Abstract:
Postmodernism, a philosophical position that advocates the relativity of truth, knowledge,
values and morality, is opposed to any essentialist cultural or grand narrative like
omolúwàbí in Yorùbá culture. Many scholarly attempts have been made to review the
postmodern paradigm, especially concerning such over-arching narratives in political and
epistemological domains. However, there is a dearth of attempts to examine the
sustainability or otherwise of the postmodernist critique of such grand values that
sustained many traditional cultures such as omolúwàbí. This study was, therefore,
designed to examine the extent to which grand moral narratives like omolúwàbí could
withstand the onslaught of the postmodernist critique. This is with a view to establishing
the extent to which omolúwàbí, a grand cultural narrative that promotes the good of
human flourishing, cannot be relativised.
Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics served as framework, while Interpretive design was used. Texts
examined in African Philosophy included Idowu’s Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief
(OGYB), Fadipe’s The Sociology of the Yoruba (TSY), Ajadi’s OMOLÚWÀBÍ 2.0: A
Code of Transformation in 21st Century Nigeria (OCT), Hallen’s The Good, the Bad and
the Beautiful (TGTBTB) and Akintola’s Yoruba Ethics and Metaphysics (YEM). In
Epistemology, Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (PMN), Lyotard’s The
Postmodern Condition (TPC), Wheen’s How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World
(HMJCW), Moore’s Philosophical Studies (PS) and Bewaji’s Introduction to the Theory
of Knowledge (ITK) were interrogated. The texts deal extensively with critical issues on
moral values and knowledge acquisition. The philosophical tools of criticism, conceptual
analysis and reconstruction were used.
The OGYB, TSY, OCT and TGTBTB reveal that ìwà (character) is crucial to being in
Yorùbá society, and omolúwàbí is the vehicle by which it is transmitted. The degree and
quality of humanness in a personality is depicted by his/her ìwà. Omolúwàbí legislated the
right course for a good society in the traditional Yorùbá society and also served as the
foundation on which values that sustained traditional Yorùbá society were built. Hence,
an active renaissance of its ideology is solicited to engender a good society (YEM, OCT,
TGTBTB). The PMN, TPC and ITK show that foundationalist account of truth has been
questioned by postmodernists, who emphasised that knowledge does not require
foundations to qualify as truth. Truth is a subjective notion and thus, method of knowing
cannot be grand, universal or objective. However, HMJCW and PS claim that
abandonment of objective truth may be socially unhealthy as it becomes difficult to pass
moral judgement on acts like honour killing in some cultures on the ground that we cannot
judge others by our own standards. Critical intervention revealed that omolúwàbí, a grand
cultural narrative that promotes the good, which is an indispensable ideal for societal
flourishing, is immune from postmodernist critique.
The postmodernist critique of omolúwàbí cannot be sustained because omolúwàbí
espouses such humane qualities and virtues like honesty, truthfulness, kindness,
compassion and justice, which are indispensable to engendering a stable and happy
society