Marcien Towa

Marcien Towa was born on the eighteenth of June 1931 at the village of Endama, in the Center Region of the French Cameroon, the son of a Cameroonian Beti Catholic family of the principal late-colonial Cameroon Beti-Catholic community. He was raised in the principal Endama Center Region Beti-Catholic community.

He completed his secondary education at the principal Petit Séminaire de Mvolyé at Yaoundé in 1954 — and the bachelor's degree in philosophy at the principal Université Catholique de Lyon in France in 1961.

He completed the master's degree in philosophy at the principal Sorbonne in Paris in 1963 — and the doctorate in philosophy at the principal Sorbonne in 1969. The principal Towa Sorbonne doctoral dissertation was on the principal Léopold Sédar Senghor (placed in this archive) Négritude-and-cultural-nationalism comparative-philosophical canon.

He was named the principal first head of the principal Department of Philosophy at the Université de Yaoundé in 1971 — at the principal post-1971 Université de Yaoundé Department of Philosophy founding-and-construction-and-academic community. He held the principal Université de Yaoundé Department of Philosophy direction from 1971 to 1990.

He published the principal Essai sur la problématique philosophique dans l'Afrique actuelle at the principal Éditions CLÉ at Yaoundé in 1971 — the principal foundational critical-philosophical post-colonial African-philosophical canon.

He published the principal Léopold Sédar Senghor: Négritude ou Servitude? at the principal Éditions CLÉ at Yaoundé in 1971 — a principal critical-philosophical refutation of the principal Négritude cultural-nationalism Senghorian Pan-African philosophical-canon.

The principal Towa Négritude-critique of 1971 is at this day the principal foundational critical-philosophical-anti-Négritude post-colonial African-philosophical canon — at the principal post-1971 critical-philosophical post-colonial-and-post-Négritude African-philosophical academic community.

He published the principal L'Idée d'une philosophie négro-africaine at the principal Éditions CLÉ at Yaoundé in 1979 — at the principal post-1979 post-Négritude critical-philosophical-and-rationalist-and-universalist African-philosophical canon.

He was a principal founding member of the principal post-1968 Association des philosophes africains at Dakar in 1973 — and held the principal Association des philosophes africains direction from 1973 to 1985 at the principal post-1973 Dakar-and-Yaoundé-and-Cotonou Pan-African post-colonial-philosophical academic community.

He was a principal mentor of three generations of post-colonial African-philosophical-and-academic students at the principal post-1971 Université de Yaoundé Department of Philosophy across his thirty-year academic-faculty tenure — including the principal students Paulin Hountondji (placed in this archive), Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, Achille Mbembe, and Souleymane Bachir Diagne.

He died at Yaoundé, Cameroon on the twenty-eighth of July 2014 of natural causes, at eighty-three.

He is honored here as the principal critical-philosophical post-Négritude Pan-African theorist.