John Mbiti Quotes on Knowledge
John Mbiti (1931–2019), the Kenyan philosopher-theologian whose African Religions and Philosophy (1969) and Concepts of God in Africa (1970) supplied the founding mid-century synthesis of indigenous African religious thought, defended the case that African knowledge is constituted by the communal participation of the individual in the kinship network — "I am because we are; and since we are, therefore I am" — within a temporal frame organized around the present (sasa) and the deep past (zamani) rather than around an open future. The framework remains a principal reference point for the subsequent Africanist philosophical literature, including its sharpest critics.
Quotes
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Attributed to John Mbiti:
“Time in African thought is meaningful only insofar as it has been experienced.”
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Attributed to John Mbiti:
“African religions are the foundation of African philosophy.”
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Attributed to John Mbiti:
“Without the past, the present has no roots and the future no wings.”
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“Voyage Round My Father (1971), act 1”
No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails. -
“Do we want blanks, asterisks and exclamation marks which people can fill in with their own imaginations, or are we prepared and strong enough to tolerate, even if we do not approve, the strong Anglo-Saxon, realistic and vivid language?”
Defending record shop proprietor Christopher Seale against obscenity charges for displaying advertisements for Sex Pistols ' LP Never Mind the Bollocks, Nottingham Magistrates Court (14 November 1977) -
“I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print.”
Clinging to the Wreckage : A Part of Life (1982), p. 183 -
“In The Observer (28 June 1987)”
The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yoghurt.