| Under the background of western centralism,there has been a problem of the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy in the Chinese philosophy circle.However,following Fung Yulan,generations of scholars have been promoting the development of Chinese philosophy.Sub-Saharan Africa is facing a crisis of legitimacy over its philosophy,too.Africa has its own philosophy.Even by western philosophical standards,the form of that philosophy is possible.The premise of it is to solve the "generality" problem of African philosophy.The "generality" problem is whether African philosophy is general or not in the world.In other words,it is whether African thought and being is general or not in the world.However,because African philosophers mainly focus on indigenous cultures,the solution to this problem has been failed.Having figured out this problem,this paper is to find a way to solve it so as to realize the independence of African philosophy in western discourse.The problem comes from the denial of African philosophy by western philosophers.According to the study of African politics and religion,Hegel believed that African had neither thought nor being and negated African philosophy.Thus,he regarded western philosophy as the only philosophy with generality.If African philosophy has generality,it has to have the same nature as western philosophy.In this sense,the nature of western philosophy has become the standard to measure whether a thought is a philosophy.However,with the independence of African countries,African philosophers also began to promote the intellectual decolonization.With the help of approaches of analytical philosophy and hermeneutics in western philosophy,African philosophers took rational thought as the boundary of philosophy and created a native philosophy based on African traditional culture.This kind of philosophy mainly focused on politic and ethics with collectivism.It has a deep connection with pan-Africanism that united African nations in their struggle for independence.Thus,on the one hand,African philosophers separated the generality from western philosophy and established the foundation for the study of African philosophy.On the other hand,they have paid too much attention to the development of its own particularity,which keeps the general character away from the African philosophy.The solution to the problem of universality is failed.Based on the analysis above,it can be seen that African philosophy is characterized by relativism,which is reflected in African thought and being.To some extent,relativism led to the African philosophy marginalized.Moreover,this tendency of relativism comes from the fact that African philosophers limit the study of African philosophy to the local culture,and from the methodological approach introduced by African philosophers,which provides a legal basis for the relativism tendency of African philosophy.Therefore,this paper is to provide a possible methodological approach to solve the problem,the approach of intercultural philosophy.The approach is to apply hermeneutics to the interaction between different local philosophies.On the basis of recognizing the particularity of African philosophy,intercultural philosophy requires African philosophy to step out of its own cultural boundary and have equal dialogue with local philosophies from all over the world so as to reach overlapping consensus.And the overlapping consensus makes the thought and being in local philosophy acquire the characteristic of generality.Although the consensus hasn?t been found,this approach provides a solution for African philosophy to solve the "generality" problem and achieve independence in western discourse. |
