENCISM AS PART OF CONVERSATIONALISM

Abstract

There has been a great waste of intellectual energy exerted in the discovery of African philosophy. This can be seen in the various efforts made to define African philosophy, and to answer the questions - What is African philosophy? What is the method of African philosophy? It becomes more complex and confusing given the several and diverse problems associated with the documentation, history, language, logic and critical questions that have to do with African traditional tradition. All these intellectual exercises tend to suggest that African Philosophy was lost or never existed before now. These, perhaps, also suggest the alleged inferiority of African Philosophy to that of the western tradition. In this paper therefore, effort will be made to assert that African Philosophy is as superior and systematic as any other philosophy, either in the West or Asia. We will also challenge the uncharitable position that the method of African philosophy is different from that of the West and Asia among others. We will posit that the method of philosophy is the same globally, and it has to do with dialogues through the exchange of ideas in the form of conversation that has been tagged and categorized as conversationalism. At the end, we will show and conclude that essencism is a part of this universal conversational method of philosophy, which bears African, Asian and Western ideas. This will be provided a historical pathway to establish and validate our logic of discourse. Keywords: Africa, Conversationalism, Essencism, Method, Philosophy.