Suffering in Igbo-African Ontology

Abstract

Suffering in a broad sense, is an individual's basic affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm. Suffering may be physical or mental. It occurs in the lives of sentient beings in numerous manners, and often dramatically. As a result, many fields of human activity are concerned, from their own points of view, with the meaning of suffering. Considerations include the nature of suffering, its processes, its origin and causes, its meaning and significance, its related personal, social, and cultural behaviours, its remedies, management, and uses. This paper studies the contribution of the Igbo-African world to the ongoing discourse on human suffering. “Igbo” is a language and the name of an ethnic group or tribe in Nigeria. It is referred to as Igbo-African because it is an ethnic group in Africa and relates culturally to other ethnic groups in Africa. This would involve the study of the different Igbo-African perspectives regarding human suffering in the world. This will include the Igbo Cosmological optimistic view which believes that man is the cause of his suffering and not God. The personal god and destiny view which sees human suffering as the product of a person’s personal god. There is also a middle course view, which sees human suffering as the product of both views already expressed. This paper discovers that with all these understandings of evil and its dimensions, evil still remains a puzzle to the Igbo-African.

Keywords: Suffering, African, Igbo, Ontology, god, destiny, Nigeria, World, middle-course, experience.