Abstract
The
concept of a person held by a group of people is fundamental in understanding
not only how a person within such framework of thought views himself but also
how other matters such as the idea of being, morality, knowledge and truth that
are essential for the ordering of the society are viewed. This is emphasized by
the fact that such a concept encapsulates the role the society expects the
individual to play for the attainment of an orderly society and this makes it
inevitable for African Scholars to write on the conception of a person from the
Africans perspectives. The Yoruba of south western Nigeria, a person is
believed to be made up of three important parts. These are the “Ara” which is
the material body, including the internal organs of a person; the “Emi” which
is the life giving element and the “Ori” which is the individuality element
that is responsible for a person’s personality. In Akan ontology, a person is also
made up of three parts namely the “Okra”, the “Sunsum” and the “Honam” or
“Nipadua”, representing the soul (or life giving entity), the spirit that gives
a personality its force and body respectively.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO METAPHYSICS
1.1.1 METAPHYSICS AS A BRANCH OF PHILOSOPHY
1.1.2 THE QUESTION OF ULTIMATE REALITY
1.1.3 THE QUESTION OF BEING
1.2 THE
WESTERN CONCEPTION OF A PERSON
1.2.2 PLATO’S CONCEPT OF A PERSON
1.2.3 DESCARTES’ CONCEPT OF A PERSON
1.3 AFRICAN
CONCEPTION OF A PERSON
1.3.2 YORUBA CONCEPTION OF A PERSON
1.3.3 AKAN CONCEPTION OF A PERSON
1.4 CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
CHAPTER TWO
THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN PERSONALITY AND ORI IN RELATION
TO DESTINY
2.0
INTRODUCTION
2.1 THE
YORUBA OF CONCEPT A PERSON
2.2 THE
CONCEPT OF ORI IN AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE
2.3 THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ORI AND DESTINY
2.4 THE
PLAUSIBILITY OF THE THEORIES ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ORI AND DESTINY
2.5 CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
CHAPTER THREE
A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT ON ORI AND ITS RELATION TO HUMAN
DESTINY
3.0
INTRODUCTION
3.1 THE
PLAUSIBILITY OR OTHERWISE OF THEORIES ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ORI, DESTINY
AND HUMAN PERSON.
3.1.2
THE YORUBA ACCOUNT OF ORI AND DESTING AND THE PROBLEM OF
PERSONAL IDENTITY
3.1.3 THE YORUBA ACCOUNT OF ORI AND DESTINY AND
THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
3.2
YORUBA ACCOUNT OF ORI AND DESTINY AND THE PROBLEM OF FREE
WILL AND
DETERMINISM
3.3 ISSUES ARISING FROM THE ASSESSMENT OF
YORUBA ACCOUNT OF ORI AND HUMAN DESTINY
3.3.2
ENVIRONMENTAL/ SOCIETAL ISSUE THAT ARISES FROM THE
CONCEPT OF
PREDESTINATION
3.3.3 SCIENTIFIC AND BIOLOGICAL ISSUES ARISING
FROM PREDESTINATION
3.4 CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
The position of a human person in the world we are is what
gives meaning to our world. The human person governs and rules over other human
persons, every communities and societies have human person occupying it and it
can even be argued that the society exist because human person occupies it.
This importance of a human person makes it an object of study for scholars to
inquire into the ontological and normative conception of a person of which
African scholars are not exempted. This chapter is divided into seven sections,
the first section present an overview of metaphysics, which is necessary
because African scholars do not exclude metaphysic in their account of a
person. The second section discuss briefly on African conception of a person in
general and the third section present an explanation of Akan conception of a
Person from Gyekye and Kwasi Wiredu exposition.
The fourth section present an explanation of the Yoruba conception of a
person according to some African scholars which are Bolaji Idowu, Barry Hallen
and Shodipo, Olusegun Oladipo, Segun Gbadegesin, Kola Abimbola and Wande
Abimbola. The fifth section is a comparative analysis of the African conception
of a person and the western conception and the Seventh section is the
comparative analysis of the Akan conception of a person and the Yoruba
conception.
