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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Since the origins of this book date back to 1973, the list of individuals and institutions that have made it possible is a long one. But they all deserve mention here, because without their contributions and support it would never, and could never, have been written. I begin by expressing my enduring gratitude to the Central Research Committees of the University of Lagos and the Obafemi Awolowo University (formerly University of Ife), Nigeria, for affirming the credibility of the original research projects on Yoruba thought and philosophy, and for providing funding that was indispensable to their completion. Throughout the more than a decade that these projects involved, the commitment, communications skills, and scholarship demonstrated by my student, colleague, and friend Olufemi Osatuyi, the Chief Research Assistant on the project, was remarkable . He deserves the highest of accolades for his love of his native Yoruba culture and for the objectivity with which he was able to approach and to interpolate that culture on scholarly grounds. My friend, colleague, and coauthor of my previous volume on Yoruba philosophy, the late J. Olubi Sodipo, also deserves a very special mention for both supporting and participating in the project from the very first day I took up the position of Lecturer in Philosophy at the then University of Ife. In the town of Ijan-Èkı̀tı̀, where my arm of the overall project was sited, there would of course have been no research done without the cooperation and support of Oba J. A. Obarinde, the Onijan of Ijan-Èkı̀tı̀. And most importantly I am profoundly indebted to the fifteen gentlemen, herein referred to generally as onı́s .e .̀gùn, masters of medicine, herbalists, or traditional doctors, who at various points summoned up the patience, knowledge, and insight required while participating in the numerous discussions that produced the corpus of materials that I have drawn upon in order to construct this text. The days, weekends, and months spent in Ijan in their company constitute a truly memorable period of my life, when I x | ACKNOWLEDGMENTS was afforded the luxury of being taught by people in another culture how they perceived themselves, one another, and the world in which they lived. This second book would never have been undertaken, much less finished , without my initial year (1995–96) as a resident Fellow of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, and for these succeeding four years as a nonresident Fellow of the same institution. The generous, consistent support of its director, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and of my colleague in the Department of Afro-American Studies at Harvard, Anthony Appiah, provided me with the freedom, incomparable resources, and intellectual stimulation that are the marks of truly first-rate scholars in a firstrate academic institution. Among my fellow Fellows at the Du Bois, one who must be singled out is Mary Hamer. Mary took the time not only to read, but also to ponder and constructively criticize elements of the manuscript’s form and content . Among the administrative staff of the Du Bois Institute, Richard Newman , the Fellows Officer and a serious scholar in his own right, deserves my most sincere thanks—not just for welcoming my very persistent presence , but for the friendship, warmth, and wit which he seems able to dispense in limitless quantities. Gay Mekhissi and Lisa Thompson offered comprehensive secretarial counsel and support. I cannot thank enough the two Harvard students who at one point acted simultaneously as my research assistants, Alison Moore and Ike Gbadegesin, for the hard work and serious commitments they made toward completion of my project. Among the many colleagues who were kind enough to peruse the manuscript in draft form, several deserve very special mention. Kwasi Wiredu toiled for months to come to terms with it as a comprehensive whole, and the literally hundreds of constructive comments and suggestions he made have definitely made a significant difference to the overall quality of the ‘finished’ product. My friend and colleague from those Ife years, Karin Barber, also read through the manuscript with a thoroughness I did not expect and cannot recompense, except to thank her for the constructive comments that also led to significant revisions in the original text. Another old friend from the Ife days, Rowland Abiodun, took pains to make sure the Yoruba translated passages cohered with the adjoining textual commentary. W. V. O. Quine was once again kind enough to read through portions...

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