ABSTRACT
This chapter describes major trends in the philosophy of Africa south of the Sahara in the twentieth century, with particular focus on representatives of cultural relativism, such as Négritude and ethnophilosophy. In contrast to an ontological and essentialising relativism, which proposes that there is a way of knowing that is uniquely African and suggests that rationality is culturally relative, Kwasi Wiredu upholds the universalist claim that all human beings share the same cognitive capabilities. However, Wiredu points to linguistic contrasts between Akan and English in order to demonstrate that there are some philosophical issues which can be formulated in English but not in Akan. According to Wiredu this indicates that some philosophical problems are not universal. Furthermore, the chapter touches on African feminist positions and ends with the current academic debate on the South African concept of ubuntu.
