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In African countries there has been a surge of intellectual interest in foregrounding

ideas and thinkers of African origin—in philosophy as in other disciplines—that
have been unjustly ignored or marginalized. African scholars have demonstrated
that precolonial African cultures generated ideas and arguments which were at
once truly philosophical and distinctively African, and several contemporary
African thinkers are now established figures in the philosophical mainstream.
Yet, despite the universality of its themes, relevant contributions from African
philosophy have rarely permeated global philosophical debates. Critical intel-
lectual excavation has also tended to prioritize precolonial thought, overlooking
more recent sources of home-grown philosophical thinking such as Africa’s intel-
lectually rich liberation movements.
This book demonstrates the potential for constructive interchange between
currents of thought from African philosophy and other intellectual currents within
philosophy. Chapters authored by leading and emerging scholars:
•• recover philosophical thinkers and currents of ideas within Africa and

about Africa, bringing them into dialogue with contemporary mainstream
philosophy;
•• foreground the relevance of African theorizing to contemporary debates in
epistemology, philosophy of language, moral/political philosophy, philoso-
phy of race, environmental ethics and the metaphysics of disability;
•• make new interventions within on-going debates in African philosophy;
•• consider ways in which philosophy can become epistemically inclusive,
interrogating the contemporary call for ‘decolonization’ of philosophy.
Showing how foregrounding Africa—its ideas, thinkers and problems—can

help with the project of renewing and improving the discipline of philosophy
worldwide, this book will stimulate and challenge everyone with an interest in
philosophy, and is essential reading for upper-level undergraduate students, post-
graduate students and scholars of African and Africana philosophy.
George Hull is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Cape Town,

South Africa.
Perspectives on Identity, Decolonial Ethics
and Comparative Philosophy
Edited by George Hull
With a Foreword by Lungisile Ntsebeza

First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 selection and editorial matter, George Hull; individual chapters,
the contributors
The right of George Hull to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hull, George, editor.
Title: Debating African philosophy: perspectives on identity, decolonial
ethics, and comparative philosophy / edited by George Hull.
Description: New York: Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018036706 (print) | LCCN 2018042424 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780429796289 (web pdf) | ISBN 9780429796272 (epub) |
ISBN 9780429796265 (mobi) | ISBN 9781138344952 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138344969 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780429438189 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, African.
Classification: LCC B5303 (ebook) | LCC B5303 .D43 2019 (print) |
DDC 199/.6–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018036706
ISBN: 978-1-138-34495-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-34496-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-43818-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
About the contributors viii

Foreword by Lungisile Ntsebeza x
Introduction 1
GEORGE HULL
PART I
Decolonising philosophy 23
1 Ottobah Cugoano’s place in the history of political philosophy:

slavery and the philosophical canon 25
ROBERT BERNASCONI
2 Decolonizing bioethics via African philosophy:

moral neocolonialism as a bioethical problem 43
REBECCA BAMFORD
3 A philosophy without memory cannot abolish slavery:

on epistemic justice in South Africa 60
MOGOBE RAMOSE
PART II
Race, justice, identity 73
4 Neville Alexander and the non-racialism of the Unity Movement 75

GEORGE HULL
vi Contents
5 Biko on non-white and black: improving social reality 97
BRIAN EPSTEIN
6 Black autarchy/white domination: fractured language

and racial politics during Apartheid and beyond via
Biko and Lyotard 118
SERGIO ALLOGGIO AND MBONGISI DYANTYI, WITH A POSTSCRIPT
BY BARNEY PITYANA
7 Impartiality, partiality and privilege: the view from South Africa 130
SAMANTHA VICE
PART III
Moral debates 147
8 Making sense of survivor’s guilt: why it is justified by

an African ethic 149
THADDEUS METZ
9 African philosophy and nonhuman nature 164

EDWIN ETIEYIBO
10 On cultural universals and particulars 182

UCHENNA OKEJA
11 The Metz method and ‘African ethics’ 195

TOM P. S. ANGIER
PART IV
Meta-philosophy 211
12 The edges of (African) philosophy 213

BRUCE B. JANZ
13 Is philosophy bound by language? Some case studies from

African philosophy 228
BERNHARD WEISS
14 African philosophy in the context of a university 248

ORITSEGBUBEMI A. OYOWE
Contents vii
PART V
Comparative perspectives 267
15 Relational normative thought in Ubuntu and

Neo-republicanism 269
DOROTHEA GÄ DEKE
16 African philosophy, disability, and the social conception

of the self 289
JULIE E. MAYBEE
Index 305
About the contributors
Sergio Alloggio is a lecturer in Philosophy at Rhodes University, Makhanda

Tom P. S. Angier is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Cape Town
Rebecca Bamford is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Quinnipiac University,
Hamden, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of Fort Hare,
East London
Robert Bernasconi is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy and African
American Studies at Pennsylvania State University
Mbongisi Dyantyi is a lecturer in Philosophy at Nelson Mandela University,
Port Elizabeth
Brian Epstein is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, Medford
Edwin Etieyibo is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Dorothea Gä deke is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Universiteit Utrecht,
the Netherlands, and a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg
George Hull is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Cape Town
Bruce B. Janz is Professor of Philosophy, Co-director of the Center for Humanities
and Digital Research, and core faculty in the Texts and Technology PhD
program at the University of Central Florida, Orlando
Julie E. Maybee is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Disability Studies
Program at Lehman College, City University of New York
Thaddeus Metz is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University
of Johannesburg
Lungisile Ntsebeza is Professor of Sociology and African Studies in the Centre
for African Studies at the University of Cape Town, and holds the A. C. Jordan
Chair in African Studies and the National Research Foundation Chair in Land
Reform and Democracy in South Africa
About the contributors ix
Uchenna Okeja is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Rhodes Univer
sity, Makhanda
Oritsegbubemi A. Oyowe is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of
the Western Cape, Bellville
Barney Pityana is a professor and former vice-chancellor of the University of
South Africa, former president of the South African Students’ Organisation,
and currently a programme advisor at the Thabo Mbeki Foundation
Mogobe B. Ramose is a professor and member of the Department of Clinical
Psychology, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, Ga-Rankuwa
Samantha Vice is Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Witwaters
rand, Johannesburg
Bernhard Weiss is Professor of Philosophy and Head of the Philosophy
Department at the University of Cape Town
Foreword
Lungisile Ntsebeza
The publication of this book compelled me to reflect on its gestation. As my

colleague George Hull points out in the Introduction, the book is by and large
the product of a series of seminars that took place in 2016. These seminars were
in many ways our response to a critical moment in the history of higher educa-
tion in South Africa. The immediate cause was the entry of university-based stu-
dents into the political life of South Africa which manifested itself in the open on
9 March 2015, when a University of Cape Town (UCT) student activist, Chumani
Maxwele, flung “poo” onto the imposing statue of arch-imperialist and capital-
ist Cecil John Rhodes, which was mounted on UCT grounds. Soon thereafter his
student supporters, who organized themselves under the #RhodesMustFall move-
ment, demanded the removal of the statue. They alleged that the statue signi-
fied deep-rooted links between UCT and colonialism or, in the words of UCT
Emeritus Associate Professor Dave Cooper, “colonial capitalism” (Cooper 2015).
Within a month, the statue was removed, making this a significant victory for the
student-led effort.
By this time, students had added more demands, notably the “decoloniza-
tion of the curriculum”. They were vehemently opposed to what they loosely
referred to as “Euro-centrism” and expressed inclinations towards “Afro-centric”
approaches to teaching and research. Students and academics at a number of uni-
versities in South Africa, as well as elite American and British universities such
as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cambridge and Oxford, had pledged support for the
campaign. This clearly demonstrated that the protest was the proverbial spark
that started the prairie fire, highlighting as it did the urgency of problematizing
the African colonial past, not merely as a national issue, but as a continental and
global phenomenon.
It soon became clear to some of us that, while this was a period of great excite-
ment, offering opportunities for institutions of higher education in South Africa
and elsewhere to interrogate their past as they considered their future options,
there was an urgent need to stand back, reflect and harness the energies into a sus-
tained intellectual project that would bring clarity and critical analysis to the stu-
dent demands, most of which were expressed in the form of slogans. This is a call
similar to the one Archie Mafeje (1978) issued to students in his assessment of the
1976 Soweto Student Revolts.1 For him, “militant action” and “simple slogans”,
Foreword xi
important as they are, are no substitute for a programme of action, whose task it is
to come up with clear, informed and well-justified demands and policies.
The clamour for the decolonization of the curriculum pushed to the fore the
thorny issue of African Studies, specifically at UCT. I use the word “thorny”
deliberately, drawing from the experiences of UCT’s past 27 years or so, a period
beginning with the demise of official apartheid in the early 1990s and the advent
of the democratic era beginning in 1994. A notable response from UCT was the
establishment in 1993 of the AC Jordan Chair in African Studies. The main aim
of the Chair was to provide a meaningful study of Africa by integrating African
Studies into research, teaching and learning. The Chair was appropriately located
in the Centre for African Studies (CAS). Having made such a good start, UCT lost
a golden opportunity in not appointing, under controversial circumstances, the
late Archie Mafeje when he applied for the Chair when it was advertised in 1993.
Mafeje was at the time by far the foremost scholar of African Studies.2 When
UCT eventually appointed Mahmood Mamdani, there was a fierce debate and
deadlock on the issue of Africa in the curriculum, which led to the resignation of
Mamdani after only three years (1996–99) at UCT (Mamdani 1998).3 This led to
a 13-year period when the Chair was not advertised and was vacant. During this
period, various attempts were made to “disestablish” CAS. The student campaign
beginning in 2015 thus forced African Studies and the role of CAS back on to the
UCT agenda.
CAS in its current form was relaunched in June 2012, with my appointment to
the AC Jordan Chair of African Studies, which carried with it the directorship of
CAS. The main mission of CAS under my charge has been to promote African
Studies across departments and faculties at UCT and beyond, particularly within
the African continent and the global South. This mission is in line with the notion
of CAS as creating an interdisciplinary environment facilitating discussions,
research and teaching on Africa, while at the same time taking a leadership role in
establishing and consolidating links with universities across the African continent
and the global South in particular.
Although CAS is not a teaching unit, its academic staff members are actively
involved in teaching at both under- and postgraduate levels. The commitment to
teaching is based on the vision of CAS that the best way of promoting African
Studies at UCT, or any academic institution in South Africa for that matter, is
through research, teaching and curriculum design and development. CAS’s
approach to teaching involves a three-pronged approach: a University-wide
course on the study of Africa, curriculum design of an undergraduate major and
to influence teaching within departments.
The prioritization and elevation of African Studies as a major degree subject
right from the undergraduate level has been the response of CAS to the student-
led campaign. There was a feeling among some of us that the undergraduate major
offered opportunities for us to systematically re-think the colonial and de-colonial
moments in Africa and the diaspora. In discussions within CAS and with col-
leagues outside CAS with whom we worked on the major, there was a strong view
that the major should not simply be about content. Nothing should be taken for
xii Lungisile Ntsebeza
granted and all assumptions should be scrutinized and re-thought with an empha-
sis on putting Africa at the core of research, teaching and learning.
It is in discussions on the African Studies major that I met George Hull from
the Department of Philosophy. I had been made aware of him by a colleague,
Kathy Luckett, who was part of a curriculum reform committee that CAS put
together when I became Director. I was particularly excited to learn that he was
a member of the Philosophy Department. I majored in philosophy and completed
Part One of the Honours degree at the University of South Africa in the late 1970s
and early 1980s.
I trace my interest in philosophy to my teens in the late 1960s when, as a
political activist, I was introduced to study groups whose purpose was to connect
political economy and political theory to political activism. By the mid-1970s, I
had established and led my own study groups. Our idea of political activism was
that a historical and theoretical understanding of oppression and exploitation was
a necessary prerequisite for constructive activism and militancy. We were draw-
ing from what was a well-established tradition within the liberation movements:
the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), later renamed the South African
Communist Party (SACP), the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), the
African National Congress (ANC) and the Black Consciousness (BC) move-
ment. These movements were known for setting up study groups, fellowships and
schools focusing on political education. We focused a great deal on close reading
and analysis of texts, in a bid to acquire a good grasp of complex theoretical mat-
ters, including historical and philosophical questions of justice, race, class, gender
and the meaning of emancipation.
At school and university, I studied commercial subjects with a focus on
accountancy/accounting. However, when I was arrested for my political activism
and, upon being sentenced, allowed to study in prison, I registered for philosophy
and not accounting. My reasoning was that the four years in prison would be better
spent engaging with ideas, rather than analyzing financial transactions. My inter-
est in philosophy had also been ignited by Emeritus Professor André du Toit’s
testimony in our trial. He was, at the time, Senior Lecturer in Political Philosophy
at the University of Stellenbosch. Although his evidence was dismissed by the
late Judge George Munnik, Du Toit, in our opinion, acquitted himself so well in
his testimony, which essentially dealt with analyses of concepts such as Marxism,
communism and Stalinism, that I did not struggle with my decision to switch to
philosophy, as an academic field of study.
When, in the late 1980s, I decided to continue with my studies on a full-
time basis, having been accepted at UCT in 1987, I thought that I would make
Philosophy my home department. I was adamant, though, that I would want to
apply the skills I developed in philosophy, especially logic and conceptual analy-
sis, to real-life situations, pretty much following the example of André du Toit.
South Africa in 1987 had emerged from a period (1984–6) that was generally
referred to as a period of “ungovernability and insurrection”, and I wanted to
do a deeper study of this period by focusing on the ideas that informed militant
tendencies of the time. My enthusiasm was unfortunately shattered when the then
Foreword xiii
Head of Department, David Brooks, refused to accept me on the grounds that the
Department was rooted in analytic philosophy and would not be able to accom-
modate my interests.
Although rejected by the Philosophy Head of Department, my attitude to philos-
ophy, particularly its emphasis on conceptual analysis and clarity, never changed. In
many ways, I continued to use these tools outside formal philosophy departments.
I have, in the context of African Studies, argued and continue to do so, that philoso-
phy (and language) are key to African Studies and should one way or the other be
at the core of the study of Africa. When I met George Hull, I discovered that we
shared a lot of ideas in common about the role of philosophy in real-life situations.
To my surprise, a lot was happening in his Department that I was not aware of,
largely because of, I must say, loss of interest in the Department from past experi-
ence. Close discussions with George Hull, which are still continuing, reveal(ed)
that dramatic changes have and are taking place in the Department of Philosophy.
It strikes me as vastly different from the Department of the 1980s. Most notable is
the attempt to put philosophy at the disposal of society by analyzing, as I wanted
to in the 1980s, what I refer to as real-life situations. The employment of George
Hull in 2013, as I see things, contributed to this shift. His Philosophy of Race
course (PHI2045S) that he introduced in 2014 is a good example. This is how he
introduced the course in the outline:
This course is a philosophical exploration of central issues in scholarly and

