B.Justification of Purpose
This work is inspired by the need to contribute to the development of the study of traditional African systems of thought beyond what this author identifies as the descriptive and analytical stages of scholarship. We do this through the erection and application of a theoretical framework that goes beyond the descriptive and analytical foci which currently dominates studies of traditional African thought.

Most studies of traditional African thought consist in descriptions and analysis of the ideational structures they demonstrate, as well as, in some cases, of an analysis of the relationship of these structures to the cognitive and social organisation of the societies to which they are endogenous.

Most of the studies make no effort to examine the significance of these systems to social formations and cultural productions that go beyond the host societies of these systems. The study of these systems of thought, however, has certainly gone beyond their classification as curiosities representing the infancy of the human race. Significant advances have been made in demonstrating their ideational sophistication and explanatory power, but these analytical advances are often limited to restricting these systems to tools of knowledge that can explain only those realities they were originally created to explicate or to which they have been explicitly related by modern forms of discourse2.

Examples of such intracultural study include interpreting Ifa, for example, as a means of elucidating critical principles embodied in Yoruba visual art or relating it to the work of the Yoruba writer Wole Soyinka, who makes the mythology of the system central to his work3.