Kọ́lá Abímbọ́lá

Kọ́lá Abímbọ́lá is a Nigerian-American philosopher, legal scholar and scholar of African philosophy, particularly Yorùbá philosophy and the Ifá intellectual tradition. Quotes All philosophy is cultural philosophy. Abímbọ́lá uses this as the first premise of his argument about African philosophy. The growth of philosophy in Africa is leading to the demise of African philosophy! His argument is that when African philosophy is conducted predominantly in European languages, the concepts and categories embedded in those languages can increasingly reflect European rather than African conceptual frameworks. As long as we continue to conduct philosophy in Africa solely (or mainly) in European languages, the concepts, categories, and worldviews embedded within our philosophical products will predominantly be European and not African. Abímbọ́lá was examining the relationship between language and philosophical thought. He argued that language is not merely a neutral vehicle for expressing ideas because its conceptual structures influence the way philosophical problems are formulated and understood. Translation from Yorùbá into English and vice versa is fun! You see and understand things differently by code-switching in and out of the two languages. But at the same time, it is perilous! Abímbọ́lá argues that these approaches do not by themselves capture the essential nature of African philosophy. The implication of the foregoing is clear: doing philosophy in the English language will yield a completely different set of rules, principles and standards from doing philosophy in the Yorùbá language because these languages individuate and identify in radically different ways. He mentioned that philosophical reasoning conducted through different natural languages can operate with different conceptual assumptions. The primary logic of Yorùbá language is not classical; it is intuitionistic or sortal at base, with a secondary or supplementary layer of classical logic. Abímbọ́lá was presenting his argument about the logical structures embedded in Yorùbá. He contrasted these with the classical logical assumptions that he associates with English and other European languages. Many concepts, principles, actions, processes, rules and methods simply do not make sense if one thinks in Yorùbá on the basis of the spatiotemporal classical logic that is encoded into the English language. His argument is that translating or interpreting ideas between the two languages can require more than substituting words because the underlying conceptual structures may differ. External links Category:Living people Category:Philosophers from Nigeria