Philosophic sagacity - Quest-journal.net

QUEST: An African Journal of Philosophy / Revue Africaine de Philosophie 

XXI: 91-108 

Philosophic sagacity 

A classical comprehension and relevance to post-colonial social 

spaces in Africa 

by F. Ochieng’-Odhiambo 

Résumé: De la sagacité philosophique: Compréhension classique et relevance 

pour les espaces postcoloniales en Afrique. Des quatre tendances ou 

approches identifiées en philosophie africaine par H. Odera Oruka, à savoir 

l’ethnophilosophie, la sagacité philosophique, la philosophie idéo-nationaliste 

et la philosophie professionnelle, il y a lieu de relever que la sagacité philosophique 

a été la moins présente dans les discours et pratiques intellectuelles 

philosophiques en philosophie africaine. Un facteur majeur qui pourrait peutêtre 

expliquer cet état de choses est que la sagacité philosophique n’a pas été 

correctement comprise. Pourtant, au contraire, la sagacité philosophique a un 

rôle significatif à jouer dans la solution aux problèmes sociopolitiques et réalités 

qui ont embrouillé les États-Nations d’Afrique. Cette dernière remarque 

forme le soubassement de la première rationalité de cette essai. Précisément 

l’essai réexamine la sagacité philosophique en retraçant ses origines et préoccupations. 

Parallèlement, l’essai clarifie aussi la distinction entre les deux termes 

liés linguistiquement, à savoir la « philosophie sage » et la « sagacité 

philosophique ». Quelques-uns de ceux qui ont exprimé verbalement leur vues 

ou qui ont écrit sur la sagacité philosophique ont souvent utilisé les deux termes 

comme synonymes au détriment des objectifs et buts pourtant clairs de la 

sagacité philosophique. Ceci constitue le fondement de la deuxième thèse de 

cet essai. 

Abstract: Philosophic sagacity: A classical comprehension and relevance 

to post-colonial social spaces in Africa. Of the four trends in, or approaches 

to, African philosophy identified by H. Odera Oruka namely ethnophilosophy, 

philosophic sagacity, nationalist-ideological philosophy and professional philosophy; 

it is philosophic sagacity that has been given the least space in intellectual 

philosophical discourses and practices on African philosophy. Perhaps, 

a major contributing factor in this regard could be that it has not been adequately 

comprehended, or simply misunderstood. Yet, on the contrary, philosophic 

sagacity has a significant role to play in resolving some socialpolitical 

problems and realities that have bedevilled African nation-states. 

Herein lies one rationale of this essay. The essay revisits philosophic sagacity 

by tracing its origins and concerns. At the same time, the essay also clarifies 

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F. Ochieng’-Odhiambo 

the distinction between the two linguistically related terms ‘sage philosophy’ 

and ‘philosophic sagacity’. Some of those who have said or written something 

on sagacity in African philosophy have often used them synonymously at the 

expense of the clear objectives and aims of the latter. Herein is to be found another 

rationale of the essay. 

Mots clefs: Odera Oruka, sagacité philosophique, racines philosophiques de la 

culture, naïveté philosophique, moralité technologique, sagacité populaire, 

ethnophilosophie, école de philosophie professionnelle. 

Key words: Odera Oruka, philosophic sagacity, philosophical roots of culture, 

philosophical naivety, technological morality, folk sagacity, ethnophilosophy, 

professional school. 

Introduction 

As an approach to African philosophy, philosophic sagacity made its 

maiden appearance in international philosophical discourse in 1978 during 

the commemoration of Dr. Anthony William Amo 1 Conference held 

in Accra, Ghana. This was by way of Kenyan philosopher H. Odera 

Oruka’s presentation titled ‘Four Trends in Current African Philosophy’. 

The following year, Odera Oruka read a slightly different version of the 

essay during the 16 th World Congress of Philosophy in Dusseldorf, Germany. 

The essay has been seminal in academic African philosophy. Besides 

the essay, Odera Oruka authored several others, including two texts, 

in the area of African philosophy most of them focussing on philosophic 

sagacity. It is therefore not surprising that he is generally regarded not 

only as the icon of philosophic sagacity, but its progenitor as well. 

As is the case with the other approaches to African philosophy, 

philosophic sagacity has had its share of critics. However, this essay does 

1 Amo was born in present-day Ghana in 1703. At the tender age of four years, he was 

in Amsterdam possibly as a slave though other possibilities have been offered as well. 

