ON THE POSSIBILITIES OF ACHIEVING AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY AND THE CRITICISM OF SENGHORIAN NEGRITUDE BY MARCIEN TOWA

Abstract

This paper will seek to highlight and discuss the questioning that the Cameroonian philosopher Marcien Towa makes of the Black African Philosophical thought from decade of 1960 and 1970 and the paths that it points to the realization of Philosophy. At first, we will present the Towa’s diagnosis about the ways that the African Philosophical thought took after the end of the colonial process. In this questioning, he especially criticized the thought of Leopold Sédar Senghor, who provides a blackness type that has as trap his own theoretical articulation, dualistic and universal and is based on the ethnoPhilosophy, which maximizes the view that Europe contributes for the construction of human history with its reason and Africa, with its emotion and mysticism. Towa points a way to abandon this perspective of blackness, with the disclosure of rationality found in the different African cultures’ structure, as he presents an Africa that contributes rationally and culturally with the universal history.