Metaphysical Issues in African Philosophy of Medicine

In this chapter, I examine four related metaphysical issues in indigenous African medicine. These include the nature of the body, disease, causality, and health and healing. These issues are related in the sense that any medical model of the body is intimately connected to that medical tradition’s understanding of disease, its causation, and its approach to health and healing. According to African ontology, the body is considered as an interconnected and interdependent entity made up of natural and supernatural components, and sharing the universe with other beings in perpetual search for harmony. From this conception of the body, disease is not simply the result of a mechanical dysfunction, but may also be the result of collapse of harmony. Besides, not all diseases are material entities which can be identified by means of modern diagnostic methods. From this ontological outlook, cause is teleological in nature; it is not mechanistic as it is commonly defined in modern science. Chance does not exist as an explanatory model in African metaphysics. There is always a supernatural justification for a disease. Finally, like the human body, health is also defined from a wholistic and inclusive perspective as the complete physical, mental, spiritual, social, and ecological well-being and not simply a level of mechanical effectiveness of the body or absence of infirmity. I begin the chapter by briefly sketching out what I understand by African philosophy of medicine, and then I examine four metaphysical issues and show how they apply to African medicine and medical practice.