Kwasi Wiredu
Distinguished University Professor

Kwasi Wiredu is currently Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy in the University of South Florida , Tampa , where he has taught since 1987. He was born in Ghana and studied Philosophy at the University of Ghana (B.A. 1958), and Oxford (B.Phil.1960). He taught at the University of Ghana for 23 years (from 1961 to 1984). He has held visiting professorships at the University of California , Los Angeles (1979-1980), University of Ibadan , Nigeria (1984) University of Richmond , Virginia (N.E.H. Distinguished Professor, Spring 1985), Carleton College , Minnesota (Donald J. Cowling Visiting Professor, Fall 1986) and Duke University , North Carolina (1994-95 and 1999-2001). He has also held fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1985) and the National Humanities Center, North Carolina (Spring 1986).

He has published articles in Logic, Epistemology and African Philosophy and has written entries in encyclopedias and anthologies. His book Philosophy and an African Culture was published by Cambridge University Press in 1980. Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies was jointly edited by him and Kwame Gyekye and published in 1992 by the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, New York . His Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective, ( Bloomington : Indiana University Press) appeared in 1996. He also edited A Companion to African Philosophy, published by Blackwell in 2004. Kwasi Wiredu was a member of the Committee of Directors of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies from 1983-1998.

His study of the still influential colonial accounts of African thought has led him to raise some fundamental questions about philosophy and culture and, in particular, about the philosophical conditions of inter-cultural dialogue. Investigation encounters intersections with epistemological and ethical issues.

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