A personalist approach to the dialogue of civilisations: African Ubuntu, social Catholic personalism and Muslim Shakçânyya compared (original) (raw)
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Interrogating the concept of Personhood in African Thought- Beyond the Communitarian Debate
MADONA UNIVERSITY Thought and Action Journal of Philosophy, 2022
Abstract: Conceptualization of personhood by Menkiti’s (1984) Person and Community in African Traditional Thought, Gyekye’s (1992) Akan Concept of a Person and Mbiti’s (1970) African Religions and Philosophy has shown that communal intimate belongingness is mostly limited to a micro community more than the totality of a larger African community. Within the context of this communal living, they have argued that, an individual owns no personality, and only becomes a person through social and ritual incorporation. For these scholars, personhood has been pictured as a state of life that is acquired “as one participates in communal life through the discharge of the various obligations defined by one’s stations” (Menkiti, 1984 p.176). Personhood they say, is a quality acquired as one gets older. Hence, according to them age is the determinant factor. This paper argues that, this mode of thinking not only ignores the essentials of personhood, namely, self-determination and the rights of the individual but it also, exposes the overbearing mode of the community and scuttles the inherent freedom and primacy of the individual thought and his right to question communal ideas. The youth has a different point of view from that of an older individual, though both are defined by the quality of personhood. African wisdom literature upholds that life in its existential meaning is human fellowship and solidarity among individuals though, the rights of individual persons and freedom of self-expression within the communities are not in doubt. The paper argues the conclusion that, while communal ethos matures the individual in the community, such conclusion does not have ontological and epistemological precedence over individual persons. In his lone level, the individual experiences varying modes of competing epistemologies that activates his moral arsenals to evaluate, protest, distance and effect reform on some features of the community to ingratiate his widely varying needs and interests. Key Words: Communitarianism, personhood, personal identity, ethical maturity, human well-being, African thought, African philosophy, African heritage, inter-cultural philosophy, African studies.
Utuism: The African Definition of Humanism
Journal of Philosophy, Culture and Religion, 2019
Then human person is the only created being who can transcend the limits of his very being, to comprehend, grasp and appreciate the Creator and even investigate the Being qua Being. In this venture, man realizes that even he himself is a complex reality that is fused into a Metaphysical World. We therefore investigate ourselves concisely. What is the reality underlying our very being? Is the reality that defines and/or composes an individual common to all humanity, and if yes, what is the nature of that reality? This paper expounds on the background of Utuism in relation to humanism from the African perspective. The paper further provides prejudices from earlier scholars that helps in understanding the human person. Further, a review of human person from Western and African Philosophers is also provided.
The Place of the Individual in the Traditional African Society: A Philosophical Appraisal
2016
The idea of African communalism is well-known in the academic circle, as it were. The concept of communalism suggests that Africans emphasize community living. It is also often understood to suggest that the individual is swallowed up in the community and has no distinct life. This then raises the question of the place of the individual in the traditional African society. Is the individual suppressed in the society? Are his rights and privileges sacrificed at the altar of communalism? These and similar questions form the concern of this study. This work evaluates the place of the individual in a typical African society from the background of the Igbo traditional society. It does this by subjecting to critical analyses various literature on the Igbo/African society with regard to the place of the individual. The conclusion is that, contrary to contemporary arguments to the effect that communalism stifled individual growth, communalism added to the quality of life of the individual in...
Theology, Ethics, and the Church: Perspectives from the Global South, 2023
Paul Ricoeur (1992) draws on Aristotle’s 'The Nichomachean Ethics' to define the ethical intent as follows: “Living the good life with and for others in just institutions.” Ricoeur points out that this definition encompasses first person (the one living the good life), second person (with and for others) and third person (in just institutions) interpersonal dynamics, which seems to imply that Aristotelian ethics is the foundation for the modern Occident’s conception of ethics as personalist. However, Vishal Mangalwadi (2011) and David Bentley Hart (2017) both point out that ancient Greek philosophy has no true concept of the human person, extending dignity and rights only to certain members of the polis (namely free adult males). In this paper, with recourse to the hermeneutic phenomenology of Paul Ricoeur and Max Scheler, I demonstrate how an Augustian-Franciscan interpretatin of the Bible has framed the personalist ethics prevalent in the contemporary West. Despite numerous attempts by modernist continental philosophers to dislodge the Bible and find alternative ways of connecting the archē and the autos, the Biblical foundation of personhood persists. I place this same framing in dialogue with Ubuntu personalism to outline an approach to formulate a Biblical African personalist ethics.
The value of a person in Akan traditional life and thought: A contemporary inquiry
As a contribution to the debate on African Philosophy, this paper explores the value of a person in Akan traditional life and thought. African philosophy can be found in the various traditional and cultural schemes of the people. This paper maintains that one of the approaches of appreciating African philosophy is through the traditional concept and worldview of the nature of a person. This paper argues that a person is not just a bag of flesh and bones that we see with our eyes, but, a more complex being with soul and body. Through a qualitative analysis of the relevant literature, this paper argues that some contemporary incidents, such as African crossing the Mediterranean Sea to seek better life in Europe, and the recent Xenophobic attacks on some African nationals in South Africa, undermines the indigenous value of a person in Akan traditional life and thought. This paper concludes that the real goal of the value of human life, as one of the dominant themes in African philosophy, must be properly studied, assessed, understood and harnessed in addressing contemporary African problems, such as corruption in government and society, environmental degradation, indiscipline, diseases and conflicts in our communities and other social vices.
