Post-colonial Africa continues to grapple with a persistent identity crisis rooted in the historical experiences of slavery, colonialism, cultural erasure, systemic oppression, and the imposition of foreign values and institutions. These forces have produced a condition of psychological dividedness in which Africans are caught between their worldviews and Western paradigms, resulting in cultural dislocation, dependency, and loss of authentic self-definition. This work interrogates this African identity crisis through the lens of Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy of authentic existence. Drawing particularly on Kierkegaard’s notions of subjectivity, choice, commitment, and responsibility, the work argues that authenticity offers a viable philosophical framework for reclaiming African selfhood. Kierkegaard’s critique of rationalism, conformity, and “the crowd” is applied to the African context to expose the dangers of uncritical imitation, external validation, and ideological dependence. It contends that African revitalization requires critical self-reflection, contextualized decision making, and the courage to assume responsibility for collective choices rather than reliance on imported models. By embracing subjective truth, Africans can resist Eurocentric narratives and internalized oppression, assert their right to self-definition, and reconstruct identity grounded in lived experience and indigenous values while remaining open to universal engagement.
Written by:
Christian Nwadinihu
Department of Philosophy
Faculty of Humanities
Imo State University, Owerri, Nigeria
cnwadinihu@yahoo.com
christiannwadinihu@gmail.com
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-3415-5491