African Thought in Comparative Perspective showcases how adept Ali Mazrui, the most prolific writer on Africa today, is at using complex conceptual apparatuses to categorize and synthesize Africa’s political and social thought. This book, thus, offers an original interpretation of the knowledge that has been accumulated over the years, and which is of timeless relevance. It covers such themes as the legacy of the African liberation movements, the convergence and divergence of African, Islamic and Western thought, nationalist ideologies in Africa, the role of religion in African politics, and the impact of Ancient Greek philosophy on contemporary Africa.

This volume compares the western ideas of knowledge with the African. It aims at creating a mirror through which the western knowledge culture can look at itself through an unusual and interesting angle. The culture of Sub-Saharan Africa is the substance from which we, in this book, have tried to construe an epistemological mirror.

This revised and expanded second edition of African Politics in Comparative Perspective reviews fifty years of research on politics in Africa and addresses some issues in a new light, keeping in mind the changes in Africa since the first edition was written in 2004. The book synthesizes insights from different scholarly approaches and offers an original interpretation of the knowledge accumulated in the field. Goran Hyden discusses how research on African politics relates to the study of politics in other regions and mainstream theories in comparative politics. He focuses on such key issues as why politics trumps economics, rule is personal, state is weak and policies are made with a communal rather than an individual lens. The book also discusses why in the light of these conditions agriculture is problematic, gender contested, ethnicity manipulated and relations with Western powers a matter of defiance.

This book focuses on African metaphysics and epistemology, and is an exercise in decoloniality. The authors describe their approach to "decoloniality" as an intellectual repudiation of coloniality, using the method of conversational thinking grounded in Ezumezu logic. Focusing specifically on both African metaphysics and African epistemology, the authors put forward theories formulated to stimulate fresh debates and extend the frontiers of learning in the field. They emphasize that this book is not a project in comparative philosophy, nor is it geared towards making Africa/ns the object/subjects of philosophy. Rather, the book highlights and discusses philosophical insights that have been produced from the African perspective, which the authors argue must be further developed in order to achieve decoloniality in the field of philosophy more broadly.

In a major challenge to African philosophy, this book demonstrates the importance of the universalisation question for every committed African philosopher. Rooted in Africa’s colonial legacy, the universalisation question challenges the African thinker to show how authentically African philosophical concepts and phenomena can be universally applicable in a globalising world. In this highly original book, the author inserts the philosophy of consolationism into African philosophical discourse, constructing a unique philosophical system that is at once African and universally relevant. The book engages major African and Western philosophers of diverse ideological leanings in a compelling dialogue that announces the future of world philosophy as one of interculturality, in which a common philosophical horizon is forged out of the cultural diversities of the world for the edification of humanity in a continually changing world. This book will be an important read for researchers in the fields of African Studies, intercultural philosophy, philosophy of mind, and existentialism.

The main aim of this book is to discuss fundamental developments on the question of being in Western and African philosophy using analytic metaphysics as a framework. It starts with the two orthodox responses to the question of being, namely, the subject-verb-object language view and the rheomodic language view. In the first view, being is conceived through the analysis of language structure, where it is represented by subjects (particulars), objects, and relations (often universals). In the second view, there are different variations; however, the common idea is that the world's structure is revealed in the root verb of terms. This suggests a holistic and dynamic conception of being, where everything is in a continuous process of action. The book builds on analytic philosophy and explores metaphysical concepts such as space-time, modality, causation, indeterminism versus determinism, and mind and body. The book shows that in both Western and African thought, (i) similarities in different studies confirm that philosophy is a universal activity, (ii) differences within a context and beyond confirm the perspectival nature of human knowledge as individuals attempt to interpret reality, and (iii) language influences the conceptualization of being in a particular area. One of the novel aspects is the development of visual and mathematical African models of space and time.

Robin Horton's critical and creative writings on African religious thought have influenced anthropologists, philosophers, and all those interested in the comparative study of religion and thought. This selection of some of his classic papers, with a new introduction and postscript by the author, traces Horton's theoretical ideas over thirty years. In attempting to understand African religious thought, he also tackles broader issues in the history and sociology of thought, such as secularisation and modernisation. Part I is a critical assessment of two established interpretive approaches, the Symbolist and the Theological. Part II proposes an alternative 'Intellectualist' approach that emphasises the structural and processual similarities between religious and scientific thinking. The postscript appraises the Intellectualist approach in the light of theorising about religion and world views.