Abstract
The diverse global sociocultural world views pre-empt difficulty in the standard conceptualization of a human person. Often, the Western world view is contestably perceived as the yardstick for personhood. In Africa, despite the heterogeneity of culture and diversity in perception of reality, there has been more or less common conceptualization of personhood. The African anthropocentric ontology of nature is perceived in this chapter as the foundation of personhood. By and large, the chapter dwells on the fundamental African understanding of a human person from communalism world view. The limitation of African communalism to the ethnic boundaries and the consequences associated with this limitation are argued to be a setback in the conceptualization of personhood in Africa.
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- 1.
Interview with a respondent from University of Toronto, Canada for a PhD thesis by David Nderitu (author) titled: ‘An analysis of Aristotelian analogy of friendship among unequal parties: the case of IU-Kenya Partnership’ on 16 March 2017.
- 2.
Interview with an opinion shaper from the Turkana community on 23 May 2012 in Naivasha Sub-County, Kenya.
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Nderitu, D. (2020). The Meaning of Human Person in the African Context. In: Wariboko, N., Falola, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Social Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36490-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36490-8_6
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