308pp., paperback, Athens, 2002

First published in French in 1997 as Combats pour le Sens.

Hountondji "discusses the ideas, rooted in the work of such thinkers as Husserl and Hountondji’s former teachers Derrida, Althusser, and Ricoeur, that helped shape his critique [of ethnophilosophy]. Applying his philosophical ideas to the critical issues of democracy, culture, and development in Africa today, he addresses three crucial topics: the nexus between scientific extraversion and economic dependence; the nature of endogenous traditions of thought and their relationship with modern science; and the implications - for political pluralism and democracy - of the emergence of 'philosophies of subject' in Africa." from the back cover

“As an object of philosophical discourse, Africa has been constructed, indeed invented according to some, as the ‘Other’ of thought, reason, and history. Today, Africa itself is the site of origin of plural and open discourses on its ancient traditions of thought, modes of knowledge, and on the inexhaustible meanings of the discipline of philosophy ... Paulin Hountondji, whose African Philosophy: Myth and Reality had a considerable impact on African Studies in general, has played an important role in the critical framing and conceptualization of these issues and discourses. In The Struggle for Meaning, he returns to a personal, intellectual itinerary of exemplary value, not for reasons of memory, but for the future; above all for the task of unblocking the horizon, of inscribing issues of identity and culture on a platform of action: notably that of the re-appropriation of the sciences.” Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern University

Paulin J. Hountondji is Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Benin. He is the author of Philosophy: Myth and Reality, on African philosophy.

John Conteh-Morgan is Professor in the Department of French and Italian and African and African-American Studies at Ohio State University.

THE STRUGGLE FOR MEANING, reflections on philosophy, culture, and democracy in Africa, translated by John Conteh-Morgan, foreword by K. Anthony Appiah

: Hountondji (P.)

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