Sage Philosophy and Oral Traditions of Wisdom

Sage philosophy is a research program and a philosophical thesis developed principally by the Kenyan philosopher Henry Odera Oruka, of the University of Nairobi, beginning with fieldwork conducted from the mid-1970s and most fully presented in his edited volume Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy (1990). Oruka's method was to identify, through community recommendation, individuals recognized within their own societies as sages, or wise elders (in Kiswahili, mtaalamu or mzee, and in Dholuo and other Kenyan languages, comparable terms of respected elder-wisdom), and then to conduct extended, recorded philosophical interviews with them, translated and transcribed, probing their views on causation, the nature of the person, ethics, God, and death, with the explicit aim of distinguishing sages who merely repeated received communal wisdom (whom Oruka labeled "folk sages") from those who subjected inherited beliefs to independent critical scrutiny, sometimes reaching conclusions that departed sharply from prevailing communal consensus (whom Oruka called "philosophic sages").