public debates about race. The approach will be both rigorous and open
minded. The course will have a particular focus on investigating currents of
thought about race that have arisen in the context of struggles against coloni-
alism and white supremacism—specifically, in North America, in the former
French colonies, and in South Africa. Thus some of the readings are detached
philosophical analyses, while others, as well as being pregnant with philo-
sophical ideas, are responses to contemporary political events or engage in
political advocacy. Yet others are a mixture of the two. The course will sys-
tematically examine the philosophical content of these currents of thought,
while always remaining sensitive to the contexts in which they emerged.
A course on “Xhosa for Philosophers”4 was also introduced in 2014, to accom-

pany two first-year courses: Ethics and Introduction to Philosophy. Hull recalled
that he collaborated with Mbulungeni Madiba in the Centre for Higher Education
Development (CHED) to set the “Xhosa for Philosophers” course in motion.
These courses, it must be noted, precede the #RhodesMustFall campaign and
discussions of an undergraduate major in African Studies by close to a year. At
the time, CAS was exploring the teaching of a university-wide course on Africa.
In the same year, the UCT Philosophy Department organized an international
conference on the topic of social equality, and hosted an engagement between
Professor Jonathan Wolff from University College London and Dr Mamphela
Ramphele, former VC of UCT, and former Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe
Madlala-Routledge, on “Dealing with Disadvantage”.5
xiv Lungisile Ntsebeza
It seems clear that there was a lot of internal discussion and dynamism taking
place in the Philosophy Department at least a year before the student-led cam-
paign which erupted into the open in 2015. Hull told me that in the context of
discussions about how to expand teaching and research in the department, they
came to the view that African philosophy was an important priority area. He went
on to state that as a result of these discussions, a proposal was submitted to the
Humanities Faculty to create a new post in the department with expertise specifi-
cally in African philosophy. This post would make it possible for the Philosophy
Department to devote a member of its staff to teaching in the proposed undergrad-
uate major in African Studies. The committee designing the undergraduate major
had unanimously agreed that the major should include a second-year semester-
long course on philosophy in an African context. Unfortunately, the Philosophy
Department’s proposal to employ an additional staff member for this purpose
was, for whatever reason(s), rejected by the Humanities Faculty.
What the above meant was that the undergraduate major would proceed
without exposing students to philosophy in the African context. This makes me
wonder how one can even begin to talk about African Studies without reference
to philosophy.
At the same time as we were discussing the role of philosophy in the under-
graduate major, Hull and I discussed the possibility of a seminar series that
ultimately had the title “Philosophy in Africa, Africa in Philosophy”. We had
observed that, much as the student-led protests had opened up valuable oppor-
tunities for transforming higher education, especially at the level of curriculum
reform, there was always the danger that the heat of the moment and the slogans
that were deployed would narrow the space for an open, rigorous debate and dis-
cussion about the precise meaning of the slogans and critical examination of the
arguments that were made. We sensed that there was a lot of intolerance and
refusal to listen to the other side of the debate. As the saying goes, there seemed
to be more heat than light in debates and discussions. The seminar series was our
attempt to create space for a more focused and open-minded examination of the
burning issue of the moment, specifically the notion of decolonization and what
philosophy could contribute.
The series, which was approved and supported by the Philosophy Department
and CAS, ran, as Hull states in the Introduction, throughout 2016. Integrally
linked to the series was a Postgraduate Conference on African Philosophy in
August 2016.6 The book you are reading is the product of these seminars, whose
realization, I must say, was almost the solo effort of George Hull. I was more of a
sounding board in the enterprise.
As I conclude, I want to make two points. First, we see this book as the start-
ing point of more intense debates and discussions of the issues highlighted in
this Foreword and the book itself. While the seminar series was well attended
and attracted a number of scholars, from South Africa and abroad, we were not
successful in drawing to the seminars some of our colleagues who were and are
especially active on the topic of decolonization. They were invited but, for var-
ious reasons, stayed away. I personally attribute this to the spirit of the time.
Foreword xv
The year 2016 at UCT and in the Faculty of Humanities in particular was fraught
with tensions which were not conducive to constructive discussion among those
who did not see eye to eye on the issues at stake. Without going into the detail,
there was a lot that revolved around personalities. Things seem to have settled
down now and it may be time for a resumption of the debates and discussions that
have now been published in this book.
With this and other contributions, the issue of what philosophy is and who
defines the meaning thereof is now up for debate and discussion. In such moments
it is important to reflect on how our forerunners reflected on similar topics. I have
found re-reading Archie Mafeje’s booklet In Search of an Alternative (Mafeje
1992) pertinent to the issues we are dealing with, close to three decades later. The
central theme of his booklet is the “quest for an African identity in the world of
scholarship”, what Mafeje refers to as “the search for a lost identity or the attempt
to affirm an inner self” (1992: 3). Mafeje had concluded that “a true community of
African scholarship” had not been achieved in the early 1990s, largely as a result of
“three fronts” on which African intellectuals and their organisations had to struggle:
1 The adverse effects on intellectual life arising out of the malaise of the post-
colonial state in Africa: bannings and imprisonment of intellectuals.
2 The role of donors who are “invariably politically and ideologically moti-
vated”, and “are hostile to, or at best suspicious of, independent-minded
African scholars and often accuse them of ‘ideological bias’ … . African
scholars are dependent for their research on donations from the North – they
are caught in a serious dilemma … their pride is hurt and the realization of the
power of veto of the North is hard to swallow … [leading] to bitter arguments
among African scholars.”
3 The attitude of intellectuals in the Northern hemisphere, who continue to
“rationalise their own desire to control and dominate by imputing that most
of the research proposals by African radicals or non-conformists are unsci-
entific or ‘below standard’. Given the fact that in such cases the criteria for
judgements are themselves in dispute, rationally, who is to say? … The issue
[is] not scientific; it ha[s] to do with racial super-ordination and subordina-
tion in an age of imperialism.” (1992: 20–21)
Mafeje’s observations are as relevant to our current conditions as they were when
he published his booklet. They are a challenge to us. Hopefully, this book makes
an important contribution to the quest.
Notes
1 The student-led revolts starting on 16 June 1976 were triggered by the introduction of
Afrikaans, a language that was associated with the oppressive apartheid regime, as a
medium of instruction in schools. Initially led by students from the township of Soweto,
the revolts spread to the rest of the country as a general challenge to Bantu Education
which was introduced in 1953 in particular, and the apartheid system in general.
xvi Lungisile Ntsebeza
2 See Ibbo Mandaza (1992) where he outlines the intellectual activities Mafeje was
involved in, in many ways an agenda for what he would do when he returned to South
Africa, which to him meant UCT. At the time, the political negotiations which would
end up with the democratic elections of 1994 had started and Mafeje was making
inquiries about a possible return to his alma mater, UCT – see Ntsebeza (2014).
3 See also responses by Johan Graaff and Martin Hall in the same issue of Social
Dynamics: Volume 24, Number 2.
4 www.news.uct.ac.za/ar ticle/-2014-11-06-xhosa-course-attracts-inter national-philo
sophy-students.
5 www.humanities.uct.ac.za/news/philosophy-conference-sheds-light-social-equality.
6 www.philosophy.uct.ac.za/sites/default/f iles/image_tool/images/160/African%20Phi
losophy%20Postg raduate%20Conference%20Programme%20and%20List%20of
%20Abstracts.pdf.
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Theory and Politics. Harare: SAPES Books.
Mafeje, A. 1978. Soweto and its Aftermath. Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 5,
No. 11, pp. 17–30.
Mamdani, M. 1998. Teaching Africa at the Post-Apartheid University of Cape Town: A
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Humanities Faculty’s Foundation Semester, 1998. Social Dynamics, Vol. 24, No. 2,
pp 1–32.
Mandaza, I. 1992. Foreword. In Mafeje 1992, pp. iii–viii.
Ntsebeza, L. 2014. The Mafeje and the UCT Saga: Unfinished Business? Social Dynamics,
Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 274–288.
Introduction
George Hull
Some intellectual questions are especially live and inescapable for those doing
philosophy in African contexts.
As a sequel to political decolonisation, does the discipline of philosophy
need to be decolonised? Have African philosophy and philosophical problems
relevant to Africa been unfairly marginalised in philosophy? What place do
questions of racial and ethnic identity have in debates about social justice in
Africa’s former settler colonies? If a philosophical problem or thesis, expressed
in English, French, German or Portuguese, appears not to translate into an
indigenous African language, what does that tell us about language—and
about philosophy?
But these questions are also important for philosophy conducted outside
Africa. Increasingly, questions such as these are occupying the attention of phi-
losophers throughout the world. Of the sixteen new philosophical essays col-
lected here, some participate in and advance on-going debates within African
philosophy. Others are penned by scholars who specialise not in the subdis-
cipline of African philosophy, but in areas—such as philosophy of language,
social ontology or political philosophy—on which much African philosophy
has been written. A guiding aim of the volume is to show that much African
philosophy on these topics can and should be debated not only by African phi-
losophy specialists, but by any philosophers working on the relevant topics.
All of the chapters contribute to contemporary debates particularly relevant to
philosophical reflection in African contexts, and to reflection worldwide on the
place of Africa in philosophy.
Each chapter, bar one,1 was originally drafted as a seminar paper for a series
hosted by the Philosophy Department and the Centre for African Studies at the
University of Cape Town (UCT), which ran throughout the 2016 academic year.
This was a time when the student-led Rhodes Must Fall movement had cap-
tured public imagination in South Africa and inspired similar campaigns abroad
(Mpofu-Walsh 2016). Initiated in March 2015 at UCT, the protest movement
demanded ‘decolonisation’ of the university’s research and teaching, with the
removal of the statue of English imperialist Cecil Rhodes on its Rondebosch cam-
pus as a symbolic starting point (Naidoo 2016). Some of the seminar papers were
2 George Hull
presented in hidden locations to the nearby accompaniment of struggle songs, as
groups of students and workers protesting outsourcing and fees advanced along
University Avenue, interrupting lectures and ejecting academics and administra-
tors from their offices as they went.2
The call for intellectual decolonisation of the academy, and of the discipline
of philosophy in particular, is nothing new in postcolonial African scholarship3—
although it remains important. What is new, however, is a palpable mood of
soul-searching and self-criticism in parts of the North American and European
philosophical establishments. Peter K. J. Park has recently called attention to
the role of explicit racism, including that of Immanuel Kant and his exponents,4
in the formation of the mainstream philosophical canon (Park 2013). Bryan W.
Van Norden now argues that the persisting exclusion of African, Asian and South
American philosophical thought from teaching and research in the Global North is
due to ignorance and tacit racism on the part of contemporary practitioners (Van
Norden 2017). Prominent philosophers in the United States of America, including
Robert L. Bernasconi, Jay L. Garfield and Charles W. Mills (Mills 2014), have
claimed that without ‘decolonizing the philosophy canon’,5 American philosophy
departments have little hope of addressing the notorious skew towards the white
and male ends of the spectrum in their staff and student demographics. In an
opinion piece for the New York Times published on 11 May 2016, Garfield and
Van Norden wrote that too many U.S. philosophy departments do nothing to belie
the perception that they are ‘temples to the achievement of males of European
descent’ (Garfield et al. 2016).
In convening the series ‘Philosophy in Africa, Africa in Philosophy’, our inten-
tion was not to replicate in the seminar room the bluster of the open meetings
through which the Rhodes Must Fall movement was asserting itself on campus.
Rather, the Director of the Centre for African Studies, Prof. Lungisile Ntsebeza,6
and I aimed to create a forum for critical, informed and open-minded philosophi-
cal discussion of a series of topics which—partly due to the student-led move-
ment—were once again receiving enthusiastic attention in South Africa. At the
same time, acknowledging that these topics featured prominently in established
currents of philosophy elsewhere on the continent, as also in the ongoing soul-
searching of philosophers from the Global North, we resolved that the series
should be an international conversation involving scholars with relevant expertise
from South Africa, other African countries and elsewhere in the world.
In this chapter, I introduce some of the overlapping themes which unite the
essays collected here.7
African philosophy8
Because the question of the nature of African philosophy has itself been a
major preoccupation of modern African philosophy,9 it is almost impossible
to say anything general about African philosophy without saying something
highly controversial.
Introduction 3
It is important to appreciate how this situation came about. Around 1960, most
African countries achieved political independence from their erstwhile European
colonisers. The generation of African philosophers active in the decades that
followed spent much of its energy resisting two tendencies in European social-
scientific thought. The first was an ethnographic approach—epitomised by the
work of Lucien Lé vy-Bruhl (see e.g. Lé vy-Bruhl 1923; Lé vy-Bruhl 1926)—
which held that African cultures exhibited insufficient rationality to support
genuinely philosophical thinking (Hountondji 1984: 24; Oruka 1991: 47; Osha
2011: 31). The second was an assumption on the part of some missionaries and
theologians10 that, though African cultures did exhibit philosophical thinking, this
resided exclusively at the level of an uncritical communal consciousness—pos-
sibly shared by all Africans—and owed its acceptance to the authority of tradi-
tion, rather than to any individual ratiocination (Oruka 1991: 47–50; Hountondji
1996: 55–56). Belgian missionary Placide Tempels’ influential Bantu Philosophy
(Tempels 1959) straddles both tendencies: though he insists that the metaphysic
of ‘vital forces’, which he describes, informs the perceptions and actions of all
Africans, Tempels claims that Africans themselves lack the cognitive and linguis-
tic resources to articulate it (Hallen 23–24).
In response to the first tendency, African scholars mined the orature of their
cultures for theses and conceptions which were both unquestionably African and
recognisably philosophical:11 ethical views, cosmogonies, conceptions of causa-
tion or personal identity. In response to the second tendency, a war was declared
on scholars who presented mere collections of proverbs or descriptions of tradi-
tional practices as ‘African philosophy’. Paulin Hountondji, who led the charge,
exhorted his peers to reject the ‘myth of primitive unanimity’ (Hountondji 1996:
61) (the doctrine that all Africans fundamentally think alike) and cease their quest
for ‘an implicit, unexpressed world-view, which never existed anywhere but in
the anthropologist’s imagination’ (op. cit.: 63).
Naturally, the two lines of resistance came into conflict:12 scholars combating
the second tendency denounced bodies of traditional or folk philosophy com-
piled to combat the first tendency as constituting mere ‘ethnophilosophy’. Yet,
several philosophers pioneered new syntheses, combining the wisdom of both.
Hountondji announced that his African colleagues pursuing ‘ethnophilosophy’
were philosophers after all, only they were imprisoned by a false self-conception:
‘looking for philosophy in a place where it could never be found’, they had pro-
jected their own philosophical views onto ‘the collective unconscious of African
peoples’ (1996: 63). Now it was time for them to stand up and defend those views
as their own, in the face of counterargument and critique. Meanwhile, philos-
ophers such as Kwasi Wiredu, J. Olubi Sodipo and K. Anthony Appiah have
blazed a different path. Demurring from Hountondji’s condemnation of ‘[e]thno-
philosophy’ as ‘an indeterminate discourse with no object’ (op. cit.: 62), they
hold that African cultures, like all other cultures, possess a collectively under-
stood ‘folk philosophy’ (Appiah 1992: 101)—a ‘traditional philosophy’ (Wiredu
1984: 32) or ‘pervasive world outlook’ (Sodipo 1984: 75)—which does qualify as
4 George Hull
genuine philosophy. Where they converge with Hountondji is in urging contem-
porary African philosophers to do more than simply describe this folk philosophy.
Though purely descriptive ethnophilosophy is not without value (Appiah 1992:
100), African philosophers ought also to approach folk philosophies in a ‘criti-
cal and reconstructive spirit’ (Wiredu 1984: 33), bringing theoretical coherence
to bodies of folk beliefs, testing their justifiability, and being willing to discard
beliefs which do not pass rational muster.13
All philosophy is self-conscious about method. The particular focus of
African philosophy’s self-consciousness is, though, a distinguishing trait. Time
and again, African philosophers return to the question of the right relationship
between theory construction by contemporary practitioners and the folk philoso-
phies of African cultures; as they do to the concomitant question of precisely
where in that relationship ‘African philosophy’ is to be located. One reason for
this focus is the role of resistance to tendencies in European social science in
modern African philosophy’s trajectory—‘the Levy-Bruhl syndrome’ (Falaiye
2017: 142); another reason is the predominance, until relatively recently, of oral
rather than written transmission in sub-Saharan African cultures;14 no doubt
there are others.15 Controversies over such matters as whether in ascertaining
folk beliefs it is good practice to canvas philosophical opinion from the popu-
lation at large or only from pre-identified ‘sages’ (see Kalumba 2004),16 and
whether a philosophical doctrine reconstructed from African folk philosophy
must be applicable only locally or can be of universal application (see Bello
2004: 263–64), remain live.
In his essay for this volume, Edwin Etieyibo seeks to defend African philoso-
phy from the charge that it exhibits a problematic anthropocentrism—and to do so
without succumbing to theoretical ‘unanimism’ himself. Based on the testimony
of philosophers from many sub-Saharan African countries, who have worked up
the folk philosophy of several different cultures, Etieyibo argues that the view
most prevalent in African philosophy is that individual nonhuman beings have
intrinsic moral value, and are not merely valuable insofar as they can be beneficial
to human individuals and human communities. This view may not be found ‘in
every nook and cranny of Africa’, and is certainly not attributable to an African
collective unconscious, but it is the view which prevails. Like Wiredu,17 Etieyibo
is willing to credit Bantu Philosophy as a reasonably reliable record of the folk
philosophy of some Africans, despite Tempels’ problematic framing of his work.
He argues that the ‘hierarchy of beings’ described by Tempels does not necessi-
tate a purely instrumental view of nonhuman beings, and may even permit view-
ing all beings, human and nonhuman, as fundamentally of equal value. Etieyibo
concludes that African ethics generally comes closer to biocentrism or ecocen-
trism than to anthropocentrism.
Thaddeus Metz is a scholar who has pursued a version of the critical recon-
struction approach recommended by many African philosophers in their writ-
ings on methodology. Beginning with twelve prevalent folk ethical beliefs, six
of them ‘more widespread in the sub-Saharan part of [Africa]… than in Europe,
Introduction 5
North America or Australasia’ (Metz 2007: 324), he has constructed a normative
ethical theory which, in its latest form, holds that an agent becomes a ‘real’, or
ethically fully developed, person by ‘prizing identity and solidarity with others’:
that is to say, by ‘honour[ing] relationships of sharing a way of life with others
and caring for their quality of life’ (Metz, this volume). Metz has presented his
theory as a ‘theoretical interpretation’ (Metz 2007: 328) or ‘construal’ (op. cit.:
330) of the Nguni language-group concept ubuntu. A striking difference between
this reconstructed African ethic and other moral theories such as utilitarianism
and Kantianism, argues Metz in his contribution to this volume, is that the for-
mer holds some instances of ‘survivor’s guilt’ to be morally justifiable. In other
words, it holds that there can be good moral reason for a person to feel bad about
themselves because their associates died and they did not, even when they are not
morally culpable for the deaths. While mainstream Western moral theories typi-
cally count survivor’s guilt as unreasonable, Metz’s reconstructed African ethic
views it as, at least sometimes, a manifestation of good character—because it is
‘one way of honouring communion’. Since Metz now advocates for the recon-
structed ubuntu ethic as a universal moral theory superior to its rivals (Jones et al.
2015: 539), his claim is not that just Africans, or just some Africans, can be mor-
ally justified in feeling survivor’s guilt, but that every human could, in the right
circumstances, be morally justified in feeling survivor’s guilt.
Metz’s critical reconstruction has come in for healthy criticism.18 Recently,
Dylan Futter has questioned the form of Metz’s reconstructed ubuntu. He argues
that Metz’s twelve folk beliefs will remain an inadequate starting point for recon-
struction until it is established what kind of ethical subject matter they give voice
to—whether a set of principles for moral rightness, a single character virtue, a set
of character virtues or something else (Futter 2016).19 In this volume, Tom P. S.
Angier casts doubt on the content of Metz’s reconstruction. Angier writes that
he has no qualms about the ‘Metz method’ of philosophical reconstruction per
se; however, he is concerned that in Metz’s hands it has been misapplied, since,
according to Angier, Metz has cherry-picked the distinctively African ethical folk
beliefs least offensive to ‘mainstream Western liberal commentators’. Homing in
on what he suggests are some further pervasive African ethical beliefs—includ-
ing acknowledgement of ‘the value of hierarchy’ and the ‘notion that poverty has
value’—Angier offers a blueprint for a revised reconstruction of a distinctively
African ethic, which he believes is both ‘truer to the cultural and philosophical
resources of Africa’ and more distant from ‘the nostrums of Western liberal egali-
tarianism’ than Metz’s.
Bruce B. Janz and Oritsegbubemi A. Oyowe’s chapters both tackle the ques-
tion of the nature of African philosophy head-on. Janz warns against setting up
Western currents of philosophy as a standard and then asking how well or how
badly African philosophy lives up to it.20 Taking as his case study the prominent
South African philosopher Mogobe B. Ramose’s treatment of ubuntu (Ramose
2005), Janz renews his advocacy for a ‘platial’ (see Janz 2009) philosophy. He
argues that in Ramose’s work, ubuntu is not a metaphysical or ethical theory, but
6 George Hull
rather a ‘cognitive strategy’—an ‘open-ended structure for new creation’, includ-
ing creation of concepts—and that this provides a stimulating example of how
philosophy can ‘explore its edges’. Oyowe, on the other hand, argues that insofar
as African philosophy is a practice involving teaching and research which occurs
at a university, ‘the idea of a university’ should play a regulative role in our think-
ing about its nature. This regulative idea would, according to Oyowe, rule out
conceptions of African philosophy which exclude otherwise qualified practition-
ers on the basis of their ‘ethnic, racial, gendered etc. identities’, or which would
‘fail to provide the platform for members of the local community to be part of
the discursive tradition’. It would not, however, rule out a conception of African
philosophy on which it can play ‘a key role in African liberation politics’.
Decolonising philosophy
Both in the Global South and in the Global North, there are calls for the discipline
of philosophy to be decolonised.21 Several of the essays written for this volume
address, indirectly or directly, the theme of intellectual decolonisation. As with
other evocative slogans, those who speak of the ‘decolonisation’ of philosophy
mean different things by it; but that is not to say the notion is fundamentally
empty or incoherent.
Conceptions of decolonising philosophy have a common core: the conviction
that Eurocentric colonial influences have had a harmful or otherwise objection-
able effect on the discipline of philosophy as it exists in Africa (and other regions
of the world) today, and the call for this to be put right. Below, I outline five dif-
ferent focuses or emphases in calls for the decolonisation of philosophy, not all
mutually exclusive. Each one spells out the objectionable effect of Eurocentrism
in a different way, and, accordingly, recommends remedies of a different type.
Decolonising for identity

