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ABSTRACT
This article philosophically explicates the relationship between personhood and moral recognition in African ethics. Specifically, it reveals the two distinct forms of moral recognition associated with personhood. It conceptualises moral recognition in terms of recognition and appraisal respect. To clarify the relationship between personhood and moral recognition, it makes three interventions. Firstly, it draws a distinction between the normative concept of personhood and the ethics of personhood. The normative concept of personhood specifies the final good of character perfection (virtue) and the ethics of personhood refers to a moral theory comprising (1) the fact of being human, (2) a theory of human dignity (or, moral status) and (3) the final good of virtue, the former is one component of the latter. Secondly, it indicates two aspects of value constitutive of the ethics of personhood - human dignity (or, moral status) and virtue (normative notion of personhood). Finally, it associates the aspect of human dignity with the primary form of moral recognition — recognition respect and it associates virtue with the secondary form of moral recognition — appraisal respect. The major insight of this article is to alert us of the primacy of human dignity in the ethics of personhood.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 In this article, I use the terms moral status and human dignity interchangeably. I do so following reasons already specified in the literature (see Toscano Citation2011; Molefe, Citation2019a, Citationb).
2 In this article, I use the normative concept of personhood and ubuntu interchangeably. I do so following reasons already specified in the literature (Ikuenobe, Citation2018; Molefe, Citation2019a).
3 Remember, Gyekye’s criticises Menkiti’s view of personhood for failing to accommodate human rights. When, however, he seeks to introduce and defend rights ala moderate communitarianism, Gyekye invokes the notion of human dignity construed in terms of the capacity for autonomy as the ground for human rights. Remember, human rights are kinds of moral properties that we do not earn or merit, and the idea of personhood is a merit term, which makes it unsuitable to ground human rights.
4 The latest form of this conceptual confusion and misunderstanding of personhood finds its expression in Ikuenobe’s contribution on human dignity and human rights in light of the concept of personhood (see, Citation2016, Citation2018). For criticisms of it (see Molefe Citation2019a).
5 The reader will do well to notice that there is scant literature that has reflected on the question whether the African concept of personhood (virtue) presupposes a particular conception of human dignity (or, moral status). This kind of reflection is generally absent in the literature. At best, it is implicit, particularly in the writings of Menkiti and Gyekye. I am aware that Ikuenobe has started exploring this kind of relationship, but I think his approach is less than plausible (see Molefe Citation2019a). I am equally aware that Molefe (Citation2020a, Citationb) has started explicating the relationship between personhood and human dignity.
6 I take the idea of moral status and human dignity to be related in a particular way. The concept of moral status admits of degrees: we can talk of low and high moral status, or we can talk in terms of partial and full moral status. The highest or full moral status is tantamount to human dignity (Toscano, Citation2011).
7 The reader might reasonably press me to clarify the place of the self and self-regarding duties in this moral system given the prominence of other-regarding virtues in it. Space does not allow me to respond to this concern. Elsewhere, I do consider and respond to this objection (see Molefe, Citation2019a: 57; Citation2020c: 203–204; 2021).
8 Briefly, the reason for preferring deontology over consequentialism is the fact that most scholars of personhood accept those interpretations of it that take seriously the idea of human dignity and special relationships, which are typical features of deontological accounts (see Gyekye, Citation1992; Wiredu, Citation1996). I am aware that Ikuenobe (Citation2018) takes a mixed approach that interprets it in terms of both consequentialism and deontology. It is not within the scope of this paper to delve into these details, I am satisfied with merely suggesting that a deontological interpretation most suitably captures a plausible view of the ethics of personhood.
9 The major insight that emerges in this section, which I hope the reader appreciates, is the intrinsic relationship between a view of human dignity and virtue. These two are different sides of the same moral coin of the ethics of personhood.
10 In the literature on environmental ethics, there is a distinction between strongly and weakly anthropocentric theories. A strongly anthropocentric position strictly assigns intrinsic value to human beings. A weakly anthropocentric view imposes a hierarchy among human beings and non-human components of the environment, and it assigns greater value to the former over the latter. If, in a trade-off situation, where one must choose one over the other, then one must prioritise human beings.