Legon honours Emeritus Professor Kwasi Wiredu

On 16 February 2022, the University of Ghana, Legon, held a dignified memorial ceremony to commemorate one of its most distinguished products, Emeritus Professor Kwasi Wiredu, former student, and Professor, of the University.

Prof Wiredu died in the USA in early January 2022, aged 90.

Organized by the Classics and Philosophy Department, the remembrance event was both a live event (in the precincts of the Great Hall of the University) as well as a simultaneous telecast, carried by Zoom to the world, on the internet.

Professor Martin Ajei and his colleagues of the Department of Philosophy and Classics managed, despite the considerable technical difficulties that a Zoom event often presents, to bring Prof Wiredu vividly “back to life”. Anyone who watched the event, and was already an admirer of Prof. Wiredu, would have been grateful to the University for bestowing so much honor on Prof Wiredu (who, after all, left the University more than 40 years ago), those who did not know Wiredu well would no doubt have been given a prod by the event, to seek to learn more about the great brain that the world has sadly been robbed of, through his death.

The work that Prof. Wiredu undertook to make African philosophy not only acceptable to the world but a subject that excited those who are genuinely pursuing a quest for knowledge about life on our planet, was outlined in brief by many of the Professor's fellow philosophers, including his old friend, Prof William Abraham. (whose restrained and dignified revelations about their last conversations, will no doubt arouse much interest!).

Warm tributes were also paid to the late Professor Wiredu by members of Prof Wiredu's family. The first of these announced himself this way:

“Good evening, my name is Agyenim, and as my father would refer to us in our email correspondence – I am his descendant, and he is my ancestor".

“I would like to start by thanking everyone that is participating; the University of Ghana, the faculty, staff and all the people that contributed to this event to honor my father".

“As many of you know, my father gave a lot of lectures and speeches…and for us, his children, his lessons were sometimes conveyed through funny stories or just sitting us down for a calm conversation. But I believe the greatest lesson he taught us, was that he did – without uttering a single word! He did it by simply being who he was.

“I never once heard my father say 'I love you' nor did I ever say it to him. The love he had for us was felt so deeply that there was no need to say it. It was understood. He showed he loved us by his actions, how he treated us, the relationship he had with us.

“Even though he always had a paper to grade, a book to write, a conference to attend, a lecture to teach, and numerous other obligations, he always made time for his family. I would often joke with him about how busy he always was:

“Eiii daddy, nti still wo yԐ busy before no anaa?” And he would reply, “Seesei deԐ me yԐ even busier than before!”


Then I would press on: “How??? Na sԐ last time no, wo kaa sԐ woyԐ so busy sԐ

ԐnnyԐ possible sԐ wobetumi ayԐ any busier?”

Then he would affirm, “Multiple no by bԐyԐ 100!”

(Basically, I would have asked him if he was still as busy with work as before, and he would always reply, “Even busier!” Then we would both laugh hysterically.)

“Whether it was work ethic, being principled, or simply showing kindness, we could always look to him to set the example. By being the incredibly loving and dedicated person he was, he taught us how to be, he taught us how to love. He was the epitome of the saying, “Don't talk about it! Be about it!!!” So let's all be about showing each other love. Thank you!”

It is often observed that fathers have a special relationship with their daughters and Wiredu was no different. The testimony of his daughter, Amanda Wiredu “Awuraakua,” was a gem amongst the genre. She said: “I am honored to be here today to present this tribute to my Dad. I would like to thank all the gathered dignitaries, the faculty and students, friends and family.

“To tell the story of Kwasi Wiredu is to talk about family. He was a consummate family man. A man who cared deeply about his whole family.

“He was born in 1931 and hails from the mountains of Kwahu, Nkwatia. Ghana. West Africa. The Aduana clan. His grandmother was Madame Awo Asantewaa. A woman fiercely protective of her children and grandchildren. His parents were Opanin Daniel Kissi and Madame Rose Dwamenaa- after whom I am named. They were blessed with six children (of whom Kwasi was the second).

“As a young lecturer at the University of Ghana, Kwasi met and married my mother, Mary Gifty Wiredu. He could not have reached the heights that he did without the unmeasurable love and support of our mother Mary. Together they raised five children- Regina Wiredu, Kofi Wiredu, myself, and Agyenim Wiredu. She handled all the practicalities of life; where he left off, she took over and ran everything to perfection. She exemplifies what it is to be a wife and a mother. A wife of many years, together for over 60 years....”