It is possible to view decolonising philosophy as simply a matter of ‘ours’ versus
‘theirs’. In European countries—on this conception—it is fine for the philosophies
of Europeans to be most prevalent in teaching and research; but in Africa, the
philosophies of Africans should be most prevalent. This line of thought becomes
more seductive, the more ‘philosophy’ can be made to sound synonymous with
‘general cultural outlook’.22 It would, after all, be odd if African researchers inter-
ested in compiling and itemising general cultural outlooks were studiously to
ignore the general cultural outlooks of African people around them.
Of course, many would contest the notion of a clean divide between African
cultural outlooks and European ones, given the common historic influences on
both regions, and the cross-fertilisation between African and European societies
at various points in history.23 But it is not wrong to speak of cultural differences
between African countries and European countries—as of cultural differences
among, and within, both African and European countries: differences of lan-
guage, religion, dress, cuisine, manner of greeting and hospitality, and prevailing
Introduction 7
concepts and ideas. It is normal and appropriate for these cultural differences to
influence the institutional culture of universities in different parts of the world
and, to some extent, to influence the topics and types of problem focused on in
philosophical teaching and research (see Metz 2015).
However, the idea that one should adhere to or teach a doctrine simply because
it is part of one’s culture sits uneasily with philosophy’s self-image as a critical
discipline with a special commitment to discursive justification. For this reason,
many scholars who are committed to decolonising philosophy mention this sim-
plest identitarian conception of intellectual decolonisation only in order to dis-
miss it.24
Decolonising for universal truth

Kwasi Wiredu has put forward a model of ‘conceptual decolonization’ (2007: 76)
for philosophy whose ultimate goal is attaining to truth.
According to Wiredu, there is nothing wrong with Africans adopting words,
concepts and beliefs from elsewhere in the world per se (Wiredu 1984: 32).
However, Wiredu argues that there is an urgent need for African philosophers to
weed out the false doctrines introduced to Africa by the colonising powers’ ‘reli-
gious evangelism… and political tutelage’, and to do away with whatever wrong-
headed concepts and ‘categories of thought’ have been imposed upon Africans
through ‘philosophical education… in the medium of foreign languages’ (Wiredu
2007: 76).
Since he takes it that the rightful aim of philosophy is to discover universally
true answers to fundamental questions, conceptual decolonisation, as Wiredu
conceives of it, is as relevant to philosophers in Europe and other non-African
parts of the world as it is to African philosophers. He acknowledges that some-
times it will be the African doctrine, and not that of the colonial powers, which
is in need of correction, and that in some areas African languages will prove in
need of ‘revision or enrichment’ (Wiredu 1984: 40); but the principal focus of
Wiredu’s conceptual decolonisation programme is to excise as much ‘philo-
sophical deadwood’ (Wiredu 2007: 76) as has been inherited from colonial doc-
trines and languages.
As regards conceptual dead wood with a linguistic origin, Wiredu offers the
following ‘simple recipe for decolonization’:
Try to think [the concepts] through in your own African language and, on the
basis of the results, review the intelligibility of the associated problems or the
plausibility of the apparent solutions that have tempted you when you have
pondered them in some metropolitan language.
(Wiredu 2007: 77)
When a philosophical idea is intelligible or plausible in one of the languages but

not in the other, the next step is ‘to try to reason out the matter on independent
grounds’ (ibid.). A concept should be used, or a doctrine adopted, only if doing so
8 George Hull
is supported by reasons ‘fathomable in both the African and the foreign language
concerned’ (ibid.).
In his contribution to this volume, Bernhard Weiss, like Wiredu, endorses the
practice of confronting one’s own ‘parochial way of speaking’ with another as a
valuable philosophical heuristic. But he takes a critical look at a further thesis of
Wiredu’s: that this practice reveals some philosophical problems to be ‘language
relative’ or ‘[t]ongue-dependent’ (Wiredu 2004b: 49), because one and the same
statement can be ‘correct and philosophically interesting’ in one language but
‘truistic’ and ‘of no philosophical interest’ in another (op. cit.: 48). Wiredu has
claimed that a statement of the correspondence theory of truth is ‘conceptually
informative in a philosophical way’ in English, but ‘an uninformative tautology,
sans all philosophical pretences’, in his mother tongue Akan (ibid.). Weiss criti-
cally discusses Wiredu’s treatment of this case, arguing that Wiredu has not suc-
ceeded in providing an example of a tongue-dependent philosophical problem,
because an accurate statement of the correspondence theorist’s distinctive thesis
is as non-trivial in Akan as it is in English. Though he agrees with Wiredu that
there could be tongue-dependent problems in cases where two languages differ
in their conceptual resources, he concludes that an example of natural languages
differing in their ‘repertoire of fundamental concepts’ has yet to be provided.
Weiss’s critique does not discredit Wiredu’s overarching project of conceptual
decolonisation, but it does cast doubt on an important corollary thesis to it.
Decolonising for relative truth

Wiredu believes relativism is false (Wiredu 2007: 77). He hopes that with his
version of intellectual decolonisation implemented, it will soon ‘no longer be
necessary to talk of the Akan or Yoruba or Luo concept of this or that, but
simply of the concept of whatever is in question with a view to advancing
philosophical suggestions that can be immediately evaluated on independent
grounds’ (op. cit.: 81).
But some scholars embrace relativism. If relativism is granted, a relativ-
ist variant of Wiredu’s conceptual decolonisation programme suggests itself.
Decolonising philosophy would consist in stripping away philosophical material
which is true, or at any rate plausible, relative to the languages, cultures or con-
ceptual frameworks of the colonial powers, and replacing it with material which
is true or plausible relative to those of indigenous Africans—wherever the two
do not coincide. Since prominent versions of relativism hold that what is true
depends on who you are, this conception of intellectual decolonisation combines
a focus on identity with a focus on truth, showing that they are not necessarily
in tension.
Barry Hallen and J. Olubi Sodipo have made a detailed case for philo-
sophical relativism, based on their investigation of the concepts and beliefs
of Yoruba speakers. In Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft, Hallen and Sodipo
argue that the Yoruba propositional-attitude terms ‘mo’ and ‘gbagbo’ have no
exact equivalents in English (they are usually inaccurately rendered as ‘know’
Introduction 9
and ‘believe’); they conclude ‘that propositional attitudes are not universal’
(Hallen et al. 1997: 84).
However, Weiss in this volume points out an equivocation in Hallen and
Sodipo’s conclusion. While non-Yoruba speakers may not have at their disposal
individual terms which pick out the precise propositional attitudes designated by
‘mo’ and ‘gbagbo’, this does not mean they do not have those propositional atti-
tudes; indeed, the paraphrases supplied by Hallen and Sodipo suggest that English
speakers, say, regularly have the propositional attitudes in question and can refer
to them. Weiss argues that if Hallen and Sodipo have identified a significant dif-
ference between Yorubu speakers and English speakers, it is a difference not
in propositional attitudes exhibited, but in relative epistemic value assigned to
first-hand as opposed to second-hand knowledge. Yet this difference, if it exists,
entails not that we should embrace ontological or conceptual relativism, but
rather that there is a principled choice to be made—on Wiredu-type ‘independ-
ent grounds’—about the epistemic value that ought to be assigned to beliefs of
second-hand as opposed to first-hand provenance.
Decolonising for justice

An alternative view says that what is primarily at stake in intellectual decoloni-
sation is not truth or identity, but justice. It might initially be jarring to see the
word ‘justice’ applied to matters of knowledge and belief; however, a body of
philosophical work has recently grown up25 which articulates a variety of different
ways in which ‘a wrong’ can be ‘done to someone specifically in their capacity as
a knower’ (Fricker 2007: 1).
In her chapter of this book, Rebecca Bamford advocates for intellectual
decolonisation of theoretical biomedical ethics, on the basis that ‘neocoloni-
alism’ in theories of biomedical ethics unjustly harms people on the receiving
end of certain types of research and aid interventions. According to Bamford,
‘moral neocolonialism’ involves proceeding on the basis that the moral val-
ues one recommends are universally agreed upon, or are of universal appli-
cability, when in fact they are not universally agreed upon, or not universally
applicable. Besides indirectly working to the advantage of commercial and
political interests in the Global North, moral neo-colonialism—in Bamford’s
view—can also do wrongful harm of distinctively epistemic kinds: for exam-
ple, it may impede the development of theoretical problem-solving resources
based upon moral values adhered to locally, and it may result in patients
and research participants who adhere to different moral ideals being ignored
or ‘silenced’.
Forward-looking justice requires the avoidance of wrongful harm in pros-
pect. Backward-looking justice requires the redress or rectification of wrongs
committed in the past. Some contemporary writers argue that there should be
an epistemic component to redress for colonialism, since many of the wrongs of
colonialism had an epistemic character. For example, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni
states that European colonialists committed ‘epistemicides’—an epistemicide
10 George Hull
being ‘the process of the killing and appropriations of other knowledges’ (2017:
xii). In Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s view, ‘Africanisation’ of the pursuit of knowledge
in universities today realises decolonial justice by producing ‘restitutive knowl-
edge’ (op. cit.: x). It remains unclear whether intellectual decolonisation can be
conceived of as epistemic restitution without presupposing a form of relativism—
or indeed smuggling in an identitarian conception of intellectual decolonisation
by the back door. What is more, it would be important to consider whether the
need for epistemic redress could ever override the truth-seeking imperative in
responsible research and teaching. Still, the very notion of a distinctively epis-
temic form of restitution or redress is a tantalising philosophical subject, worthy
of further exploration.
If the discipline of philosophy is to make epistemic redress for wrongs in
the past, it must cultivate in its contemporary practitioners an awareness of the
wrongs which require rectification: ‘A philosophy without memory cannot abol-
ish slavery’, as the title of Mogobe B. Ramose’s contribution to this volume puts
it. Ramose is one of the foremost theorists of ubuntu (see Ramose 2005), and two
of the essays in this volume give interpretative responses to his work in that area—
Janz reading it as a ‘transversal… way of thinking about the cognitive strategies
that have emerged over the centuries among Africans’, while Dorothea Gä deke
reads it as a ‘relational’ form of moral perfectionism. In his own chapter, Ramose
turns his attention to epistemic injustice in the South African context. He probes
this country’s troubled history in order to identify some of the injustices which
contemporary philosophers must keep before their mind, if philosophy in South
Africa is to be a truthful discipline, committed to social and epistemic justice.
Decolonising for relevance

Finally, decolonising philosophy is sometimes presented as a struggle for rel-
evance. On this conception, philosophy as practised by, say, Europeans and North
Americans tends to focus mainly on topics of particular concern and relevance
to people in those regions of the world. Decolonising philosophy, then, means
enlarging the set of problems addressed by philosophers, so that the discipline is
of equal interest and relevance to people from all regions of the world. What in
the African context needs to be undone, on this conception, is a pervasive Euro-
American influence on the academy which means it generates only—in Francis B.
Nyamnjoh’s (2012: 138) phrase—‘excellence at irrelevance’.
The complaint that philosophy is irrelevant is likely to connect very quickly
with concerns about justice. If a field of study lacks relevance to a society, it will
be difficult to justify that society’s spending public money to support it.26 What
is more, blind spots in an academic discipline are sometimes the result of unjust
practices of exclusion and discrimination in society at large, and their existence
can, in turn, normalise and perpetuate such practices.27 Nonetheless, irrelevance
is a shortcoming in its own right, alongside—and distinguishable from—untruth
and injustice.
Introduction 11
In his essay for this volume, Robert Bernasconi identifies a striking example
of a blind spot in academic philosophy: the moral question of slavery. Bernasconi
criticises contemporary scholars who research or teach the moral and political
thought of Immanuel Kant and John Locke without pausing to acknowledge these
canonical philosophers’ willingness to defend the enslavement of Africans, or to
investigate ‘what this means for our understanding of them’. He notes that this
silence today is echoed by the unwillingness of moral philosophers such as James
Beattie and Francis Hutcheson towards the end of the 18th century to take a clear
position on contemporary slavery—even at a time when public opinion in north-
ern Europe was outraged by the institution. Bernasconi shows that 18th-century
philosophers’ failure to take a stand on the question of slavery can often be traced
to their fear of offending powerful commercial and religious vested interests. He
concludes that contemporary scholarship should not only expose and condemn
Kant and Locke’s support for slavery, but elevate to the philosophical canon those
18th-century figures who did offer sustained philosophical argument against slav-
ery, including the West Africa-born writer and former slave Ottobah Cugoano.
Philosophy and African liberation movements

