African Journal of Philosophy and Religious Studies

African Journal of Philosophy and Religious Studies ISSN 1621-4587 Vol. 5 (4), pp. 001-009, April, 2019. © International Scholars Journals

Review

A comparative analysis of causality in Buddhism and African philosophy

Chris O. Akpan

Department of Philosophy, University of Calabar, Calabar- Nigeria. Email:[email protected]

Accepted 08 March, 2019

Abstract

The principle that everything has a cause is very fundamental in all aspects of life to every culture. Both the Buddhist and the traditional African believe that nothing happens by chance. The Buddhist conception of causality, hinged on the theory of ”dependent origination”, appears to be concerned with the human (physical) world with suffering as its prime focus while the traditional African thought does not limit causation to the empirical world but freely blends and relates empirical causation with supernatural causation. This paper in its critical comparison posits that both positions are fraught with some logical and metaphysical difficulties which in turn seem to blur and retard the people’s knowledge of the external world, thus acting as an albatross to scientific development and progress.