THE CONCEPTION OF PERSONHOOD AND COMMUNITY IN AFRICA

Abstract

It is not the case that ‘personhood’ and community could always be used or express in the same context as dual aspect of existence acting in one entity. In African philosophy, those concepts are deemed as ideas that are related but considerably different in some aspects. While the concept of a personhood in Africa is discussed from a broad range, but the idea of community is only sometimes in connection with the notion settlement, this is because the conception of personhood in Africa is always attached to existence. Evidence of this is found in the life, living and society of the African communal setting. However, the relationships between these concepts are so complex. This article does not discuss the usual subject of the clash of rights between the individual and the community. However, it offers to show the conceptual relationship that exists between personhood and community in Africa. An analytic method will be applied to this work in other to help create a wide range analysis of the relationship that thus exist between personhood and community in African worldview, which will also take an over view of some aspects of the arguments for communitarianism and socialism that have over clouded the trend’s in African worldview.