A systematic account of African conceptions of the meaning of/in life

Abstract

In the growing literature on meaning in/of life, not a lot has been done to address the question of the meaning of/in life from an African perspective. Thus, in this article I attempt to bridge this intellectual gap by taxonomising and justifying some plausible theories of meaning in African thought in more depth than is found in African philosophical literature. Achieving this would involve proffering answers to the question: what are the African conceptions of the meaning in/of life? To do this, I first distinguish between meaning in life, which involves those moments of meaningfulness that may dot a person’s existence, and the meaning of life, which involves the meaningfulness of a person’s life considered as a whole. From clues in the literature, I curate four salient accounts of meaningfulness, viz. the African God-purpose theory of meaning, the vital-force theory of meaning, the communal normative function theory of meaning, and the consolationist theory of meaning.