Whatever the case might have been, while in Europe, he exhibited great intellectual 

élan, successfully undertaking undergraduate and graduate studies in various fields of 

study namely law, medicine, psychology, and philosophy. He later taught at the 

universities of Halle and Jena in what is now the Federal Republic of Germany, and 

published several philosophical works. He returned to his native land in Ghana in 

1753 and died soon thereafter. 

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not seek to directly address some of these specific criticisms. It is a general 

disquisition on philosophic sagacity meant to give an accurate exegesis 

and account of the approach. Many may be under the false impression 

that the approach found its way into the philosophical arena in the early 

1980s. 2 Others may query its relevance beyond proving the obvious that 

sages existed or exist in traditional Africa. Yet still, some may wonder 

what sets it apart from ethnophilosophy. Such impressions, queries, and 

wonders may be made redundant by a proper understanding of philosophic 

sagacity. In its specificity, this essay has three objectives. These are: 

(1) To trace and enunciate the origins of philosophic sagacity as an approach 

to African philosophy in academic intellectual discourse. (2) To 

highlight its relevance to modern African nation-states, despite its anchorage 

in traditional Africa. (3) To decipher the distinction between philosophic 

sagacity and sage philosophy, given that too often, some 

individuals have definitively, though at times mistakenly, used the two 

terms interchangeably. 

Origins of Philosophic Sagacity: Odera Oruka’s Two 

Research Projects 

Despite the fact that philosophic sagacity was pronounced to the international 

community in 1978, many seem not to be aware that Odera Oruka 

had actually started work on it a couple of years earlier in his two, though 

related, research projects, one in 1974 and the other in 1976. In other 

words, though he first employed the term ‘philosophic sagacity’ in his 

1978 essay, it is apparent that his 1974 and 1976 projects were exercises 

in philosophic sagacity. The two research projects therefore rightfully 

demarcate the origins of philosophic sagacity. Hence, contrary to conventional 

belief, the birth year of philosophic sagacity within academia predate 

1978. Knowledge of this fact, as will be apparent below, is 

fundamental in that it not only enhances the general comprehension of the 

2 This is because, though H. Odera Oruka read the paper ‘Four Trends in Current 

African Philosophy’ in 1978, it was only published in 1981. 

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approach but also highlights its significance to the social-political realities 

of modern Africa. 

In 1974, together with some of his colleagues at the Department of 

Philosophy and Religious Studies, notable among them the charismatic 

philosopher and theologian Joseph Donders, Odera Oruka formulated a 

research project at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. It was entitled 

‘Thoughts of Traditional Kenyan Sages’. At its inception, the immediate 

aim of the project was to address the following question: 

Would it be possible to identify persons of traditional African culture, capable 

of the critical, second-order type of thinking about the various problems of 

human life and nature; persons, that is, who subject beliefs that are traditionally 

taken for granted to independent rational re-examination and who are inclined 

to accept or reject such beliefs on the authority of reason rather than on 

the basis of a communal or religious consensus? 3 

In 1976, Odera Oruka designed yet another related research proposal 

of national and social significance. On the face of it, the project appeared 

rather ambitious given the enormity of its attendant implications in 

terms of duration and resources necessary for the fulfillment of its objectives. 

The project was titled ‘The Philosophical Roots of Culture in 

Kenya’. In the proposal, researches were initially meant to cover the 

Western part of Kenya. The ultimate objective however was: 

To uncover and map out the philosophical ideas which underlie some of the 

main cultural practices of Western Kenya. This would be treated as a regional 

investigation which, if co-ordinated and supplemented with researches from 

other parts of the Republic would provide an over all [sic] pattern of the Philosophy 

of Kenyan National Culture. 4 

The objective of the 1976 research proposal was premised on two assumptions. 

First, philosophy is always the moving spirit and the theoretical framework of 

3 H. Odera Oruka, ‘African Philosophy: The Current Debate’ in H. Odera Oruka, ed; 

Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy, 

Nairobi: ACTS Press, 1991, p. 17. 

4 H. Odera Oruka, ‘The Philosophical Roots of Culture in Kenya’, unpublished 

research proposal presented to the Ministry of Culture and Social Services, 

Government of Kenya, 1976, p. 8. 

