Wiredu’s Consensus

A few days ago, one of Africa’s greatest minds of political philosophy passed away. The body of work that the Ghanaian philosopher, Kwasi Wiredu, leaves behind is expansive and urgent. In fact, over—at least—four decades ago, Wiredu had been concerned with that concept of decoloniality now publicly in fashion. Wiredu’s own recognition was that it had become essential to think more carefully about the ways many of our most important ideas concerning political life—indeed, about the nature of human existence in general—have come, unjustifiably, to be dominated by ideals that are specific to the historical experiences of merely a handful of countries in Western Europe and North America.