Political philosophers working in African countries have frequently turned to pre-
colonial modes of governance for intellectual inspiration.28 They have sometimes
neglected an equally valuable resource: the ideas worked out within African lib-
eration movements in the course of their struggles against oppressive regimes,
during colonial rule and after. Some of the manifestos written by philosophi-
cally trained African statesmen (e.g. Nkrumah 1964; Senghor 1964; Nyerere
1968) have, it is true, entered the canon of African philosophy—classified as
‘nationalist-ideological philosophy’ by H. Odera Oruka (1991: 49). But there is
much creative philosophising to be found in works by individuals and collec-
tives who—unlike Africa’s post-independence ‘philosopher-kings’ (Martin 2012:
154)—never tasted political power.
Organised African liberation movements have often been fora for political and
philosophical theorising which is as ready to challenge the authority of age-old
cultural traditions as it is the rationalisations of those in government. Nowhere is
this truer than in South Africa, where officially state-backed racial exploitation
and oppression continued decades longer than in other African countries. During
this time, a strikingly rich body of contesting theoretical approaches grew up
within the organisations opposed to segregation and apartheid.29 In the opinion of
Mabogo P. More, it is ‘in this political sphere’—‘outside mainstream university
departments’—‘that African philosophy has been vibrant in South Africa’ (More
2004: 156). In the face of colonial and apartheid-era attempts at thoroughgoing
social engineering, theorists within liberation movements had to address not only
the questions ‘What is liberation?’ and ‘How should liberation be achieved?’ but
also the question ‘Who is to be liberated?’ (More 2008: 48) The South African
struggle’s intellectual legacy is a trove of position papers, treatises and polemics,
12 George Hull
in which there is ‘a convergence between questions of identity and questions of
liberation’ (ibid.). This intellectual legacy is of direct relevance to debates in con-
temporary philosophy of race; however, the latter has tended to focus exclusively
on ideas and issues from the U.S. context.30
Two essays in this volume focus on the thought of South Africa’s Black
Consciousness Movement, which grew up out of the activism of the South African
Students’ Organisation (SASO), established in the late 1960s as a black-only
breakaway from the National Union of South African Students. Bantu Steve Biko,
SASO’s first president, took issue with the other organisations fighting apartheid,
claiming that, by focusing on the ‘material want of the black people’ (Biko 1978:
28), they had ‘diagnosed the problem incorrectly’ and ‘not even considered the
root cause’ (op. cit.: 27). It was, thought Biko, ‘spiritual poverty’ which ‘creates
mountains of obstacles in the normal course of emancipation of the black people’
(op. cit.: 28). During the 1970s, in a series of speeches, articles and interviews,31
Biko developed his conception of ‘spiritual poverty’—at once an individual psy-
chological malaise and a corrosive form of social injustice—and his analysis of
how it was to be overcome. The writings of Nyameko Barney Pityana, Biko’s
successor as president of SASO, are also of great interest.32
One of South Africa’s most notable contemporary philosophers, Mabogo P.
More,33 has done more than anyone else to establish that Biko’s writings, in his
words, ‘contain numerous philosophical insights and ideas from which it is pos-
sible to draw together an account of a philosophical outlook’ (More 2008: 64).34
On More’s interpretation, Biko’s thinking is to be characterised as an ‘Africana
philosophy of existence’ (op. cit.: 49), which uses a phenomenological approach
to trace the ‘consciousness of the situation of being black in an antiblack world’
(59), and is concerned to establish the conditions for a liberation of black South
Africans which avoids ‘bad faith and lack of authenticity’ (62).35
Brian Epstein’s essay for this volume takes as its point of departure Biko and
SASO’s definition of ‘black’ people:
those who are by law or tradition politically, economically and socially dis-
criminated against as a group in the South African society and identifying
themselves as a unit in the struggle towards the realisation of their aspirations.
(Biko 1978: 48)
Epstein agrees with More that Biko’s intellectual project is one of ‘existential
phenomenology’, strongly influenced by the work of Frantz Fanon. However,
he points out that Biko’s theorisation of black identity in apartheid South Africa
is also aimed at the ‘amelioration’ of social categories—and in this respect has
much in common with projects of conceptual amelioration pursued by contempo-
rary philosophers like Sally Haslanger (see e.g. Haslanger 2000). Biko’s aim, as
Epstein interprets him, is to ‘transform… one inter-related pair of categories’—
the apartheid state’s categories white and non-white—‘into another pair’—white
and black. Biko does not aim to replace non-white with a concept which picks out
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CHAPTER XX
A MISSION OF MERCY
To some of the boys the day seemed unusually long. Their restless
spirits chaffed under the strain of doing nothing save looking after the fire,
lying around talking, roaming through the woods at that end of the island,
reading, and at noon eating the meal that had been prepared.
Possibly except for the restraining influence of Mr. Holwell and Mr.
Bartlett and the knowledge that they would forfeit certain privileges if they
broke the posted rules of the camp, Eddie Grant and the two other mill
boys, perhaps Nat Silmore and his chums also, might have gone off in one
of the boats to fish.
But to Dick and some of the others that was a day long to be
remembered. Mr. Holwell talked more about his early struggles and
difficulties than they had ever heard him do before. They learned that he
had had a most adventurous career up to the time he decided to follow the
ministry for a calling.
It was about three in the afternoon, and some of the boys were sighing
over the fact that the day still had several more hours to run, when there
came a sudden interruption of the Sunday quiet that enveloped the camp.
“Listen!” exclaimed Dan Fenwick, jumping up. “Some one’s coming
through the brush back yonder. Lickety-split, too!”
All could hear the noise made by the hurried passage of some body; and
more than one boyish face lost much of its usual color as the lads
exchanged uneasy glances.
“What if it’s the wild man?” ventured Andy Hale, thus voicing the
alarm that had begun to hammer at every heart.
“Wow! get your clubs, everybody, and stand ready to repel boarders!”
snapped Peg, immediately pouncing on the handy camp hatchet.
“Hold on, fellows,” Dick called out. “It’s a man, you can see, and he
looks to me as though he might be more frightened than we are. See, he’s
waving his hands.”
“Why, seems as if I ought to know that man!” exclaimed Fred
Bonnicastle just then. “Yes, sure as you live, it’s the farmer we got the
butter and eggs from.”
“Say, I bet you he’s run across the monster that gave us the scare the
other day!” ventured Nat Silmore. “Now, mebbe you’ll believe what we
told you.”
The farmer soon reached the camp. He was breathing hard, but tried, as
best he could, to talk. It was to Mr. Holwell he addressed himself, for he
saw that the minister was older than any of the rest and looked as though he
might be in charge.
“I thought you were camping on the other site,” he stammered; “so I
landed at the wrong place. Oh! I want somebody to go back with me and try
to stop the bleeding, or I’m afraid the poor lad will not last long, and I never
could get to town, for my horse is sick.”
“What does this mean, my friend?” asked Mr. Holwell, laying a kindly
hand on the agitated farmer’s arm, to calm him, for he was very much
excited.
“My little boy managed to cut his foot frightfully with the axe,”
explained the man, drawing a deep breath; “and I’m a poor hand at anything
like binding up a bleeding artery. My wife has done the best she knew how,
but in spite of the rags she tied around his leg it keeps on bleeding. Say
you’ll come back with me, please, and do something for my poor little
Josh!”
“To be sure we will!” cried the minister. “It’s Sunday, but the better the
day the better the deed. One whom we love and worship went about doing
good on the seventh day of the week. I’ll be ready in a minute, my friend.
Dick, I’d like you—yes, and Leslie also, to accompany me. Perhaps Mr.
Rowland will come with us, if you, Harry, can get along here with both of
your assistants gone.”
“To be sure, Mr. Holwell. We are all under your direction and at your
disposal, you know.”
Some of the other boys would have been glad to go along, but evidently
Mr. Holwell thought he had enough helpers.
“We’ll use one of our boats,” he said as they gathered, ready to depart
on their mission of mercy. “We’ll save considerable time by not pushing
through the woods to where you landed, sir. Later on you can recover your
skiff.”
Accordingly, they started. Dick rowed across to the mainland, and as the
lake chanced to be very still he found little difficulty in making fast time.
Leslie was fairly itching to take a turn, but Dick laughingly declared he
could do his rowing on the way back.
Upon landing they pulled the boat up on the shore, and then, with the
farmer acting as pilot, the expedition of relief set forth. Their pilot knew
every foot of ground in that neighborhood, and followed a trail that the
boys, thanks to his advice, had used in coming back from their visit to his
farm in search of provisions.
Now and then the worried father would turn to Mr. Holwell, and the
piteous look on his face always brought forth words of hope and cheer from
the kind-hearted minister, who knew full well how the man was suffering.
After a short time the party reached the farm. The man hurried them
across by way of a short-cut, meanwhile shouting to his wife that he had
brought help.
She met them at the door, a pleasant, motherly looking woman, though
just then white of face, and evidently suffering greatly.
“Is he still alive, Mother?” gasped the farmer.
“Yes, but the wound still bleeds in spite of everything I can do to stop
it!” she told him. Then her eyes fastened on the minister, whose calling she
could guess from his white cravat and clerical clothes, donned because of
the day. “And oh! sir, I do hope you can do something to help save our boy,
even as the Master whom you preach went about doing good for those in
trouble,” she pleaded.
“We will do everything possible,” said Mr. Holwell, quietly. “I know
very little about surgery myself, but Mr. Rowland, here, has some surgical
knowledge, and I’ve heard it said that one of these boys has done things that
have won him warm praise from Doctor Bowen in Cliffwood. Please take
us to the lad, Madam.”
They found Josh in a bad way, and looking ghastly white, for he had
indeed lost a large amount of blood. It was Leslie Capes of whom the
minister had spoken so highly as they entered the house. Mr. Rowland had
before this discovered Leslie’s dexterity and ability, and motioned to him to
go ahead with the work, standing back ready to give instant help if
necessary. Without a second’s delay Leslie undid the rude bandages with
which the anxious parents had swathed the limb, and exposed the gash.
It was indeed a serious wound, and if no help had come, within another
hour or so the boy would probably have died from loss of blood. Dick
himself could see that neither of the parents knew the first thing about
anatomy, or where to place the knot when they tried to form a tourniquet
that could be twisted, and by pressure on the artery cause the bleeding to
cease.
The two boys set to work with a vim that pleased Mr. Holwell and Mr.
Rowland exceedingly, and it was pitiful to see how the distracted father and
mother followed every little move the amateur surgeons made.
First of all Leslie constructed a new tourniquet, and managed to stop the
loss of precious life fluid. Then he had the mistress of the house fetch him
warm water and a basin, and washed the boy’s foot and leg, after which he
bound the limb up.
“You must hurry over to your nearest neighbor, Mr. Jones,” he told the
farmer, “and borrow a horse, so as to go to town for a doctor. That artery
will have to be sewed, and I’m not quite able to tackle such a job yet,
though I hope to do it in time. This tourniquet will prevent the blood from
coming, though it isn’t good to keep it on for more than a few hours.”
“Then you think he’ll pull through all right, do you, Doctor?” asked the
mother, so filled with gratitude that she gave Leslie a title that he was proud
of ever afterwards.
“Not any doubt about it,” he told her, so warmly that the man and his
wife turned and looked into each other’s eyes, and then cried for sheer joy
as they embraced each other.
Mr. Holwell saw to it that the farmer hurried off to the neighbor’s
house, which lay a mile or so further on. He could get a horse there, and
reach the nearest town.
Of course none of the party felt like returning to the camp until it was
known that the doctor had been reached; so they spent the rest of that never-
to-be-forgotten Sunday afternoon on the farm. The good woman of the
house bustled about from time to time when she dared leave her boy, and
saw to it that the visitors were well looked after, pressing fresh buttermilk
upon them, apples and cake and everything that she thought the heart of a
genuine boy could wish for.
Finally, when it was getting along toward sunset they heard an
automobile coming, and upon sighting it discovered that the farmer, as well
as a fat little man with a professional air, occupied the seat of the runabout.
When the physician looked at Leslie’s work he smiled and patted the
boy patronizingly on the head.
“Keep on doing this sort of thing, son,” he observed, “and some of these
days you are bound to be a good surgeon. I never saw a finer bit of work
done, and I’ve been an army surgeon in my time, too, during the Spanish-
American war.”
Mr. Holwell said that since they were no longer needed it would be wise
for his party to take its departure, especially since the trail led through the
dark woods, and they had some two miles to cover before arriving at the
lake. So, overwhelmed by the gratitude of Josh’s parents, they presently
started forth.
In the gloaming they covered the last half mile of their journey, and the
thoughts of the kind-hearted minister were very pleasant ones as he
considered that he had been given a gracious opportunity to follow in the
footsteps of Him who delighted in going about, Sunday or week-day, doing
good to all who were in distress.
“There, you can see the light of our campfire over the water!” said
Leslie, presently. “And we’ll soon be in the boat pulling across. My turn to
row, remember, Dick, if you please.”
CHAPTER XXI
