Introduction

Oritsegbubemi Anthony Oyowe’s book Menkiti’s Moral Man, published in 2022, explores Ifeanyi Menkiti’s ideas on the community’s role in defining personhood, encapsulating the idea that “a person is a person because of other persons.” Oyowe, previously a critic, now “a repentant critic” of Menkiti, engages Menkiti’s maximal view of personhood within Menkiti’s broader philosophical commitments. While acknowledging the plausibility of some criticisms, Oyowe defends Menkiti’s views against recurrent critiques. In light of his defense, this special issue is dedicated to furthering the intellectual engagement of his arguments. This issue features contributions from various philosophers who critically analyze and expand upon the themes presented by Oyowe, thereby enriching the discourse on personhood and African philosophy within the academic community and beyond it.The special issue has a total of eight articles. The article by Thaddeus Metz critiques Oyowe’s interpretation of Ifeanyi Menkiti’s views on personhood. Metz acknowledges that Oyowe’s interpretation is more plausible than others but argues that it still has shortcomings. Oyowe’s interpretation of Menkiti’s view of the person underscores two features, namely, social recognition and a social life of moral action. Metz’s reaction to these two features is that they give undue emphasis to the social dimension of personhood. His contention is that it is possible for an individual to achieve personhood by means of accomplishments that are not recognized by the community and by fulfilling requirements, such as those pertaining to one’s duties to oneself, that don’t involve social engagement. In short, Metz’s assessment of Oyowe’s interpretation of Menkiti’s view of personhood is that it is “too social.”In the article “A Critique of Oyowe’s Mind-Dependent Ancestral Persistence Thesis,” Dennis Masaka focuses on chapter 6 of Oyowe’s book, where Oyowe discusses the ontology and persistence of ancestral persons. According to Oyowe’s interpretation of Menkiti’s view of personhood, ancestral persons depend on human memory for their existence such that they cease to exist as soon as no human being remembers them. So, according to Oyowe’s Menkiti, ancestral persons are mind-dependent though real. Masaka concedes that Oyowe’s mind-dependence ancestral existence thesis is easier to defend than its competing alternative of the mind-independence ancestral existence thesis. So, he refers to the former as the “safe” alternative and to the latter as the “unsafe” alternative. Nevertheless, Masaka contends that Oyowe’s arguments for the “safe” alternative have not managed to rule out the possibility of the “unsafe” alternative. So, Masaka, who is sympathetic to the second (“unsafe”) alternative, intends his article to serve as a call to all other sympathizers to start the process of creatively articulating arguments for its defense. Do ancestral persons continue to exist mind-independently, that is, after their termination in human memory? Masaka urges fellow sympathizers to begin articulating plausible arguments for an affirmative answer to this question.In the article “The Politics of Exclusion and Inclusive Recognition,” Ovett Nwosimiri discusses the concepts of personhood and community within contemporary African philosophy, focusing on the inclusion and recognition of LGBTQ+ people. He critiques the version of African communitarianism that prioritizes the community over the individual, arguing that it contributes to ongoing social and epistemic injustice toward LGBTQ+ individuals. Nwosimiri, who examines Oyowe’s arguments for the social recognition and inclusion of women in African communities, calls for the extension of the same arguments to LGBTQ+ people.He contends that the nonrecognition and exclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals are forms of social and epistemic injustice, given that, like other recognized community members, they fulfill communal obligations and demonstrate good conduct.Nwosimiri argues that failure to recognize and to include LGBTQ+ people constitutes a social injustice because it violates their individual human rights, autonomy, dignity, and well-being, contrary to the principles upheld by the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights to which most African countries are signatories. It also constitutes an epistemic injustice because LGBTQ+ people are denied the opportunity to contribute to communal knowledge, thus impoverishing the community’s understanding of human diversity. Ontologically, Nwosimiri embraces the equal ontological standing of the community and the individual thesis, as this grounds a version of communitarianism that respects interdependence between individuals and the community while also addressing the oppressive practices that lead to the marginalization and exclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals.The article “Africa Is Not for Softies: On Oyowe, Menkiti, and Conventionalism” by Simon Beck is a critical engagement of Oyowe’s interpretation of Ifeanyi Menkiti’s concept of personhood in African philosophy that focuses on the distinction between human beings and persons. According to Oyowe’s interpretation of Menkiti’s view of personhood, the set of its defining features includes the conventional ones that pertain