The Antinomy of Relation: An Understanding of Causation and the Question of Destiny

This chapter concerns itself with three commitments. The first of these commitments is to assess the freewill-determinism problem in Igbo philosophy from three points of view: (a) community and individual relationship; (b) nature of forces in the Igbo cosmology; and, (c) the concept of destiny. The second of these commitments is to assess the apparent solution of soft determinism and engage this solution to abstract its pragmatic imports in dealing with the notions of moral responsibility and the problem of evil. I shall then evaluate Igbo notions of the solution to the problem of evil, according to two common views of God in African Metaphysics. Posterior to the foregoing analysis, I shall introduce my own solution to the antinomy of relations—what I describe as Quasi-Liberal Compatibilism. This basically takes Igbo anthroposophy as its foundation and from the constituents of the person as excogitated in Igbo thought, I single out the dimension of the mkpuruobi as crucial to explaining moral responsibility, determinism, and freewill. With these constituents, and the analysis I urge in this chapter, the freewill-determinism debate may be resolved. I shall defend this view against possible objections, and then construct a genuinely Igbo-African perspective to causation, destiny, and evil.