Draft:Prof. Agbakoba, J.C.A

Joseph C.A. Agbakoba

Joseph Chukwuemeka (Chemeka) Achike Anthony Agbakoba, born 8 February 1961, is a professor of philosophy at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He has been working mostly around development philosophy and ethics, and is associated with reasonabilism, Afro-constructivism, transcolonial theory, and Africanity as creative self-manifestive identity, among other concepts in contemporary African Thought. He is a 2022 recipient of the prestigious Georg Forster Research Award.

Early Life

Joseph Agbakoba was born at the Holy Rosary Maternity and Hospital at Emekuku, Owerri. The fourth child and first son in a family that would eventually have eight adult siblings. His father, Vincent Chukwuemeka Agbakoba, was at the time Engineer and Manager at the Owerri office of the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN), which later became known as National Electric Power Authority (NEPA). His mother, Josephine Nwanyibuzo Agbakoba, was a schoolteacher, who pursued her entrepreneurial and artistic interests by training in dressmaking and design when the family was resident in Birmingham, England, in the 1950s. By 1965, the family had moved to Port Harcourt and there, Joseph started school at the Santa Maria School, Port Harcourt. In 1967, he represented his school in the Eastern Nigeria Festival of Arts and came second in poetry rendition. In 1968, when Port Harcourt was bombarded and sacked during the Nigerian Civil war, the family moved, eventually settling as IDPs in Ibeme, a tiny village in the Mbano district. His mother helped turn the IDP gathering in the village school buildings into a refugee centre, eligible for relief donations from such organisations as Caritas and the World Council of Churches. Life was tough but young Agbakoba cheerfully embraced IDP and African village life.

After the civil war, the family moved to Enugu, where Joseph completed his primary school education at the Santa Maria school in Enugu, in 1972. He then proceeded to Christ the King College, Onitsha, in 1973, for his secondary education. In 1978, he went to the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife) where he studied history and philosophy for his BA. His MA in Philosophy is also from Ife, where he defended his dissertation in 1987. Thereafter, Agbakoba pursued his writing interests by venturing into journalism, becoming a newspaper Features Editor before joining the staff of the Philosophy Department at the University of Nigeria Nsukka in 1992, as a junior academic. In the following years, he studied for his PhD, receiving it in 1998 from the University of Nigeria Nsukka.

Academic Career

Agbakoba rose through the academic ladder to become senior lecturer in 2000 and professor in 2005. He was head of department of Philosophy from 2007 to 2010, Dean, School of General Studies, 2012 to 2013, Deputy Vice Chancellor at Madonna University, 2013 to 2017.  In 2006/2007 academic year, he lived in Ghana as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cape Coast. From 2010 to 2012, he was resident in Germany as a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at Goethe University, Frankfurt and again resident in Germany (2023-2024), as a Humboldt Foundation awardee at the University of Bayreuth. Agbakoba  has also received many short scholarships, visiting professorships and fellowships, including the Bayreuth Academy Fellowship in the 2019/2020 academic session. Agbakoba was team leader in a Volkswagen Foundation research grant (2005-2009) and philosophy theme leader in a MacArthur Foundation research grant (2022-2023).

He was President of the Nigerian Philosophical Association (2008-2016); a member of the Steering Committee (Committee of Directors, CD) of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP) (2008-2024). Agbakoba is also the Regional Coordinator for Africa for the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (CRVP), Washington DC; and the Vice President for Africa for COMIUCAP (Conférence Mondiale des Institutions Universitaires Catholiques de Philosophie).

Philosophical Ideas

Agbakoba’s philosophical approach is intercultural and cognitively progressivist, based on colligational synthesis and hybridity, especially heterosis (the form of hybrid that is more vigorous than its parent stocks). Colligational (or fusional) synthesis works to bring diverse theses and anti-theses into a harmonious and well functional whole (of many parts) using the various means of balancing, reconciling and harmonizing terms. It contrasts with the Hegelian-Marxian dialectical synthesis in which the anti-thesis absorbs and annihilates the thesis as an existential entity in its march to constitute a new synthesis.

