Friday, January 30, 2015

Philosophizing the Ifa Corpus

"Philosophising for the public should be about helping that 'modern' Yoruba fella understand that no philosophical text is superior to the Ifa corpus produced by the genius of his people; that the Western progress and modernity he celebrates while recoiling in Christian or Islamic horror at the first mention of the Ifa corpus were all once part of a Western 'pagan' intermesh of history, myth, and science until fellas like him applied themselves and separated the science from everything else; that the microphone that his pastor uses to give him gospel every Sunday was part of that pagan mix until the separation; that there is still room to separate that science from the Ifa corpus for the elevation of humanity if only he and I would study it, apply ourselves to a creative extraction of that knowledge, and stop diminishing it as an inferior pagan text."
Pius Adesanmi
You're Not a Country, Africa

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