Philosophy lived in community · Traditional; written works from 1980
Akan philosophy
Overview
Decide by consensus where a community can, and see a person as shaped by community yet holding a dignity of their own.
The Akan peoples of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire have a long tradition of proverbs, political institutions and reflection on what a person is. In the twentieth century two Ghanaian philosophers, Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye, drew on that tradition to argue that African cultures contain systematic philosophy and to bring its ideas into debate with Western thought.
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Wiredu described how traditional Akan councils decided by consensus, talking until they reached a position everyone could accept, and proposed that modern states could govern by agreement rather than by rival parties. He also urged African thinkers to examine the concepts they had inherited from colonial education. Gyekye set out the Akan account of the person, with the okra or soul, the sunsum that shapes personality and the mogya, the mother’s blood that ties a person to a clan. Against more radical views, he defended a moderate communitarianism in which community shapes us deeply while each person keeps reason, will and rights of their own.
Critics ask whether consensus can work in large, divided societies, and how far a view built on one people’s traditions speaks for others. The habit worth keeping is to seek what all can accept before counting votes, and to hold duties to the community and the dignity of the person together.
Where it answers
Who should govern?
Keep talking until everyone can agree, rather than counting votes.
Key terms
- Consensus democracy
- Wiredu’s model: decisions by agreement reached in discussion, not by majority vote.
- Okra, sunsum and mogya
- In Akan thought, the life-soul, the spirit that shapes personality and the blood of one’s mother’s lineage.
- Moderate communitarianism
- Gyekye’s view that persons are shaped by community but keep rights and dignity of their own.
- Conceptual decolonization
- Wiredu’s call to examine concepts inherited through colonial languages before adopting them.
In their words
“Reconciliation is, in fact, a form of consensus.”
Further reading
- An Essay on African Philosophical Thought · Kwame Gyekye
- Philosophy and an African Culture · Kwasi Wiredu
- Cultural Universals and Particulars · Kwasi Wiredu
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A plain reference you can paste into notes or an essay:
Quest2Reason. “Akan philosophy.” https://quest2reason.com/learn/ideas/akan. Accessed 13 November 2026.