Reasonabilism is the basic metaphysical pillar in Agbakoba’s thoughts. It combines rationality (the principle of consistency) and enabling conative and affective states, captured in his notion of ontological beneficence, which mutually and necessarily reinforce and affirm the being of each other.  Reasonability in an entity/notion can be seen in the radius of consistency-beneficence it displays, that is, a combination of its internal consistency-beneficence and horizon of consistency-beneficence. Agbakoba holds, therefore, that the more reasonabilistic an agent (person or community) is, the more it can attain genuine development.

In his scheme, Afro-constructivism is the perspective that the mindset and mode of scholarship in Africa has to change from being dominantly and principally oppositional, deconstructive and productive of negative knowledge, to being colligational or fusional, integrative, constructive, positively creative and productive of positive knowledge, especially for enhancing development, which is the main challenge and existential concern of contemporary Africans. This change in perspective is crucial because although the oppositional approach was suitable to the anti-colonial and immediate post-colonial era, it is no longer useful. Africa cannot afford to remain in a victimological bind. It must convert her colonial experiences and the colonial deposit that derived from these experiences, into something positive. This is especially crucial because although colonialization is morally indefensible, it is one of those competitive human conditions in which often the unintended consequences for the victims might include exposure to their lack of forms of knowledge/values and the need and means to acquire them for their own survival and development.

Afro-constructivism is associated with reasonabilism and epistemic creativity. The latter refers to any form of innovative or generative act that enables humans gain more truthful information (in the form of facts, insights, perspectives, principles etc.) in any sphere of human existence - from science and technology to the arts, governance, business, sports, etc. Such information can be further used to make life better for humans in specific communities and generally as the case may be. Epistemic creativity is thus ensconced in the generative aspect of human agency and is central to the transformation and development of societies. The Afro-constructivist position advocates for conditions and processes that would enhance epistemic creativity and agential integrity in the education process and society generally. It also advocates moves away from various forms and “false consciousness about the self, its provenance and circumstances” and manifestations of self-deception. which “in turn yields… false knowledge, wrong self-evaluation, wrong values and polices, inadequate interactive skills, and other negatives that have tended to destroy rather than build on the potentially utilizable  deposits of colonization as well as produce counter-development rather than development.”

The foregoing concepts ground trans-colonization and transcolonial theory. This implies going beyond the colonial deposit (including its cultural, and as much as possible  physical, limitations and negativities) without throwing away utilizable elements of the deposit but “by appropriating them via rational evaluation, transforming and adapting them via indigenous creativity, fusing them with indigenous knowledge and creating new forms, expanding the possibilities and realities of knowledge; thus, emerging beyond both the pre-colonial and colonial starting points in an ever forward [cognitively] progressive motion.” His transcolonial theory emphasises agency, its capabilities and potentials, as well as the error of seeing Africans as passive agents in the making of their own history and development (or counter-development).

Within the framework of transcolonial thinking, Africanity (African identity) is not seen as a heritage of immutable essences, a fossilised gift of the ancestors. Heritage is important but it is not the only source of identity. There is also, more importantly for Africa currently, identity as creative self-manifestation; the process and its outcomes (or the lack therein) by which contemporaneous living generations define themselves by their creative output in all aspects of human existence for good or for bad. Creative output of persons in this regard is the basic and authentic statement of who such persons are. Africans as other peoples of the world should be free to rely on their own individual generative capabilities. They should also gain inspiration and utilise materials from their precolonial heritage, the colonial deposit, and other cultures of the world, provided they creatively integrate all these - guided by truth, functionality, and aesthetics. This is already happening with very good outcomes in music (with such genres as Highlife), in fashion design and art, and even in the modernization of traditional herbal remedies.

Agbakoba’s writings and ideas offer a home-grown systematic and comprehensive transcolonial theory of development, which also includes perspectives on freedom, responsibility, productive justice, distributive justice, positive and negative practical justice, and so on.

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