This essay deals with the ideas of Ifeanyi Menkiti and Kwame Gyekye on the individual-community relationship. I begin with a provocative statement: most African intellectuals struggle with abandoning Westernity and consequently remain at the Eshuean crossroads seeking to please both sides of the abyss. It is my argument that both Menkiti and Gyekye understood that teasing out our philosophical problems might lead us to an intellectual clarity about the concepts of community and individual in African cultures. I (...) am making no attempt to solve this problem of Eshuean crossroads in this essay; I simply want to establish the grounds upon which the combatants of philosophical ideas like Menkiti and Gyekye are fighting. Keywords: Westernity, Ifeanyi Menkiti, Kwame Gyekye, Eshuean Crossroads, Africa. (shrink)

Kwame Gyekye offers a philosophical interpretation and critical analysis of the African cultural experience in modern times. Critically employing Western political and philosophical concepts to clear, comparative advantage, Gyekye addresses a wide range of concrete problems afflicting postcolonial African states, such as ethnicity and nation-building, the relationship of tradition to modernity, the nature of political authority and political legitimation, political corruption, and the threat to traditional moral and social values, practices, and institutions in the wake of rapid social change.

In this paper I explore some ways in which Africa can contribute to the discourse on global justice. I first note the wide range in the circumstances in which judgements of justice continue to be made—from the domestic to the local and national, and from the national to the international. I conclude the paper with a look at the international human rights situation, suggesting areas where African wisdom and criteriology can be brought to bear on discussions of global justice. (...) In doing this, I call attention to John Rawls’s important distinction between a people and the state which the people call their own. The state does not constitute the people, but the people may constitute a state. (shrink)

Over the past four decades, I have been asked many questions regarding the substance and methodology of my essay “Person and Community in African Thought”. I cannot in the space of these pages retrieve or reframe the content and implications of these several questions and it would be fool-hardy to attempt an answer to all of them here. But that is no reason not to try to say a few things, by way of additional commentary, on the occasion of this (...) retrospective on the essay. It would be helpful to proceed by concentrating on a few issues which have been of some concern, or interest, to readers over the years, adding a response, however brief, as I go along. Keywords: Community, Personhood, Descriptive Metaphysics Africa Philosophy Human Person. (shrink)

Even though the subject of my paper is ‘Technology and Culture in a Developing Country’, it seems appropriate to preface it by examining science itself in the cultural traditions of a developing country, such as Ghana, in view of the fact that the lack of technological advancement, or the ossified state in which the techniques of production found themselves, in the traditional setting of Africa and, in many ways, even in modern Africa, is certainly attributable to the incomprehensible (...) inattention to the search for scientific principles by the traditional technologists. I begin therefore with observations on how science and knowledge fared in the traditional culture of a developing country. (shrink)

This collection is about composing thought at the level of modernism and decomposing it at the postmodern level where many cocks might crow with African philosophy as a focal point. It has two parts: part one is titled 'The journey of reason in African philosophy', and part two is titled 'African philosophy and postmodern thinking'. There are seven chapters in both parts. Five of the essays are reprinted here as important selections while nine are completely new essays commissioned for this (...) book. As their titles suggest, in part one, African philosophy is unfolded in the manifestation of reason as embedded in modern thought while in part two, it draws the effect of reason as implicated in the postmodern orientation. The idea of the book is to open new vistas for the discipline of African philosophy. African philosophy is thus presented as a disagreement discourse. Without rivalry of thoughts, Africa will settle for far less. This gives postmodernism an important place, perhaps deservedly more important than history of philosophy allocates to it. It is that philosophical moment that says 'philosophers must cease speaking like gods in their hegemonic cultural shrines and begin to converse across borders with one another'. In this conversation, the goal for African philosophers must not be to find final answers but to sustain the conversation which alone can extend human reason to its furthermost reaches. (shrink)

I argue that individual autonomy and rights can be defended but only in African or qualified version of communitarianism. I posit that there are two possible versions of communitarianism: the qualified or the African and the unqualified or the version discussed mostly by Western scholars. I show that Ifeanyi Menkiti, Kwame Gyekye, Michael Eze and Bernard Matolino have formulated communitarian theories of right in African philosophy. I explain that while Menkiti and Gyekye erroneously employed the unqualified version in (...) their proposals, Eze and Matolino who employed the qualified version failed to ground it in a non-Western or African logic. I argue that while the Western or Aristotelian logic grounds the unqualified version making it difficult to defend autonomy and rights within it, an African logic can be used to ground a qualified version of communitarianism in order to bring out an important African cultural value such as complementarity which affirms the identity of the individual first, so as to justify other communal values such as solidarity and common good, etc. I therefore contend that the qualified version is the correct specimen for analysing the individual-community relationship in African philosophy in which autonomy and rights can be defended. Keywords: individual autonomy, rights, African philosophy, Afro-communitarianism, Menkiti, Gyekye, Eze, Matolino. (shrink)

