Speaker Bio: Gail Presby teaches peace and social justice, ethics, African philosophy and culture, and other courses related to social and political philosophy. Her interests are in cross-cultural and feminist explorations in philosophy and the philosophy of non-violence.
Speaker Abstract: What is the philosophical aspect of interviewing sages? The early sage interviews undertaken by Henry Odera Oruka focused upon looking for arguments in the sages' conversations, that is, looking for claims backed up by reasons or value statements. This focus was in line with a mainstream academic philosophy preoccupation with logic and argumentation that downplayed the role of proverbs or myth, suggesting that such trappings were rhetorical or literary and not philosophy in a narrow sense. Recently some philosophers have challenged the narrow view and insisted that the use of myth, metaphor and narrative in philosophy has a long history, even in the classics such as Plato. An African philosophy scholar who interviewed sages about the same time as Oruka, but in Nigeria, was Campbell S. Momoh. Unlike Oruka, he focused on a wide range of conversation with the sages, including proverbs, metaphors, and myths. What are the benefits or drawbacks of both of these approaches?
