TENDENTIOUSLY SHAPED EURO-AMERICAN ACADEMIC CONJECTURES

"Modern interpreters of Africa have been tendentiously shaped by Euro-American academic conjectures. In seeking the anticipated legitimacy that comes from higher education, African scholars during the period in which independence was being fought for fell all too easily into the trap of idealizing , romanticizing and liberalizing motifs so familiar to Western modern traditions. They are not being criticized for seeking the best education available to them. But the best education was still highly imperfect , with all the limitations of the chief failures of modernity: autonomous individualism, hedonic narcissism, moral relativism, and reductive naturalism. None are characteristic of the African spirit." P.69-70, "Defining Africa," HOW AFRICA SHAPED THE CHRISTIAN MIND by Thomas C. Oden (2007) http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tendentious