In Menkiti’s Moral Man, Oritsegbubemi Anthony Oyowe offers an original interpretation of Ifeanyi Menkiti’s conception of person, one that has significant implications for his metaphysics and moral philosophy. Menkiti holds that one is not born a person but becomes a person in a linguistic and cultural community, denies that the mere possession of intrinsic properties makes one a person, and maintains that personhood is defined by the community. This last process consists in the community socially recognizing as person one who has been incorporated into society and has successfully carried out a range of obligations linked to social roles and positions. On the one hand, Oyowe clarifies the role of intrinsic properties in Menkiti's account by arguing that for Menkiti, moral agency and personhood do not coincide. One is a moral agent but not a person in virtue of being rational, free, and endowed with a moral personality. On the other hand, he clarifies the sense in which the community makes one a person by drawing on principles of social ontology to explain how by adopting certain attitudes and practices a community constitutes its members as persons.This interpretation has the potential to illuminate a range of problems raised in response to Menkiti’s conception of person.

Ifeanyi Menkiti’s articulation of an African conception of personhood—especially in “Person and Community in African Traditional Thought” —has become very influential in African philosophy. Menkiti on Community and Becoming a Person contributes to the debate in African philosophy on personhood by engaging with various aspects of Menkiti’s account of person and community. The contributors examine this account in relation to themes such as individualism, communalism, rights, individual liberty, moral agency, communal ethics, education, state and nation building, elderhood and ancestorhood. Through these themes, this book, edited by Edwin Etieyibo and Polycarp Ikuenobe, shows that Menkiti’s account of personhood in the context of community is both fundamental and foundational to epistemological, metaphysical, logical, ethical, legal, social and political issues in African thought systems.

Clinical Trials and the African Person aims to position the African notion of the self/person within the clinical trials context. As opposed to autonomy-based principlism, this other-regarding/communalist perspective is the preferred alternative model. This tactic draws further attention to the inadequacy of the principlist approach particularly in multicultural settings. It also engenders a rethink, stimulates interest, and re-assesses the failed assumptions of universal ethical principles. As a novel attempt that runs against much of the prevailing (Euro-American) intellectual mood, this approach strives to introduce the African viewpoint by making explicit the import of the self in a re-contextualized arena, meaning within the community and a given milieu. Thus, research ethics must go beyond autonomy-based considerations for the individual, to rightly embed him/her within his/her community and the environment.

Antonia Lolordo presents an original interpretation of John Locke's metaphysics of moral agency, in which to be a moral agent is simply to be free, rational, and a person. Her account bears on Locke's metaphysics and political theory, and helps us understand his wider philosophical project and his accounts of liberty, personhood, and rationality.

Kwame Nkrumah is globally recognized as a foremost pan-Africanist strategist and statesman. He is less widely acknowledged as a philosopher, in spite of his considerable philosophical training, seminal contribution to African political theory, and incisive critique of the ethics of international relations. Consciencism has the distinctive status of being the only published book that Nkrumah consciously meant to be a work of his philosophy, yet it has failed to attract the focused attention of philosophers. The chapters in Disentangling Consciencism: Essays on Kwame Nkrumah’s Philosophy critically explore the metaphysical, ethical and political thought expressed in Consciencism. In doing so, they broaden our understanding of his philosophical ideas and their relevance for effective African contribution to thought in a contemporary world in which Africa increasingly totters on the margins of international affairs. In much of current moral and political thinking, there is a tendency to universalize liberal values and neglect non-Western philosophical perspectives. At the same time, global normative thinking is overwhelmingly applied in non-Western contexts. Writing from across three continents, the contributors to this volume establish greater intellectual connection among African, Asian and Western academics, and their chapters offer explicit perspectives on the value of Nkrumah’s philosophy, and on the conceptual basis of early post-colonial public policy options in Africa. A valuable appendix provides the text of speeches delivered at the 1964 launch of Consciencism. With insights into numerous dimensions of Nkrumah’s philosophy, this volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars of philosophy—especially of non-Western metaphysical, moral and political thought—and to anyone working in the history of African political theory.

This is the first comprehensive volume on African ethics, centered on Ubuntu and its relevance today. Important contemporary issues are explored, such as African bioethics, business ethics, traditional African attitudes to the environment, and the possible development of a new form of democracy based on indigenous African political systems. In a world that has become interconnected, this anthology demonstrates that African ethics can make valuable contributions to global ethics. It is not only African academics, students, organizations, or those individuals committed to ethics that are envisaged as the beneficiaries of this book, but all humankind. A number of topics presented here were inspired by a Shona proverb that says, Ndarira imwe hairiri (One brass wire cannot produce a sound). The chorus of voices in African Ethics demonstrates this proverbial truism.