PERSON AND COMMUNITY

PERSON AND COMMUNITY

            The characteristic of communitarianism (or communal living) is one aspect that distinguishes Africans from westerners. This distinguishing characteristic of Africans has attracted a host of contributions. Central here are Ifeanyi Menkiti and Kwame Gyekye. These men champion radical communitarianism and moderate communitarianism respectively. Let us move to present their views.

IFEANYI MENKITI (RADICAL COMMUNITARIAN)

            Menkiti begins by contrasting the divergences between the western and African views of person vis-à-vis the community.

            Firstly, according to Menkiti, albeit most western views of man abstract this or that feature (rationality, memory, or will) of a lone individual and then proceed to make it the defining or essential characteristic which entities aspiring to the description man must have, the African view of man denies this but defines man by reference to the environing community and the social circumstances that shape the individual. This, J.S Mbiti says is summed up in the statement “I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am.” Affirming this, Menkiti opines that from this dictum, it is to be appositely concluded that the reality of the communal world takes precedence over the reality of individual life histories, whatever these may be. This primacy is meant to apply both ontologically, and with regard to epistemic accessibility. Hence, it is in rootedness in an on-going human community that the individual comes to see himself/herself as a man/woman, and it is by first knowing this community as a stubborn perduring fact of the psychophysical world that the individual also comes to know himself/herself as a durable, more or less permanent, fact of this world.

            The second point of contrast is the processual nature of being in African thought. According to Menkiti, persons become persons only after a process of incorporation. Without incorporation into this or that community, individuals are considered mere danglers to whom the description ‘person’ does not apply. Personhood, contra western thought, is achieved and not simply given by mere birth as it is in western thought. Thus, in the light of the above, says Menkiti, the western view goes for minimal definition of the person, the African view goes for maximal definition of the person.

            Moving further to consolidate and develop his views on personhood, Menkiti avers that personhood is attained not merely ontologically given, it is something at which individuals could fail, at which they could be incompetent or ineffective, better or worse. He substantiates this by given two arguments.

            The first is what I call the ‘It’ argument. Here, Menkiti argues that, in many African languages (English included), children and new-borns are referred to as ‘it’. Although, we could refer to such as he or she, but, we have a choice of using ‘it’ whereas no such choice abounds in referring to older persons. In this light too, a significant symmetry exists between the opening phase of an individual’s quest for personhood and the terminal phase of that quest. Both are marked by an absence of incorporation and this absence is made abundantly evident by the related absence of collectively conferred names. This is clear because in African societies, the ultimate termination of personal existence is also marked by an ‘it’ designation, thus, the same depersonalized reference marking the beginning of personal existence, also marks the end of that existence. After birth, the individual goes through the different rites of incorporation, including those of initiation at puberty time, before becoming a full person in the eyes of the community. And then, of course, there is procreation, old age, death and entering into the community of departed ancestral spirits- a community viewed as continuous with the community of living men and women, and with which it is conceived as being in constant interaction. The inhabitants of this ancestral community, Menkiti (following Mbiti) calls ‘living dead’. This name is invoked because the ancestral dead are neither dead in the world of the spirits, nor in the memory of living men/women who continue to remember them, and implore their help via libation and sacrificial offering. But, at the stage of ancestral existence, the personhood of the dead remain which make them to be addressed by their various names. But later, after several generations, the ancestors cease to be remembered by their personal names (nameless dead) and slide into personal non-existence, becoming mere ‘its’, ending their earthly sojourn as they had started out, and falling back into unincorporated non-persons.

            The second is what I call the ‘grief’ argument. Here, Menkiti argues that in African societies, there is a relative absence of ritualized grief when the death of a young child occurs, whereas with the death of an older person, the burial ceremony becomes more elaborate and the grief more ritualized, thus, indicating a significant difference in the conferral of ontological status, and affirming that personhood is attained not immediately given by mere birth.

            If personhood then is attained, does mere incorporation suffice? Menkiti would answer this question by saying that personhood is to be attained via participation in communal life. Through the discharge of the various obligations defined by one’s stations. The carrying out of these obligations transforms one from the ‘it’ status of early childhood (marked by an absence of moral functions), into the person-status of later years (marked by a widened maturity of ethical sense). This moral maturity, and the fulfillment of moral mores and ethical norms are necessary for personhood attainment, and this is surely absent in children and infants in Menkiti’s theses.

            On the whole, for Menkiti, in African societies, unlike western, there is the ontological priority, primacy and independence of the community. The community gives rise to persons, and personhood is acquired not merely given by birth. This acquisition is by incorporation and ethical sense fulfillment.

KWAME GYEKYE (MODERATE COMMUNITARIAN)

              According to Kwame Gyekye, social structure is a necessary feature of every human society, but it evolves (unlike Menkiti) to give effect to certain conceptions of human nature, and provide a framework for both the realization of the potentials, goals and hopes of the individual members of the society, and the continuous existence and survival of the society. Citing Senghor, Dickson and Kenyatta, Gyekye avers that communal life and communitarian ethos of the African culture (which rules out isolationism, individualism and eccentricity) is central in African societies, evident in African socio-ethical thought and indisputably reflected in African societies.

