Hermeneutics is a crucial but neglected perspective in African philosophy. Here, Tsenay Serequeberhan engages post-colonial African literature and the ideas of the African liberation struggle with critically-used insights from the European philosophical tradition. Continuing the work of Theophilus Okere and Okonda Okolo, this book attempts to overcome the debate between ethnophilosophy and professional philosophy, demonstrating that the promise of African philosophy lies with the critical development of the African hermeneutical perspective.

A classic collection of essays calling for decolonization through self-liberation "For us," said Amilcar Cabral, "freedom is an act of culture"--and these were not just words. Guided by the concrete realities of his people, Cabral called for a process of "re-Africanization," a Return to the Source. As a new imperialism has taken hold the world over, many have hearkened back to Return to the Source, but this time, our source of inspiration is Cabral himself. With a system of thought rooted in an African reading of Marx, Cabral was a deep-thinking revolutionary who applied the principles of decolonization as a dialectic task, and in so doing became one of the world's most profoundly influential and effective theoreticians of anti-imperialist struggle. Cabral and his fellow Pan-African movement leaders catalyzed and fortified a militant wave of liberation struggles beginning in Angola, moving through Cabral's homelands of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, and culminating in Mozambique and beyond. He translated abstract theories into agile praxis and in under just ten years steered the liberation of three-quarters of the countryside of Guinea Bissau from Portuguese colonial domination. In this new, expanded edition of Return to the Source: Selected Texts of Amilcar Cabral we have access to Cabral's warm and humorous informal address to the Africa Information Service, and we revisit several of the principal speeches Cabral delivered during visits to the United States in the final years before his assassination in 1973, including his last written address to his people on New Year's Eve. Return to the Source is essential reading for all who understand that the erasure of historical continuity between social movements has disrupted our ability to make the revolutionary transformation we all desperately require.

Post-colonial Africa provides the context for this exploration of a crucial yet neglected perspective in African philosophy. Tsenay Serequeberhan's critical reading of the philosophical insights of post-colonial African literature and examination of the self-understanding of the African liberation struggles allow a concrete development of the hermeneutic possibilities of African thought. His critical use of other insights from the European tradition of philosophical hermeneutics allows him to continue the work of Theophilius Okere and Okonda Okolo in developing an African philosophical hermeneutics.
In The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy, Serequeberhan shows how African philosophical hermeneutics overcomes the prolonged and stale debate between ethnophilosophy and professional philosophy over the nature of African philosophy, carefully demonstrating that the promise for this fast-growing area lies in the critical development of the African hermeneutical perspective.

In this compelling and engaging work, Tsenay Serequeberhan discusses recent attempts to define African philosophy and the practice of hermeneutics for articulating a philosophy that is distinctively African. Pressing into service insights derived from Marx, Nietzsche, Levinas, Fanon, and others, Serequeberhan analyzes the question of how we relate to our past (i.e., our heritage) and the open possibilities of our future. He carefully examines the variety of approaches to African philosophy and argues for a historically engaged and existentially attuned paradigm shift. The result is an approach that explores the contemporary situation of African and African-American existence in view of emancipatory struggles that have established the confines of the present.

A classic collection of essays calling for decolonization through self-liberation "For us," said Amilcar Cabral, "freedom is an act of culture"--and these were not just words. Guided by the concrete realities of his people, Cabral called for a process of "re-Africanization," a Return to the Source. As a new imperialism has taken hold the world over, many have hearkened back to Return to the Source, but this time, our source of inspiration is Cabral himself. With a system of thought rooted in an African reading of Marx, Cabral was a deep-thinking revolutionary who applied the principles of decolonization as a dialectic task, and in so doing became one of the world's most profoundly influential and effective theoreticians of anti-imperialist struggle. Cabral and his fellow Pan-African movement leaders catalyzed and fortified a militant wave of liberation struggles beginning in Angola, moving through Cabral's homelands of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, and culminating in Mozambique and beyond. He translated abstract theories into agile praxis and in under just ten years steered the liberation of three-quarters of the countryside of Guinea Bissau from Portuguese colonial domination. In this new, expanded edition of Return to the Source: Selected Texts of Amilcar Cabral we have access to Cabral's warm and humorous informal address to the Africa Information Service, and we revisit several of the principal speeches Cabral delivered during visits to the United States in the final years before his assassination in 1973, including his last written address to his people on New Year's Eve. Return to the Source is essential reading for all who understand that the erasure of historical continuity between social movements has disrupted our ability to make the revolutionary transformation we all desperately require.

The Idea of a Negro-African Philosophy is a short book originally published in 1979. It is a concise, yet thorough and systematic, exploration of the question of African philosophy as it emerges out of the central concerns of the postcolonial present. "Propositions on Cultural Identity" a short article, published in the same year, is a succinct philosophic exploration of the question of identity, as it pertains to the cultural, political and economic issues linked to Africa's politico-economic dependence on the West. In both texts - presented here in translation for the first time - Towa engages the question of African Philosophy by concretely exploring and showing how this question is organically linked to the efforts of the Continent aimed at reclaiming its economic, political, historical and existential actuality. Broaching the question from slightly differing, yet complimentary, angles Towa articulates a stance that directly engages the central concerns of African independence, in the context of a postcolonial world that is still tied to the apron-strings of its former colonisers.

Kwame Nkrumah is globally recognized as a foremost pan-Africanist strategist and statesman. He is less widely acknowledged as a philosopher, in spite of his considerable philosophical training, seminal contribution to African political theory, and incisive critique of the ethics of international relations. Consciencism has the distinctive status of being the only published book that Nkrumah consciously meant to be a work of his philosophy, yet it has failed to attract the focused attention of philosophers. The chapters in Disentangling Consciencism: Essays on Kwame Nkrumah's Philosophy critically explore the metaphysical, ethical and political thought expressed in Consciencism. In doing so, they broaden our understanding of his philosophical ideas and their relevance for effective African contribution to thought in a contemporary world in which Africa increasingly totters on the margins of international affairs. In much of current moral and political thinking, there is a tendency to universalize liberal values and neglect non-Western philosophical perspectives. At the same time, global normative thinking is overwhelmingly applied in non-Western contexts. Writing from across three continents, the contributors to this volume establish greater intellectual connection among African, Asian and Western academics, and their chapters offer explicit perspectives on the value of Nkrumah's philosophy, and on the conceptual basis of early post-colonial public policy options in Africa. A valuable appendix provides the text of speeches delivered at the 1964 launch of Consciencism. With insights into numerous dimensions of Nkrumah's philosophy, this volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars of philosophy-especially of non-Western metaphysical, moral and political thought-and to anyone working in the history of African political theory.