Person And Community In African Traditional Thought John Mbiti Analysis

In "Person and Community in African Traditional Thought" (1984), Menkiti argued that, in Africa, the community had priority over the individual. He distinguished between Western views, which generally hold that a person is a lone individual, and African views, in which a person is defined "by reference to the environing community," quoting John Mbiti's statement, "I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am," to support his thesis (p. 171). According to Menkiti, "as far as Africans are concerned, the reality of the communal world takes precedence over the reality of individual life histories" (p. 171). Thus the communal ethos has ontological and epistemological precedence. Menkiti also defended the communitarian view on biological
Menkiti conflates the facticity of personhood with quality. He does this by distinguishing between muntu mutupu (a man of middling importance) and muntu mukulumpe (a powerful man, a man with a great deal of force). It is not clear why both persons cannot hold the status of "person," even though one is "middling" and the other is already great. Menkiti rejects the Western minimalist definition of a person, "whoever has a soul, or rationality, or will, or memory; the African view is 'maximal'." Menkiti uses the word maximal to indicate that the African view of personhood includes other criteria and is not limited to soul, rationality, or will. Since personhood is achieved, not endowed, in Africa, one could fail at achieving it. There are rules governing social rituals of incorporation that are designed to help the individual attain selfhood. The older an individual becomes, the more of a person that individual becomes. Menkiti quoted an Igbo proverb, "What an old man sees sitting down, a young man cannot see standing up," to support his claim that personhood is a quality acquired as one gets older. While this proverb hints at differences of perspective between older and younger individuals, it is not implicit that personhood is an acquired quality. Opponents might agree with
He also stated that when a child dies, the funeral ceremonies are brief. However, when an older person dies, elaborate funeral celebrations take place because the older individual has achieved personhood and has now become an ancestor who lives among the people. In general, when one dies, he or she ceases to be a person. At the beginning of life, an individual who has no name will work toward personhood, and at the end of life, that individual loses personhood because he or she has departed for the next world. The departed ones may be referred to with the neuter pronoun it because their contact with the human community has been