Ifeanyi Menkiti’s “Person and Community in African Traditional Thought” is criticized from the standpoint that the author assumes a dichotomous framework taken over in his decision to articulate the African view of the person in the idiom of modern philosophy. Kwame Gyekye’s critique of Menkiti in “Person and Community in Akan Thought” is also scrutinized to see if it manages to break free from this framework. I conclude by calling for a departure from quasi-scientific approaches to human nature (...) and experience that attempt to apprehend culture from a position without culture. (shrink)

From an African point of view, there is no social justice in the world today and, from that point of view, there may not be much difference between the African, African-American, Asian, or even Western perspectives. There may, however, be some difference in the reasons given in support of this perspective or, rather, conclusion. The African perspective is heavily influenced by events such as the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, and, more recently, by the report of South Africa’s Truth and (...) Reconciliation Commission and the bombing of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The reason, in part, is that all of these events or reports seem to reinforce the belief, which I take to be contrary to the core principle of social justice, that African lives are either worthless or do not count as much as others. Further, they seem to have the effect of cheating Africans or making fools out of them, which, from a traditional Akan point of view, is a violation of the tenets of social justice. (shrink)

I revisit in this article the question of the possibility of political integration of the Afri- can continent, something rst proposed by Kwame Nkrumah and then re-proposed by Muamar Gaddaf . My focus here is not to examine the extent of African leaders’ willing- ness to bring about integration, nor will I concentrate on the political intrigues surround- ing it (though these will be brie y acknowledged). Further, I will not contest Nkrumah’s economic argument (which is commonsensically correct and (...) in line with mainstream eco- nomics) but will, instead, take up the more normative question of the possibility, and thus practicability, of political integration in light of cultural and ethnic heterogeneity on the continent. I argue that political integration is possible, and I support the gradualist view- point by drawing lessons from Nicholas Taleb’s concept of antifragility and pointing out that there is almost as much heterogeneity at individual and simpler society levels as there is in ethnically diverse societies. (shrink)

“I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am”, generally regarded as the guiding principle of African humanism, expresses the view that a person is a person through other persons and is closely associated but not identical with African communitarianism, or communalism. Against Ifeanyi Menkiti’s “unrestricted or radical or excessive communitarianism” Kwame Gyekye has proposed a “restricted or moderate communitarianism”. Whereas personhood, for Menkiti, is acquired over time, with increasing moral maturation, seniority and agency, Gyekye (...) considers it to arise automatically with being born human. The problem with Menkiti’s account of personhood is that it is at once too wide and too narrow. On the other hand, it remains unclear to what extent Gyekye’s is a communitarian view – and to what extent it is distinctly ‘African’. I conclude with a critical reflection on the implications of African communalism and personhood for non-human animals. Keywords: Ifeanyi Menkiti, Kwame Gyekye, African Communitarianism, Non-Human Animals, Personhood. (shrink)

The ongoing debate among African philosophers on the relation of the individual and the community has spawned radical, moderate, and limited communitarian views. In this paper we will insert the question of interpersonal communication into the individual-community conundrum and raise the discourse to the level of cross-cultural engagement. We will highlight the dominant perspectives in Afro-communitarianism with particular emphasis on the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye and the Nigerian philosopher Ifeanyi Menkiti. Expanding the discourse into the domain of intercultural/comparative (...) philosophy, this paper will engage Gyekye and Menkiti’s Afro-communitarianism and Jean-Paul Sartre’s radical individualism and the resulting conflictual presentation of interpersonal relation. The paper adopts the conversational method. Keywords: Ifeanyi Menkiti, Kwame Gyekye, Afro-communitarianism, community, individual, Jean-Paul Sartre. (shrink)

