COLLECTIVE EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE PRIVILEGE OF THE COMMUNITY IN AFRICAN SOCIAL EPISTEMOLOGY

Abstract

This article demonstrates the logic and viability of collective subjects in African social epistemology. It exposes the epistemology of collective subjects as one of the central issues in social epistemology. The question of collective subject proves a difculty for traditional epistemology because of its individualistic approach. Traditional epistemology privileges the individual over a group or collective. However, social epistemology which is a more uid form of epistemology discusses the uidity of subjects beyond individual persons as knowers. The complexity of regarding a group or collective as a knower involves a lot of implications. This paper critically takes on some of the engaging objections against collective subjects. This paper exposes philosophical perspectives on the community and on this rational ground, takes the community, as an example of collective subject to discuss the philosophy of collective epistemology both from social epistemology in the West and African social epistemology. It holds that the naturalist-structualist view of the community which communitarianism is grounded on is well-reasoned. It defends the communitarian view of the community as a doxastic agent and shows that it does not undermine individual freedom or rationality as advanced by critics of communitarianism, rather, it enhances it. It concludes that the privilege of the community in social epistemology and particularly, African social epistemology, is grounded on epistemological and ontological predisposition, yet, the community can be regarded as an epistemic agent, without diminishing the epistemic integrity of the individual. It holds that the individual knows through the community, which makes the individual's scope to know more holistic. This paper adopts expository and analytic methods in its approach.