Abstract

Confronting the contemporary African Philosopher is a major linguistic challenge forged out of the controversies involved in using foreign languages to do African philosophy An increasing number of scholars are beginning to realize today how the use of foreign languages in African Philosophy is itself an obstacle to a truly unfettered research into African thought 1 This is because to choose a language is to choose a particular thought pattern and the choice of the language already predetermines the most important issues But the critical responses of Africans to the intellectual onslaught of Eurocentrism ironically had to be through the medium of the European languages for example English French and Portuguese 2 This ipso facto poses a methodological problem arising from the need to ensure that African meanings are not distorted in the process of analyzing them within the conceptual frameworks of alien languages The problem is further compounded with the realization that the African continent possesses many languages in which to express itself This makes the problem more abstruse thereby begging the question in what particular language amongst the different languages in Africa is African philosophy to be genuinely constructed 3 Armed with the nitty-gritty of the ex post facto cogitations this paper therefore attempts to bring to limelight the related issues difficulties problems and implications associated with the use of linguistic imports that is sufficiently alien to Africa in the Herculean task of rendering the discursive formations and ideas of Africa s culture religion and philosophy The paper jettisons the idea that only the use of African languages guarantee authentic African philosophy and finally recommends a rather pragmatic approach to the subject matter