1.1 BACKGROUND
TO METAPHYSICS
There are disagreements on the nature of
metaphysics. Philosophers attempt to give a definition to metaphysics has given
rise to varieties of subject matter and approaches: This implies that there
lies uncertainty as regards metaphysics. Despite the disagreement, two things
can be deduced from the scope of metaphysics. On one hand, metaphysics is
descriptive in nature, that is, metaphysics give account of what metaphysicians
do. Secondly, by nature, it is normative, that is, it attempts to identify what
philosophers ought to do when they engage in metaphysics.
However, the term metaphysics is taken from
the title of Aristotle’s treatises’. Aristotle himself never called the treatise
by that name; but rather, the name metaphysics was conferred by the later
thinkers who happened to be students under Aristotle. Aristotle called the
discipline (metaphysics) in his treatise ‘first philosophy’ or ‘a theology’
which aimed at wisdom. Aristotle also tagged this as ‘knowledge of first
causes’. The subsequent use of the
title metaphysics makes it reasonable to suppose that what is called
metaphysics is the sort of thing done in that treatise. Metaphysics is a
discipline that centers on God as the first cause, unlike other discipline like
economics ethics etc. whose end is directed towards human action. Moreover,
metaphysics is not only interested in explaining the first causes but also in
the study of ‘Being qua Being’. Metaphysics tend to study
being qua being from the perspective of their being ‘Being qua Being’ that
exist. In other words, metaphysics considers things as beings or as existents
and it tends to explain specific properties or features they exhibit so they
are beings or existents. Metaphysics explains the concept of being and the
general concepts like unity or identity, difference, similarity and
dissimilarity that occur to everything that exist.
In Medieval Aristotelian tradition, there
is a dual characteristic of what metaphysics is: the Medieval believes that the
two conceptions of metaphysics are realized in a single discipline. This single
discipline aims at explaining the categorical structure of reality and to
establish the existence and nature of divine substance on the other hand.
Although, this view was rejected by the continental rationalist of the
seventeen and eighteen century, this led to expansion of the scope of
metaphysical enterprise. Meanwhile, the seventeen and eighteen rationalists
agreed that metaphysics is identified and characterize the most general kind of
things that exist and also agreed on the idea of the divine substance. The
rationalists confronted this idea with an intellectual landscape which led to
the ultimate emergence of a general map of metaphysics.
Contemporary philosophers that is,
philosophers from the 20th century to the 21st century
such as John Austin and A J. Ayer among others refers to the term ‘metaphysics’
as a branch of philosophy which is different from other branches of philosophy
such as ethics, epistemology etc. Metaphysics as a branch of philosophy attempt
to find answers to most general question such as ‘what is it’ that is, what
kind of thing exist in reality. There is no general answer to this question; this
led to disagreement on what object or thing exists in reality. Attempt to
answer the question give rise to different theories in metaphysics. At this
junction, I shall proceed by discussing metaphysics as a branch of philosophy,
what it centers on and the various questions it proposed as a discipline,
which leads to the discussion on the concept of a person both in Western and
African culture.
1.1.1 METAPHYSICS AS A BRANCH OF PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy is originated from two ancient
Greek words ‘philo’ and ‘sophia’ which means ‘love of wisdom’. Philosophy
consists of four branches: epistemology (known as theory of knowledge), logic (this
deals with reasoning), ethics (this deals with moral behavior) and metaphysics
(this deals with nature of what exist).
The word ‘metaphysics’ is difficult to
define. As a result of that, the twentieth century philosophers replaced the
term with word ‘meta-language’ and ‘meta-philosophy’ because they viewed it as
that branch of philosophy that study what goes beyond (physical or visible).
Metaphysics deals with questions about reality which cannot be answered by
scientific observation and explanation. However, in western philosophy
(philosophy done in the west), metaphysics is the study of the fundamental
nature of ‘what is it’, ‘why it is’ and ‘how can it be understood. It deals with questions like ‘what is that
thing that exist’? What is reality? Does free will exist?( Free will is the
doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not
simply determined by physical or divine forces), is there such a process
as cause and effect? And does abstract concept like ‘number’ exist.
There are three traditionally branches of
metaphysical inquiry: Ontology: the word is derived from the Greek term ‘on’
which means reality and ‘logos’ which means ‘study of’. Ontology is that branch
of philosophy that deals with the study of nature of reality; what is it, how
many ‘reality’ are there. What are its properties? Etc. Theology on the other
hand, is that which treats truth of faith concerning God and His works, it
centers on the question; does gods exist, what a god, is, what a god wants.
