5 research outputs found
Embodied minds: a critical response to McMahan on personal identity.
Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.No abstract available
Personhood and human rights: a critical study of the African communitarian and normative conception of the self.
Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.No abstract available
A social ontology of “maximal” persons
In 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,
conflatesissues 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
The Making of Ancestral Persons
In this paper, I address a range of arguments put forward by Katrin Flikschuh (2016) casting doubts on a theoretical account ofancestral persons in the work of Ifeanyi Menkiti. She argues both that their ontological status is uncertain and that they areontologically redundant. I argue that she does not succeed in convincing us to settle for a practical justification of ancestors. Ithen supplement Menkiti’s life-history account of post-mortem persistence with Searle’s account of social ontology with a viewto theoretically justify belief in the existence of ancestral persons