African Philosophical Humanism
AFRICAN CULTURAL HERITAGE AND SUSTAINABLE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: AN ETHICAL PARADIGM
By
Alloy S. Ihuah PhD.
Department of Religion and Philosophy
Benue State University Makurdi. Nigeria. alloyihuah@yahoo.com 08034017856;08026242031
(i) Introduction African indigenous knowledge system expressed in proverbs, names and songs etc. are conscious reflections on specific situations, events and experiences in the lives of the people. For the African, observation and experience are sources of knowledge that have immediate practical results in such areas as agriculture, medicine, crime prevention and remedy among others. It is no longer fiction that, our ancestors, whose main occupation was farming, knew of the system of rotation of crops; they knew when to allow a piece of land to lie fallow for a while; they had some knowledge of the technology of food processing and preservation; and there is a great deal of evidence about their knowledge of the medicinal potentialities of herbs and plants – the main sources of their health care delivery system long before the introduction of Western Medicine. (Even today there are countless testimonies of people who have received cures from ‘traditional’ healers where the application of western therapeutics could not cope) (Gyekye, 1997:26-27). Although western scientific thought similarly acknowledge observation and experience as sources of objective knowledge. It depends on the adoption of a linear monistic conception of reality, which goal is analysis and demonstrative procedures. Here understood, western civilization lacks the principle of self-limitation in terms of size, speed and violence and has in the process killed more than healed humanity and the environment. The work argues that any civilization that claims immunity from error and confers on itself authority over other cultures is to say the least no civilization. Every culture has its basic
By
Alloy S. Ihuah PhD.
Department of Religion and Philosophy
Benue State University Makurdi. Nigeria. alloyihuah@yahoo.com 08034017856;08026242031
(i) Introduction African indigenous knowledge system expressed in proverbs, names and songs etc. are conscious reflections on specific situations, events and experiences in the lives of the people. For the African, observation and experience are sources of knowledge that have immediate practical results in such areas as agriculture, medicine, crime prevention and remedy among others. It is no longer fiction that, our ancestors, whose main occupation was farming, knew of the system of rotation of crops; they knew when to allow a piece of land to lie fallow for a while; they had some knowledge of the technology of food processing and preservation; and there is a great deal of evidence about their knowledge of the medicinal potentialities of herbs and plants – the main sources of their health care delivery system long before the introduction of Western Medicine. (Even today there are countless testimonies of people who have received cures from ‘traditional’ healers where the application of western therapeutics could not cope) (Gyekye, 1997:26-27). Although western scientific thought similarly acknowledge observation and experience as sources of objective knowledge. It depends on the adoption of a linear monistic conception of reality, which goal is analysis and demonstrative procedures. Here understood, western civilization lacks the principle of self-limitation in terms of size, speed and violence and has in the process killed more than healed humanity and the environment. The work argues that any civilization that claims immunity from error and confers on itself authority over other cultures is to say the least no civilization. Every culture has its basic