THE BROTHERLY SPIRIT
“Tell us all about it, please!” was the way the party was greeted as the
boat drew to shore.
“Will little Josh get over his hurt, do you think?” asked Ban Jansen.
“And did Leslie, here, show what he could do along the line of first aid
to the injured?” demanded Elmer Jones. “I’ve seen him do stunts that took
my breath away, and I just guess he ought to be able to stop an artery from
bleeding.”
“That was just what he did, I’m proud to say,” the minister announced.
At this there were whoops of delight, and many heavy slaps dropped on
Leslie’s back as they started up to the camp, where Sunny Jim had supper
ready.
While they sat around the supper table the story was soon told,
interrupted from time to time as some one wished to learn a few more
particulars. Mr. Holwell and their physical director could not say enough
about the work of the boys who had accompanied them.
“I’m constantly being reminded,” the minister went on to remark, “of
the fact that boys of to-day are away ahead of those of my generation in a
good many ways. They are learning to do all sorts of things calculated to
make them better citizens of our glorious republic when they grow up. I
take it that there are myriads of lads who are capable of stanching a
bleeding wound just as Leslie did this afternoon; of bringing back the
breath of life to a boy who has apparently been drowned; and in fact of
doing a dozen similar deeds of incalculable value.”
“How about another trap, Dan?” asked Andy Hale, as they sat around
later on that Sunday evening.
Mr. Bartlett had given them a short talk that he thought they might
appreciate, since it was not at all in the nature of a sermon. It really
interested even such indifferent fellows as Nat and Dit and Alonzo, who had
never had thrust upon them the idea of looking upon any one day of the
week as differing from the rest.
“Yes, that’s so, Dan, what do you expect to do about it?” Peg added.
“Are you ready to cry quits with one knock-down?”
“I don’t know just yet,” admitted Dan, shaking his head dubiously. “I
might try to get up another sort of scheme, but let me tell you it’s no joke to
make a trap able to hold a giant like that. Why, he broke oak limbs as if they
were paper. He must be a terribly strong man, if that’s any sign.”
Dan was deeply puzzled. Dick did not wonder at it either; and if he had
been asked he would have found it difficult to suggest a plan whereby the
mysterious prowler could be secured without hurting him to any extent.
The campers spent a quiet evening. There was considerable singing, but
Mr. Bartlett saw to it that the choruses were all of a character suited to the
day. The entire group of boys joined in, and they made a volume of sound
that carried far across the lake, and might even have been heard miles away
on the other side of Bass Island.
Then Leslie, who had a splendid tenor voice, obliged them on request
with a number of songs that were old favorites with Mr. Holwell.
“I must say,” remarked that pleased gentleman, “I have never heard
them sung better, or under more romantic surroundings than here and now. I
assure you all I shall write this little camping trip down as one of the most
enjoyable experiences of my whole life. I am glad to be with you, boys,
glad to feel that all of us are here to have a good time, and to be helpful to
each other.”
Even Nat and his pair of cronies seemed to be fairly satisfied. As for
Eddie Grant, Cub Mannis and Ban Jansen, they frankly admitted they had
never in all their lives enjoyed anything one half so much.
“Mr. Bartlett has promised to let some of us go off with you in the
morning, Eddie,” remarked Dick, casually, as they sat together during the
evening, “to see if we can beat you three filling a bucket apiece with
blueberries. It’s too bad that you should have to spend so much of your time
while up here doing that sort of thing; and we mean to fix it so you’ll have
more time off, anyhow.”
The three mill boys looked as though they could not find words to
express their gratitude. It was not the fact that they wanted to shirk work.
They had always been forced to labor for their living; but the idea of any
one voluntarily offering in this brotherly way to assume their tasks in order
to let them have a little enjoyment touched their hearts deeply. This outing
on the part of the mill boys, along with their pleasant intercourse with the
others, was bound to have an influence upon Eddie Grant’s crowd. Mr.
Holwell and Mr. Bartlett both felt sure there would be an accession to the
club from the mill part of Cliffwood’s young people when the three boys
got back to town, and they could tell what a glorious time they had
experienced.
Some of the boys wondered when the time came to go to bed whether
they would be disturbed again by a visit from the unknown creature that had
taken to prowling about the camp on Bass Island. Most of them, however,
were of the opinion that what had happened on the preceding night might
deter the wild man from making any more of his visits, at least until several
days had passed.
Nevertheless, it was to be noticed that some of them took especial pains
to examine the fastenings of the tents close to their heads. Dick playfully
asked Peg Fosdick if he anticipated another thunder-storm some time in the
night and feared that a wild wind might carry the covering away and leave
them exposed to the weather, that he was so particular about having the
lashings of the tent secure, and the various pegs well driven into the ground.
Nat pretended to be above these petty weaknesses. He imagined that
Alonzo and Dit after his disclosure of a panicky condition on the other day
were thinking less of his boasted valor, so he boldly declared his intention
of sleeping right out in the open, if the camp director allowed him the
privilege.
“It’s all right for those that feel timid to huddle like a flock of sheep in
under the canvas,” he remarked with a sneer. “But shucks! what do I care
about this here old wild man of the woods. If he comes bothering around
me, I’ll pretty soon show him what’s doing. Nothing’d tickle me more’n to
have him bend down and let me get my arms twisted around his neck. I’d
soon make all your slick traps, Dan Fenwick, look like thirty cents. Huh!”
The last the others saw of Nat he had actually placed his blanket in the
open and was making ready to “camp out” in truth. It must have been like
balm to his heart when Alonzo remarked:
“Gee whiz! I don’t see how you’ve got the nerve to do it, Nat. I
wouldn’t like to be in your boots, that’s all I can say.”
The night was not half over when again the sleepers were awakened—
this time by a wild shriek close at hand. And as the boys came tumbling out
it was to see Nat rolling about in his blanket and shouting amidst its folds.
CHAPTER XXII
WHAT NAT SAW
“Nat’s got a fit!” yelled Andy Hale, giving vent to the first thought that
flashed into his mind when he saw the other carrying on so wildly.
“More likely the wild man tackled him!” cried Peg Fosdick.
“Whee! hold on to him then, Nat! Don’t let him get away!” Eddie Grant
admonished, while Clint Babbett added to the din by adding:
“We’re right here, Nat, ready to help you! Sic him, Nat. Get a strangle
hold on the ferocious burglar!”
Suddenly Nat stopped whirling about so furiously. He even managed to
poke his tousled head from under the folds of his blanket, and seemed to
squint cautiously about him, much as a tortoise does after an alarm.
“Is it gone?” he demanded, faintly, as though short of breath.
“What ails you, Nat?” asked Dick.
“Been having an attack of the nightmare, I reckon, and dreamed he saw
something as big as a house and as ugly as Bill Biddon’s bulldog!” snapped
Dan Fenwick, with a perceptible sneer in his voice.
It was noticed that neither Alonzo Crane nor Dit Hennesy uttered a
single word. Apparently they knew Nat would not act in this way simply
after having had a silly dream. Both of them had been in his company that
afternoon in the woods of Bass Island when Nat claimed to have seen the
unknown monster that was haunting their camp.
“Say, what d’you take me for, anyway?” demanded Nat, as he crawled
out of the tangled folds of his blanket, and looked defiantly around him. “I
tell you I’ve seen a terror of the woods all right, and I only hope never to set
eyes on the same again. If I had my way I’d start for Cliffwood to-morrow.
I didn’t come up here to have Old Nick, or something just as bad, play leap-
frog over me, I want you to know.”
Some of the boys could be heard muttering to themselves. Plainly these
strange words on the part of Nat gave them cause for worry.
“Tell us all about it, Nat, won’t you?” pleaded Alonzo, who was looking
rather white under the eyes, Dick noticed—a plain indication of a craven
spirit, boys are always ready to avow.
“Oh! I’m willing to tell all I know,” replied the other, readily enough,
“even if ’tisn’t much. When a feller gets waked up all of a sudden like, and
sees such a thing hoppin’ right over him, he’s not agoin’ to stop and take
too long a look. I own up I ducked under the blanket right away, and started
rollin’ around, meanin’, of course, to keep it from grabbin’ hold of me.”
“What was it like, Nat?” asked Dick, while Mr. Holwell stood by an
interested listener, a puzzled expression on his kindly face. Mr. Bartlett and
the physical director were also on hand, while a black face thrust out from
the cook tent told that Sunny Jim was listening.
“Oh! say, when I try to tell you I just seem to get all balled up,”
complained the boy who had been the cause of the midnight alarm.
“But you can give us some idea,” persisted Dick. “Already you’ve gone
and compared it to Satan himself. Did he have a forked tail and cloven
hoofs?”
Nat failed to catch the satire in Dick’s question and voice.
“I shouldn’t be ’tall surprised if it did,” he calmly replied, “though I
don’t want to exactly say I seen all that. But I give you my honest word,
cross my heart, if it didn’t look like it must a come from down below. Ugh!
but it certainly gimme a bad feelin’.”
“Must have thought they’d sent for you, on account of some of the
fierce things you’d done in the past, eh, Nat?” quizzed Peg, boldly, for he
knew the bully of Cliffwood was in no frame of mind to take offense just
then, and pick a quarrel.
“Never you mind what I thought, Peg Fosdick!” said the other, still
trembling. “If you’d had the same experience I did, I reckon your nerves’d a
been shaky too.”
“Which way did it seem to go after jumping over you, Nat?” asked
Dick, bent on extracting all the information possible from the alarmed one
while the incident was still fresh in his memory. Later on he would be apt to
become hazy about particulars, and even contradict himself it might be.
“Shucks! as if I bothered much takin’ any notice of such foolish little
things as that,” replied Nat. “The only thing I do recollect was that it
hopped over me comin’ from the left side. So I rolled the other way, you
see.”
“And you lay down with your head toward the north, didn’t you, Nat?”
came from Leslie, who realized that Dick was trying his best to get hold of
some sort of clue, though really it did not appear to matter much.
“Here’s the way I was lyin’, so you can figure it out for yourselves,”
said the other, throwing himself down for a moment, and then regaining his
feet to continue his tale.
“But you want to understand that I’m done sleepin’ out here alone after
this. I ain’t hankerin’ about bein’ waked up to find things like that playin’
leap-frog over me.”
He picked up his blanket with an air of determination that could not be
mistaken. Dick understood from this that Nat must have been pretty badly
frightened by his sudden awakening, and what he claimed to have seen.
These things aroused in Dick’s mind a greater determination than ever
to learn the answer to the puzzle before leaving Bass Island. When the
morning came one of the first things he meant to devote his attention to was
searching for a clue to the character of the unknown terror.
It was not very pleasant standing around in the chilly night air, and
lightly clad at that, so when Mr. Bartlett suggested that they turn in again no
one offered any objection.
If the unknown creature that had taken to haunting Russabaga Camp
came again between midnight and the break of day no one was any the
wiser for his visit. With the first streaks of early dawn there were signs of
activity about the camp, and one by one the boys began to make their
appearance.
There was a chill in the air on this morning, making it quite different
from several preceding ones, and many of the boys were seen to shiver
when indulging in the usual morning dip.
But it would have to be something wonderful that could hinder those
amazing appetites of theirs from gripping them. Every one seemed anxious
to have a hand in assisting Sunny Jim in getting breakfast, until Mr. Bartlett
was compelled to call half a dozen of the boys away.
“‘Too many cooks spoil the broth,’” he told them. “You’re only
hindering Jim when you hang around that way. Some of you swing the axe,
and cut more firewood. It disappears mighty fast, you notice. Others can
fetch the blankets out and fasten them on the lines for their morning airing.”
In the end breakfast was announced. The main dish on this morning
consisted of fried slices of home-cured ham and fresh eggs turned over in
the skillets. There was besides plenty of boiled hominy, of the fine variety
which in the South goes by the name of “grits.” To finish up with all the
pan-cakes were provided that any boy could swallow. They were, however,
called “flap-jacks” by the campers, it being understood that a heavy fine or
penalty awaited the one who dared designate them as “griddle-cakes,” “pan-
cakes,” or “flannel-cakes.” That would make them feel as if they were
eating at home, with a white table-cloth and china in evidence, instead of
off in the wilds far from the busy haunts of men.
There were some other “haunts” apparently, that bothered several of the
boys considerably, Nat in particular. He had not recovered from his shock
of the preceding night, nor could any of the other boys find it in their hearts
to blame him very much.
Nat Silmore had always been known as a bully, afraid, in fact, of
nothing that walked on two legs; and to hear him candidly admitting that he
was genuinely disposed to quit the camp on account of his anxieties gave
several of the boys a feeling of real alarm.
Dick managed to get Leslie aside after they had finished breakfast,
though most of the others still lingered at the table. In fact some of them
could not find the heart to get up so long as a single “flap-jack” remained.
“What do you think of it?” Dick asked his best chum.
“I have to jump at conclusions when you fire that question right at me,”
replied Leslie, with a broad smile; “so I reckon you must mean about the
thing Nat saw, or thought he saw last night.”
“Well, I’ve been turning it all over in my mind,” continued Dick,
frankly, “and have come to the conclusion that he must have seen
