ABSTRACT

Existentialism as an intellectual movement is often exclusively attributed to the Western world due to the fact that it sprang in the Nineteenth/Twentieth Century as a remarkable interjection in the historical stream of Western Philosophy. However, the ascription of the sole monopoly of this field of philosophy to the Western world impresses a parochial understanding of it. This is because all affairs of human beings, irrespective of whether or not they are Westerners, revolves around issues that are of enormous existential significance. Besides, some recurrent themes in Existentialism are observable in the thought systems of other cultural civilizations all over the world. For example, in Yoruba thought, there are those notable themes such as freedom, death, choice, responsibility, and so on, that are of pure existentialist value. Using the method of using the method of comparative analysis, therefore, we attempt in this paper to discuss some of those themes and explore their existential imports, in the light of their conceptions in Western Existentialism, focusing specifically on the themes of essence and existence, death and authenticity.