The Arc of Personhood: Menkiti and Kant on Becoming and Being a Person

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This article seeks to come to a better understanding of the account of normative personhood given by the Nigerian philosopher Ifeyani Menkiti by engaging it with that of Kant. The idea is not to adjudicate between the two accounts, but to explore the philosophical possibilities and constraints in both. I focus on the moral significance of the afterlife in each account. I engage Kant's doctrine of the postulates in support of Menkiti's defense of belief in this-worldly ancestral existence and evaluate Kant's moral commitment to belief in the immortality of the soul in the light of Menkiti's more social conception of the afterlife. I close with some comments on the general need for greater cross-cultural philosophical engagement.