ABSTRACT
The author here sets the stage for the discussions of freedom, justice, and decolonization to follow first through an exploration of challenges to the understanding of philosophy posed by Africana philosophy. Of particular, focus is the fallacy of reducing philosophy to its Western and Euromodern portraits through which other concepts such as “modern,” “thinking,” and “theory” are reduced to “Western.” The responses are historical and theoretical. The historical one points to nearly two thousand years of philosophy in Africa before the Presocratics in the European side of the Mediterranean Sea. The theoretical one poses the problem of colonial and colonized philosophy and challenges of decolonizing philosophy through an understanding of dialectical double consciousness and philosophy as relational. The latter, premised also on an understanding of Africana philosophy as a creolized hybrid of ideas ranging from what it means to be human to concepts of freedom and the justifiability of reason across the African diaspora and their relation to other traditions, leads to an openness of philosophy willing to go, paradoxically, beyond philosophy for the sake of reality and truth.