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any national culture. Any serious and meaningful national culture must have a 

philosophy. Second, because Kenya as a State is struggling tirelessly to 

ground itself permanently as a nation – and a national culture is always the 

axis of a nation. 5 

Given the gist of the two research projects one cannot fail to 

fathom that they were exercises in what Odera Oruka later christened 

‘philosophic sagacity’. The 1974 project sought to identify philosophic 

sages, whereas the 1976 one was geared towards engaging their thoughts 

for the sake of social cohesion and national prosperity. 6 

Significance of the Two Research Projects 

(a) The 1974 Project 

The late 1960s through to the 1970s was a turbulent period for African 

philosophy. It was the period that African philosophy was attempting to 

ground itself in mainstream academic philosophy. Prior to this era, and 

also during the period, discussions regarding what African philosophy 

was, was dominated by views that had been expressed in Placide Tempels’ 

Bantu Philosophy (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1959) 7 ; Alexis Kagamé’s 

La Philosophie bantou-rwandaise de l’être (Bruxelles: Académie 

Royale des Sciences Coloniales, 1956); Léopold S. Senghor’s On African 

Socialism (London: Pall Mall Press, 1964); Marcel Griaule’s Conversations 

with Ogotemmêli (London: Oxford University Press, 1965); Robin 

Horton’s ‘African Traditional Religion and Western Science’, Africa, vol. 

37, nos. 1 and 2, 1967; and John S. Mbiti’s African Religions and Philosophy 

(London: Heinemann, 1969). The ground, however, had been set 

5 Ibid., p. 2. 

6 The spirit of the 1976 research project is also discernible in H. Odera Oruka’s later 

essay titled ‘Sagacity in Development’ in H. Odera Oruka, ed; Sage Philosophy: 

Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy, pp. 57-65. 

7 The text was originally written in Dutch titled Bantoe-filosofie. The first French 

version titled La Philosophie bantoue was published in 1945, and the first English 

translation, by Rev. Colin King, was published in 1959. 

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by the French anthropologist L. Lévy-Bruhl, whose text Primitive Mentality 

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1923) had achieved certain notoriety for its 

hostility towards the African mind and also for its attendant ideological 

pretensions. The views contained in the texts crystallized in what later 

became known as ethnophilosophy, ‘the study of collective forms of culture 

as manifestations of African philosophical systems’. 8 

Paulin Hountondji, the fiercest critic of ethnophilosophy, saw it as 

ethnological works with philosophical pretensions. 9 Generally, the critics 

of ethnophilosophy were displeased with its ambiguous use of the term 

‘philosophy’. When applying it to Africa, ethnophilosophers use it in the 

ideological sense. Hountondji, for instance, noted that: 

Words do indeed change their meanings miraculously as soon as they pass 

from the Western to African contexts […]. That is what happens to the word 

‘philosophy’: applied to Africa, it is supposed to designate no longer the specific 

discipline it evokes in its Western context but merely a collective worldview, 

an implicit spontaneous, perhaps even unconscious system of beliefs to 

which all Africans are supposed to adhere. This is a vulgar usage of the word, 

justified presumably by the supposed vulgarity of the geographical context to 

which it is applied. 10 

The Malawian philosopher, Didier N. Kaphagawani, on his part, 

observes that given the suppositions and underpinnings of ethnophilosophy, 

some philosophers justifiably see it as ‘simply a constitution of both 

schemes of conduct and schemes of thought (not a philosophy)’. 11 African 

philosophy was presented by the ethnophilosophers as atypical, as a 

remarkable unanimity with no dissenting voice; it was a philosophy without 

philosophers. 

It is against this backdrop that the so-called professional school as 

8 Ivan Karp and D. A. Masolo, eds., African Philosophy as Cultural Inquiry, 

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000, p. 4. 

9 Paulin J. Hountondji, African Philosophy: Myth and Reality, Bloomington: Indiana 

University Press, 1996, p. 34. 

10 Ibid., 60. 

11 Didier N. Kaphagawani, ‘The Philosophical Significance of Bantu Nomenclature’ 

in Guttorm Fløistad, ed., Contemporary Philosophy: A New Survey, vol. 5, Dordrecht: 

Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987, p. 130. 

96


an approach to African philosophy emerged. The school sensed some 

promiscuity in the use of the word ‘philosophy’ by the ethnophilosophers, 

whom to them were using it pejoratively and in service of the Western 

world. 12 To these scholars, African philosophy was not what the ethnophilosophers 

portrayed it to be, at least not in its totality. According to 

them, it was wrong to dress African philosophy essentially in traditionalism 

or communal folk thought. Just like Western philosophy, African philosophy 

was supposed to be seen from the professional and academic 

angle also. It had to involve critical, discursive and independent thinking 

as well. 

