This is philosophy bites with me Nigel Warburton and me David Edmonds

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When I studied philosophy, I don't remember there being a single

African philosopher on the syllabus.

Katrine Frixhoo from the London School of Economics thinks the curriculum needs updating.

She believes that there are developments in African philosophy which are intrinsically interesting

and which cast new light on old philosophical problems.

Cat in Flixhoo, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Well, thanks for having me.

The topic we're going to focus on is philosophy in Africa.

Now Africa is a big place. You'd expect there to be quite a lot of philosophy going on there.

So is there something distinctive about African philosophy?

Well I mean I think that's a good question and one that's actually debated hotly in African philosophy itself and different

African philosophers take quite a different perspective on it with some of them

saying that there's nothing distinctive other than that it is philosophy that happens to come out of this

particular geographical location and others taken the extreme opposite view saying that African

thinking is in itself very, very different from any other form of human thinking,

i.e. it is African thinking.

And presumably the post-colonial pan-African movement has been an important influence on this.

That's been the case in more senses than one I think. I think one very important aspect of this

...