Personhood and Rights in an African Tradition
Motsamai Molefe
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Abstract
It is generally accepted that the normative idea of personhood is central to African moral thought, but what has not been done in the literature is to explicate its relationship to the Western idea of rights. In this article, I investigate this relationship between rights and an African normative conception of personhood. My aim, ultimately, is to give us a cursory sense why duties engendered by rights and those by the idea of personhood will tend to clash. To facilitate a meaningful philosophical discussion, I locate this engagement in the context of a debate between Ifeanyi Menkiti and Kwame Gyekye about the nature of Afro-communitarianism, whether it will ground rights as primary or secondary. I endorse Menkiti’s stance that duties are primary and rights secondary; and, I also problematise moderate communitarianism for taking a Western stance by employing a naturalist approach to rights.
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Politikon South African Journal of Political Studies Personhood and Rights in an African Tradition
It is generally accepted that the normative idea of personhood is central to African moral thought, but what has not been done in the literature is to explicate its relationship to the Western idea of rights. In this article, I investigate this relationship between rights and an African normative conception of personhood. My aim, ultimately, is to give us a cursory sense why duties engendered by rights and those by the idea of personhood will tend to clash. To facilitate a meaningful philosophical discussion, I locate this engagement in the context of a debate between Ifeanyi Menkiti and Kwame Gyekye about the nature of Afrocommunitarianism, whether it will ground rights as primary or secondary. I endorse Menkiti's stance that duties are primary and rights secondary; and, I also problematise moderate communitarianism for taking a Western stance by employing a naturalist approach to rights.
Editorial African Philosophy and Rights
Berghahn Journals, 2018
A Study of Kwame Gyekye's Notion of Personhood and Its Relationship to Rights in African Communitarian Structure
2021
This work presents Kwame Gyekye's notion of personhood and how it relates to rights in African communitarian structure. Personhood for some scholars can be culturally defined if the attainment of it is fully embedded in a cultural community; likewise partially defined if the realization of it is partially embedded in a cultural community. For Gyekye, personhood is not fully embedded in a cultural community; for him, those individual rights and interests are meaningful and achievable only within the context of human society, and must, therefore, be matched with social responsibilities. <em>Our aim, therefore, is to understand</em> Gyekye's discourse on personhood and sieve out those recognition and equal moral standing between the individual and the community in terms of rights, ethical principles, tolerance, and choice. Using an evaluative method, it is argued that Gyekye's notion of personhood is partially defined by communal structure which defends individu...
Motsamai Molefe. African Personhood and Applied Ethics. Makhanda: NISC (Pty) Ltd, 2020. African Books Collective. x + 138 pp. Bibliography. Index. $35.00. Paper. ISBN: 987-1920033699
African Studies Review, 2021
Central to African moral-political thought is the notion of personhood. Personhood, in Motsamai Molefe's view, is a moral quality which human beings earn based on the quality of their behavior in society or on their being objects of dignity. The discourse on personhood has often taken the form of a quest for its compatibility with such modern political concepts as individual rights. It is, thus, refreshing that in demonstrating the viability of personhood as a moral theory, Molefe, in his book African Personhood and Applied Ethics, pays more attention to varied topics in Applied Ethics such as the environment, women, and development in African philosophy. This book defends personhood against three charges: that it endangers the realization of a just social order, that it promotes anthropomorphism/speciesism, and that it is, finally, not socially egalitarian. Molefe devotes the first two chapters to what he sees as the two dimensions of Ubuntu (personhood)-moral theory and theory of dignity-and utilizes the latter theory to address the three charges in the remaining chapters. Molefe begins in Chapter One by examining the concept of personhood with a view to defending its robustness as a moral theory. By virtue of Ubuntu, three ontological features may be observed: human purity, relationality, and the capacity for human nature to grow or diminish (19)(20). Molefe insists that the other-regarding demands of Ubuntu, in the attempt to attain moral excellence, do not negate "the self, uniqueness and self-regarding duties," since Ubuntu also entails some aspects of individualism and egoism (29). Chapter Two is a discussion of personhood and dignity in African moral political thought. Here, Molefe mostly uses the ontological conception of personhood which, he believes, grounds the equality of humans on the basis of their common capacity for sympathy. This is consistent with the ontological conceptions of Ifeanyi Menkiti and Kwame Gyekye, which are based on the capacity for moral sense. Unlike Gyekye's conception, however, Molefe's perspective is not religious. He argues that the ontological status of this human capacity is a plausible basis for human dignity, and that "the idea of
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This work critically examines African notion of rights. The conception of human right in Africa is deeply rooted in African world view and belief system. This work adopts the theory of natural rights and secondary sources to explain the notion of rights in Africa. The findings revealed that, Africans had a system of human rights and specific provisions of human rights such as right to land, life, and political participation even before Europe became civilized. These rights were preserved in various African traditional, constitutional and customary laws. Human rights in the pre-colonial Africa (Tiv political system) encompass both rights and obligation, which provides the community with cohesion and strength. This notion of right was built largely around the conception of duty which requires the individual to place the community and the common good before individual satisfaction. The work recommends that these rights as conceived by Africans should be integrated in nation's constitution so that the citizen can live minimal good life in their domains.
