Abstract: | H. Odera Oruka regarded philosophic sages as contemporary representatives of precolonial Africans who practised philosophy in the strict sense of logical, critical, personalized thinking. Consequently, he uses them as evidence for the overarching conclusion of his sagacity project, namely, that some Africans practised philosophy in the strict sense prior to the European colonization of their continent. He sees this conclusion as invalidating a presupposition of ethnophilosophy that in precolonial Africa philosophy was always intuitive, uncritical, anonymous and unanimous. This article develops two lines of criticism concerning Oruka's sagacity project. First, it is not clear that all of Oruka's sages have transcended their community values without relying on Christian/Western conceptions. Oruka's claim that his sages represent precolonial African philosophy must, therefore, be doubted. Second, the sages cannot be given full credit for their sophisticated philosophical utterances, as these depend at least as much on the lead questions of the professional philosopher as they do on the sages' personal sagaciousness. In conclusion, the author contends that the existence of precolonial philosophers is not something Oruka's sagacity project does or can establish conclusively. As a consequence, philosophic sagacity faces a bleak future if it continues to restrict itself to the views of traditional sages. Bibliogr., notes, ref. (ASC Leiden abstract) |