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African Epistemology Assignment

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The paper attempts an investigation into the epistemological anarchism of Paul Feyerband as contained in his magnum opus Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, 1975, and uses it in the contemporary discussion and justification of African epistemology. The paper argues that African epistemology differs from Western epistemology, in that the latter places emphasis on science in knowledge acquisition. The paper therefore concludes that although African epistemology reckons with the scientific means of knowledge, it does not consider scientific methods to be the only valid and reliable means of acquiring knowledge. This is in tandem with Feyereband’s epistemological anarchism which posits that scientific know-how should …show more content…

Without fear of resurrecting the already settled issues of the existence and non-existence of African philosophy, with its attendant polemics and argumentations, the appellation, “African philosophy” presupposes and strongly assumes the existence of an epistemology that is distinctly and peculiarly African; that reflects the African universe of experience and African reality of existence. As opined in the introductory remarks of this paper, the tendency to acquire knowledge is innate in man. On daily basis, we make claim to certain knowledge. We even go as far as arguing for that thing that we claim to know. But some basic questions arise: Is knowledge relative or universal? What actually do we know? Can there be an absolute claim to knowledge? The answer to these questions forms the thematic pre-occupation of the branch of philosophy known as epistemology. Epistemology deals with the nature, origin and basis of human knowledge. In the words of Eboh (1998:1), epistemology simply deals with the justification of human knowledge. It examines the validity or truth of human knowledge (Ibid: 2). Corroborating this, Omoregbe (1998:6) posits that epistemology as a major branch of philosophy is “the study of human knowledge, its origin, scope, limits, its justification, its reliability or otherwise, its certainty or otherwise. It is knowledge taking a critical look at itself to justify

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