Human dignity in African communitarianism
2018
This study examines the extent to which African communitarian thought succeeds in the promotion of human dignity without having to call upon human rights. As well as being considered as a central value within social and political philosophy, human dignity is also critical to policy formulations within spheres is has tremendous influence such as bioethics, medicine, politics, and law. Generally, the promotion of human dignity has been conceived from the liberal point of view, and specifically through human rights and their institutions. Ontologically, liberalism prioritises the individual and her rights over her community. Respect for one's dignity is in this regard synonymous with respect for individual rights. This conception excludes the non-liberal thought systems which are regarded as inimical to the human dignity project on the basis that they do not prioritise individual rights and freedoms. On this basis, the non-liberal thought systems have been perceived as anachronistic and authoritarian, and therefore considered as dissing human dignity. However, since human dignity is generally regarded as a concept more fundamental than human rights, it cannot be reduced to a single value system at the exclusion of others. Thus, through human rights, liberalism presents a particular vision of individual-community relationships in which the individual is primary. Subsequently, this relationship points to a particular way of understanding human dignity. As different societies live by different value systems, there exist corresponding ways through which such societies express and enhance human dignity. It is in this regard that the study attempts to demonstrate the extent to which African communitarianism, one of the non-liberal intellectual traditions and considered as a dominant conceptual theme in African thought, is capable of securing human dignity. Specifically, the study examines certain values that are central to the African communitarian thought system for their consistency with the dignity of human persons in its broader sense. Within African communitarianism, the individual-community relationship prioritises the reality of the community over and above that of the individual. This can be seen by emphasis laid on such values as interdependence, consensus and the common good. Normatively, they all point to the centrality of the community and one's duty towards its flourishing. Thus, the sort of dignity that can be derived from the African communitarian thought goes beyond the bounds of individual persons exercising their freedom as emphasised within the liberal tradition. Dignity in this regard concerns the flourishing of persons not as individuals, but as members of the community. Thus, contrary to the criticism by proponents of the liberal value systems, the non-liberal thought systems can be shown to be capable of securing human dignity to the extent that dignity is conceived from a holistic point of view. Since the basic aim of every vii community is to serve people who are its members, respect to community and its values is an indication of respect for human dignity. In this way, the African communitarian thought offers a competitive alternative to the liberal conception of human dignity. In this regard it would be wrong to make judgements about the African communitarian thought system by employing a conception of dignity that is inconsistent with the African value systems themselves.
Personhood and Social Power in African Thought
2013
The paper is based on the hypothesis that received meanings of personhood in any social context are almost always associated with notions of power. Drawing on some interesting insights from the quite recent history of African philosophy as a counter-colonial practice as well as from available evidence in social anthropology, the paper specifically investigates the link between social power and a widely received conception of personhood namely, the communitarian/ normative conception of personhood. Two central claims are advanced. First, the paper suggests that the search for and the articulation of a distinctive African conception of personhood are strongly motivated by some non-epistemic motive, which the paper identifies as a struggle for power. Second, the paper argues that the communitarian/normative conception of personhood is deeply contingent upon social power differentials among individuals in community and, relatedly, this feature of socially engendered personhood is suffic...
The indigenous African concept of human right: A farce or a misjudge
Simeon Olaosebikan Oni, Ph.D, 2023
The concept of human rights is eroneously believed to have its origin in the West and that it was 'imported' into Africa. The question is: Did the indigenous African communities possess or know anything about human rights? If the answer is No, how then is human rights a global concept if the continent of Africa truly had no idea of human rights? The negative picture painted by the West concerning the concept of human rights is that it is alien to the indegenous African political system. They postulate that the African concept of justice has little or no regard for human rights. The ideal concept of human rights was missing not only in non-western traditions but also in western societies. The pro-African writers believe that the concept of human rights is given better expression than the then neo-colonial States. The Westernview that the customs and traditions of the pre-colonial African communities knew nothing like human rights is jaundiced and considered as another Western attempt to discredit, subjugate and re-colonise Africa. This paper shall examine the degree of compliance of Africa with the universal human rights concept and suggest appropriate recommendations to make African concept of human rights to be more proactive where necessary.
