Africa and the Possibility of Philosophy: Paulin Hountondji’s Intellectual Legacy

In this brief memoriam, I argue that Hountondji’s methodological concern over the possibility of African philosophy led him to query the very idea of philosophy as the search for universal knowledge. Hountondji’s lasting legacy thus consists, among other things, in challenging the image of Western philosophy as the repository of universal knowledge. To the contrary, philosophy will come into its own only through the critical construction of culturally and politically unrestricted discourse from different philosophical traditions.