KWASI WIREDU’S EMPIRICAL EXISTENTIALISM: A CRITICAL EVALUATION

ABSTRACT

Philosophy has concerned itself consistently with the universe and the place of man in it as well as attempting to give interpretation and meaning to life. The various theories of philosophers form the focus around which different schools of philosophy emerges, amongst these schools is “Empiricism” which holds that experience is the ultimate source of knowledge. Among philosophers who hold this view is the Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu who in his second thesis “To be is to be known” explicitly explains his epistemological belief of empiricism. This research elucidates the doctrine of empiricism in its evolution to the era of Wiredu. Much attention will be given to the way Wiredu conceives reality. An attempt will be made to evaluate this concept. With the critical analysis method, this work evaluates Wiredu’s philosophical thesis of knowledge acquisition and existence with the aim of launching a criticism on his empirical position on existence and knowledge as well as point out that reality is more than our perception and that Wiredu’s thesis only subjectivise knowledge and argues that such gives no guarantee for better understanding of knowledge claim in the scope of epistemology.