On Personhood: An Anthropological Perspective from Africa
Social Identities, 2001
Is the idea of 'the autonomous person' a European invention? This conundrum, posed to us by colleagues in philosophy and anthropology at the University of Heidelberg in June 1997, seems straightforward enough. Even ingenuous. But hiding beneath its surface is another, altogether less innocent question, one which carries within it a silent claim: to the extent that 'the autonomous person' is a European invention, does its absence elsewhere imply a de cit, a failure, a measure of incivility on the part of non-Europeans? And what of the corollary: is this gure, this 'person', the end point in a world-historical telos, something to which non-occidentals are inexorably drawn as they cast off their primordial differences? Is it, in other words, a universal feature of modernity-in-the-making, a Construct in the Upper Case? Or is it merely a lower case, local euroconstruct? 1 We begin our excursion into African conceptions of personhood in a decentring, relativising voice, the voice often assumed by anthropologists to discomfort cross-disciplinary, transcultural, suprahistorical discourses about Western categories, their provenance and putative universality. From our disciplinary perspective, 'the autonomous person', that familiar trope of European bourgeois modernity (Taylor, 1989), is a Eurocentric idea. And a profoundly parochial, particularistic one at that. 2 To be sure, the very notion that this generic person might constitute a universal is itself integral to its Eurocultural construction, a part of its ideological apparatus. What is more, 'the autonomous person'-the de nite, singular article-describes an imaginaire, an ensemble of signs and values, a hegemonic formation: neither in Europe, nor any place else to which it has been exported, does it exist as an unmediated sociological reality (Comaroff and Comaroff, 1991, 60f). Neither, of course, does the classical contrast between (I) the self-made, self-conscious, right-bearing individual of 'modern Western society', that hyphenated Cartesian gure epitomised in the Promethean hero of Universal History (Carlyle, 1842, p. 1), and (ii) the relational, ascriptive, communalistic, inert self attributed to premodern others. As we shall see, African notions of personhood are in nitely more complicated than this tired theoretical antinomy allows (
A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF MAN AS A SOCIAL BEING IN AFRICAN ONTOLOGY
A philosophical analysis of man as a social being in African Ontology, 2022
In the traditional African society, Mam lives for others and not just for himself, man is defined by his is relationship or participation in the society to which he/she belongs. A good representation of this can be seen in the concept of Ubuntu in African philosophy, which is based on the dictum I am because we are, it emphasizes collectivity, common good as against individualism. This can also be viewed in the works of some African philosophers like Julius Nyerere of Tanzania in his idea of African communalism popularly referred to as "Ujamaa" talked about African communal living and Familyhood, same with Kwame Nkrumah's idea of consciencism, a philosophical theory which is similar to ubuntu, and against Western capitalism and individualism. But in the contemporary African society, people are consumed by greed, which endangers the dignity of the human person and also plagues by the extreme individualism of the Western world, which has resulted to many evils in our present-day society, and this is one of the negative impacts of colonialism on African identity. Therefore we shall do a comparative study and critically analyze the traditional African society as against the individualistic culture of the western world.
THE CONTROVERSY WITH THE CONCEPT OF MAN IN WESTERN AND AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSI
The controversy around the concept of man in western and African analysis has lingered on for decades. Some African philosophers have critically argued that the communalistic analysis of man in African philosophy is strongly opposed to the individualistic emphasis of western scholars. To a large extent, these two arguments are indication of what may have influenced allot of theories and concepts as well as attitude to life in the scope of philosophy and elsewhere. From an integrationist echelon, this work seeks to reconcile these tenacious polar philosophical dogmas. To ensue this, the researcher bears in mind certain fundamental but problematic questions such as; 'who is man? Are there different conceptual analysis in every society?' Has the concept of man really changed in our time? With the hermeneutics and critical analysis method, the researcher comparatively examines the concept of man in Thomas Aquinas and Edmund Mounier representing Western perspective and Chukwudumbi Okolo and Nkafu Nkemkia representing African conceptual scheme. He argues that both Western and African concepts of man are two truth of one reality and concludes with the affirmation that for a fuller understanding, we must solemnize both angles for an approach and encompassing knowledge of man's nature. KEYWORDS: Western,African,Society,Philosophy,Concept, Man
The forces of cosmopolitanism, globalization and neoliberal policies have advanced interfaith marriages globally. This study looks at the phenomenon of interfaith marriages between Muslims and Christians in Zongo communities in Accra. Zongo is a Hausa word used to refer to communities that have historically been associated with itinerant Muslim traders and which also served as Muslim enclaves in the Gold Coast. Today Zongo communities, which were once predominantly Muslim, are now religiously and ethnically pluralistic. There is a discernible mix of adherents of other religions in Zongo communities. In the study, we show that although doctrinal differences between Muslims and Christians serve as fundamental reference point in prohibiting interfaith marriages, there are other factors that make a future of more frequent and tolerated marriages between Muslims and Christians in Zongo communities in Accra seem doubtful. and other forces of modernization, such as secular education and neoliberal policies. 4 In Ghana, the implementation of neoliberal policies in the 1980s was accompanied by privatization of state-owned enterprises and the broadening of the informal sector. These developments have contributed to the empowering of women economically in many societies that were once considered patriarchal, giving them the social bargaining power over their life choices, including marriage. Likewise, communities that were historically hostile and closed to other religions and cultures are now opening up.