AFRICAN CULTURE AND VALUES IN A WORLD OF CHANGE: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPRAISAL

Résumé

Culture is the defining element of a people and the varieties of culture among the world’s populations make life beautiful and interesting. Since culture is often seen as the sum total of the peculiarities shared by a people, a people’s value can be seen as part of their culture. In discussing African culture and values, we are not presupposing that all African societies have the same explanation(s) for events, the same language, and some mode of dressing and so on. Rather, there are underlying similarities shared by many African societies which, when contrasted with other cultures, might reveal a wide gap of difference. It does appear that while so-called African culture and values have positive, soul-lifting and humanistic dimensions, it also has some negative and dehumanizing aspects. In this paper, we try to show the relevance of African culture and values to the contemporary society, using IgboAfrican society as an example, but maintain that these values be critically assessed, and those found to be inimical to the well-being and holistic development of the society, be discarded. In this way, African culture and values can be revaluated, their relevance established and sustained in order to give credence to authentic African identity. We recommend that there is need to harness the cultural resources of Africa to enrich the process of education, and indeed, greater emphasis is on the need to harness all our cultural dimension towards a common goal of development understood as human wellbeing so as to identify with other civilized populations of the world rather than remaining backward. The method we employed in this paper is the critical method of philosophy.