Mythology as a Veritable Source of Philosophy: A Philosophical Analysis of Computer and IFA Divination Techniques

Abstract

It is now generally agreed that there exists African philosophy. The debate on whether it exists or not lingered for decades, for the antagonists of the existence of African philosophy claimed, among others, that what we call African philosophy was nothing but myth which lack rigour and rationality and thus cannot be taken to be philosophy. Myth plays an important role in the way Africans understand reality. It provides necessary analytic and conceptual framework for African philosophy. Philosophy was regarded essentially as Western because of the great contributions of the Western philosopher like Hegel, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, George Berkeley to mention a few, and their works as a result, became reference points in important academic debates. However, African intellectuals and philosophers were spurred into intellectual action of decolonization of the Africans by publishing several books and other publications. There emerged two dominant schools in the field of African philosophy, namely the traditionalists and the universalists; while the universalists inherited the Eurocentric mentality of seeing philosophy as an enterprise which necessarily needs a writing tradition since it is (erroneously) believed that ideas can only be preserved and exchanged in books and journals, the traditionalists believe that writing is not a precondition for philosophy, that ideas can be preserved through  devices like songs, folklore, proverbs, and so on. In this paper, I shall argue that myth is a veritable source of philosophy, and a careful analysis of the comparism between computer and Ifa divination techniques are made to further buttress my position.