Theophilus I. Okere's Critical Influence on Pantaleon O. Iroegbu's Formation of the Concept of Being as Uwa

Abstract

The exact articulation and eventual formation as well as proper translation of the metaphysical concept of being has been a perennial issue in philosophical enterprise for philosophers within philosophical traditions. Western Philosophical Tradition (WPT) started with the materialistic and elemental idea of being in their philosophical excursus having Thales as their first philosopher who proposed water as the urstoff, the original matter or the basic stuff of reality. Other traditions of philosophy have their turns in such conceptual articulations. In African Philosophical Tradition, the likes of Okere, Theophilus and Iroegbu, Pantaleon were front-liners in the proper formative translation of African philosophical concept of being. Using the method of historico-hermeneutical approach, the researcher finds out that Okere, who has been premier in the use of the concept of uwa to literally translate being influenced Iroegbu, who has over the time appreciated the concept of being as uwa in his contemporary African philosophical traditional engagements. More so, Iroegbu was very apt to express such an ideological concept in his uwa ontology and went further to emphasize that belongingness is the modality of this being understood as uwa.