African Sage philosophy and Socrates: Midwifery and method

International Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 42, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 177-192

  Presbey, Gail M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF DETROIT MERCY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0348181533     PISSN: 00190365     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/ipq20024223     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. H. Odera Oruka, Trends in Contemporary African Philosophy (Nairobi: Shirikon, 1990), hereafter TCAP, p. 7
2. Kwame Gyekye, An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987) p. 11
3. I have analyzed these written works in my article, "Should Women Love 'Wisdom'? Evaluating the Ethiopian Wisdom Tradition," Research in African Literatures 30/2 (1999) 165-81
4. Anthony Oseghare, "Sagacity and African Philosophy," International Philosophical Quarterly, 32/1 (1992) 95-104, hereafter SAP
5. Oruka's work is prominently mentioned in Segun Gbadegesin, "Current Trends and Perspectives in African Philosophy" in A Companion to World Philosophies, ed. Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997) pp. 548-63
6. Oruka's interview with sage Paul Mboya Akoko is included in I am Because We Are: Readings in Black Philosophy, ed. Fred Lee Hord and Jonathan Scott Lee (Amherst: Univ. of Mass. Press, 1995) pp. 32-44
7. A recent collection with several articles on sage philosophy is Sagacious Reasoning: Henry Odera Oruka in Memoriam, ed. Kai Kresse and Anke Graness (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1997)
8. H. Odera Oruka, Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy (Nairobi: ACTS Press, 1991), hereafter SP
9. Plato, Theaetetus 149b-150c, in Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1971)
10. H. Odera Oruka, "On Philosophy and Humanism in Africa," Philosophy and Social Action, V/1-2 (1979) 7-33 at 7
11. See two of my papers that address these issues at length: "H. Odera Oruka on Moral Reasoning," Journal of Value Inquiry, 34/4 (2000) 517-28
12. "On a Moral Mission to Improve Society: H. Odera Oruka and the Socratic Paradigm," International Journal of Applied Philosophy 14/2 (2000) 225-40
13. Oruka, "Philosophy and Humanism," p. 8
14. Rinita Mazumdar, "How Significant Is Socrates' Midwifery?" Indian Philosophical Quarterly 19/4 (1992) 311-26 at 313
15. Scott R. Hemmenway, "Philosophical Apology in the Theaetetus," Interpretation 17/3 (1990) 326
16. D. A. Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of an Identity (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1994) p. 238
17. Plato, Theaetetus 150b-c
18. Henry John Drewal and Margaret Thompson Drewal, Gelede: Art and Female Power Among the Yoruba (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1990) pp. 71-75. Note, however, that these powerful women are past childbearing age, another illustration of the notion that one either gives birth to babies or to ideas, not to both
19. I discuss this issue further in my article, "Who Counts as a Sage? Problems in the Further Implementation of Sage Philosophy," Quest: Philosophical Discussions, 11/1-2 (1997) 53-65
20. Peter Bodunrin, "The Question of African Philosophy," in SP, p. 166
21. Plato, Theaetetus, 151c
22. H. Odera Oruka, "Sagacity in African Philosophy" in African Philosophy: The Essential Readings, ed. Tsenay Serequeberhan (New York: Paragon House, 1991) pp. 52-53
23. Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992), p. 96
24. Gyekye gives a detailed account of the concepts of destiny that have arisen in the Akan tradition, partly, to make sense of death. See Gyekye, Akan Conceptual Scheme, pp. 104-23
25. Plato, Republic 331d in Great Dialogues of Plato, tr. W. H. D. Rouse (Mentor/New American Library, 1956)
26. Plato, Apology 22c in Great Dialogues of Plato
27. Appiah, In My Father's House, pp. 108-09
28. Masolo, In Search of Identity, p. 236
29. I. F. Stone, The Trial of Socrates (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1988) p. 82