The Philosophical Essence of GẸ̀LẸ̀DẸ́

Abstract

It has been an age-old hot debate, debunking the misconception by the Europeans, out of their Eurocentric gaze on the African continent, that the continents did not have that idea labelled “philosophy.” This paper shows that no people can truly survive, flourish, and qualify to be accorded the full status of possessing a ‘culture’ without having their philosophies and philosophers. Africans are not exempted in this case. Copious evidence has been presented by different African philosophers from different African cultures that the traditional Africans have what is ‘philosophical’ in their archives. With the aid of expository and critical analysis methodological approaches, this paper draws a line of continuum with the preexisting African philosophers, by presenting Yorùbá arts and aesthetics performance named Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́ as one of the ways through which Africans express their philosophy. Being aware of the distinction made that there is the ‘loose’ as opposed to the ‘strict’ sense of philosophy, the paper presents Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́ as not merely qualified as philosophy in the loose sense of it but argues that it is systematic enough to be qualified as philosophy in the strict sense of it. This, the paper does by exposing some elements and essences of Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́ to engender a clear look into how it participates in some of the essential philosophical universalities enough to be accorded as being philosophical in the strict sense of it, in the one hand, and that it contains enough peculiarities about it that should accord it a distinct class in philosophy, on the other hand.