Abstract
AbstractIn this paper, I address a range of arguments put forward by Kwame Gyekye (1992) and Bernard Matolino (2014) denying Menkiti’s twin propositions that persons differ ontologically from human beings and that human attitudes, behaviours and practices constitute persons in social reality. They argue that his account of “maximal” persons, rooted in African traditional thought‐worlds, conflates issues and ultimately involve him in a category mistake. I argue that their arguments do not succeed, and that Menkiti’s view is not in any predicament because of them. Then, I draw on John Searle’s account of social ontology to clarify the sense in which attitudes, behaviours and practices are constituents of persons. Thus, I characterise persons as social entities belonging in a social ontology. Finally, I argue that realism regarding persons is not undermined by the threat of conventionalism lurking behind the view.
Highlights
There has been significant growth in the scholarship on Ifeanyi Menkiti’s account of traditional African conception of person
I want to examine these objections. Since they reject the proposition that social facts, including shared attitudes, behaviours and practices, play a constitutive role in the making of a person, they stand in the way of analysing persons, as Menkiti does, as social entities belonging in a social ontology
I may be accused of relying on the intrinsic features of a human being to explain why the conventions that constitute person are established, I denied earlier on that the identity of a social object is not determined by its intrinsic feature
Summary
There has been significant growth in the scholarship on Ifeanyi Menkiti’s account of traditional African conception of person. Since they reject the proposition that social facts, including shared attitudes, behaviours and practices, play a constitutive role in the making of a person, they stand in the way of analysing persons, as Menkiti does, as social entities belonging in a social ontology.
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