The Menkiti-Gyekye conversation: framing persons

Abstract

Ifeanyi Menkiti’s “Person and Community in African Traditional Thought” is criticized from the standpoint that the author assumes a dichotomous framework taken over in his decision to articulate the African view of the person in the idiom of modern philosophy. Kwame Gyekye’s critique of Menkiti in “Person and Community in African
Thought” is also scrutinized to see if it manages to break free from this framework. I conclude by calling for a departure from quasi-scientific approaches to human nature and experience that attempt to apprehend culture from a position without culture.

Keywords: Menkiti, Gyekye, Personhood, Community, Persons