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An Exploration of the Parallels between African and Process Metaphysics: Introducing the Metaphysics of Force and Becoming

This book articulates how African metaphysics (characterized by force) and process metaphysics (characterized by becoming) are similar on several fronts. On the one hand, the vitalist and relational characters of African metaphysics have engrossed researchers as unique and original to Africa, but they have yet to articulate where this leads – processism. On the other hand, the becoming or event underpinning of process metaphysics which has been the focus of Anglo-American processism, has not courted deserving academic attention, due chiefly to the influence wielded by substance metaphysics. This is the primary research gap which the present book magnifies, and then addresses, while contending for intellectual exchange(s) among specialists in processism, irrespective of the philosophic tradition. To accomplish this, this book admits intercultural philosophy for assessing the principal claims of some African and process philosophers and to bring them into a conversation, with an alternative system of logic in Ezumezu, to mediate thought, theory, and method. This effort assists in addressing the history of misrepresentation and distortion which process metaphysics, as an under-explored tradition, has suffered and endured.

About the Author

Emmanuel Ofuasia

Dr. Emmanuel Ofuasia is Decoloniality Research Group Associate at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He specializes in: Process Ontology, African Philosophy of Religion, African Logic, Ifá Studies, and Animal Rights. He is the most published Nigerian on the subject of Process Ontology and has received research grants from organizations and institutions such as the Birmingham Centre for Philosophy of Religion in conjunction with the John Templeton Foundation and Culture and Animal Foundation (CAF). Dr. Ofuasia’s work has appeared in numerous journals, including Process Studies, and his first monograph, Ìwà: The Process-Relational Dimension to African Metaphysics, was published by Springer Cham in 2024.