OPEN ACCESS 85 Thanatology: The Igbo/African Metaphysics Sense and Value of Death

Copyright © 2014 Matthew C. Chukwuelobe. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In accordance of the Creative Commons Attribution License all Copyrights © 2014 are reserved for SCIRP and the owner of the intellectual property Matthew C. Chukwuelobe. All Copyright © 2014 are guarded by law and by SCIRP as a guardian. This work aims at exploring the Igbo/African metaphysical sense of death and its traditional value and in-ter-communality. In this study, I intend to use the Igbo as a paradigm for an African experience of death. I begin by explaining that while thanatology is the systematic study of death, metaphysics is a study of re-ality as it concerns the phases of human existence from life to death. In doing so, I want to examine the African being in its wholeness. Interestingly, African philosophy conceives of being as dynamic and a force to be record. The African world itself is best described as one of becoming: it is a world where there are constant interactions between the dead and the living, between the spirit-land and the human world. Thus, existence-in-relation aptly depicts the African view of life and reality. For the Igbo, however, life and death are intimately connected. To the extent that the latter paves the way to the ancestral dwelling, it is an urgent longing to join his forebears. Ultimately, the Igbo/African attaches a great value to ancestra