In this compelling and engaging work, Tsenay Serequeberhan discusses recent attempts to define African philosophy and the practice of hermeneutics for articulating a philosophy that is distinctively African. Pressing into service insights derived from Marx, Nietzsche, Levinas, Fanon, and others, Serequeberhan analyzes the question of how we relate to our past (i.e., our heritage) and the open possibilities of our future. He carefully examines the variety of approaches to African philosophy and argues for a historically engaged and existentially attuned paradigm shift. The result is an approach that explores the contemporary situation of African and African-American existence in view of emancipatory struggles that have established the confines of the present.