However, notwithstanding the noble intentions of the professional 

school, it caused discomfort to others in two ways. (1) It was argued that 

what the school was referring to, as African philosophy was not purely 

African. The professional philosophers having basically studied Western 

philosophy and hardly anything about African philosophy treated African 

philosophy from a typically Western standpoint. They employed Western 

logic and principles to criticize and create what they like to call African 

philosophy. 13 The end result of what they qualified, as African philosophy 

was in essence a scholarly exercise rooted in the West. (2) Though 

the professional school granted the existence of African philosophy in the 

technical and proper sense, it limited itself to modern Africa, giving the 

impression that traditional Africans were incapable of technical philosophy. 

In the two observations noted above lies the rationale of Odera 

12 See for example, Kwasi Wiredu, Philosophy and an African Culture, Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press, 1980; Paulin J. Hountondji, African Philosophy: Myth 

and Reality, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996; Peter O. Bodunrin, ‘The 

Question of African Philosophy’, Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of 

Philosophy 56, no. 216, April 1981; F. Eboussi Boulaga, ‘Le Bantou problematique’, 

Présence Africaine, no 66, 1968; Marcien Towa, Essai sur la problematique 

philosophie dans l’Afrique actuelle, Yaounde: Clé, 1971; and to some extent Franz 

Crahay, ‘Le Décollage conceptual: conditions d’une philosophie bantoue’, Diogène, 

no. 52, 1965. 

13 H. Odera Oruka, ed., Trends in Contemporary African Philosophy, Nairobi: 

Shirikon Publishers, 1990, p. 19. 

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Oruka’s 1974 research project. Regarding the second observation, the 

project sought to prove that African philosophy does not begin in modern 

Africa; that even in traditional Africa there are individuals who are capable 

of critical, coherent and independent thinking. On the first observation, 

it sought to identify African philosophy in the technical sense as 

seen through African spectacles, that is, as portrayed by Africans with little 

or no Western intellectual influence. 14 In a way therefore, besides disproving 

the suppositions of ethnophilosophy, philosophic sagacity also 

came in as a rescue package meant to salvage the professional school. 

(b) The 1976 Project 

In the 1976 proposal, Odera Oruka identified, what he referred to as, philosophical 

naivety as the problem that was posing a great threat and danger 

to the development of authentic national culture in modern Kenya, 

and indeed the rest of Africa. Philosophy in the usual sense is sometimes 

naively regarded as the heritage of the Greeks and thus treated as a typical 

European activity with the result that Africans are regarded as innocent 

of true philosophical thought and discourse. As already noted above, 

this also explained the hostility of the professional school towards ethnophilosophy. 

Because of the view that confines philosophy to the West 

many people who have had to write or say something on African philosophy 

have done so with remarkable naivety. They have argued that African 

culture and its philosophy are a lived experience, not a myriad of concepts 

to be pictured and rationalized by the mind. Thus, they see philosophy 

in Africa as an inseparable part of the concrete, of culture as Africans 

feel and live it and not an entity to be isolated and discussed. As a detailed 

activity and exercise, philosophy, has, according to this position, no 

place in African culture. 

The underlying assumptions of Odera Oruka’s 1976 proposal was 

that any genuine and concrete national culture should be identical with 

the unifying or common patterns of the general way of life of a people 

14 Ibid., 16. 

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living as a community or believed to have the same identity. Accordingly, 

a national culture must have two aspects: practical and theoretical. Things 

such as music, dance, and fashion make up the practical aspect. The theoretical 

aspect is formed by the philosophy (principles and ideas) that justifies 

such activities. A culture without a clear philosophy is incomplete, or 

as Kwame Nkrumah puts it, ‘practice without thought is blind’. 15 Such a 

culture is therefore blind and hence vulnerable to every foreign values 

and ideas, no matter how obnoxious the foreign values may be. This is 

one of the biggest threats to the various African cultures. One sure way of 

avoiding the invasion of foreign ideas is for a nation to develop and articulate 

the philosophy of its culture. One cannot fight for or defend ideas 

by use of guns; one can only successfully fight for or defend ideas with 

ideas. 