This essay provides an exposition and a plausible interpretation of Ifeanyi Menkiti’s conception of personhood vis-a-vis this community. I do this, partly, to rebut some specific criticisms by Kwame Gyekye and Bernard Matolino. They construe Menkiti’s account, primarily, as a metaphysical thesis about the community that provides the essential ontological basis for the nature of personhood. They argue that this view of communitarianism is radical or extreme because the community diminishes individuality and prioritizes community’s interests over individuals’ interests, (...) freedom, and rights. I argue that Gyekye’s and Matolino’s interpretations of Menkiti’s view are mistaken, and that Menkiti’s account of the connection between the community and personhood is a social-moral thesis. This thesis argues that the community provides the norms and material conditions for individuals to live a meaningful life and achieve personhood, and achieving personhood involves being integrated into, and contributing positively to the harmony of, the community. Keywords: Menkiti, Gyekye, Matolino, Personhood, Community, Moderate Communitarianism, Radical Communitarianism. (shrink)

This essay provides an exposition and a plausible interpretation of Ifeanyi Menkiti’s conception of personhood vis-a-vis this community. I do this, partly, to rebut some specific criticisms by Kwame Gyekye and Bernard Matolino. They construe Menkiti’s account, primarily, as a metaphysical thesis about the community that provides the essential ontological basis for the nature of personhood. They argue that this view of communitarianism is radical or extreme because the community diminishes individuality and prioritizes community’s interests over individuals’ interests, (...) freedom, and rights. I argue that Gyekye’s and Matolino’s interpretations of Menkiti’s view are mistaken, and that Menkiti’s account of the connection between the community and personhood is a social-moral thesis. This thesis argues that the community provides the norms and material conditions for individuals to live a meaningful life and achieve personhood, and achievingpersonhood involves being integrated into, and contributing positively to the harmony of, the community. (shrink)

If contemporary African political philosophy is going to develop substantially in fresh directions, it probably will not be enough, say, to rehash the old personhood debate between Kwame Gyekye and Ifeanyi Menkiti, or to nit-pick at Gyekye’s system, as much of the literature in the field has done. Instead, major advances are likely to emerge on the basis of new, principled interpretations of sub-Saharan moral thought. In recent work, I have fleshed out two types of moral theories that (...) have a clearly sub-Saharan basis, that differ from Gyekye’s moral perspective, and that also happen to constitute genuine rivals to dominant Western theories such as utilitarianism, Kantianism and contractualism. In catchwords, these African moral theories are constituted by ideals regarding community or friendliness, on the one hand, and vitality or liveliness, on the other. In this article I sketch these two under-explored ethical perspectives and then suggest several respects in which their implications for salient political controversies are novel and revealing. Sometimes the new African moral theories—and the community-based one in particular--entail different conclusions from Gyekye's position, while other times their conclusions are the same as Gyekye’s, but they provide different rationales for them that are more compelling than his. (shrink)

On the denial of traditional thought as philosophy Scholars, including philosophers, tend to squirm a little at the mention of African philosophy, ...

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 problematize moderate communitarianism for taking a Western stance by employing a naturalist approach to rights. (shrink)

There has been a debate, popularized by Ifenyi Menkiti and Kwame Gyekye, regarding philosophical understandings of the human person in Africa. The debate revolves around the saying "So and so is not a person." Gyekye convincingly argues that the saying is a manner of speech, intended to be a moral evaluation of a person's actions. Menkiti, however, goes further and suggests that many of the African conceptions of a person are based on a dynamic understanding of the self. (...) Similar findings were made of Maasai concepts of personhood in the study done by Patrick Dikirr. The "potential self" is not given but is always being constructed by one's deeds and one's relations. While it is certainly a romanticization to imagine Africans as harmoniously communal in contrast to the "isolated individuals" who supposedly inhabit the West, nevertheless, for a Maasai one gains self-identity and status to a large extent through one's relations to other persons and to animals. However, the paper illustrates the many ways in which Maasais still emphasize individual achievement and thought, debunking notions of African "group-think" and conformity. The paper then draws on Axel Honneth's insights into "recognition" to note the extent to which Maasai recognition of each other prevents the community's capitulation to the value system of other ethnic groups in Kenya or Western influence. (shrink)

