This important book provides readers with a critical and vivid account of hermeneutics as a means of cultural and political liberation in African philosophy. First, Ernst Wolff presents the nature of hermeneutics and assesses its role in African philosophical traditions. Second, he offers a fresh and thoughtful reading of some of its major representatives. Combining rigorous argumentation with a rare clarity of expression, this well-researched and brilliantly written book will be of enormous value and significance to students and scholars of philosophy and the social sciences. - Kasereka Kavwahirehi, University of Ottawa Ernst Wolff has written a book that vastly expands the boundaries of African Philosophy by doing what is rarely done in the discipline: taking seriously the ideas and discourses of individual African thinkers and engaging them at the most granular level. Henceforth, it is impossible for anyone who practices or writes about hermeneutics as a philosophical method and mode of thinking to claim ignorance of Africans place in it. With sophisticated analysis, brilliant summaries that never dumb down the complexities of his chosen thinkers arguments, and critical sections that invite deeper conversation with the authors and their readers alike, Wolff introduces us to both self-identified hermeneuticists and others whose works lend themselves to hermeneutic interpretation. He has made us abundantly aware of the riches that await questors into one branch of African philosophy: Hermeneutics. I give this book my highest recommendation. - Olśfmi Tįķwņ, Cornell University
