Gyekye and Contemporary Idealism

Tartaglia, James

Abstract

I begin with a defence of both Gyekye’s universalist and African metaphilosophies. In light of these metaphilosophies, I discuss the contemporary Western hegemony of materialist philosophy of mind and its origins in Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind (1949), showing that the existence and nature of the traditional Akan philosophy, as elaborated by Gyekye, casts serious doubt on some influential founding motivations for materialism. I then argue that traditional Akan philosophy is best aligned with contemporary idealism. Gyekye’s endorsement of dualism is shown to have not been intended as ontologically fundamental, while panpsychism is rejected on the basis of the resistance it offers to the Akan commitment to transcendence. Contemporary idealism, however, is able to accommodate all the main components of traditional Akan philosophy, making both experiential primacy and transcendence central to a metaphysical understanding of reality. Sunsum (spirit) and okra (soul) are understood in terms of the distinction between the phenomenal and horizonal conceptions of experience, with consciousness always requiring a distinction between the phenomenal world within an experiential horizon and the independent being that transcends the horizon.

Citation

Tartaglia, J. (2023). Gyekye and Contemporary Idealism. In Conversations on African Philosophy of Mind, Consciousness and AI. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36163-0_2

• Acceptance Date: Jan 31, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Aug 15, 2023
• Publication Date: Aug 15, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 16, 2025
• Publisher: Springer
• Book Title: Conversations on African Philosophy of Mind, Consciousness and AI
• Chapter Number: 1
• ISBN: 978-3-031-36162-3; 978-3-031-36165-4
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36163-0_2
• Keywords: Philosophy of mind; Personal identity; Kwame Gyekye; Metaphilosophy Metaphysical idealism
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-36163-0_2
• Related Public URLs: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-36163-0