Samuel Imbo has written a short, concise introduction to some of the major issues addressed over the last century by scholars and activists concerned with African philosophy. The book is divided into five chapters, the first of which surveys answers to the question "What is African philosophy?". Because of a legacy of intellectual denigration that portrays Africans as incapable of abstract thought, this question is often the first raised by those outside the field. This legacy is reinforced by the assumption that philosophy requires a tradition of written communication. Imbo addresses both of these sources of skepticism, delineating three senses of African philosophy: ethnological, universalist, and hermeneutical.

As a form of ethnology or "ethnophilosophy", African philosophy can be considered the set of values, categories, and assumptions that is implicit in the language, rituals, and beliefs of African cultures. Following the Sapir-Whorf thesis so popular during the first half of this century, Placide Tempels' Bantu Philosophy, published in 1945, argues that the linguistic categories of the Bantu people reflect the metaphysical categories that shape their view of reality. On this view, extended and refined by Father Alexis Kagame of Rwanda, every culture is organized around a set of philosophical principles that are implicit in its language, beliefs and practices, whether or not it is stated explicitly by any member of that culture. The other major expression of philosophy as ethnology is Negritude, the principal exponent of which was Leopold Senghor. Senghor argued that Africans have a distinctive approach to reality that is based on emotion rather than logic, an approach that encourages participation rather than analysis. Others characterized by Imbo as ethnophilosophers include Marcel Griaule, Cheikh Anta Diop, John Mbiti, Kwame Nkrumah, and Julius Nyerere.

Another group (Imbo includes Kwasi Wiredu, Paulin Hountoundji, Peter Bodunrin, Odera Oruka, and Kwame Gyekye) denies that African philosophy is relative to language and culture, and adopt a universalist outlook instead. For Kwasi Wiredu, the development of philosophy in Africa parallels the development of philosophy in Europe, and traditional African thought should not be taken as paradigmatic of African philosophy any more than traditional European thought is considered paradigmatic of European philosophy. Paulin Hountoundji argues that philosophy is a process of critical reflection on texts that requires a tradition of literacy. And African philosophy is a critical literature produced by Africans for Africans. While Wiredu and Hountoundji construe literacy as essential to the practice of African philosophy, Odera Oruka insists that active engagement in critical reflection on the assumptions of one's culture is the only requirement for philosophy. For Oruka, African sages that critically reflect on the assumptions of their culture are just as much philosophers as was Socrates.

Imbo categorizes the third approach to African philosophy as hermeneutical, and identifies Tsenay Serequeberhan, Marcien Towa, Okondo Okolo, Franz Fanon, Lucius Outlaw, V.Y. Mudimbe, and Lansana Keita as among its exponents. In the hermeneutical approach, philosophy "takes lived experience as its starting point", and the lived experience of most Africans revolves around a struggle to cope with the omnipresent effects of the cultural and economic imperialism of Europe. As such, the principle objective of African philosophy is how to achieve liberation from the injuries imposed by European hegemony. Traditional beliefs are not valuable in themselves, but only relative to the extent they contribute to this end. And to the extent that oral discourse contributes to that end, it is a valuable contribution to African philosophy. Imbo's discussion of Afrocentricism and the Bernal-Lefkowitz debate is a useful treatment of the claim that Black Africa's contributions to world culture has been denied in order to further a racist agenda.

Chapter 2 is an extended exposition and critique of ethnophilosophy, the view of African Philosophy as an ethnological study of African cultures. Imbo stresses that there are many different forms that ethnophilosophy has taken, not all of which agree with one another. Thus, while Cheikh Anta Diop stresses the unique nature of African cultures, he disagrees with Senghor's claim that Africans are 'naturally' more oriented towards the arts than to science and technology. On the contrary, Diop argues that Egypt was an African culture, and its achievements in science, mathematics, architecture, and philosophy were the basis for the flowering of classical Greek civilization. John Mbiti also assumes a kind of unamism (Hountoundji's term) among African cultures, which accounts for similar beliefs about personhood, supernatural causality, and the nature of time. Finally, Marcel Griaule's conversations with Ogotommeli portray him as the kind of African sage that Odera Oruku compares to Socrates.

Critics of ethnophilosophy call attention to the regressive nature of many traditional African beliefs and practices, especially the oppressive treatment of women. Moreover, they argue that a focus on the past as the source of authenticity detracts from a critical posture that evaluates all practices relative to their contribution to the liberation of Africa.

Chapter 3 continues this exposition and critique of ethnophilosophy, focusing on the claim that African philosophy should be concerned with articulating those factors that make African people unique and different. Advocates of this position

(mostly ethnophilosophers) argue that the African contribution to civilization is valuable because it is unique and peculiar to Africans. Unfortunately Imbo misrepresents Tempels expression of this position when he writes: "The chief difference between Bantu and Western philosophy for Tempels is the improbability of finding among the Bantu anybody who offers proofs to support an exposition of the Bantu worldview."

But it is simply not true that Tempels considered this "the chief difference between Bantu and Western philosophy". For Tempels, that honor was reserved for the difference in the concept of a being, the African concept being one based on force, while the Western concept was that of a static object. And while Tempels believed the Bantu incapable of articulating their philosophical system, it is debatable whether he considered this an inherent disability rather than mere fact of historical circumstance. In either case, Imbo makes a case for Hountoundji's claim that Tempels' efforts were made to benefit, not Africans, but Europeans. In response to Senghor's view that African philosophy should express the particular outlook of the African race, Imbo presents Appiah's counter claim that the very notion of race was invented to benefit Europeans, not Africans. In fact, Appiah argues, there are no races and the very notion is one we should avoid.

Chapter 4 outlines a cluster of issues dealing with the medium of expression for African philosophy: whether African philosophy must or should be expressed in African languages (Ngugi wa Thiong'o) or in European languages (Chinua Achebe), and whether or not African philosophy must adopt a written format.(Hountoundji, Richard Bell).

Chapter 5 explores the connections between African, African-American, and Feminist philosophy. Given similar histories of struggling against domination, each of these philosophical enterprises must satisfy the political imperative of deconstructing traditional philosophical methods and assumptions to expose hidden agendas of domination. Imbo succinctly recounts Leonard Harris' argument that "American philosophy has developed as a mirror image of a dominant society that equates white identity with racial superiority" (130) and the similar argument by Sandra Harding that philosophy has typically assumed that the interest of males represents the interest of the species. Imbo presents the claim by feminists such as Carol Gould that contrast women as care givers with men as reciprocating agents, notes the similarity with claims that contrast Africans as emotive and Europeans as intellectual, and warns against essentializing such differences because "in the dominant frameworks of Western philosophy, 'different' means 'inferior' (139).

Throughout the book, Imbo's choice of issues and exposition of pro and con positions is excellent. He writes clearly and without jargon. As a concise and readable introduction to African philosophy, I can think of no better text.

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