UBUNTU:

CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT AN AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY AGAINST TRADITIONAL WESTERN PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

This article intends to question the status of philosophy and to understand the way in which African philosophy was placed outside the concept of traditional Western philosophy, highlighting some points where they oppose or distance themselves and, from this, highlight their importance. In this framework of African philosophy stands out the use of the term Ubuntu, which is considered one of the founding terms of African ethical philosophy and represents a socio-cultural, spiritual and political praxis, used to conceptualize the philosophy that permeates social life, establishing a community ethics that points to a complex character of a philosophy that is immanent and at the same time transcendent to the individual, being related to both human and non-human through its conception of a biocentric and ancestral existence, being linked to the sensitive and the intelligible concomitantly, a fact that clashes with the concept chosen by Eurocentric philosophical thought. To achieve the intended objective, the philosophical method was used to revise concepts and the history of philosophy itself through important names in the west through exploratory research with bibliographic focus and an approach that starts from philosophical and historical speculation, using the main names of African philosophy and the history of philosophy in the West.