Philippine E-Journals

Philosophical Problem of Evil: Response To E. O. Oduwole

Ademola Kazeem Fayemi

Discipline: Philosophy, Religion, Culture

 

Abstract:

The central theses of Oduwole are: first, that Olodumare (God in Yoruba African belief) cannot be exonerated from the philosophical problem of evil for He possesses similar attributes to the theistic God in Judeo-Christian tradition; and second, that the Yoruba hold a strong dialectical principle of Ire (Goodness) and Ibi (Evilness) in their daily world encounters. This paper challenges these positions as inaccurate representations of the Yoruba African understanding of the nature of evil. It exposes the conceptual errors that fraught Oduwole’s paper and provides further rigorous analytical expositions of the nature of evil in Yoruba-African philosophical thought.