Being and Force: An Exploration in Classical and African Metaphysics

Contemporary discussions in African metaphysics or ontology seem to be indifferent to the place of force in the African thought. This is the case because of two reasons, viz, the rejection of or indifference to ethnophilosophy and the misrepresentation of force ontology by Placide Tempels, by equating force in African thought with being in classical Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics. In this essay, I examine the relation between being and force in the African worldview by exploring the conception of being according to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and Tempels’s conception of force in Bantu ontology. Contrary to Tempels’s claim that being and force are equivalent or identical in African ontology, I argue that what is called “being” in classical metaphysics is best rendered as “thing” in most African languages. As such, being is that which subsists in itself and cannot be identical with force, which inheres in things. Hence, I affirm that force is a key attribute of being or thing and so is a transcendental property of being since force is a positive attribute of all beings, whether animate or inanimate. My approach in this essay is both exploratory and explanatory.