Third is universal science which involves the search for principal things such
as the origin of the universe, fundamental law of reasoning.
1.1.2 THE
QUESTION OF ULTIMATE REALITY
There is a deep rooted tendency in human
mind to seek and explain what constitute the universe. The question of ultimate
reality is a regular question, which reoccurs in philosophy. The term ultimate
reality can be defined as that which is held to be the ultimate source of all
things. The question about what constitute reality was addressed by the ancient
Greek philosophy. The western philosophical tradition began in ancient Greece in
the sixth and fifth century B.C. As the first philosophers, they emphasized
unity of things and rejected mythological explanations of the world. The first
sets of philosophers were from Ionia. They sought the material principle of
things, and the mode of their origin. Greek thought is untied from popular and
mythological pre-conceptions about the nature and origin of the universe. Greek
philosophers attempt to solve the problems of the universe by reason only, as
opposed to the acceptance of purely magical or theological explanations. The
Ionian is represented by Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes.
Thales postulated water or moisture as
the originative substance from which the universe evolved. He explained that
water exhibits itself naturally without any apparatus of scientific experiment.
Anaximander identifies the first principle as an undefined, unlimited substance
(aperion), out of which the primary opposites, hot and cold, moist and dry,
became differentiated. Lastly Anaximenes postulated air (which in Greek means
both air and mist or fog) as the primary substance. However, there is
disagreement between the materialist and idealist on the nature of what exist
in reality. The former holds that all things in reality are made up of matter,
and the knowledge of the material world is acquired through experience while
the latter holds that reality consist of idea that is, idealist emphasized the
idea character of all phenomena.
1.1.3 THE
QUESTION OF BEING
The concept of being in Greek philosophy
from permenides to Aristotle, and
then in a more mechanical way from the stoics to Plotinus, relies upon the
preexisting disposition of the language which in Greek underline the doctrine
of being, substance, essence, and existence, and existence. ‘Being’ in Greek
thought denotes sonic single, permanent, unchanging, fundamental, reality, to
which is habitually opposed the irregular change and variety of visible things.
The question on what reality is made of, denotes the most fundamental need of
human mind. To understand a thing is for that thing to be conceived as been
identical in nature with something else that we already know. The knowledge of
reality at large is embedded in the understanding that each and every one of
the innumerable things which makes up the universe is at least identical in
nature with other things. The early Greek thinkers successively attempted to
reduce nature in general to water, then
by another to air and another to fire, until they finally discover the
primary substance of reality to be made of ‘being’. Being is a generic term
which represents all existing things.
Africans conceived everything as ‘being’.
African belief that for anything to exist there must be a reason behind it,
though man may not know the reason why, but they all serve a purpose. ‘Being’
is therefore conceived as the whole range of existent things. Africans have a
hierarchy of ‘being’: God, ancestors, spirit, witchcraft or magic of certain
ends, man and plants.
In the ‘force thesis’, Placide Tempels
conceive a being’ from the perspective of a force, that is, he used the force
thesis to explain African conception of being. Henri maurier in a
similar vein suggested vitalism: the idea that living
organisms are fundamentally different from non living entities because they
contain some non physical element or are governed by different principle than
inanimate things. In other words, vitalism holds that living entities contain
some fluid, or a distinctive spirit. According to maurier,
vitalism is viewed as most appropriate in understanding the African conception
of ‘being’. Africans believe that whatever happens cannot go unnoticed by the
omnipresent eyes of the supreme deity (God), who oversees and regulates what
goes on in the universe. In other words, God is both actuality and infinite
while humans are infinite and limited. For Africans, ‘being’ form an obscure
tie of reality, but what is of importance to Africans is how things are
holistically or the interconnections that exist among particular ‘being’.
1.2 THE
WESTERN CONCEPTION OF A PERSON
In philosophy, the word ‘person’ refers to various
concepts. Plato, one of the leading philosophers of the western tradition as
recorded by Makinde, held the belief that things in the world are created by a
world designer who, like an artist, fashions matter into images of the idea.
