IGWEBUIKE PHILOSOPHY AND HUMAN INTERSUBJECTIVITY

Abstract

While it might be arguably asserted that the issue of intersubjectivity in the western world has attained a recently famed status, arising from the domination of the subjective, in the Igbo-African worldview, intersubjectivity has always had and will always have a pride of place in the existence and thriving of the Igbo people and culture. Intersubjectivity, is basic to all social life, especially the complex behavior of humans from childrearing to science. The term has come into recent use among psychoanalytically oriented clinicians influenced by the efforts of Continental philosophers to solve what Anglo-American philosophers call the “problem of other minds” or of “solipsism. Before the expanse in the thought reawakening of this term, western thought had much pondered upon the subjective/objective dichotomy, this reached its climax in the solipsistic doctrine embellished and defended by Rene Descartes. The Igwebuike philosophy captures in depth the reality of the intersubjectiveness that defines the human person. Igwebuike is at the heart of African philosophy, and in fact, the inner or underlying principle of African philosophy. It is the manner of being in African ontology. Its nearest equivalents in English include complementarity, harmony, communality, etc., however, the preferred concept is complementarity. The richness of the term Igwebuike is totally acknowledged but in relation to the intersubjective term, it would best be conceived in the light of harmony and complementarity. This is because the term communality, as much as subjectivity does, also reduces the concept of intersubjectivity, for the latter pays tribute to the subjective and the communal, but is neither one nor the other. This paper would be focused on the elaboration of the validity of the igwebuike philosophy as foundational to the human person, who fundamentally is a being-for-others. It would also be earmarked that the intersubjectivity that this philosophy portrays does not negate the individuality of the human person, but enriches it evenly.