Hountondji, unanimism, and the possibility of a communal mind

What is wrong with unanimism? And relatedly, we can ask: What is wrong with a communal mind? Both questions, I think, form the fulcrum of many years of Paulin Jidenu Hountondji’s work and his criticism of ethnophilosophy. In this paper, I build on some earlier work in defence of the plausibility of ethnophilosophy as a way of arguing for why ethnophilosophy should be taken seriously. I do this by demonstrating, on the one hand, that the question of unanimism and communal mind, and thus by extension ethnophilosophy, turns on a particular understanding of philosophy and rationality, and on the other hand, how a proper analysis of this understanding provides a ground for conceptualizing the viability of ethnophilosophy. This particular notion of philosophy and rationality, as I will discuss, is central to Hountondji’s criticism, proscription, or argument against ethnophilosophy.