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Essays on Ghanaian Philosophy – EA Ammah –
Essay4 – Summing Up
Ade Sawyer
March 26, 2014
Conclusion
To sum up: morality or ethics means custom or customary. It is
interesting to note that our tradition and culture have
indicated all the ethics involved.
About kple hymns, the main course which constitute the gist of
this thesis, Dr. M. J. Field comments, “Some songs are in Ga,
some in Obutu, some in a mixture of both. Many of the songs are
in the extinct Obutu language. It is the Obutu songs which
betray the greatest number of the dead gods, and it is the Obutu
songs which show the greatest interest in nature—lagoons,
rivers, trees, rain, and win. The songs which are in Ga are
hardly interesting or worth recording” (The Religion and
Medicine of the Ga People, [1937] pp.16, 18, 19).
The excerpts above [by Dr. Field] represent the accepted views
of many Europeans. But from what we have demonstrated in the
preceding times, it can be realized that those views are not
factually and wholly right or true or not applicable to Ghanaian
thought.
Dr. Field’s invective view or comment on [the] Ga form of Kple
songs is unfounded—based on hasty and wrong estimation—or lack
of proper information. She, like those who had maliciously
spoken against the Ga people and the language and are still
spitefully doing so, has done a great disservice to the Ga
people.
This is nothing less than ‘persecution.’ But as the ideal of the
Ga people is towards peace and unity, they by nature “take
pleasure in persecution” (2 Corinthians, 12.10); “and being
reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it” (1
Corinthians 4.12). And the satisfying and concrete point is that
most of the hymns which expound Ghanaian thought are in the Ga
language.
It is a source of pride and satisfaction and a great credit to
our thinkers that their thought is reflected or mirrored in the
view that “the unity of all life, the mysterious harmony of the
least and the nearest with the greatest and most remote, the
conviction that life of the Universe pulsated in all its parts
were so familiar to that ancient cosmic consciousness as to
modern biology and psychology” (Samuel Angus, The Mystery
Religions and Christianity, p. x).
Metaphysics is defined as the science of the first cause, of a
cause which has no other causes behind it, or the science of the
ultimate principles independent of other principles.” (The
British Ency. Vol. 7, p. 161) or “The one unlimited substance”
(Spinoza). This reminds us of the Ghanaian notion of the sea. A
yearly recital on the feast of the god Blafo in honour, praise,
and eternal bountifulness of the sea (Bosrobo) is: The year has
come round, “the sea is not dried up (Bosrobo nke ye da).”
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Best Regards
Ade
http://adesawyerr.wordpress.com
http://twitter.com/adesawyerr
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