NJP Volume 7 Number 3 2024

PHILOSOPHY AND THE ART OF NATION BUILDING

Anikpe Anthony Mbah, PhD
Abstract

In the face of the consistent failures of many multi-nation states especially in Africa and Asia to homogenize their ethnic diversity into united and viable nations and the need to defend and promote the relevance of philosophy after the academic discipline has severally been accused of contributing nothing to society. This study interrogated how philosophy can contribute to nation building. Deploying the documentary and analytic methods for data collection and analysis, the study argued that philosophy as a discipline has four fundamental things to contributing to nation building: develop the goals of nation building, educate the leadership and citizenship necessary for nation building, provide the critical and analytic skills required for nation building and encourage separation when homogenization fails. To this extent, the work maintained that while science and technology maybe the engine of nation building, philosophy is the sailor and navigator’s mast and therefore indispensable to nation building. It therefore recommended that the success of every state requires that philosophers should be given lead roles in nation building but since power is not given but taken, the onus is on philosophers to find a way of giving to the society what their profession makes them most qualified for.

Keywords: art, building, nation, philosophy
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