Communal philosophy means customary belief, not unanimous assent

Evidence

The very idea of a communal philosophy that is entailed in the notion of particularistic studies of traditional African philosophies might be put in question. It might be suggested that to talk of the Bantu conception of this or the Zulu conception of that is to postulate a unanimity or consensus in philosophical belief among the traditional peoples for which there is not, and probably can never be, sufficient evidence. It is necessary, in response to this, to explain at once that talk of the communal philosophy of an ethnic group does not necessarily imply that the conceptions involved are entertained by all members of the group. What it means is that anybody thoughtfully knowledgeable about the culture will know that such conceptions are customary in the culture though s/he may not subscribe to it. The evidence for a communal philosophy is very much like that for the customs of a culture. In fact, in quite some cases customs are encapsulations of some aspects of a communal philosophy. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 405

Categorization

• DEFINE: Wiredu’s key clarification that ‘communal philosophy’ refers to cultural custom acknowledged by knowledgeable members, not consensus belief held by all.
• DEEPTHINKING: Wiredu’s move dissolves the entire unanimity objection to ethnophilosophy by relocating the evidence base from individual belief to cultural custom — a paradigm-level distinction for how to read collective philosophy.
• XREF: Echoes how other traditions (e.g., customary law scholarship in legal history) treat collective norms as encapsulations rather than universal individual assent.