Volume 7, Issue 2, December 2015
Barry Hallen
Pages 1-10
Personhood in a Communitarian Context
Theories regarding the nature and achievement of personhood in a communitarian context appear to differ in significant respects in the writings of several contemporary African philosophers. Ifeanyi Menkiti seems to regard ethnic differences as sufficient to warrant a national accommodation of multiculturalism with respect to moralities and attendant beliefs. Kwasi Wiredu argues that there is a substantive universal moral principle that undercuts such apparent and relatively superficial diversity. Communitarianism also seems to provide a better framework for explaining how a human being becomes a person than classical liberal theory as enunciated by someone like John Rawls.