EMOTION AS A FEATURE OF ARISTOTELIAN EUDAIMONIA AND AFRICAN COMMUNITARIANISM

Abstract

Taking it to be the case that there are reasonable grounds to compare African communitarianism and Aristotle’s eudaimonia, or any aspect of African philosophy with some ancient Greek philosophy,1;2 I suggest that it is worthwhile to revisit an interesting aspect of interpreting Aristotelian virtue and how that sort of interpretation may rehabilitate the role of emotion in African communitarianism. There has been debate on whether Aristotle’s ethic is exclusively committed to an intellectualist version or a combination of intellectualism and emotion. There are good arguments for holding either view. The same has not quite been attempted with African communitarianism. This paper seeks to work out whether African communitarianism can be viewed on an exclusively emotional basis or a combination of emotion and intellect.