As the daughter of a philosopher, Awuraakua has a philosophy more or less ingrained in her genes, and she admits that “I have had a decades-long discussion with my father on the existence of God, his son Jesus and the Bible. It would go something like this. 'Dad, are you going to come to church with us to learn about God?' Answer: “No, Awuraakua! I already know God. In our culture, we have a saying, a proverb really, that says: 'Obi nnkyerԐ akwadaa Nyame!' This means that nobody shows a child God. Intrinsically, we know that there is a Supreme Being.”

“Okay, Dad”, I would say, “let's go to church and learn more about him and the Bible.' Then he would say, “Who wrote the Bible?” I would reply, “I don’t really know but I do know that the Bible is the inspired word of God” Then he might say, “Who told you that?” Again, I would have to say “I don’t really know!” Then. he would say, “Have you read the Bible?” I would have to, at that point, admit that I had not. He would then state: “I have read the Bible from cover to cover. It is a great book. I have nothing against it. It inspires good behavior in people of Non-African descent. In a way, it is similar to Greek mythology, Zeus etc.”

“I would be saddened. I would tell him, “Daddy listen! Jesus came to save us!” Finally, he would say, “Look here, some people came to our country to tell us this good word. It says amongst other things, don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t covert etc. At the same time, they told us this, their friends accompanying them did all those things. How do you explain that?

Then he would say, “They say that we are wrong. We worship idols and do incorrect illogical things. But tell me this: “You want me to believe that a snake gave a woman an apple and now humanity is in trouble?”

“Yes Dad!”

“You want me to believe that there was an immaculate conception and Jesus appeared?”

“Yes Dad.”

“No Awurakua. I will not exchange my so-called illogical beliefs for your illogical beliefs”.

“This went on for decades, decades. Now, one fine morning, during his breakfast, I was asking my father questions to which he was answering nothing. I kept repeating myself from the kitchen. Still nothing. I went to check up on him, only to find him unresponsive. No pulse, no respiration, verbally unresponsive. I started CPR and immediately called my aunt. She said, “Give me a minute- I will pray for him right now”. She said Johnson Emmanuel Kwasi Wiredu- I command your spirit to return to your body in the name of Jesus. I bind the spirit of death.

“Folks, he woke up! God loved him regardless of the way he related to normal Christian practices. God loved him because God loves good people and he was a good man.”

“I have one last tribute from my sister, Ms. Regina Wiredu. She says: “Our Treasure is now safe with his maker. A man of few words and immeasurable consequence. He despised injustice and was never afraid to speak or write about it. His sense of humor was a close second to his sense of duty to his country, family, and work. I have to admit that I often misdeed his jokes because they were so often encased in his enormous intellect. This brilliant, caring, funny, and equally gentle force was the man that I had the privilege and honor to call my father. I am forever grateful, but incredibly broken... Dad, may God wrap his arms around you and keep you in perfect peace and rest.”

Wasn't Kwasi Wiredu fortunate to give birth to children who could so thoroughly
assimilate what their father was about? Talking about what made Wiredu tick, I am glad to notify my readers that despite writing and philosophizing in English, he was also quite well-known in the philosophical circles of the French-speaking world. On 11 January 2022, a long, laudatory obituary about him appeared in the leading newspaper of the French-speaking world, Le Monde. Written by Séverine Kodjo-Grandvaux, the Le Monde obituary said:
[Kwasi Wiredu was] “one of the most important African philosophers....

Born under British colonization, Kwasi Wiredu, from a modest family, began his studies in philosophy at the University of Ghana, before joining Oxford, where, in 1960, he defended a doctoral thesis devoted to "knowledge, truth and reason”.

“Then he taught for more than twenty years at the University of Ghana, from 1961 to 1984, before being recruited in 1987 by the University of South Florida, in Tampa, as professor emeritus. Engaged in the debate on the African philosophy of the 1970s, Kwasi Wiredu [was] the one who most insisted on the need for a "conceptual decolonization".

“A specialist in logic, epistemology and analytical philosophy, the author of Philosophy and an African Culture (1980) sought to understand, in line with Bertrand Russell, the influence of the syntax of languages on thought. According to him, linguistic structures “influence” our ways of conceiving reality. “

“[But] far from rejecting everything that comes from the West, Kwasi Wiredu [called] for vigilance so as not to tame the African realities of European conceptions. What interested him was, by translating into his Akan mother tongue the concepts and conceptual dualisms that run through the history of philosophy such as the soul and the body to distinguish those which have a universal scope from those which are related to the languages in which they are expressed.

