Double Lecture on African Philosophy

Alena Rettová (Universität Bayreuth)

Language in African Philosophy

Alena Rettová is professor for “African and Afrophone Philosophies” at the University of Bayreuth and principal investigator of the ERC Project “Philosophy and Genre: Creating a Textual Basis for African Philosophy”. She holds degrees in Philosophy, German Studies and African Studies as well as a PhD from the Charles University in Prague. In her PhD research, she worked with texts in six African languages (Swahili, Shona, Ndebele, Lingala, Bambara, and Yorùbá). The result was published in 2007 under the title Afrophone Philosophies: Reality and Challenge. After 14 years of teaching and research at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) in London, where she taught among others Swahili literature and African philosophy, Prof. Rettová joined the University of Bayreuth in April 2020. Her research then turned to further African languages, such as Ciluba, Kinyarwanda and Wolof. One of her recent articles is entitled “Experience and Text: Toward an African-Language Phenomenology” (2023).

Albert Kasanda (Universität Bayreuth)

Towards a Decolonial Political Philosophy

Albert Kasanda, PhD, is a senior researcher at the Department of political philosophy of the Institute of Philosophy at the Czech Academy of Sciences, in Prague. He is also member of an ERC research project focused on African philosophy and genre at Bayreuth university. Dr Kasanda has a deep expertise in intercultural philosophy and comparative philosophy, as well as African and Latin American philosophies. His current research focuses on African political philosophy, civil society, intercultural philosophy, and genre theory. He is the author of John Rawls: Les bases philosophiques du libéralisme politique (2005), and editor of two volume on African and comparative philosophy: Pour une pensée africaine émancipatrice (2004), and Dialogue interculturel: cheminer ensemble vers un autre monde possible (2013). His recent books include Contemporary African social and political philosophy: Trends, debates, and challenges (Routledge 2018); (edited with M. Hrubec) Africa in a Multilateral World: Afropolitan Dilemmas (Routledge 2022); and Africká filosofie společnosti, together with J. Svoboda, and M. Hrubec (2022).