Philosophical naivety is preposterous. Taking philosophy as tenets 

that underlie practice and action, the truth is that Africa must, as any 

other place, have philosophical principles that justify and govern its cultural 

practice. It is only that in Africa these principles are mostly covert 

and left at the implicit level. These principles must be unearthed and 

made explicit since they are the basis upon which a concrete and meaningful 

national culture would be built. This, according to Odera Oruka, 

was and still is the great challenge facing African scholars and cultural 

conservationist today. They should 

‘investigate and unearth such principles. This is necessary for posterity and for 

the development of a national culture. This investigation should be part of the 

national programme in every African State’. 16 

For the sake of posterity and prosperity, Odera Oruka later added 

another dimension to the role that sagacious reasoning could play in the 

development of national cultures and social cohesion in various modern 

15 Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonisation and 

Development with Particular Reference to the African Revolution, London: Panaf 

Books, 1970, p. 78. 

16 H. Odera Oruka, ‘The Philosophical Roots of Culture in Kenya’, unpublished 

research proposal presented to the Ministry of Culture and Social Services, 

Government of Kenya, 1976, p. 8. 

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African nation-states. Sagacious reasoning is not just reasoning for the 

sake of reasoning. He noted with dismay that philosophy especially in the 

academic understanding of the term, has tended to estrange itself from the 

‘Socratic’ partnership with wisdom with the result that philosophers have 

proceeded in a manner in which they perfect their reasoning skills without 

caring about, or at the expense of, its practical utility. They have become 

too theoretical and have tended to divorce philosophy from society, 

and study the subject in a vacuum. Little wonder, some non-philosophers 

view philosophers with lots of suspicion. They are considered as individuals 

who are stuck to their armchairs in ivory towers dreaming dreams 

that cannot be lived. They are perceived as people who cannot say anything 

sensible concerning problems of life. 17 This is an unfortunate state 

of affairs and is a challenge to all philosophers worth their salt, for in 

truth, philosophy is after all for life and not the vice versa. 

In all seriousness, the general project of philosophic sagacity is an 

effort to bring back some of the lost glory of philosophy by emphasizing 

on sagacious reasoning or wisdom. In his earlier essays, Odera Oruka had 

defined a sage simply as a person ‘versed in the wisdoms and traditions 

of his people’. 18 However, in a later work, he attaches the ethical quality 

as an explicit and necessary component of the definition. This, he 

thought, would underscore the practical aspect of philosophic sagacity. 

The thoughts of the sages must be seen primarily as concerned with the 

ethical and empirical issues, and questions relevant to the society, and the 

sage’s ability to offer insightful solutions to some of those issues. He is 

unequivocal that a sage has two qualities or attributes, 

insight and ethical inspiration. So a sage is wise; he has insight, but employs 

this for the ethical betterment of the community. A philosopher may be a sage 

and vice versa. But many philosophers do lack the ethical commitment and inspiration 

found in the sage […]. A sage, proper, is usually the friend of truth 

and wisdom. A sage may suppress truth only because wisdom dictates not be- 

17 See H. Odera Oruka, ‘Philosophy and Other Disciplines’ in Anke Graness and Kai 

Kresse, eds., Sagacious Reasoning: Henry Odera Oruka in Memoriam, Frankfurt am 

Main: Peter Lang GmbH, 1957, p. 35. 

18 H. Odera Oruka, ‘Sagacity in African Philosophy’, International Philosophical 

Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 4, 1983, p. 386. 

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cause of some instrumental gain. Indeed, Pythagoras’ definition of a philosopher 

as the ‘lover of wisdom’ should have been reserved for a sage, since the 

sophists were the grave-diggers of wisdom and truth. Socrates was wrongly 

labeled, ‘philosopher’; he was first and foremost a sage. Socrates used philosophy 

only as a means to advance his sagacity and expose the hypocrisies of 

his time. But when all is said, one must still emphasize that sagacity and philosophy 

are not incompatible. 19 

Odera Oruka therefore rightly believed that if the thoughts of the 

sages were granted more intellectual and social spaces in modern Africa, 

then that would be one sure way of avoiding or at least downplaying the 

raging invasions of obnoxious foreign ideas and values impinging on African 

cultures. Take for example what may be called technological morality. 

It is a morality in which technological innovations are preponderant 

and are objects of worship. It is a genre of morality in which technological 

superiority or efficiency is identified with the good. What is technologically 

possible and fitting is treated as also being morally permissible. 

And the bad is that which lags behind technological advancement. Thus, 

for instance, if abortion is medically possible and safe (a reflection of advance 

technology), then it is treated as also being morally all right for a 

woman to abort. 