            But what, asks Gyekye, is the conception of personhood held in such a communitarian socio-ethical philosophy? Responding to Menkiti’s theses, Gyekye criticizes them by invoking many Akan thoughts and belief systems, and from thence, draws his own views which I consider more candid and tenable.

            But to begin with, Gyekye clarifies what ought to be the relationship between the community and the person vis-à-vis priority. He opines that obviously, the individual human being is born into an existing human community, and therefore into a human culture. But also, a community crucially consists of persons sharing interests and values, and so, emerges with the congregation of individual persons. This suggests, very appositely, that the human community is a product of the individual and not vice versa. The individual is therefore prior to the community, and the community existentially derives from individuals and the relationships that would exist between them. Moving further, Gyekye argues that the fact that a person is born into an existing community must suggest a conception of the person as a communitarian being by nature, but also, a person is a social or communal being by nature and is also other things by nature as well (that is, he possesses other essential attributes like rationality, capable of choice and moral judgement and so on). Failure to recognize this would confer on the community, a pseudo-all-engulfing moral authority to determine all things about the life of the individual person.

Owing from the demonstration of the above, Gyekye then worthily expresses a profound discountenance for Menkiti’s attempt to prove that African thought considers personhood as something defined and conferred by the community and as something that must be acquired by the individual. He does this by debunking the arguments put forward by Menkiti in support of this claim. And if these arguments are the basis of Menkiti’s theses and Gyekye shows these arguments to be untenable and lacking affective praxis, then, they cannot hold and are false. What are Gyekye’s critiques?

            The first is the ‘It’ critique. Here, Gyekye argues that the way the neuter pronoun ‘It’ functions in English differs from how it functions in some African languages. Citing the Akan language, ‘it’ does not exist for animate things but for inanimate things or objects. Citing also the Ga-Dangme language in Ghana, ‘it’ is gender neutral and applies to both animate and inanimate things. On this note, says Gyekye, Menkiti errs. 

            The second is the ‘grief’ critique. Here, Gyekye denies that every older person who dies in every African community is given elaborate burial. According to him, the type of the burial and nature and extent of the grief expressed over the death of an older person depends on the community’s assessment based on the person’s achievements in life, his/her contribution to the welfare of the community and the respect he/she commanded in the community. Older persons who do not satisfy these criteria are given simple and poor funerals and attenuated forms of grief expressions. As to the absence of ritualized grief on the death of a child, the reason is not personhood, but beliefs about its possible consequences. For the Akans, they believe that excessive demonstration of grief in the event of the death of a child will make the mother infertile by reaching her menopause prematurely, or, will also drive the dead child too far away for it to reincarnate, so be reborn. On this note too, Menkiti is amiss.

            Thus, for Gyekye, based on the above, contra Menkiti, a human person is a person regardless of age or social status. Personhood may reach its full realization in the community, but it is not acquired or yet to be achieved as one goes along in the society.

            Furthermore, for Gyekye too, one character of a human person is that a human person (at least in Akan thought) is a being who has a moral sense and is capable of making moral judgements. This conception quite includes children and infants. This is because, according to Gyekye, children (although not actually) are potentially capable of exercising moral sense and making moral judgements. To the mentally deranged, if I am to add following Gyekye’s thought pattern, their own capacity is not absent but in a state of abeyance.

Moral capacity then, is not implanted or conferred by the community. The community could at best nurture these capacities.

            Furthermore, in the communal setting of the African life, striving for the demonstration of a sense of personal responsibility, to achieve some measure of success in life and have a family, are strivings for the attainment of social status not personhood. These strivings are in fact part of the individual’s exercise of a capacity he /she has as a person. And even if he/she fails in this striving, personhood is not diminished though social status or respect might be lost. Thus, contra Menkiti, it is social status not personhood that individuals could fail.

            More so, individual persons are rational and capable of choice and so may find aspects of cultural givens inelegant, obsolete, undignifying or unenlightening, and thus, thoughtfully question and evaluate them. This may include affirmation, amendation, refinement or even total rejection of these canons.

            On the whole, for Gyekye, human beings besides being communal by nature, are also other things as well, like, rationality, capacity for virtue, capacity for evaluating and making moral judgements and hence, capable of choice. The community only nurtures and discovers these not creating them.

MY LOVE FOR GYKEYE

I find Gyekye’s views more tenable and plausible because they make a point that I consider sacred and inviolable to me which is that, with Gyekye’s views, the assertion of the naturality and inviolability of human rights is assured. With this view, it becomes evident, following Joseph Ratzinger in Values in a Time of Upheaval, that human rights are unconditional values which are inviolable, sacred and must be protected unconditionally. They derive from the essence of what it is to be human, are antecedent to any political arrangement, and are neither defined by a legislator nor given to human beings. It is something we possess naturally and antecedently. The community cannot define this for us but nurture it.