Abstract

My first aim in the chapter is to provide an overview of African epistemology, partly to acquaint the reader with the field and partly to show that introspection as a source of knowledge has yet to receive any sustained consideration in it. In the rest of the essay I expound and motivate as prima facie plausible the characteristically African view that one’s personal identity is essentially (even if not exhaustively) relational in some way and argue that, if that view were true, then introspection would be of limited use in learning particularities about a person, such as who she is as essentially distinct from others and even whether she continues to exist. I conclude that there has been unacknowledged good reason for the African tradition not to have highlighted introspection as a distinct source of knowledge, at least when it comes to knowledge of the self.