“Through numerous articles and his book Cultural Universals and Particulars; An African Perspective (1996), Kwasi Wiredu demonstrated, against a colonial prejudice still tenacious in his time, that African languages can be philosophical languages and that it can be useful – although not always necessary – to 'exploit the patterns indigenous concepts'.

“In the 1990s, when sub-Saharan Africa opened up to a multiparty system, he designed the African modalities of democracy through the deliberative act. The “consensual democracy” that he advocated supposes that there cannot be irreconcilable social interests, but a primary interest shared by all. Here again, it is a question of finding how to reconcile the one and the plural.

“Kwasi Wiredu was part of all the great philosophical debates that agitated Africa English-speaking as well as French-speaking during the second half of the 20th century. And through the textbooks or encyclopedic works he edited – including the invaluable A Companion to African Philosophy (2004) he worked to promote all the philosophies of the continent and to give African philosophy its full depth, in integrating into its corpus the Islamic, Ethiopian, Egyptian, Greco-Roman heritages.

“And to remember that Origen, Saint-Augustin or Plotinus, for example (who are usually attached to the philosophy of European antiquity, were African. [In other words] Africa has never lived in a vacuum and has always been linked to the rest of humanity.”

That such a generous amount of space was given in Le Monde to a tribute to was, of course, a credit not only to himself but to scholarship, as generated, initially, by the University of Ghana, Legon. So, Old Lady on the Hilltop – congratulations to you, on forming and recognizing – Kwasi Wiredu.

Prof Martin Ajei of the Department of philosophy remarked, whilst addressing the audience at the memorial ceremony, that Legon's philosophers will continue the discourse initiated by Kwasi Wiredu, and thus disprove the Akan notion that Opanin kasa a na asem asa. [What the elderly person says brings the discussion to an end!”]

Yes – endless discussion is what Wiredu would have wished on his students and fellow teachers. And, in truth, no one who has tasted the deep waters of Kwasi's “Pierian spring” could expect anything else.

May he rest in perfect peace.

[Kwasi Wiredu was] “one of the most important African philosophers.

Born in Kumasi in 1931, under British colonization, Kwasi Wiredu, from a modest family, began his studies in philosophy at the University of Ghana, before joining Oxford, where, in 1960, he defended a doctoral thesis devoted to "knowledge, truth and reason”.

“Then he taught for more than twenty years at the University of Ghana, from 1961 to 1984, before being recruited in 1987 by the University of South Florida, in Tampa, as professor emeritus. Engaged in the debate on the African philosophy of the 1970s, Kwasi Wiredu [was] the one who most insisted on the need for a "conceptual decolonization".

“A specialist in logic, epistemology and analytical philosophy, the author of Philosophy and an African Culture (1980) sought to understand, in line with Bertrand Russell, the influence of the syntax of languages on thought. According to him, linguistic structures “influence” our ways of conceiving reality.

“[But] far from rejecting everything that comes from the West, Kwasi Wiredu [called] for vigilance so as not to tame the African realities of European conceptions. What interested him was, by translating into his Akan mother tongue the concepts and conceptual dualisms that run through the history of philosophy – such as the soul and the body – to distinguish those which have a universal scope from those which are related to the languages in which they are expressed.

“Through numerous articles and his book Cultural Universals and Particulars; An African Perspective (1996), Kwasi Wiredu demonstrated, against a colonial prejudice still tenacious in his time, that African languages can be philosophical languages and that it can be useful – although not always necessary – to 'exploit the patterns indigenous concepts'.

“In the 1990s, when sub-Saharan Africa opened up to a multiparty system, he designed the African modalities of democracy through the deliberative act. The “consensual democracy” that he advocated supposes that there cannot be irreconcilable social interests, but a primary interest shared by all. Here again, it is a question of finding how to reconcile the one and the plural.

“Kwasi Wiredu was part of all the great philosophical debates that agitated Africa – English-speaking as well as French-speaking during the second half of the 20th century. And through the textbooks or encyclopedic works he edited – including the invaluable A Companion to African Philosophy (2004) he worked to promote all the philosophies of the continent and to give African philosophy its full depth, in integrating into its corpus the Islamic, Ethiopian, Egyptian, Greco-Roman heritages.

“And to remember that Origen, Saint-Augustin or Plotinus, for example (who are usually attached to the philosophy of European antiquity, were African. [In other words] Africa has never lived in a vacuum and has always been linked to the rest of humanity.”