Supernaturalism and the Philosophical Character of the Traditional African Thinker

Abstract

Owing to the prevalence of belief in spiritual beings and in the reality of some non-physical events in traditional cultures like those of Africa, the orientation of the people is typically regarded as supernaturalistic. But while some anthropologists and philosophers see belief in the supernatural as irrational, others argue in ways that seem to suggest that supernaturalism limits the rational capacity of the African thinker. This paper rejects the positions held by these scholars and, using Akan traditional wisdom, argues for the possibility of extricating rationality from the domain of cultures – making rationality a matter of conceptual, noncultural objectivity.