something. Nat isn’t a timid chap by any means, as every one knows; and if
you watch him right now you’ll notice how he keeps looking to the right
and left all the while he eats. He’s half expecting to have something jump
out at him.”
“That’s right, as sure as you live,” admitted Leslie. “If things keep on
like this much longer, Dick, our camping trip will be spoiled. Why, none of
the fellows will care to wander into the woods, and before we came they
had laid out all sorts of schemes that would take them there.”
“Yes, I know they had planned to explore every foot of Bass Island,”
said Dick, moodily. “They’re beginning to care only for going out on the
water.”
“Humph! a good reason why,” grunted Leslie. “That mysterious wild
man can’t get them out there, it seems. Yes, just as you say it threatens to
upset all our jolly plans. What’s got to be done about it, Dick? I’m ready to
try anything you say.”
Dick scratched his head as if in deep thought.
“Well,” he remarked, finally, “of course one of the first things I did this
morning was to get down on my hands and knees and examine the ground
where Nat says he was sleeping when he woke up to see something jump
over him.”
“And did you make any discovery worth while, Dick?”
A shake of the head answered this question even before Dick could
frame words to reply.
“Why, no, I can’t say I did,” he went on to say. “The fact of the matter is
the ground was so well tramped over that there couldn’t be any way of
finding the footprints of the wild man, even if he did hop over Nat as he lay
there. I had to give up in the end, and call it a bad job.”
“I’m sorry for that,” said Leslie, who apparently had begun to indulge in
the hope that his clever friend might have come upon a clue.
“But there’s another chance for us,” ventured Dick.
“To find a track, you mean, do you?” questioned Leslie, taking fresh
courage.
“Why, somehow or other,” Dick explained, “none of us thought to look
closely into that trap of Dan’s which was smashed by the wild man the
other night. Now, let’s the two of us slip away as soon as the morning
service is over without telling any one what’s in the wind. We can prowl
around there, and see if some sort of sign is to be picked up that will give us
the clue we want.”
As soon as the religious service, which was held every morning after
breakfast, was over, Dick whispered to his chum:
“Let’s be moving, Leslie, while the crowd is still sitting around. Mr.
Holwell seems to be telling them one of his stories about his experiences.
Every little while something that happens seems to stir up his memory. He’s
seen a heap of queer things in his day.” Accordingly, the pair walked away
unnoticed by any of their comrades.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE TELLTALE FOOTPRINT
As the spot Dick and Leslie were heading for lay only a short distance
away from the heart of the camp the two boys quickly reached it. They
could plainly hear the laughter of the others when the minister reached
some comical part in his story of the early experiences associated with his
checkered career.
“Here’s the wreck of Dan’s trap,” remarked Leslie. “He lost heart when
the wild man smashed things so easily, and hasn’t managed to hatch up
another scheme to catch him, though I know he’s thinking about it all the
time.”
“Let’s take up every piece of wood first, and see if they can tell us
anything,” suggested Dick.
Leslie looked as though for the life of him he could not see how a mere
piece of broken branch could speak and explain; but at the same time he
knew Dick must have a meaning attached to his words.
Accordingly, they commenced to handle the remnants that told of Dan’s
wonderful trap, which had failed to hold the wild man.
Leslie suddenly heard his chum give a low bubbling cry.
“What have you found?” he asked, hurriedly, all excitement.
“Come here and see,” he was told.
“Well, I declare! that’s a bunch of hair clinging to a broken bit of wood,
or I miss my guess!” ejaculated Leslie Capes almost immediately.
“And sort of reddish-brown hair at that, you notice,” Dick told him.
“That must have come from the hide of an animal, mark you, and not from
a man at all!”
“Gee whittaker, Dick! What are you saying?”
“The wild man, as we’ve been calling him, isn’t a human being at all, it
seems,” Dick continued, slowly, as though he were trying to grasp a
stupendous idea.
“But, Dick, don’t forget that Nat has seen the creature twice now,”
urged Leslie.
“I know that,” admitted Dick.
“Yes, and there was Alonzo Crane and Dit Hennesy, too, who told us
they glimpsed him before he vanished into the brush. All three vowed it
was a short-looking man with awfully broad shoulders and long arms, and
that he bent over as he moved.”
“Granting all that,” persisted Dick, clinging to his rapidly forming
theory, “it could have been an animal just the same.”
“A four-footed animal do you mean, Dick?”
“Why not?” came the steady reply. “Some animals that can be called
four-footed sometimes walk on their two hind feet, such as monkeys and
apes. Even bears can do the trick without much trouble; and we’ve seen
elephants dancing in a circus, keeping their forelegs elevated all the while.”
Leslie gave a whistle to indicate his surprise.
“Look here, Dick, you’re getting close to the truth of this mystery, I just
know it from your ways. Tell me what you think, please, Dick.”
“Wait a bit,” admonished the other. “Let’s look around here and see if
we have any better luck than I did in the camp.”
“You mean hunting for signs, don’t you?”
“Yes, see if you can run across any footprint that doesn’t look like those
the boys would make with their shoes,” he was advised.
Both busied themselves at that, bending low the better to examine
closely every foot of the neighboring ground. It was Leslie who gave
utterance to a cry this time.
“Oh! come over here, Dick!” he exclaimed, as though thrilled by a
discovery he had made. “I’ve found something!”
When Dick bent over and took a look he laughed.
“Just what I was expecting we’d run across somewhere around,” he
said. “The plain imprint of a bare foot! And no human being, wild man or
not, ever made that mark, let me tell you, Leslie.”
“It does look somewhat queer I own up, Dick.”
“For a human being I should say it was impossible,” continued the
other. “Notice its peculiar shape in the first place. And the foot is hardly
longer than the toes. Yes, and they’ve got long nails on them in the bargain.
There’s also a pad to the sole that no human ever has.”
Leslie’s eyes were staring. He turned them on his companion with an
interrogation point in each orb. Somehow Dick was usually to be depended
on to rise to an occasion like this, and find out the truth. His chums had
long ago learned how absolutely they could depend on him when the
necessity arose.
“What sort of animal, Dick, would have feet like those?” he asked,
boldly.
“WHAT SORT OF ANIMAL WOULD HAVE FEET LIKE THOSE?” HE
ASKED.
“Well, a gorilla might, for one,” Dick declared.
No wonder Leslie gasped his amazement.
“A gorilla, Dick? An ape loose in the woods on Bass Island! Why,
surely I must be dreaming, or else you’re joshing me.”
Dick, however, stuck to his guns manfully.
“Remember, Leslie,” he went on to say, steadily, “I can’t even guess
how such an animal could get across from the mainland, even granting that
one escaped at some time from a menagerie that was wrecked in a storm.
We’re dealing with facts now, not theories. There’s an animal over here,
because some of our crowd have seen it, and all of us have looked on the
wreck of the trap set to hold it. I honestly and truly believe it’ll turn out to
be a gorilla.”
“Well, let’s figure out how that explanation agrees with what we know,”
was the sensible way Leslie commenced. “All the boys who have glimpsed
the creature agreed that it was short in stature, and with broad shoulders, as
well as long arms. I remember that gorillas are built that way, Dick.”
“Yes, and travelers say they are very powerful,” added the other. “I’ve
read how a wounded gorilla will snatch the rifle out of a hunter’s hands, and
twist the barrel as easily as if it were made of wire, tying it in a knot.”
“So he would have no trouble in smashing Dan’s silly trap, that’s right,”
Leslie went on to say. “Yes, and I can also remember reading, Dick, that
such an animal, when it gets mad, thumps on its chest and makes a
rumbling sound like the beating of a drum.”
“Sure enough!” Dick exclaimed, smiling with glee over the probability
of having solved the mystery that had been haunting the camp so long,
“didn’t the boys tell all about hearing some one drumming, when they
glimpsed the wild man as they thought, going through the brush?”
“Dick, I do believe we’ve solved the puzzle at last!”
“I’m dead sure of it!” Dick declared, “after finding this telltale scrap of
reddish hair on the stick, and seeing that queer footprint. One thing certain,
it’s likely we’ll never know just how the creature managed to get across
here.”
“You mean from the mainland, I suppose,” ventured Leslie. “Can a
gorilla swim, do you think, Dick?”
“I don’t know, but I should say not,” came the dubious reply.
“Well, then we’ll just have to make a stab at it, and let the thing go at
that,” Leslie continued, philosophically. “Mebbe the beast was on a log that
drifted away from the shore when he was washing his face or trying to
catch a fish for his dinner—if gorillas ever eat such things, which I doubt.
Then the floating log carried him across to the island, and he’s been
marooned here ever since. How about that for an explanation, Dick?”
“For want of a better it will have to stand, I suppose,” Dick told him.
“But let’s go and give the rest of the bunch a surprise.”
Leslie, of course, was willing, and away they hurried to startle their
camp-mates with the recital of the discovery they had just made.
Every one had to examine the stick that had the clump of dun-colored
hair fastened to its splintered part. Then all rushed to the spot where the
remains of the man-trap lay scattered around, Dick taking care that no one
crowded so close as to endanger the strange and telltale footprint.
Long and earnestly every boy gazed at this mark. Queer feelings came
over them as they realized that in all probability Dick had indeed solved the
mystery.
Nat in particular was triumphantly declaring that he had been
vindicated.
“Say, what did I tell you?” he demanded of Dan and Peg as a grin crept
over his face. “A gorilla can hop if it wants to, can’t it? Well, that’s what the
critter did with me when it saw me startin’ to sit up. And say! ain’t a gorilla
somethin’ like a short, squatty man with wide shoulders and long arms?
Well, didn’t all three of us try to describe the thing we saw in the brush like
that? Huh! next time don’t get quite so fresh with your remarks, Peg
Fosdick!”
“Oh, so far as that goes, Nat,” the other said humbly enough, “we all
admit that you must have been right. Yes, and I’ll go further when I say that
if a gorilla hopped over me in the night, and I saw him, I’d think it was the
Old Scratch himself. You’re all right, Nat, even if you were scared half to
death.”
Nat flared up as though inclined to resent this imputation regarding his
well-known courage. On second thought, however, he held his tongue.
Perhaps he remembered that he had frankly admitted being frightened. And
on the whole the sooner that matter was dropped the better.
Mr. Holwell, as well as the other two gentlemen, had, of course, taken a
decided interest in all that passed. In this he found a good reason for adding
to the high opinion he already had concerning Dick’s abilities. Any boy
who could figure out an answer to such a baffling mystery deserved worlds
of credit, and the minister was prouder of Dick than ever.
Indeed, Mr. Holwell was feeling more and more pleased every day, that
he had decided to take a little vacation and spend it on Bass Island in camp
with the boys of the Junior Department of the local Y. M. C. A. He dearly
loved to study boy-nature, and watch the development of those faculties
that in the years to come might carry the possessors on to fame or fortune.
Clint Babbett was coaxed to get his camera and take a photograph of the
strange footprint. He had more or less trouble in arranging things to suit his
ideas, but after several attempts declared that he believed he had succeeded,
and, in time, when he had developed that film, they would be able to prove
their claim by displaying an exact reproduction of the telltale track. Others
who possessed cameras were not deterred from trying the same task.
“But I hope we don’t let it go at that, fellows,” the first photographer
said, after completing his last effort.
“Not much,” remarked Andy Hale. “Some of the knockers down in
Cliffwood wouldn’t believe a word of what we said unless we had better
proof to show than just a picture of some marks on the ground. Why, they’d
claim we’d made them in order to pull the wool over their eyes.”
Looks were exchanged, that spoke of hidden thoughts and grim
resolutions. Peg Fosdick undoubtedly voiced the sentiments of many when
he went on to remark seriously:
“One thing sure, boys, we must think up some way to kill this
Jabberwock of the Bass Island woods. We could have the skin stuffed, and
stood up in our room at the Y. M. C. A. building, you know. Every one who
called would ask for the story of what happened up here in camp.”
Harry Bartlett glanced over at Mr. Holwell. He would have said
something himself, only he seemed to guess that the minister would express
his thoughts if given a chance.
“Wait a bit, boys,” said Mr. Holwell, gently. “Let’s consider this thing
well before deciding to try to kill this poor animal. The rooms of a Y. M. C.
A. building are hardly suitable for the exhibition of stuffed wild animals.
The rules of the organization do not encourage the hunting instinct, only a
laudable desire to build up the human body, so that a healthy mind may be
better qualified to grasp the precious truths that are so frequently
proclaimed within these walls. In fact, I can easily imagine several patrons
of the association staring in wonder and displeasure upon discovering a
stuffed gorilla standing guard in your department.”
“But do we have just to keep on enduring his visits night after night,
sir?” Peg asked, appealingly. “Would there be any objection to Dan here
getting up some sort of trap that would hold the gorilla a prisoner, so we
could return him to the Zoological Gardens that mebbe he escaped from?”
Mr. Holwell smiled on hearing that.
“I’m sure there could be no objection to such a scheme, provided Dan is
able to conjure up a plan that will turn out better than the last trap did,” he
answered. At this Dan blushed, and then grinned as though he felt the
remark was intended as a compliment.
“Oh! leave all that to me, sir,” he said, boldly. “Right now I’m figuring
on a bully scheme that is bound to work. And this time I don’t mean to trust
to just plain snares or traps.”
CHAPTER XXIV
DAN’S NEW IDEA
“Somehow I’m feeling unusually smart this morning,” said Peg

