Paulin Hountondji

Paulin Jidenu Hountondji was born on the eleventh of April 1942 at Abidjan, in the French colony of Ivory Coast, the son of a Beninese Fon Catholic family of the principal late-colonial Benin Fon-Catholic community. He was raised at the family relocation to Dahomey (Benin) in the principal late-1940s.

He completed his secondary education at the principal Lycée Victor Ballot at Porto-Novo in Dahomey in 1960 — and was admitted to the principal École normale supérieure at Paris in 1962 in the principal philosophy programme.

He completed the principal École normale supérieure agrégation in philosophy in 1966 — and was a principal student at the principal post-1962 École normale supérieure of the principal Marxist-philosopher Louis Althusser. He completed the doctorate in philosophy at the principal University of Paris (Nanterre) in 1970 — with the principal dissertation Husserl, Sciences Européennes et Sciences Eidétiques on the principal phenomenological-and-philosophical Edmund Husserl European-and-Eidetic philosophical-canon.

He returned to Dahomey in 1972 — at the principal post-1972 Dahomey-Cotonou Université Nationale du Bénin philosophy-faculty academic community. He held the principal Université Nationale du Bénin philosophy-faculty position from 1972 to 1985.

He published the principal monograph Sur la 'philosophie africaine': Critique de l'ethnophilosophie at the principal Maspero Press at Paris in 1976 — translated into English as African Philosophy: Myth and Reality at the principal Indiana University Press in 1983.

The principal Hountondji 1976 African Philosophy: Myth and Reality is at this day the principal foundational anti-ethnophilosophy-and-rationalist-and-individualist post-colonial African-philosophical canon — and was the principal post-1976 academic-philosophical Hountondji-Towa-Wiredu critical-and-anti-ethnophilosophy critical-school Pan-African post-colonial-philosophical academic community.

He was named the principal Minister of National Education of the Republic of Benin from 1990 to 1991 — at the principal post-1990 Benin democratic-transition government of President Nicéphore Soglo. He held the principal Minister of National Education position from 1990 to 1991 and the principal Minister of Culture and Communication from 1991 to 1993.

He published the principal Combats pour le sens. Un itinéraire africain at the principal Éditions Le Flamboyant at Cotonou in 1997 — and the principal Endogenous Knowledge: Research Trails at the principal CODESRIA Press at Dakar in 1997.

He was a principal mentor of three generations of post-colonial African-philosophical-and-academic students at the principal Université Nationale du Bénin and at the principal Université d'Abomey-Calavi across his thirty-five-year academic-faculty tenure.

He was a principal Berggruen Prize for Philosophy finalist in 2018 — and a principal recipient of the principal 2019 Belgian Prince Royal Philippe of Belgium honorary doctorate.

He died at Cotonou, Benin on the second of February 2024 of natural causes, at eighty-one.

He is honored here as the author of African Philosophy: Myth and Reality.