Kwame Gyekye 1939 – 2019
Kwame Gyekye was a Ghanaian philosopher and one of the principal interpreters of Akan thought to the wider philosophical world. Trained at Ghana and Harvard, he held a long professorship at the University of Ghana, Legon, where he founded philosophy as a serious academic discipline. His Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme reconstructed Akan metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics in dialogue with the Western tradition, and Tradition and Modernity argued for a reflective combination of indigenous African and modern values. He defended a moderate communitarianism in which the person is at once communal and individually responsible.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Ghanaian
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Postcolonial Philosophy
Selected quotes
-
Attributed to Kwame Gyekye:
“The person is at once communal and individually responsible.”
-
Attributed to Kwame Gyekye:
“Tradition and modernity are not opposed; they are partners in human flourishing.”
-
Attributed to Kwame Gyekye:
“African moral thought is grounded in the conception of the human as a being-with-others.”
-
Attributed to Kwame Gyekye:
“Knowledge that does not nourish life is not yet wisdom.”
-
Attributed to Kwame Gyekye:
“The aim of philosophical reflection is the improvement of the human condition.”