The communitarian conception of person is the dominant view of personhood in
African philosophy. This view centrally holds that personhood is something that is
attained in direct proportion to one's moral worth and one's relations with her
surrounding community. This view understands personhood as something that is
acquired as one's moral responsibility grows. Essentially personhood is constituted by
the community and expressed in relations that one has with her community. Thus the
individual and the community are both tied in the same fate. The individual is seen as
constituted by the community and as one with the community. Whatever happens to
her happens to the whole community.
Some leaders of newly independent Africa used this communitarian VIew of
personhood to argue for a socialist order. Such an order would have been faithful to
the traditional communitarian conception of person and the soc,i al as well as the
economic order that proceeds from that conception. In order to develop an
authentically African socialist programme these leaders strived to show that the
communitarian conception of personhood naturally leads to African socialism. They
took African socialism to be a panacea to economic and social ills that had been
brought on by colonialism.
This thesis seeks to interrogate both the communitarian conception of personhood and
the resultant political ideology of African socialism. It is argued that the major driving
factor behind the development of the communitarian view and African socialism is an
inordinate desire to find and present the African difference. The problem started with
Placide Tempels' futile search for an African ontology and has been perpetuated by
all communitarians and African socialists. Thus this project is conceived as a
philosophical critique of African communitarianism and the resultant socialism. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermariztburg, 2008.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/997 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Matolino, Bernard. |
| Contributors | Beck, Simon. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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