In Africa today, it is increasingly becoming acceptable that to be 

good or beautiful is to have technological fashion on one’s side. In a 

manner of speaking, a beautiful lady, for example, is no longer she who 

relies on her natural built. She is one who dresses fashionably and decorates 

her innocent body with cosmetic trappings: thanks to technology. 

And the handsome man is he who owns what the latest technology has in 

store. To him, ladies will be attracted as flies are to a rotten body. Love 

and marriage are becoming material at the expense of spirituality. The 

question is not just, how one can love one’s partner and enrich the marriage 

or relationship spiritually, but what one can materially benefit from 

the relationship. This could very well be one of the reasons why divorce 

is spiraling out of control in the modern world in general. Technological 

morality is thus dangerous to African societies because in truth it deprives 

19 H. Odera Oruka, ‘Introduction’, in H. Odera Oruka, ed; Sage Philosophy: 

Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy, pp. 9-10. 

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culture of morality in the proper and desirable sense. Sagacity, if well articulated, 

properly documented, and readily availed to community members 

especially in the urban areas, could thus act as check on 

technological morality as well as other undesirable foreign invasions. In 

emphasizing the important roles of sages, Odera Oruka asserts that: 

Sages exist in all cultures and classes. Indeed, sages are among the custodians 

of the survival of their respective societies. A society without sages would easily 

get swallowed up as an undignified appendage of another. All societies use 

their sages or at least the ideas of their sages to defend and maintain their existence 

in the world of inter-societal conflict and exploitation. 20 

Since Africa is today at a crossroads and under invasion by foreign 

cultural elements, there is an urgent need that the sages be accorded more 

prominent roles in their respective societies. Otherwise African cultures 

will end up getting swallowed up as undignified appendages of Western 

culture. The question of Africa being swallowed up, as an undignified 

appendage of the West has been a concern of several African scholars and 

statesmen, though the solutions they have offered has varied. Kwame 

Nkrumah, for example, called for a social revolution in the emergent independent 

African nation-states: a revolution in which African thinking 

and philosophy are directed towards the redemption of the African humanist 

society of the past. He believed that his notion of consciencism 

was best placed to achieve this. He defines it as: 

The map in intellectual terms of the disposition of forces which will enable 

African society to digest Western and Islamic and the Euro-Christian elements 

in Africa, and develop them in such a way that they fit into the African personality. 

The African personality is itself defined as the cluster of humanist 

principles which underlie the traditional African society. 21 

What Philosophic Sagacity is Not 

Some critics as well as proponents of Odera Oruka’s approach to African 

20 Ibid., p. 3. 

21 Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonisation and 

Development with Particular Reference to the African Revolution, p. 79. 

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philosophy commonly use the terms ‘sage philosophy’ and ‘philosophic 

sagacity’ interchangeably as if they mean one and the same thing. From a 

purely semantic point of view this is understandable, but from a philosophical 

angle, it is inexcusable since it is a reflection of misreading Odera 

Oruka. A perusal of his texts and essays on sagacity shows that he assigns 

somewhat different shades of meaning to the two terms. He does not use 

them synonymously. 

Sagacity consists of thoughts having or showing insight and good 

judgement. It is therefore thoughts of persons acknowledged as wise by 

their respective communities. In yet another sense, sagacity is a body of 

basic principles and tenets that underlie and justify the beliefs, customs, 

and practices of a given culture. In-built in the second definition is the 

first, since it is the beliefs and thoughts of persons acknowledged as wise 

by their respective communities that in essence constitute the basis of that 

community’s culture. It is important therefore to take cognizance of the 

fact that sagacity and sage philosophy are synonyms given that the latter 

is described as: 

The expressed thoughts of wise men and women in any given community and 

is a way of thinking and explaining the world that fluctuates between popular 

wisdom (well-known communal maxims, aphorisms and general common 

sense truths) and didactic wisdom (an expounded wisdom and rational 

thoughts of some individuals within community). While popular wisdom is often 

conformist, didactic wisdom is at times critical of the communal set up and 

popular wisdom. 22 

From the definition given above, it is apparent that sage philosophy 

has two facets: popular (or folk) sagacity and philosophic (or didactic) 

sagacity. The former consists of well-known communal maxims, aphorisms, 

and general common sense truths, whereas the latter is an expounded 

wisdom and rational thoughts of some given individuals within 

the community. The folk sage, unlike his philosophic counterpart, operates 

squarely within the confines of his culture. For him, 

22 H. Odera Oruka, ‘Sage Philosophy: The Basic Questions and Methodology’ in H. 

Odera Oruka, ed; Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on 

African Philosophy, p. 33. 

