REVIEWS 403 coastal Kenya, from the completion of the Uganda railway and the choice of Nairobi as the territorial capital. But those developments lie beyond the time limits of this book, although the author warns that ' the youth of the coast envied the material advantages which Western culture and technology offered. Therefore they aspired for the very changes which their elders dreaded ' (p. 208). The Harrow-educated Sultan Abdu'l-Hamid in Zanzibar was to show the possible combination of Islamic and ' modern elements' in his government school, but educa- tion remains a battleground in Swahili society again down to the present day. This book may be marred by its title, but it is thoroughly researched and winds together the past and present of the Swahili in challenging ways. DONAL B. CRUISE O'BRIEN KWAME GYEKYE: An essay on African philosophical thought: the Akan conceptual scheme, xvi, 246 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. £27.50 ($39.50). Professor Gyekye's project is to develop a contemporary African philosophy based upon the ' intellectual foundations of African culture and experience'. Because he is writing in the context of the continuing debate about what African philosophy actually is, he is careful to stake out his territory with reference to alternate approaches to his subject. He seems to be seek- ing a middle ground: he criticizes such philos- ophers as Hountondji and Wiredu for abandon- ing their African heritage and for seeking merely to contribute to Western philosophical discourse. On the other hand, he insists on the essential role of individual thinking in the cre- ation of collective knowledge, therefore seeming to join them in rejecting an ethnophilosophical approach. For example, Gyekye sees proverbs, which exist as part of the collective body of knowledge of a given society, as the condensed and refined expressions of individual thinkers and wise men who have reflected upon human experience. Gyekye's method is to take the products of these historical reflections, as found in proverbs and similar material such as myths, folktales and custom, and to subject them to analysis in a Western frame of philosophical reference. Thus he analyses Akan material in terms of such concepts as causality, personhood, destiny, free will, responsibility, ethics, and the relationships between the individual and the social order. By following this method, Gyekye succeeds in achieving his goal of systematically introducing Akan ideas into contemporary philosophical discourse. Although the aims of this exercise are clear and the results engaging, Gyekye's approach raises several conceptual and methodological questions. One of these touches upon the sub- title of this book: what in fact constitutes the ' Akan conceptual scheme'? Is it composed of the totality of those past reflections referred to above, or is it Gyekye's reflections upon these reflections, during which process he imposes a logic and order on material which was formerly full of contradictions? This question emerges from a historical concern; it is not intended to cast doubts on the legitimacy of imposing such order on a set of concepts, if one's aim is to introduce them into contemporary philosophi- cal discourse. On the other hand, it seems clear that African traditional philosophy did not place great emphasis on logical order. Perhaps, as some would argue, this absence of order was a function of the absence of literacy. However, perhaps it was because the emphasis was con- sciously placed elsewhere. I recall a conversation with a young Malian acquaintance some years ago who told me that he was once seriously reprimanded for citing a proverb in a conversation with his father, a man locally reputed for his wisdom, who admonished his son that he should never quote a proverb until he had lived it. Gyekye is of the opinion that Akan philosophical thought was directly related to lived experience, although he seems to view the primary role of proverbs as aiding in the elucidation of concepts and ideas. His own methodology may have led him to this conclusion; his conversations with his inform- ants derived from the theoretical questions he posed, such as, ' What is destiny?" (p. 65). This kind of question can only result in theoretical answers, even if proverbs are quoted in the discussion for purposes of illustrating particular points. The Malian example suggests that proverbs are more to be lived than thought about, certainly lived before thought about! If we fol- low this lead, African traditional philosophy might be described as more interested in the acquisition of lived wisdom than its logical coherence, and any subsequent analysis of this philosophy might usefully shift its emphasis from the systematizing of ideas to exploring the process of their transmission. This philosophi- cal approach makes life into a teacher, and each individual learns according to the vagaries of everyday experience. Wisdom derives from active engagement with life, not from grasping an overarching scheme of concepts and ideas. Hountondji has argued that philosophy is not constituted as a system but as a historical pro- cess. Gyekye's book contributes to this process by seeking to introduce certain Akan ideas into current philosophical debate with a view to developing a sound African philosophy which is in communication with its own past. He pro- ceeds, in effect, by lifting ideas out of their oral context and placing them in a literate context and subjecting them to critical analysis. It is not the intention of this review to condemn this procedure, which may in any case be unavoid- able, an inevitable consequence of operating within what Robin Horton has called the ' open predicament', in which ideas become objecti- fied and are freely exchanged. At the same time, however, we should perhaps look more closely at the dynamics of the ' closed predicament' which produced these African ideas. What, for example, would be the contemporary philosophical implications of exploring histori- cally the process of the acquisition and trans- mission of wisdom in Africa as well as the logic of its content? This process is also one of the ' foundations of African culture and