Main Article Content

Reincarnation, Predestination and Moral Responsibility: Critical Issues in Akan Philosophy


H M Majeed

Abstract

African scholars such as Bolaji Idowu and John Mbiti have argued that belief in reincarnation is alien to African thought. However, this article argues that an adequate understanding of the Ghanaian Akan culture points to the presence of reincarnation in Akan, and for that matter African, philosophy. Nevertheless, unlike in Indian philosophy, for instance, where reincarnation depends on the quality of an individual’s moral life and is a means of ensuring moral responsibility, in Akan philosophy reincarnation is not dependent on moral considerations. Yet there is the idea of moral responsibility in Akan philosophy. The article interrogates how moral responsibility, an idea which is ordinarily regarded as reasonable in the presence of free will, is in the case of the Akan held alongside predestination. The article also reveals some serious philosophical difficulties which this Akan conception of moral responsibility generates in respect of the ‘reincarnated’ person.

 

Keywords


Reincarnation, predestination, moral responsibility, Akan philosophy, immortality, dualism, life and death

Journal Identifiers


eISSN: 2076-7714
print ISSN: 0251-043X