Fosdick, as he came face to face with Dan Fenwick, after the excitement
had somewhat abated, “and I’m going to challenge you to a spin in the
rowing shells across to that little island away over there and back again. I
dare you to accept, Dan!”
Dan was one of those who seem to be always carrying chips on their
shoulders, and any one knocking that chip off would have his hands full
immediately.
“Count me in the game!” he quickly exclaimed. “That is, if Mr.
Rowland will give us the necessary permission. I’ve been wanting to make
a test of your boast that you were a better oarsman than any of the rest of
us, barring Eddie Grant and Ban Jansen.”
“Well, here’s your chance to make good!” jeered Peg.
The athletic instructor, coming along just then, was appealed to in such
terms of entreaty that he laughingly consented to the trial of skill and
strength, for rowing combines both these necessary qualifications.
The knowledge that another rivalry had broken out interested most of
the campers, although a very few were so much taken up with other tasks
and hobbies, such as photography, that they declined to become
enthusiastic.
The two clumsy boats which Peg had ambitiously called “shells,” were
overhauled and put in as good condition as possible. Though, being old
craft and rather dilapidated, there was a fair chance that one of them might
leak so badly that it would necessitate a stop during the contest in order to
bail. To make things fair, however, it was arranged that should such a delay
occur a certain signal was to be given by the victim, which would call for a
halt on the part of the other competitor until the leaking boat had been
relieved of its unwelcome cargo of water. Then again would operations be
resumed.
At a signal from Mr. Rowland away went the rivals, both using the oars
at a furious rate, although they had been cautioned by the athletic conductor
to be deliberate, and not to exhaust themselves in the beginning of the race.
Both lads had stripped, and donned their swimming trunks, the better to
be able to take care of themselves should any serious accident befall them
while speeding across the water toward the small island that was to
represent the turning point. Moreover, each boat contained a life preserver,
for those who had the safety of the Y. M. C. A. boys in their keeping took
no unnecessary chances.
In their excitement both contestants forgot most of the instructions so
carefully given by Mr. Rowland. When one found that the other was forging
ahead ever so little it meant that on his part he had to row harder in order to
close up the gap before it grew to discouraging proportions. Those on Bass
Island could see that neither contestant rowed in a manner that was to his
credit, for there seemed to be an unusual amount of splashing done as the
oars fell hurriedly into the water.
Peg turned the island a little in the lead, and from this the onlookers
fancied Dan’s boat must either be leaking, or else his energies were flagging
under the heavy strain.
On the way back Peg seemed to be increasing his lead, and it looked as
if the race were bound to go to him. But Dick, who knew that Dan was a
hard fellow to beat, did not share in that conviction.
“Wait!” he told the group of shouting boys. “No race is decided until it
is finished. Dan may have a card up his sleeve yet. See! both have stopped
and are resting on their oars. I think Dan has given the signal that he must
‘pump ship,’ for I remember that his boat is a shade the worse of the two.
But the rest will give Dan the second wind he often needs. Then watch him
make things fly.”
As it turned out Dick was exactly right in his prediction. After the race
was resumed it seemed that Dan had received much more benefit from the
rest than had Peg, for it was noticed that the gap between the two boats was
closing. Despite the almost frantic efforts of Peg the distance separating the
rivals grew less and less. When the boats were a short distance away from
the shore of Bass Island they seemed to be on even terms. But this was not
to last.
Dan had a certain amount of strength left which enabled him to push the
nose of his boat ahead of the opposing craft. That discouraged Peg, and he
lost heart in the race, well knowing that in his exhausted condition he could
never regain the lead. Indeed, the boy crumpled up in his seat, and allowed
his boat to push on with its acquired momentum until it reached land.
Meanwhile, Dan had been welcomed with a great din, and yet his first
act was to brush the many hands aside and wait for his rival to come along.
“You’d have beaten me easy, Peg,” he told the disappointed chum,
“except for that little trick I played. There wasn’t nearly so much water in
my boat as I made out. But it was a lively race, all right, and you’re a game
one to the bone.”
Shortly afterwards a number of the boys started off with pails. Eddie
Grant and his two comrades from the mills realized that since the weather
was propitious and the harvest of blueberries abundant on the island, they
must not lose any more time than could be helped.
Just as had been planned by Mr. Bartlett and Dick, a number of the
other generous campers insisted on accompanying the pickers. Eddie
objected at first, but seeing that the boys were intent on going along his
remonstrances died away.
“We want to say we’ve picked a few bushels of those whopping big
berries ourselves,” said Peg, honestly. “It’ll be heaps of fun, you know, and
give some other fellows an afternoon off to try the fishing.”
“Besides,” added Fred Bonnicastle, just as determined to be of
assistance to the workers in the mills, who he had discovered were fine
chaps, “we all of us like blueberries, and have been dipping a little into the
stock of those you gathered on Saturday. We want to make the loss good,
and feel that we’re returning good measure every time. So don’t say another
word, Eddie. You just can’t shoo us back.”
At that Eddie Grant laughed.
“Oh, well,” he said, “now that we know for sure that a real live monkey
is loose on Bass Island I reckon there’ll be safety in numbers. If he tackles
us, six are better than just three.”
“Oh! you can’t frighten us by that kind of talk,” jeered Peg. “All of us
will go with a club in our hands, as well as a bucket. And say! perhaps we’d
better manage to keep within call of each other. Seems to me I’ve read
about these gorillas carrying children off sometimes.”
“Well, that may be worrying you, Peg, but the rest of us don’t consider
ourselves in the baby class,” remarked Phil, at which there was a general
laugh in which Peg joined.
Mr. Holwell took a fancy to try the fishing himself that morning.
“Not that I lay much claim to being a master-hand at angling, you
understand, boys,” he apologized, when making up the party. “But those
bass do taste so fine that I’d like to say I had pulled a few of them in
myself. Once upon a time, away back, I can remember as a barefooted boy
going after bass along the Susquehanna river. Yes, and seldom coming
home without a nice string, too. But in those days my rod was one I’d cut
myself in the woods; and I had no reel, or even a modern snell attached to
the hook. But I took the fish.”
Dick was one of those who went out in the boat. Mr. Holwell asked him
to join them, for he said he would need the advice of an “expert,” as he
neither knew where the bass were likely to be found during the hot weather,
nor how to manipulate his line when he had a strike.
“Just as likely as not,” he explained, “I should jerk the bait away when
by rights I ought to give the bass a certain amount of time to turn it in his
mouth. I know there are a great many things connected with fishing that a
tyro does not understand; though when I was a lad I must have been
acquainted with the habits of the tricky bass, or I never could have had the
good luck I did.”
Some of those left ashore had portioned out the morning for various
tasks or pleasures. It was a part of the plan that there should not be too
much labor attempted while they were in camp. They had come all this way
from home not so much to work, as to have a delightful time, although
certain camp duties had to be observed, for those in charge would allow no
shirking.
For instance, Clint Babbett and other photographers were allowed to
prowl around and take as many pictures as they chose. If they preferred it,
they could learn where certain small animals, such as raccoons or opossums
or squirrels or possibly even a mink, had a home, so that they might plan
the arranging of a camera and taking a flashlight picture of some animal
tugging at the bait left exposed.
Then there was Dan. Nobody was to bother him as long as he wished to
sit and ponder and figure with pencil and paper. It was known that Dan was
trying to get up some wonderful scheme whereby the monster with the
thieving instincts of the monkey race might be entrapped and made captive.
Everybody would, of course, feel greatly relieved could this be attained,
and for that reason, if no other, the camp director wished Dan to have all the
opportunity possible to expand his scheme.
The anglers were not quite so successful as on former occasions. Dick
knew that black bass could be considered whimsical, in that they often
refused to take any sort of bait, even when the wind, the water, and other
conditions made it an apparently ideal day for fishing.
“Nobody understands just why they act as they do,” he told Mr.
Holwell, when the bites were few and far between. “I’ve been fishing most
of the day, with never a strike. Then about four o’clock the clouds would
come up and the wind shift to a new quarter, when it seemed as if every
bass in the whole lake must be fairly wild to get something to eat. You
never can count on bass.”
Nevertheless, they managed to take a few good-sized fellows. The fish
proved so gamy that Mr. Holwell enjoyed their capture immensely.
“It seems to me the same thrill passes up my arm when I feel that fierce
tug that I used to experience in those wonderful days of old,” he went on to
say in a ruminating way, as memory once more awakened the scenes long
since passed.
“Do you think the savage feels just so, when he brings down his game,
or fastens to a big salmon or trout?” asked Dick.
“Well, that’s a question I can hardly answer,” said Mr. Holwell. “From
my observation I imagine the only sensation he is apt to feel is gratification
over having attained his end, which was to provide food to satisfy his
appetite. Only civilized sportsmen have reached such a condition that they
fish for the delight of matching their skill against the cunning of the gamy
denizens of the lake. After winning the victory the sportsman will often
gladly restore the fish to the water again unharmed.”
When lunch was ready at noon the berry pickers came trooping in,
looking somewhat wearied, but all in good spirits. They had full buckets,
every one, and this meant that the pile of berries would be considerably
augmented.
“We intend to try it again to-morrow morning, if things look right, and
Mr. Bartlett agrees,” asserted Peg, valiantly. “It was great fun, let me tell
you! Why, we could have filled two buckets apiece if we’d had them
along.”
“Say, did you happen to see anything of our friend, Bob?” demanded
Dan.
“I suppose you mean the gorilla by that,” responded Fred Bonnicastle.
“We’re glad to inform you that he was only conspicuous by his absence.”
“And his room was a whole lot better appreciated than his company,”
added Eddie Grant. “For one I’m not hankering after running across any
Old Man of the Woods just now. If he leaves me alone I’ll promise not to
bother him while we’re here on Bass Island.”
“My sentiments every time,” said Phil.
When two or three more had expressed themselves as of the same
opinion Dan looked pained.
“Looks as if you were all going to leave it to me to grab that monster,”
he told them. “And make up your minds I can do it, if only some of you’ll
promise to give me a helping hand.”
At that several immediately announced their willingness to assist.
“Of course we all want to feel that it’s going to be safe for us to wander
around anywhere on the island, Dan,” said Fred; “and on that account we
hope you’ll get busy. No matter what you want me to do I’ll promise to do
it, only please don’t ask me to stand and offer to feed the old scamp out of
my hand.”