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Beliefs or truth-claims within culture are generally treated as ‘absolutes’ [not 

to be questioned]. Anything outside or contradictory to the culture is treated 

with indifference and even hostility. Those sages or persons who are [merely] 

experts in the culture defend this philosophy and the structure of their society 

with the zeal of fanatical ideologists defending the political line. 23 

To illustrate the distinction between these two aspects of sage philosophy, 

Odera Oruka contends that the thoughts of Ogotemmêli reflect 

popular or folk wisdom, whereas those of Paul Mbuya Akoko belong to 

philosophic sagacity. This is because: 

Ogotemmêli’s text is given as the verbatim and faithful recitation of the beliefs 

common to his people, the Dogon. No attempt is made to assess the extent to 

which the sage himself has thoughts that transcend the communal Dogon wisdom. 

Mbuya’s text is a mingling of an informal formulation of the traditional 

Luo beliefs and a critical objection to and, at times, a rational improvement on 

those beliefs. 24 

Given the above, it is quite clear that sage philosophy and philosophic 

sagacity are not exact synonyms. While it is true that all instances of 

philosophic sagacity belong to sage philosophy (as in Mbuya’s case), not 

each and every instance of sage philosophy would qualify as philosophic 

sagacity; they could be instances of popular or folk sagacity (as is the 

case with Ogotemmêli’s thoughts). Despite this distinction some scholars 

have commonly, though erroneously, continued to equate sage philosophy 

with philosophic sagacity. 25 And there is no doubt that this error has 

23 H. Odera Oruka, ‘Sagacity in African Philosophy’, in Tsenay Serequeberhan, ed; 

African Philosophy: The Essential Readings, New York: Paragon House, 1991, p. 52. 

24 H. Odera Oruka, ‘Sage Philosophy: The Basic Questions and Methodology’ in H. 

Odera Oruka, ed; Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on 

African Philosophy, p. 34. 

25 See, for example, Anthony S. Oseghare, ‘Sage Philosophy: A New Orientation’ in 

H. Odera Oruka, ed; Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on 

African Philosophy, pp. 237-246. Gail M. Presbey, ‘Is Elijah Masinde a Sage?’ in 

Anke Graness and Kai Kresse, eds; Sagacious Reasoning: Henry Odera Oruka in 

Memoriam, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997, pp. 195-209. Patrick M. Dikirr, 

‘Sagacity in the Maasai Concept of Death and Immortality’ in Anke Graness and Kai 

Kresse, eds; Sagacious Reasoning: Henry Odera Oruka in Memoriam, pp. 181-193. 

Chaungo Barasa, ‘Odera Oruka and the Sage Philosophy School: A Tribute’ in Anke 

Graness and Kai Kresse, eds; Sagacious Reasoning: Henry Odera Oruka in 

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been to the disservice of the narrower and more specific philosophic sagacity 

project for it has had negative ramifications and given critics an 

opportunity to equate sage philosophy with ethnophilosophy in toto, yet 

in actuality it is only the folk sagacity aspect that lends itself to ethnophilosophy. 

This equation contradicts Odera Oruka’s thesis that philosophic 

sagacity ‘is the only trend that can give an all-acceptable decisive blow to 

the position of ethno-philosophy’. 26 

It is instructive to note that when Odera Oruka identified the four 

trends in African philosophy, he labeled them Ethno-philosophy, Philosophic 

Sagacity, Nationalist-ideological Philosophy, and Professional 

Philosophy. 27 And even when he added two more trends namely, Hermeneutical 

Philosophy, and Artistic or Literary Philosophy about a decade 

later in his edited text Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern 

Debate on African Philosophy, he still talked of Philosophic Sagacity as 

one of the six trends, not Sage Philosophy. Why title the text Sage Philosophy 

but nevertheless still talk of philosophic sagacity as one of the 

trends? One may muse. The reason should not be difficult to gauge. In the 

1970s when Odera Oruka formulated the two research projects, his aim 

was unmistakable. He wanted to prove the existence of critical independent 

thinkers in traditional Africa (1974 project), and also explicate a clear 

methodology upon which national unity could be attained and obnoxious 

foreign ideologies and values checked (1976 project). His endeavour in 

both instances pointed to sages who were didactic in their thinking. It is 

for this reason that Odera Oruka made a clear distinction between what he 

was doing from ethnophilosophy. 