The communitarian conception of person is a widely accepted view in African thought. Kwame Gyekye thinks there is a distinction between what he calls radical communitarianism and his own version of moderate communitarianism. He is of the view that radical communitarianism is faced with insurmountable problems and ought to be jettisoned in favour of his moderate communitarianism. Gyekye’s strategy is twofold; he firstly seeks to show the shortcomings of radical communitarianism – particularly by attacking Ifeanyi Menkiti’s position. Secondly, (...) he seeks to show the authenticity of his version as well as its serious regard for individual rights as representing a triumph over radical communitarianism. In this paper, I seek to contest both of Gyekye’s strategies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper I argue that the economistic conception of development which has all along been touted by development ‘experts’and which has been made the monolithic framework for understanding and tackling the problem of development, is lopsided and terribly inadequate. That conception, it seems to me, fails to come to grips with the complex nature of human society and culture. That complexity, I argue, calls for a comprehensive, not segmented, approach to the development of human society. I therefore argue (...) also that development must be perceived in terms of adequate responses to the entire existential conditions in which human beings function, conditions which encompass the economic, political, social, moral, cultural, intellectual and others. It is pointed out that these conditions are greatly helped by a congenial political climate and a viable ethical and cultural framework. (shrink)

An avowed communitarian, Gyekye follows the lead of such African communitarians as Menkiti who believe that the community is ontologically prior to the individual. However, unlike Menkiti and other...

The more passages one examines in the translations from Arabic to Latin and from Arabic to English and other modern languages, the more mistakes one comes across in the translation of the Arabic expression ‘alā al-qaṣd al-awwal . The mistakes stem from the failure to distinguish between two senses of the expression, one an adverb, and the other a famous philosophic concept. Failing to distinguish between the two senses, the translators translated the phrase literally, often with unsatisfactory results. In this (...) paper, I shall indicate a Greek word which was rendered by the Arabic ‘alā al-qaṣd al-awwal. I shall refer to some English translations from the Arabic and show how wrong they are. I shall suggest that in Arabic philosophy itself al-Fārābī, rather than Avicenna, may have been the origin of the philosophic concepts of “first and second intentions.” I shall point out that although these concepts may have been introduced into Latin scholasticism by Raymond Lull, he could not have derived them from the Logic of al-Ghazālī, as has been alleged. (shrink)

Democracy is a political system that has some universal appeal, and, this seems to invest it with some kind of legitimacy over other systems of government. But this in no way suggests that it is homogenously conceived or practiced across the world—particularly in Western and African countries. Yet there is some supposition that some cultures have (almost) perfected their practice of democracy while others are learning its rudiments. This tends to arouse the philosopher's interest in the conceptual and practical bases (...) for the supposition. In African philosophy, the notion of consensus has often been touted as a kernel and mēnsūra for evidence of democracy in traditional African thought. This paper examines the propriety of this move, taking into account the specific positions of the Ghanaian philosophers, Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye. It explores the political dynamics of contemporary Africa and brings out the challenges and prospects for the sort of democracy that is being practiced—or, at least, is said to be practiced—in Africa. It is often debated in African political thought whether consensus or majoritarian rule (characterized by such activities as voting and multipartism) defines democracy, but the paper argues that neither of them really brings about democracy. It then highlights the humanistic end of democracy. Using the Ghanaian experience especially, the paper proposes ways of improving the understanding and practice of democracy in Africa. (shrink)

In this paper i argue that the bundle-theory, the theory that substance is nothing but a collection of qualities, bristles with difficulties. i show that a conjunction of the so-called essential qualities would primarily yield a conception not of an individual substance socrates, for instance, but of a species, i.e., the concept 'man', and that only the addition of some uniquely determining accidental qualities to the essential ones would yield an individual substance. but, then, these accidental qualities and infinite in (...) number and are therefore only potential and unknowable. thus, the "bundle" can never be 'actualized'. nor can the notion of substance be eliminated in favor of descriptions, since these should include negative descriptions which are infinite in number because expressible in terms of the whole universe. since not all descriptions apply to a thing, where they do, they must have been antecedantly 'derived' from that thing. hence, i conclude that there are grounds for at least a limited defense of a substance ontology. (shrink)

This translation of Ibn-al-Tayyib’s work on Porphyry’s Eisagoge brings to the English readers a significant book in Near Eastern logic that has been discussed and excerpted by major philosophers such as Tusi, Averroes, and Avicenna. It has also been the source of philosophical discussions on topics of logic by Boethius, Abelard, Ockham and others. Gyekye has clarified the Arabic link between Greek and Latin traditions with his translation, detailed explanations and text analysis of this 11th century philosopher’s commentary on the (...) Eisagoge, a work which is itself based on Aristotle’s Categories and Metaphysics. (shrink)