Sophie Oluwole (1935-2018) was a Nigerian scholar and the first woman to earn a PhD in philosophy in her country. She not only placed Nigeria’s rich Yoruba philosophical tradition on the intellectual map, she also helped redefine African philosophy, a field dominated by men.
As a scholar of cultural studies with a focus on francophone and west Africa, I recently co-authored, in French, a book called African Intellectual Sensitivities: From Western Discourse to African Voices (1988-2022). One of its chapters is devoted to Oluwole and African women intellectuals.
She did much more than break gender barriers. By placing Nigeria’s Yoruba thought in dialogue with the famed western philosophers like Socrates, she challenged the assumption that African philosophy was merely folklore. To her it was a rigorous intellectual tradition.
Who gets to think?
For centuries, western philosophy presented itself as the universal measure of reason. Beginning with German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), influential strands of western philosophy described Africa as “outside history”.
The continent was said to lack philosophy because it lacked a written tradition comparable to ancient Greece’s. Rational thought, many argued, needed text.
It was against this assumption that Oluwole built her work. She did not simply ask for African thinkers to be added to reading lists. She questioned the criteria used to define philosophy. In the process, she challenged a long-standing intellectual hierarchy.
A philosopher between worlds
Born in 1935 in what is today Ondo State, Sophie Bosede Olayemi Oluwole came of age during the final decades of British rule and the intense debates that would culminate in independence in 1960.
Like many girls of her generation, she initially trained as a teacher. But her intellectual curiosity pushed her further. She enrolled to study philosophy at the University of Ibadan, then the country’s premier university. It was an unusual choice for a Nigerian woman in the 1960s. She earned her PhD there in 1984.
Pursuing a doctoral degree took persistence in an academic culture overwhelmingly dominated by men. Her path reflects both the new educational opportunities after independence and the structural barriers women still faced in higher education.
Her intellectual career unfolded from the 1970s through the early 2000s, while Nigerian universities were wrestling with their post-independence identity. After 1960, several institutions sought to Africanise curricula and leadership. Yet philosophy departments often remained anchored in European traditions.
Oluwole herself was Yoruba, one of the largest ethnic and language groups in west Africa. The Yoruba were concentrated mainly in south-western Nigeria but also present in Benin and Togo.
Yoruba thinking is structured around a cosmology linking the visible and invisible worlds, ancestors and descendants, individual destiny and communal responsibility. Knowledge is not separated from ethics or spirituality; wisdom is understood as practical guidance for living well within a web of relationships.
She focused on the corpus of Ifá, a vast body of oral literature linked to ethics, cosmology and reflection on human destiny. At its centre stands Òrúnmìlà, a figure associated with wisdom and knowledge.
For Oluwole, Òrúnmìlà was not just a religious figure. He functioned as a philosopher – a teacher of critical inquiry and moral reasoning whose insights were preserved through disciplined oral storytelling.
She drew comparisons between him and the Greek philosopher Socrates. Socrates left no written work of his own. His ideas were transmitted through dialogue and memory. Why, then, should the spoken word disqualify an African thinker from being recognised as philosophical?
The problem, she insisted, was not Africa’s lack of philosophy. It was the narrow definition of philosophy inherited from Europe – one that privileged written texts and dismissed oral traditions as pre-philosophical. By questioning that definition, Oluwole was not only defending Yoruba thought. She was expanding philosophy itself.
The politics of the spoken
At the centre of Oluwole’s work was a simple but disruptive question: must philosophy be written to exist? In her book Philosophy and Oral Tradition (1997), she argued that African oral texts – including myths, proverbs and Ifá verses – contain structured reasoning and critical reflection, and therefore meet the criteria of philosophical thought. Texts are preserved, cited and institutionalised.
She exposed the colonial logic behind this hierarchy. During the 1800s and early 1900s, European scholars often portrayed Africa as a continent of myth rather than reason.
The absence of classical written texts was interpreted as intellectual absence. But storytelling does not prevent intellectual reasoning. Writing does not automatically produce critical thought. By analysing Ifá verses, Oluwole showed that they contain ethical reasoning, reflection on causality (cause and effect) and debate about human responsibility.
Her work entered into dialogue with broader debates in African philosophy. Thinkers like Benin’s Paulin Hountondji criticised the idea that African philosophy was only a collective worldview. They argued for critical and argumentative traditions. Oluwole demonstrated that such critical reasoning could also be embedded in oral forms.
A trailblazing woman
Oluwole’s work cannot be separated from her position as a woman. Philosophy remains one of the most male-dominated disciplines worldwide.
But Oluwole faced a double challenge. She was a woman in philosophy. She was also an African philosopher confronting Eurocentric standards.
She would become an increasingly public figure, making many TV appearances and speaking engagements, always spurring debate.
Why she matters today
The questions Sophie Oluwole raised remain pressing.
As calls to decolonise knowledge grow, universities around the world are rethinking what they teach. Yet change often focuses on adding authors to the syllabus. The deeper issue concerns the criteria used to define knowledge.
Oluwole’s work invites a more structural reflection. If philosophy is defined too narrowly, inclusion will remain limited. The definition of philosophy itself must be examined.
Her argument also speaks beyond Africa. Many indigenous knowledge systems continue to be marginalised because they are transmitted orally or embedded in ritual and narrative. They are treated as cultural heritage rather than intellectual production.
By defending the philosophical depth of Yoruba thought, Oluwole challenged this hierarchy. She showed that philosophy is not the property of one civilisation. It is a human practice shaped by different media and histories.
Christophe Premat, Professor, Canadian and Cultural Studies, Stockholm University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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