God (olodumare in Yoruba belief) is the creator of everything including man.
The western thought identify a person as body and soul.
1.2.2 PLATO’S CONCEPT OF A PERSON
Plato attributes the
entire creation of man to the ‘soul of the universe’. He is interested in the
soul than the body that is why he attached importance to the soul in his
theory. Plato’s explanation, failed to account for how human body was formed
but instead proceed to the explanation of the soul. He argued that soul was
first created before body was formed, this idea of Plato contradicts the
African traditional account; Yoruba account to be precise. In Plato’s theory,
the soul is divided into parts which are: Appetite: this part of the soul
consists of innumerable desires for various pleasures, comforts, physical
satisfactions, and bodily ease. The temperament or the spirited: This is the
part of human soul that love to face and overcome great challenges, it steel
itself to adversity, and that of love and honour. Reason: this is the part of
human soul that thinks, analyzes, rationally weighs opinions, and tries to
gauge what is best and truest overall. Plato regards the
reasoning part of human soul as the highest part; because the rational part
controls the other two parts (temperament and appetite). For him, the rational
part of the soul is simple, has no part, therefore, it is indestructible and
immortal. However Aristotle objects Plato division of the soul, he argued that
the parts identified by Plato are nothing but different activities of a single
person.
1.2.3 DESCARTES’ CONCEPT OF A PERSON
Descartes affirms that he exists. He is
in search of that which constitute him, that is, his essence or nature. The
tern ‘essence’ or ‘nature’ refers to properties without which a thing will no
longer remain what it is. There are however one property of every substance,
which constitutes its nature or essence. This is supposed to be permanent,
never changing and both are necessary and sufficient to establish the existence
of a thing with certainty. In other words, to know what actually defines a person;
Descartes adopt the method, being a substance dualist, he holds that two things
exist: physical (body) substance and mental (mind) substance. Each substance has its
own essence or an essential trait that makes it what it is. According to
Descartes, the essential trait of mind is consciousness while body is
extension.
To him what defines a person is the consciousness (mind) and not extension
(body). He affirmed it in his datum ‘cogito ergo sum (‘I think therefore I
exist’).
With this argument, Descartes proposes that the very act of thinking offers a
proof of individual human existence. He affirms that there must be an ‘I’ that
exist to do the thinking. Although, he is uncertain of things that exist but he
is sure of the fact that he thinks and that which thinks exist. To him, thought
and reason are essence of humanity, he also assert that a human would still be
a human without hand, hair or face. This implies that non human possess hand,
hair or face but one thing is that no human without reason or rationality.
However, Anton Wilhelm Amo argued that
the mind cannot exist outside the body or independently of the body. To Amo, a
person cannot said to be nothing but a thinking thing. According to Amo, there
are two essential parts of man: mind and body, he is of the view that a living
person is necessarily both thinking and a sensing being. The thinking belongs
to the mind while the sensing belongs to the body. Descartes tend to group both
the ‘I’ and self as an immaterial substance, meaning that the grouped mind and
body as an immaterial substance. Amo’s response is that mind is spirit by that
he mean: “whatever substance is purely active, immaterial and always gains
understanding through itself (i.e. directly), and act from self motion and with
intention in regard to an end and goof which it is conscious to itself’ He argued that human mind
is an immaterial substance, which ‘inhere’ in the body arises from Amo’s
conception of human mind as purely active and of sensation as purely passive.
Sensation is necessarily bound up with materiality, whilst mind is, in its very
essence immaterial.
1.3 AFRICAN CONCEPTION OF A PERSON
The concept of a person or personhood has
drawn the attention of great scholars in Africa philosophy. In Africa thought,
there is more to the conception of a person than what is been explained in the
western thought. In African thought, the idea of a person occurs in different
stages and secondly, the idea of a person consists of more than the usual two
elements given by the western thought to be soul and body.
