Henry Odera Oruka

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Henry Odera Oruka (1944–9 December 1995) was a Kenyan philosopher, best known for his project of Sage philosophy.

Although Oruka's education was in Western philos­ophy in Sweden and the United States, his own father, Oruka Rang'inya, was a sage of the Luo.

Oruka's project set out to provide evidence for his contention that "critical reflection upon themes of fundamental importance has always been the concern of a select few in African societies"^[1] In doing so, he hoped to defend the notion of a traditional African philosophy against three critical arguments: that African sages did not use reflective reason in the way that the ancient philosophers of Greece, India, and China did, that philosophy is impossible in a purely oral tradition, and that traditional belief-systems discourage individual thought in favour of consensus.

[edit] Published works

[edit] Monographs

• 1990: Trends in Contemporary African Philosophy (Nairobi: Shirikon)
• 1995: Ethics, Beliefs, and Attitudes Affecting Family Planning in Kenya Today: A Final Report (Nairobi: University of Nairobi, Institute of Population Studies)
• 1997: Practical Philosophy: in Search of an Ethical Minimum (Nairobi: East African Educational) ISBN 9966-46-704-1

[edit] As editor

• 1983: Philosophy and Cultures: Proceedings of the Second Afro-Asian Philosophy Conference, Nairobi, October/November 1981. Co-edited with D. A. Masolo (Nairobi: Bookwise)
• 1990: Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and the Modern Debate on African Philosophy (Leiden: E. J. Brill) ISBN 90-04-09283-8/ISSN 0922-6001

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Masolo

[edit] Reading

• 1997: Anke Graness & Kai Kresse [edd]. Sagacious Reasoning: Henry Odera Oruka in memoriam (Frankfurt: Peter Lang) ISBN 3-631-30794-2; U.S. ISBN 0-8204-3258-X

[edit] Sources and external links

• "African Sage Philosophy" — by Dismas Masolo for The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy