Abstract

As African philosophy continues to make progress, the question of language has emerged as an important issue. Put succinctly; should African philosophy be done through foreign languages or indigenous African languages? This has become a problem which some members of the Particularist and Universalist schools in African philosophy have being wrestling with. While the Particularists favour the view, that African philosophy should be done using an indigenous African language, the Universalists argue that a more universally spoken language should be the vehicle for doing African philosophy. In this chapter, I seek to reconcile these two positions through what I call ‘Linguistic complementarity’. Here, I argue that ‘Linguistic complementarity’ provides for the usefulness of both African and foreign languages in doing African philosophy, especially in the post-colonial time. My hunch is that due to the existence of numerous language groups in Africa, it would be difficult if not impossible to identify one indigenous language that would be acceptable to all, or that is even widely spoken across the continent. As a result, any of the colonial languages, which is widely spoken remains a better alternative if part of the goal is to achieve a cross-cultural conversation. In this way, linguistic complementarity entails the complementarity of African and foreign languages where indigenous African languages can be used in formulating concepts, and the foreign languages can be used in communicating them. I will show examples of this approach in the works of Innocent Asouzu and Jonathan Chimakonam.