In Praise of Onisegun

Abstract

In his very interesting book, The Good, The Bad and the Beautiful: Discourse About Values in Yoruba Culture,1 Professor Barry Hallen presents the ‘philosophical’ ideas of the onísègùn,2 a group of Yoruba traditional practitioners of medicine. What comes out of the endeavor is partly epistemological, partly ethical and partly aesthetic. This article is a critique of these ideas and is bibliocentric, based entirely on Hallen’s book.