Philosophizing from Igbo Life-Worlds:
Phenomenological Reflections on African Thought
Interview with Dominic Ekweariri
Language of the Interview: English
Conducted by Monika Rohmer
Posted on
Dr. Dominic Ekweariri approaches “Places of African Philosophies” through phenomenology’s core claim that human existence is being-in-the-world: meaning arises within lived contexts (Lebenswelt). Against Eurocentric universals, he argues that African philosophy must speak from African life-worlds—its environments, languages, and practices—rather than as a derivative of Greek-Latin categories.
Philosophy’s task, he stresses, is not to deliver final answers but to unsettle what seems self-evident, exposing invisible structures of exclusion (regional, linguistic, gendered) and opening space for more just social orders.
Drawing on his native Igbo context, Ekweariri highlights performative modes of philosophizing—councils of elders rich in proverbs and dialogue, music and poetry that evoke reflection, and sculptural archives of communal memory—many of which risk erasure under globalization and precarity. As a priest and phenomenologist, he sees tensions yet no contradiction between faith, reason, and African experience: their common ground is human experience, which he proposes as the point of departure connecting philosophy, theology, and the plural places where thinking takes flesh.
The following questions are posed in the interview:
- What could it mean to study places of African philosophies from a phenomenological perspective?
- How do you address the problem of unequal power relations in philosophy and what can we gain from tackling with this?
- What could it mean to philosophize in Igbo or other African languages?
- What kind of role do the Catholic Church and theology play for your way of doing philosophy?