On his first semester after taking a research sabbatical, Dr. Bruce Janz will be sharing his research and upcoming project in this talk.
Abstract:
This session will serve two purposes. First, I will give an overview of the book I have been working on, Events in African Philosophy. Second, I will focus on one chapter from the book – on John Mbiti and his theory of time. I will briefly outline the place that this theory has in the development of African philosophy, and argue that it could have been understood differently at the time (and still could now), which would result in a strikingly different conversation in the field. The attempt here is not to show that other interpreters are wrong, but rather that the understanding of time that most commentators take from Mbiti leads to what I will call a mode of thought (which narrows the range of philosophical options by tying philosophy to the representation of culture) rather than a space of thought (which is a space for the creation of new concepts adequate to African experience).
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