Abstract
Alexis Kagame’s “shadow thesis” is one of the most prominent theories of personhood in African Philosophy. Kagame offers us insight into what makes a person a person. Pinnacle to Kagame’s thesis is the idea that to be considered a person, one must have “intelligence” and the ability to put reason to good use. In this chapter, I argue that Kagame’s minimalist requirement for personhood is ableist in so far as it presents itself as exclusionary to people living with severe cognitive disabilities from the status of personhood. I contend that the justification for the ill-treatment of people with disabilities is premised on the notion that they are excluded from the category of personhood as identified in any theory of personhood that wants to make rationality a minimal requirement for personhood. The conclusions reached in the paper gesture toward the view that any theory of personhood that exemplifies itself as ableist should be rejected for further philosophical study and consideration.
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Manzini, N.Z. (2019). The Othering of Persons with Severe Cognitive Disabilities in Alexis Kagame’s Conceptualization of Personhood. In: Imafidon, E. (eds) Handbook of African Philosophy of Difference. Handbooks in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04941-6_19-1
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