It [philosophic sagacity] differs from ethno-philosophy in that it is both individualistic 

and dialectical: It is a thought or reflection of various known or 

named thinkers not a folk philosophy and, unlike the latter, it is rigorous and 

Memoriam, pp. 19-22. Parker English and Kibujjo M. Kalumba, eds., African 

Philosophy: A Classical Approach, Upper Saddles River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996. 

26 H. Odera Oruka, ‘Sagacity in African Philosophy’, International Philosophical 

Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 4, 1983, p. 384. 

27 See H. Odera Oruka, ‘Four Trends in Current African Philosophy’ in Alwin 

Diemer, ed; Philosophy in the Present Situation of Africa, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner 

Verlag GmbH, 1981. 

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philosophical in the strict sense. 28 

Odera Oruka believed that contrary to the aims of his two projects, 

ethnophilosophy was being applied in service of the Western world, not 

Africa. 29 His articles on African Philosophy written during this period express 

open hostility towards ethnophilosophy; the articles are polemical. 30 

A careful reading of Odera Oruka’s works on sagacity reveals that 

the term ‘sage philosophy’ appeared much later. He employed the term 

for the very first time in ‘Philosophy in English Speaking Africa’, a paper 

published in 1984. 31 However, it was only in his text Sage Philosophy: 

Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy, first 

published in 1990, that he makes a deliberate distinction between ‘sage 

philosophy’ and ‘philosophic sagacity’; a distinction which had escaped 

the eyes of many because of their semantic affinity. As already noted, the 

distinction lies in the fact that ‘sage philosophy’ has two wings of which 

‘philosophic sagacity’ is one, the other being folk or popular sagacity. In 

his text Trends in Contemporary African Philosophy, also published in 

28 H. Odera Oruka, ‘Four Trends in Current African Philosophy’ in H. Odera Oruka, 

ed; Trends in Contemporary African Philosophy, Nairobi: Shirikon Publishers, 1990, 

p. 17. The essay was however first published in Alwin A. Diemer, ed; Philosophy in 

the Present Situation of Africa. 

29 For similar arguments, refer to Paulin J. Hountondji, African Philosophy: Myth and 

Reality, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996; Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba, 

‘Philosophy and African Intellectuals: Mimesis of Western Classicism, 

Ethnophilosophical Romanticism, or African Self-Mastery’, Quest, vol. v, no. 1, June 

1991; Christian M. Neugebauer, ‘Ethnophilosophy in the Philosophical Discourse in 

Africa’, Quest, vol. iv, no. 1, June 1990; Christian M. Neugebauer, ‘Hegel and Kant: 

A Refutation of their Racism’, Quest, vol. v, no. 1, June 1991. 

30 See for example his essays ‘Mythologies as African Philosophy’, East Africa 

Journal, vol. 9, no. 10, October 1972; and ‘The Fundamental Principles in the 

Question of ‘African Philosophy’ I’, Second Order: An African Journal of 

Philosophy, vol. iv, no. 1, 1975. 

31 H. Odera Oruka, ‘Philosophy in English Speaking Africa’ in E. Agazzi, ed; Nouva 

Secondaria, no. 10, Roma 1984. Having established the existence of philosophic 

(didactic) sages in traditional Africa and also having laid the groundwork for his 1976 

project, Odera Oruka saw no harm in delving in popular sagacity hence the coming 

into being of ‘sage philosophy’. 

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1990, he goes on to equate folk sagacity with ethnophilosophy. Here he 

asserts that the thoughts of Ogotemmêli constitute folk sagacity besides 

being ethnophilosophical, in contrast to Paul Mbuya Akoko’s which are 

philosophic. 32 Both however fall within the broad category of sage philosophy. 

He also qualifies renowned ethnophilosophical pieces by Claude 

Sumner, Ethiopian Philosophy vol. 1 and, John O. Sodipo and Barry Hallen 

‘An African Epistemology: The Knowledge-Belief Distinction and 

Yoruba Thought’ as works in current African philosophical literature that 

deserve the label ‘sage philosophy’, though not philosophic sagacity. 33 

32 H. Odera Oruka, ‘The Basic Questions about Sage Philosophy in Africa’ in H. 

Odera Oruka, ed; Trends in Contemporary African Philosophy, p. 52. 

33 Ibid., p. 52 and p. 69. 

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