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Debating African Philosophy Perspectives On Identity Decolonial Ethics and Comparative Philosophy 1st Edition George Hull (Editor)

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Debating African Philosophy

Perspectives on Identity Decolonial

Meaning and Truth in African Philosophy Doing African

African Perspectives on Ethics for Healthcare

Wittgenstein Religion and Ethics New Perspectives from

Nietzsche and Other Buddhas Philosophy After

Postmodern Suburban Spaces: Philosophy, Ethics, and

Exile and Otherness The Ethics of Shinran and

Perspectives on Philosophy of Management and Business

Biological Identity Perspectives from Metaphysics and

In African countries there has been a surge of intellectual interest in foregrounding

•• recover philosophical thinkers and currents of ideas within Africa and

Showing how foregrounding Africa—its ideas, thinkers and problems—can

George Hull is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Cape Town,

Edited by George Hull

With a Foreword by Lungisile Ntsebeza

About the contributors viii

1 Ottobah Cugoano’s place in the history of political philosophy:

2 Decolonizing bioethics via African philosophy:

3 A philosophy without memory cannot abolish slavery:

4 Neville Alexander and the non-racialism of the Unity Movement 75

6 Black autarchy/white domination: fractured language

8 Making sense of survivor’s guilt: why it is justified by

9 African philosophy and nonhuman nature 164

10 On cultural universals and particulars 182

11 The Metz method and ‘African ethics’ 195

12 The edges of (African) philosophy 213

13 Is philosophy bound by language? Some case studies from

14 African philosophy in the context of a university 248

15 Relational normative thought in Ubuntu and

16 African philosophy, disability, and the social conception

Sergio Alloggio is a lecturer in Philosophy at Rhodes University, Makhanda

The publication of this book compelled me to reflect on its gestation. As my

This course is a philosophical exploration of central issues in scholarly and

A course on “Xhosa for Philosophers”4 was also introduced in 2014, to accom-

Decolonising for identity

Decolonising for universal truth

When a philosophical idea is intelligible or plausible in one of the languages but

Decolonising for relative truth

Decolonising for justice

Decolonising for relevance

Philosophy and African liberation movements

“Somehow I’m feeling unusually smart this morning,” said Peg

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