We argue that Menkiti and Gyekye – the forerunners in Afro-communitarianism, to different extents both trivialise the notion of human rights. While Menkiti prioritises community and denies human rights, Gyekye who upholds human rights subsumes these to the community. We contend that both are however mistaken in their trivial conceptions of human rights. To clarify the confusion, we propose that the notion of rights in Afro-communitarianism can have two possible senses namely, rights as participatory and rights as entitlements and that the failure to recognise these senses was what led Menkiti to a fringed position and Gyekye to a difficult position. We then conclude that Afro-communitarianism, in both Menkiti and Gyekye harbours a certain notion of rights contrary to Menkiti’s assumption but it is not one that accommodates the idea of inalienability contrary to Gyekye’s suggestion.

Conversational thinking is articulated as the new approach to philosophical inquiry. It has two strands: conversational philosophy and interrogatory theory with conversationalism and interrogationism as their respective methodic ambience. The former is a method of philosophic thought that involves critical and creative engagement of a philosopher with other actors geared toward increasing literature, developing concepts and building systems, the latter is the methodic ambience of interrogatory theory and is a method of social thought that involves deconstructive and reconstructive engagement of a philosopher with social structures and social agents geared toward building strong social institutions and correcting faulty ones. This journal adopts and promotes this approach to philosophizing for African philosophy. Readers are encouraged to submit their conversational piece (maximum of 2000 words) on any essay previously published in this journal or on any controversial topics, thoughts or authors for publication. The aim is to enhance the evolution of new epistemes in African philosophy. The subject column for the email submissions should read "Manuscript for Conversations". Enjoy the two conversations in this issue. Conceptualization: To converse or hold a conversation literally means to have an informal exchange of ideas or information. Here, we employ the term in a slightly more technical sense. Philosophical conversation for us is not a mere informal exchange of ideas or a simple informal dialogue between two interlocutors; it is rather a strictly formal intellectual exercise propelled by philosophical reasoning in which critical and rigorous questioning creatively unveils new concepts from old ones. This process involves a 'creative struggle' which is the African philosopher's struggle against the postcolonial imaginary to create systems, new concepts and open up new vistas of thought. Contrast this with 'destructive struggle', a fixation on the precolonial originary which destroys any chances of creating something new. Not all philosophic engagements qualify as conversational thinking; for the latter, there are canons and themes that must guide the discourse. Conversational thinking thus is more than a dialogue; it is a rule-guided encounter between proponents (Nwa-nsa) and opponents (Nwa-nju), engaged in protestations and contestations of thoughts in place and in space. A conversational school therefore would be any circle of like-minded philosophers who adopts this approach in their practice of philosophy. For us, in The Conversational School of Philosophy-The Calabar Circle, this should now define not only the new era of African philosophy but the practice of philosophy generally in our Age. We encourage colleagues in other universities to establish their own circles.

We argue that philosophy education across the globe is still bedevilled with the ‘politics’ of marginalization of less favoured traditions like African philosophy. Extant works show that the conventional curriculum of philosophy used in educational institutions across the globe is predominantly Western and, as such, very much colonial. We contend that this amounts to a sort of ‘epistemic injustice’ that is detrimental to knowledge production. We argue specifically that this ‘politics’ should be discontinued. We propose the conversational tradition, out of which a philosophy curriculum that is comprehensive and antithetical to the politics of exclusion may be developed.

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