https://doi.org/10.31261/fp.24205
Down through the ages, a true African would say, “You are who you are” only in relation to the community in which you live. It means that you cannot be without identifying yourself with others. Hence, the search into the nature and attributes of “being” has been a primary task of philosophy, beginning from the ancient times and down to the present era. However, as there are various conceptualizations of “being” from various schools of thought and from unique continental philosophical traditions, so also there is the unique understanding of “being” from the point of view of African communalism, which is the foundation of personhood in African philosophical thought. This paper seeks to discuss the contextual understanding of being in the theory and practice of African Communalism especially as Western individualism has taken over the core African communal living thereby causing the geometric speed erosion of African communality. Accordingly, in an attempt to proffer solutions to the above-stated problem, this article adopts the methods of hermeneutics and critical analysis which strategically digs into a typical metaphysical attribute of African understanding of man, not just as an inherently individual person, but also as that person whose life and purpose can only attain meaning and fulfillment as an intrinsic member of the community whose collective decisions and actions contribute to defining one’s existence here on earth, and in the after-life. The paper concludes that an assessment of the inventions fueled by Westernization, especially “individualism,” is necessary, since it is the only way the African community can bring back her core traditional practice of communal living.
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2026
Published: 2021-04-22
10.31261/fp
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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