Benue State University, Makurdi

Indigenous Esan Epistemology as a Response to the Challenges of Public Morality

Sylvester Idemudia Odia, PhD

Abstract

Our society today echoes the presence of public immorality and conflict of values, as well as a dwindling trust of the public in scientific or traditional epistemological solutions for resolving all issues of life. These call for a more critical look at the ‘other’ as an object of knowledge especially as epistemological conceptions of the ‘other’ form the background to the moral valuation of the person. The prevailing Western theories of representation separates the subject of knowledge from the object of knowledge, and group together the person-object (the ‘other’) and the nonperson-object (plants, animals, things, etc.) as object of knowledge; thus it dehumanizes the ‘other’ and undermines morality which is an essential aspect of the human person. Using the critical and analytic methods, this paper aims at resolving public immorality and conflict of values. To achieve this aim, it critically evaluates the Western epistemic theories of representation to show how they dehumanise the person-object of knowledge, and further analyses Indigenous Esan epistemology which bonds the subject of knowledge with the person-object of knowledge on communal, rational and moral grounds (but this bond does not exist for nonperson-objects that are amoral). Thus, Esan epistemology resolves the dehumanization of the person-object (the ‘other’) and creates the “interactivist” and epistemic intercourse between the subject and the person-object of knowledge that can help resolve these public moral problems and value challenges of our time. If adequately articulated, Esan epistemology can serve as an alternative epistemology to the Western theories of representation.

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