This book offers a philosophical interpretation and critical analysis of the African cultural experience in modern times. In their attempt to evolve ways of life appropriate to our modern world culture, says Kwame Gyekye, African people face a number of unique societal challenges, some stemming from the values and practices of their traditional cultures, others representing the legacy of European colonialism. Defending the cross-cultural applicability of philosophical concepts developed in Western culture, Gyekye attempts to show the usefulness of such concepts in addressing a wide range of...

In this important and pioneering book, Kwame Gyekye examines postcolonial African experience from a viewpoint receptive to aspects of both traditional African cultures and Western political and moral theory. African people, in their attempt to evolve ways of life compatible with an increasingly globalized world cultural, intellectual, and political scene, face a number of unique societal challenges, some stemming, Gyekye argues, from traditional African values and practices, others representing the legacy of European colonialism. Enlisting Western political and philosophic concepts to clear,...

Believing that the intellectual enterprise called philosophy is essentially a part of the cultural as well as historical experience of a people, that the concepts and problems that occupy the attention of philosophers placed in different cultural spaces or historical times generally derive directly from those spaces and times, and that philosophy, in turn, has been most relevant to the development of human cultures, the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye gives reflective attention in this book to some of the concepts and problems that in his view feature most prominently in the contemporary...