An African Conception of Human Rights? Comments on the Challenges of Relativism
The belief that human rights are culturally relative has been reinforced by recent attempts to develop more plausible conceptions of human rights whose philosophical foundations are closely aligned with culture-specific ideas about human nature and/or dignity. This paper contests specifically the position that a conception of human rights is culturally relative by way of contesting the claim that there is an African case in point. That is, it contests the claim that there is a unique theory of rights. It analyses three examples of what often passes as African conception of human rights arguing that they have little or nothing to do with human rights, are simply inadequate or are not African in the sense at issue in a cultural relativism. Along the way, it distinguishes between two meanings of the term African contending that to the extent that the practice of prizing the ‘community’ higher than any other value is definitive of African, the idea of African human rights remains suspect.
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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.
Okolo's Conception of Personhood and the Question Of Human Rights: An African Perspective
Nigerian Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2022
The African personhood has taken many dimensions some of which could be normative, social cum communitarian, etc. Okolo has equally participated in the discourse by upholding a communitarian view depicted in the term 'being-with'. By this, the community and the individual and the influences one draws from another become a central focus of what is to be African. That suffices that Okolo believes that all there is to be truly African person is the socio-ontological attitude of 'being-with' which expresses nothing but the communitarianism of the African person. The question now is: what is the fate and position of the individual's right and freedom in the existential attitudinal disposition of 'being-with' others in the community? Do the community have a limit in influencing the attainment of an individual's personhood? In addressing these questions, this paper argues that Okolo's perception of (the African) personhood alienates individuals from their inalienable human rights hence it is derivative in nature from the community. Following this, the paper recommends that Africans should critically analyze their cultural values which intrinsically influence their perceptions in order to
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Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory , 2019
The historical debate, in African philosophy, on personhood has been characterised by radical and moderate communitarianism seen through the scholarship of Menkiti (1984) and Gyekye (1997) and continues contemporarily with scholars considering its implications on contemporary conceptions of rights. Responding to Chemhuru's compatibilist view that, he maintains, safeguards and guarantees individual rights, I showcase how his conception of the community as prior to the individual betrays his project. Using the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights to contextu-alise rights discourse in Afro-communitarianism, Chemhuru avers that once collective rights have been gained, individuals can claim their rights. I critique this position to suggest that Chemhuru undermines his own project of compatibilism through placing the community prior to the individual. Using the Civil Union Act (2006) as a legislative framework that safeguards and guarantees individual human rights, I test Chemhuru's compatibilist view. I conclude by highlighting the divergences between constitutionalism and Afro-communitarianism.
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Universal Human Rights from an African Social Contract
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The Common Good and a Teleological Conception of Rights An Article on the African Philosophy of Rights
Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, 2018
A common communitarian criticism of rights discourse picks at the individualistic picture of rights which is said to presuppose a society where persons are conscious of their separateness. In contrast, an African communitarian society is said to put less emphasis on individual interests; it encourages harmony, not divergence of interests, competition , and conflict. Thus, preoccupation with rights would be incompatible with and even hostile to the possibility of community. This article argues the opposite; it submits that rights and community are mutually constitutive. To this end, I explore T. H. Green's social recognition thesis which reconceptualises rights and obligations in a teleological framework. When conceived in this fashion, rights transcend antitheti-cal relations between individuals and society as typified by classical natural rights thinkers. I argue that, considering a normative significance of the common good, a compelling account of rights in African philosophy is better conceived in a teleological framework.
African values and human rights as two sides of the same coin
In an article previously published in this Journal, Anthony Oyowe critically engages with my attempt to demonstrate how the human rights characteristic of South Africa's Constitution can be grounded on a certain interpretation of Afro-communitarian values that are often associated with talk of ubuntu. Drawing on recurrent themes of human dignity and communal relationships in the sub-Saharan tradition, I have advanced a moral-philosophical principle that I argue entails and plausibly explains a wide array of individual rights to civil liberties, political power, criminal procedures and economic resources. Oyowe's most important criticism of my theory is in effect that it is caught in a dilemma: Either the principle I articulate can account for human rights, in which case it does not count as communitarian, or it does count as the latter, but cannot account for the former. In this article, I reply to Oyowe, contending that he misinterprets key facets of my theory to the point of not yet engaging with its core strategy for deriving human rights from salient elements of ubuntu. I conclude that Oyowe is unjustified in claiming that there are 'theoretical lapses' that 'cast enormous doubts' on my project of deriving human rights from a basic moral principle with a recognisably sub-Saharan and communitarian pedigree.
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