1.3.2 YORUBA CONCEPTION OF A PERSON
According to, Gbadegesin, the word for a
person in Yoruba is ‘eniyan’, but he observes that this term has both a
normative and a literal meaning. The former indicates the moral standing of the
human being who is thus determined as [either] falling short [or living up to
the expectations] of what it takes to be recognized as such. In other words, the
normative concept of a person evolves from the way in which man is understood
in a given community in terms of his relations to other living beings and his
role among other men. Examples of this are
social status of the individual and societal value. In Yoruba language, greater emphasis is placed
on this normative dimension of eniyan than is perhaps placed on the concept of
person in the English language. ‘Eniyan’ in Yoruba conception consists of four
elements: the ara, okan, emi, and ori. The ara is a
physical-material part of the human being. It includes the external and
internal components: flesh, bone, heart, intestines. The Yoruba regard it as
fruitless and pointless to articulate the nature or essence of the body. Nor do
they consider significant the question whether or not a person is all body,
Gbadegesin argued that “it appears too obvious to them that there is more to a
person than the body”.
The second element of eniyan is okan.
Idowu’s view as recorded by Ademuleya, is that okan literally means the heart.
In the physical sense, the heart is closely connected with the blood. But for
the Yoruba, the heart is more than a blood machine: it is the seat of emotions
and of psychic energy. Thus a brave man is said to possess a strong heart ‘o
lokan’ and if a man is known to be weak in his thought and action, the Yoruba
would say ‘ko ni okan’(he has no heart).
The
third component of eniyan is emi. It is nonphysical, the active principle of
life and the life-giving element, put in place by the deity. . It is also construed as
part of the divine breath. It has been argued that it has an immaterial and
independent existence; and others, that it is merely a principle or force which
brings about various activities and actions in human beings.
Lastly, the fourth element of the eniyan is
the ori. Ori refers to the physical head and, given the acknowledged
significance of the head in comparison with the rest of the body, ori is
considered vital even in its physical character. However, the dual nature of
the ori lies in the fact that it is recognized as the bearer of the person’s
destiny as well as the determinant of personality that is ori determine the
worth and essence of a person in the material world.
1.3.3 AKAN CONCEPTION OF A PERSON
The Akan concept of
person seems to be in agreement
with the Yoruba concept of a person. From the Akan perspective, a person is
composed of three fundamental
elements: nipadua [body], okra
[life-giving entity], and sunsum [that which gives a person’s personality]. The
okra is the innermost self, the essence, of the individual person, the
individual’s life, for which reason
it is referred to as okrateasefo, that is, the living soul, the embodiment and
transmitter of the individual’s destiny [fate: nkrabea], the spark of the
Supreme Being [Onyame] in man. The okra is, according to Gyekye, described as
divine and as having an ante-mundane existence with the Supreme Being. Wiredu
on the other hand claims that on the grounds that in Western philosophy the
term okra refers to a purely immaterial entity that somehow inhabits the body.
According to Wiredu, the okra, by contrast, is quasi-physical. That is, it is
not physical or not perceivable by the naked eye, while Gyekye translated okra
to mean soul.
The second component of a person in Akan
thought is sunsum. This is described as that which is responsible for the total
effect communicated by an individual’s personality, that is, the basis of human
personality. There seems to be confusion in Gyekye’s account of okra and
sunsum. On one hand, sunsum is responsible for thought in the narrow sense as
ratiocination (reasoning), and at the same time, it is the “activating principle
in the person”. On the other hand, Gyekye also says that okra is the principle
of life of a person. According to Gyekye, what Sunsum does as the “activating
principle” is unclear since okra is also regarded as the “principle of life”.
However, in the Yoruba conception, emi as the activating principle that brings
the body to conscious existence and its departure from the human being is
death. The third, and apparently less controversial, component of a person in
Akan thought is honam or nipadua (body), which is the flesh, bones, and blood
of which humans are made at the material level.
1.4 CONCLUSION
The disagreement on what should be the definition of
metaphysics led to varieties meanings attributed to the discourse. However, one
thing still holds that metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that attempt to
answer to question pertaining to the meaning, nature, scope and origin of that
which exist in reality.
More also, on the conception of a person,
Western philosophy believes that a person consist of body and mind (dualism) or
as either a body or a mind not both (monism). On the other hand, Africans holds
the tripartite (ori, ara and emi) conception of a person, which is in contrast
with the western philosophy concept of a person.
I
have attempted what metaphysics is and it’s various questions, and at the same
time expounded various conceptions of a person from Western and African
perspective.
However, this subject of discussion goes
beyond what is been discussed in this chapter.
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