Sistema filosófico de Ifá

Abstract

This thesis aims to think of Ifá as a philosophical system, as one that maintains, preserves, and creates a set of knowledge and practices of the Yoruba people, which contributes to maintaining balance, fundamental for the well-being of people of African origin. Ifá is a strict sensu philosophical system, that is, it entails a set of rigorous axioms, concepts and methodologies, competent to dialogue with the world philosophical tradition, presenting a public, semiotic, multi-referential, complex and polylogical face, and, at the same time, it is a specific system, born from Yoruba culture, capable of dealing with major philosophical themes: life, death, origin, destiny, power, justice, evil, existence (Iwá), based on the same narrative structure - the sacred corpus of Ifá, preserved in oral tradition of the Yorubans, and today written in different documents produced by scholars in the area. It is a philosophical system taken as a body of ancestral wisdom, a cognitive paradigm prior to classical Greco-Roman antiquity, which brings together and organizes traditional Yoruba knowledge, resignified and reified in the African Diaspora, where it promotes a vision of existence that breaks with the “universality scientific” of Western civilization and creates diverse new ways to combat Racism and the epistemic, memorial, symbolic and physical genocide of black people outside Africa and, mainly, in the Americas. The readings, consultations, dialogues, analyzes and interpretations of your Literary Corpus must contribute to our better training in the face of the daily challenges of Racism. The philosophy of Ifá is the production of meaning for our lives, it is the daily restoration of our balance and preservation, of our vital strength/energy, of our Axé through the (re)infusion/(re)construction/(re)expansion of Iwá Pelé within our communities. Philosophy for us is thinking and feeling about living, the one that is intertwined with our ancestry, the one that is all the time all the time; living that trusts in the knowledge of Orunmilá and never dishonors the instructions of Ifá. It is a philosophy that is intrinsically woven by Yoruba cosmogony, by our Afro-Amerindian ancestral knowledge, by our daily reflections in the terreiro where what seems simple is of unique sophistication in the lived experience of ancient learning. Various methodologies and plural methods were used in the multi-referential, polysemic, and polylogical theoretical dialogue, with the basic and founding reference of African Philosophy, including a vast intellectuality that carries out its research based on African studies, where new ways of articulating knowledge are proposed. and produce positive and affirming changes in everyday life.