Restating Rights in African Communitarianism

Abstract

In classical African communitarianism, individual rights have tended to be accorded a secondary status to the good of the community. What is prioritised are the duties and obligations the individual has to the whole as opposed to the entitlements one can expect to derive from a community qua individual. I seek to show that this view, by its own standards and assumptions, is erroneous in framing rights as secondary to the good of the community. I attempt to show that individual rights are an inherent component of classical African communitarian accounts. Further, I seek to argue for a non-communalist view of African communitarianism which takes into full account the multiple factors that constitute modern African communities. Such a view, I suggest, will avoid the unnecessary dichotomisation of rights which has become synonymous with the classical African communitarian account.

Epistemic Just and Dynamic AI Ethics in Africa

“…In the African tradition, the relation between an individual and society is determined by a community of people (Gyekye, 1997, p. 2). Thus, the "communal structure" (ibid., p. 3) of African societies is the core characteristic of the social structure of African cultures (see also, e.g., Masolo, 2004;Tshivhase, 2015;Matolino, 2018;Metz, 2018). In this sense, one's status as an individual, one's very uniqueness, is only a secondary quality, as one is "first and foremost … several people's relatives and several people's contemporary" (Gyekye, 1997, 2).…”

“…22 In other words, the "thick" view of rights according to which rights are prior to duties (e.g., Griffin, 2009) is not necessarily naturally the African view, as on the latter account, rights should not naturally trump cultural, moral and political grounds for action (Molefe, 2019, p. 147), but are rather related to human dignity in more complex causal relationships (ibid, p. 152). There is in fact a continuum of views on rights in African literature, with persons such as Ake (1987), claiming that there are no individual rights in African moral and political thought, only communal duties, on one side of the continuum, more moderate views such as Gyekye's (1997) in which rights and duties are not in a one-to-one correlative relationship, but are nevertheless on equal moral footing and in a mutually dependent relationship, to African scholars accepting individual rights into African political theories to varying degrees (e.g., Wiredu, 1997;Metz, 2011;Matolino (2018)). I will here briefly consider Gyekye's moderate communitarian approach 23 to this debate, with some reference to other views, such as Molefe's.…”

Locating rights in the afro-communitarian scheme: Testing the compatibilist argument

“…Bernard Matolino (2018) attempts an account of the compatibilism of rights and Afro-communitarianism that is grounded on a conception of personhood that strictly emphasizes the constitutive elements of the self without being encumbered with normative details of the communitarian community. He argues that the idea of community Menkiti and Gyekye hold as constituting the African view of community, makes the idea of rights of non importance in African political philosophy.…”

“…This Menkiti's claim has initiated Afrocommunitarian discourse on the place and relevance of individual rights within the African political philosophy. At the forefront of this Afro-communitarian discourse are the right-based compatibilists, such as Kwame Gyekye (1997), Bernard Matolino (2018), Thaddeus Metz (2011Metz ( , 2020, Jonathan Chimakonam (2018), who argue that individual rights, as well as duties, should be of paramount importance in African political philosophy. For instance, Gyekye defends what he calls "moderate communitarianism" that espouses that Afrocommunitarianism is compatible with individual rights and, therefore, individual rights should be accorded equal status with duties.…”

African communitarian ethics: An externalist justification for altruism

“…For a classic example of a paper that modifies ACE to ground individual autonomy, see for instance Kwame Gyeke's (1978, 1997-Chapter 2) "moderate communitarianism". For a more recent paper, see Matolino's (2018). See also Ikuenobe (2018).…”