to the process of an individual’s incorporation into the community. In contrast, Beck argues that Menkiti’s essential features of personhood are limited to those such as moral function or moral maturity, which are internal to the individual. His view is that instead of being constitutive of personhood, the role of the process of incorporation and its pertinent conventional features is limited to that of transformation of the individual into a person. Beck argues that this transformation involves fundamental changes that endow the individual with the moral maturity that is essential for personhood.Beck also addresses the potential problems of relativism and arbitrariness in Oyowe’s conventionalism, suggesting that while conventions vary, the core properties that constitute personhood are causally connected to human beings, making persons robust rather than conventional or arbitrary components of the real world.In the article “Communal Social Architecture, Individual Capacities, and Menkiti’s Personhood,” Polycarp A. Ikuenobe addresses two sets of issues raised by Oyowe regarding Menkiti’s conception of personhood. The first set involves criticism that Menkiti’s view is unfairly gendered, privileging men and undermining individuality in favor of the community. The second set of issues concerns Oyowe’s critique of Ikuenobe’s interpretation of Menkiti. Despite acknowledging the merits of these criticisms, Oyowe believes that Menkiti’s framework has the resources to address them.Regarding the issues of gender biases in Menkiti’s conception of personhood, the balance between community and individual autonomy, and the moral status of individuals like infants and those with cognitive impairments, Ikuenobe comes to Menkiti’s defense. He does so by highlighting the importance of social roles and social architecture in achieving personhood. He also argues that Oyowe overlooks the very resources for addressing these issues that he himself acknowledges to exist within Menkiti’s framework. Regarding social architectures, Ikuenobe discusses how they affect the achievement of personhood, as well as their potential for perpetuating oppression and exclusion. He also underscores the distinction between normative and meta-normative analysis, and he insists that his work focused on applying normative standards rather than on questioning their fairness. He further underscores the complexities of the concept of personhood in African cultures and the interplay between communal norms and individual identity.The article “Ancestral Existence and the Mind’s Afterlife” by Katrin A. Flikschuh discusses the concept of ancestral existence. Flikschuh critiques Oyowe’s approach for its inclusion of both mind-independent and mind-dependent realities within one framework, arguing that this leads to competing criteria for determining what is real. She argues that this duality places mind-dependent entities on a lower rung compared to mind-independent entities. Additionally, she questions Oyowe’s socio-ontological approach for being overly descriptive and for failing to adequately reflect the prevailing nature of belief in ancestors, which typically includes their empirical effects in the natural world as evidence of nonmaterial agency.Flikschuh also presents an alternative to Menkiti’s extended materialism, suggesting the possibility of the mind-independent existence of nonmaterial entities like ancestors within the material world. She justifies her alternative by drawing on pan-psychic and quasi-materialist perspectives that appeal to phenomena that cannot be explained by material causation alone. Flikschuh’s alternative challenges dominant physicalist conceptions and supports the rationality of belief in ancestral existence through ontological progression, whereby a socially nurtured human being becomes a person through community induction, in much the same way as Aristotle’s potentiality is actualized under the right conditions.The article “On the Importance of an Endogenous Ontological Account of Ancestors” by Lindokuhle Gama critiques Oyowe’s defense of Ifeanyi Menkiti’s conception of ancestors. According to Gama, Oyowe argues that ancestors should be understood as social kinds rather than natural kinds, opposing Katrina Flikschuh’s claim that their ontological status is uncertain and practically justified at best. Gama contends that both Oyowe’s and Flikschuh’s arguments are caught up in Western metaphysical frameworks and that these blind them to the mind-independent events and common-sense understandings present in African conceptions of ancestors. Consequently, she emphasizes the need for an endogenous ontological account that respects African epistemic traditions and avoids the distortions caused by exogenous paradigms.The article “Menkiti’s Moral Man: Engaging with Critics” by Oritsegbubemi Anthony Oyowe is his response to the seven philosophers who contributed to this special issue by critically engaging the main arguments of his Menkiti’s Moral Man.In conclusion, this special issue stands out, as both African and global intellectual communities in related fields will find the articles intellectually stimulating. We expect the articles to inspire further fruitful discussions on the various topics and arguments presented. We wish you an engaging and enjoyable reading experience.