Reappraising the Reincarnation Debate in an African Culture: A Conceptual Clarification
Akinpelu A. Oyekunle 
& Ezekiel S.N. Mkhwanazi
Issue: Vol.5 No.16 Issue Article 37 pp.3157-3168
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.202451637 | Published online 24th December, 2024
© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
This paper re-examines the reincarnation debate within the African cultural context, with a focus on the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria and the Nguni people of Southern Africa. The reincarnation debate has generated the query that the term/concept ‘reincarnation’ does not describe or capture African socio-cultural thinking and belief about the interrelationship between the living and the dead. Alternative terms that align with African intellectual heritage and cultural practices have emerged because of this query, while critiques have been advanced against the alternative terms’ arguments. Thus, the reappraisal of the reincarnation debate becomes necessary to provide analytical justification for the proposed alternative terms for the phenomenon of reincarnation within the African socio-cultural ecosystem. Adopting an expository and analytic method of philosophising, this paper calls for a conceptual clarification of what reincarnation could mean in the African context. This paper argued that the phenomenon of reincarnation explains one of the ways Africans promote family solidarity and unbroken inter-generational unity in the cycle of existence. As such, the African conception of reincarnation encapsulates a philosophical explanation of the perpetuation of the family of the past on a cyclic continuum involving present and future generations. The study concludes by emphasising the importance of reconceptualising reincarnation within the African conceptual framework to ensure the logical and intelligible representation of African intellectual heritage and identity, particularly considering the global epistemicide of local knowledge systems.
Keywords: Reincarnation, Yoruba, Nguni, Cultural Heritage, Conceptual Frameworks
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AKINPELU A. OYEKUNLE (Ph.D.) is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology, University of South Africa, Pretoria.His research focuses on advancing African epistemology as a theoretical and pragmatic framework for addressing the global challenge of environmental crisis. Research interest includes Environmental Philosophy, Applied Epistemology, Decoloniality and Development Studies, among others. He plays the piano and enjoys travelling outside philosophical engagements.
EZEKIEL S.N. MKHWANAZI is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology, in the College of Human Sciences, at the University of South Africa, in Pretoria. He obtained his master’s degree in philosophy at Louvain in Belgium and his doctoral degree in 2016 at the University of South Africa under the directorship of Prof Mogobe B. Ramose. The title of his doctoral dissertation is Nkrumah and Levinas in Dialogue over the Primacy of the Other: An African Philosophical Perspective. His research interests include African philosophy, Ubuntu philosophy, Philosophy of Kwame Nkrumah and Emmanuel Levinas, History of Western Philosophy, Social philosophy, Informal logic, Phenomenology and Existentialism. E-mail: Mkhwaesn@unisa.ac.za
Oyekunle, Akinpelu A., and Ezekiel S.N. Mkhwanazi . “Reappraising the Reincarnation Debate in an African Culture: A Conceptual Clarification,” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 5, no.16 (2024): 3157-3168. https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.202451637
© 2024 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Journals. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
