ABSTRACT
This chapter critically examines the interaction between the cognitive agent (knower) and the object of cognition (the known) with the aim to evaluate the agent’s role in knowledge practice. Its argument is grounded on African epistemology as a communitarian epistemology. Communitarian epistemology is based on the African unitive ontological conception of reality, which describes the dialectics, cooperation and togetherness that make knowledge a derivative of a chain relationship. In other words, knowledge is derived through a collaborative enterprise that synthesises individual contributions to produce a collective understanding of reality through communal rationalisation. It is justified by the African ontological notion of a continuum which encompasses the experiential, rational, religious, intuitive, symbolic, mythical and emotional aspects of reality. The African notion of continuum implies the presence of spiritual components of nature that influence human experience and perception. With this understanding, this paper argues that knowing is an interaction between the knower, the community and reality. It presents knowing as an activity in which the knower, guided by community rationalisation, is the responsible moderator of what is sensible, reasonable and applicable to reality.
