Person, Personhood and Individual Rights in Menkiti’s African Communitarian Thinking

Abstract

In this article, I argue that individuals could be entitled to rights, outside those that are communally conferred, as part of the primary requirement of being ‘persons’ in the African communitarian set-up if the terms ‘person’ and ‘personhood’ are understood differently from the way they are currently deployed in the communitarian discourse. The distinction between these two terms is the basis of my thesis where clarity on their meanings could be helpful in establishing the possibility of ascribing rights outside those that are communally conferred. I argue that ontologically, a ‘person’ is prior to ‘personhood’ (understood in the normative sense) which is considered to find its fuller expression in a community and by virtue of this, I think that he or she is entitled to some rights outside those that are defined and conferred by the community. This is my point of departure in this article.

Acceptance, obedience and resistance: Children's perceptions of street trading in Nigeria

“…The ACC clearly upholds the best interests of the child, along with rights to education and to be protected from hazardous labour, but this can potentially be overridden by duty to parents or to support cultural values. This conception of rights reflects the African communitarian perspective, which has traditionally prioritised the communal world over the individual (Masaka, 2018).…”

African Ethics, Respect for Persons, and Moral Dissent

“…The rights or claims against others that Rawls proposes are not communally conferred but “natural” in the sense that they exist independent from any community. African scholars such as Masaka point to a similar concern when they distinguish between “personhood” and “person”: personhood indicates moral and social standing that a community confers when it “helps in moulding a person into a moral being”; whereas person designates the moral status associated with rights or dignity in the sense that “a person retains some level of individuality and self‐expression even outside the mediation of the community and such individuality ought to be respected” (Masaka, 2018). Yet, in reply, although an appeal to natural rights or moral status apart from society affords one way to extricate a persecuted individual from an immoral social system, it is not the only way.…”

A social ontology of “maximal” persons

“…There has been significant growth in the scholarship on Ifeanyi Menkiti’s account of traditional African conception of person. Much of the focus has been on its implications, particularly on the implied overbearing role of community, on individual agency, rights and relational autonomy (see, for example, Ikuenobe, 2006a, 2006b, 2016; Molefe, 2016, Masaka, 2018). Comparably less attention has been devoted to illuminate Menkiti’s claim that personhood is a status and that one acquires that status in virtue of certain kinds of social behaviour, including participating in social life, carrying out appropriate obligations and intra‐group recognition.…”