Polycarp Ikuenobe
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 196978 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Polycarp Ikuenobe |
| PRENOMES | Polycarp |
| SOBRENOME | Ikuenobe |
| ASSINATURA | IKUENOBE P |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Kent State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3370-9775 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 22 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 40 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 21 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1997 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2024 |
| ÍNDICE H | 3 |
Communal Social Architecture, Individual Capacities, and Menkiti’s Personhood
This article examines two issues raised and addressed by Oyowe in his book, Menkiti’s Moral Man. The first involves two of Oyowe’s criticisms of Menkiti: One criticism is that his conception of personhood is unfairly gendered; the other is that Menkiti’s view involves the priority of the community over individuals. The second issue involves Oyowe’s criticisms of Ikuenobe’s analysis of some aspects of Menkiti’s view in the context of the above cri…
Priority of duties, substantive human rights, and African communalism
I argue for a plausible view of the African idea and practice of substantive individual rights. This view indicates that rights are a means of enhancing individual dignity in the context of a communal system of correlativity of duties and rights. This view is exemplified in Menkiti’s idea of the priority of duties. I explicate this idea and indicate how it highlights the inherent social-communal nature of humans that is implicated in African norm…
Menkiti on Community and Becoming a Person
Ifeanyi Menkiti’s articulation of an African conception of personhood—especially in “Person and Community in African Traditional Thought” —has become very influential in African philosophy. Menkiti on Community and Becoming a Person contributes to the debate in African philosophy on personhood by engaging with various aspects of Menkiti’s account of person and community. The contributors examine this account in relation to themes such as individu…
Social ontology, practical reasonableness, and collective reasons for action
I argue that the ontology of human social institutions and collective intentionality could be anchored in the normative notion of ‘practical reasonableness’ as collective reason for action. This involves the deontic idea of mutuality, accepted rules, and shared attitudes of other‐regardedness. I examine John Searle's three primitive notions of social ontology: collective intentionality, assignment of social functions, and constitutive rules and p…
Radical versus moderate communitarianism
This essay provides an exposition and a plausible interpretation of Ifeanyi Menkiti’s conception of personhood vis-a-vis this community. I do this, partly, to rebut some specific criticisms by Kwame Gyekye and Bernard Matolino. They construe Menkiti’s account, primarily, as a metaphysical thesis about the community that provides the essential ontological basis for the nature of personhood. They argue that this view of communitarianism is radical …
African communal basis for autonomy and life choices
I argue that the metaphysical capacity of autonomy is not intrinsically valuable; it is valuable only when used in relation to a community's values and instrumentally for making the proper choices that will promote one's own and the community's well‐being. I use the example of the choice to take one's life by suicide to illuminate this view. I articulate a plausible African conception of personhood as a basis for the idea of relational autonomy. …
The Practical and Experiential Reality of Racism
Human rights, personhood, dignity, and African communalism
I articulate and defend a plausible conception of substantive human rights that is grounded in an African communal conception of dignity and personhood that emphasizes individual responsibilities. I contrast this conception with the dominant Western liberal view of moral dignity as a basis for human rights, which involves an individualistic self-regarding entitlement that inheres in human nature. The Western overemphasis on rights as entitlements…
Mental Emancipation in Nnamdi Azikiwe’s Political Philosophy and the Decolonisation of African Knowledge
This article examines Nnamdi Azikiwe’s idea of mental emancipation as the intellectual foundation for his political philosophy. Mental emancipation involves re-educating Africans to adopt scientific, critical, analytic, and logical modes of thinking. Azikiwe argues that development must involve changing Africans’ intellectual attitudes and educational system. He argues that Western education, through perpetuating negative stereotypes and engender…
Matolino’s misunderstanding of Menkiti’s African moral view of the person and community
I provide an exposition of Ifeanyi Menkiti’s view of communal ethics in terms of his conception of moral personhood vis-à-vis community, in order to defend him specifically against Bernard Matolino’s criticisms. Matolino argues that Menkiti’s view of communitarianism is a metaphysical thesis about the essential ontological nature of the community as ontologically constitutive of personhood. He argues that this view is false because it cannot expl…
White-on-Black Racism and Corlett’s Idea of Racism
Conceptualizing and Theorizing About the Idea of a “Post‐Racial” Era
I critically examine the eliminativist theories of race or racism, and the behavioral theory of racism, which provide the theoretical foundation, respectively, for the nominalist and substantive conceptualizations of the idea of a post‐racial era. The eliminativist theories seek to eliminate the concepts of “race” or “racism” from our discourse. Such elimination indicates a nominalist sense of the idea of a post‐racial era. The behavioral theory …
Conceptualizing Racism and Its Subtle Forms
Many people are talking about being in a post‐racial era, which implies that we have overcome race and racism. Their argument is based on the fact that manyof the virulent manifestations of racism are not prevalent today. I argue that racism is not seen as prevalent today because the commonplace views of racism fail to capture the more subtle and insidious new forms of racism. I critically examine some of these views and indicate that racism, its…
Philosophical Perspectives on Communalism and Morality in African Traditions
This DOI is not currently attached to any metadata records. DOIs can’t actually ever be deleted (they’re persistent), but sometimes our members create DOIs in error. We do have a process to approximate deletion which we follow only in rare cases where the DOI has been genuinely created in error, and most crucially, if the DOI has never been published anywhere online or in print and never otherwise distributed to or communicated with anyone (autho…
The Idea of Personhood in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
In this paper, I explore the African normative idea of personhood as a philosophical theme in Things Fall Apart.^ I do this in the context of communalism, which involves the mutual dependence between individuals and community. This dependence, which provides the foundation for people's actions, characters, and identities, is founded on the view that people have complex normative and spiritual relationships with others and with their ancestors in …
Optimizing Reasonableness, Critical Thinking, and Cyberspace
The Meta-Ethical Issue of the Nature of Lying
Rationality, Practical Reasonableness, and the Social and Moral Foundation of a Legal System
Questioning as an Epistemic Process of Critical Thinking
(2001). Questioning as an Epistemic Process of Critical Thinking. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 33, No. 3-4, pp. 325-341
Moral Education and Moral Reasoning in Traditional African Cultures
Colonialism in Africa, Culturally Induced Moral Ignorance, and the Scope of Responsibility
This paper analyzes colonialism in Africa to show a plausible connection between culture and human agency and to highlight the conceptual problem of ascribing responsibility in the context of the notion of culturally induced moral ignorance. It argues for the plausibility of the inability thesis, which states that people can be rendered morally ignorant by their culture, using as a backdrop, Moody‐Adams’ account of the connection between culture …
The Parochial Universalist Conception of 'Philosophy' and 'African Philosophy
In the past three decades, philosophers-especially African-born who are trained in Western philosophy-have engaged in a metaphilosophical debate over whether there exists an African philosophy and, if so, what its nature is. This debate regarding the nature and existence of African philosophy has culminated in two camps, which I shall call the universalists and the particularists. Wiredu characterizes the latter as the anti-universalists or the n…
Philosophical Perspectives on Communalism and Morality in African Traditions
This DOI is not currently attached to any metadata records. DOIs can’t actually ever be deleted (they’re persistent), but sometimes our members create DOIs in error. We do have a process to approximate deletion which we follow only in rare cases where the DOI has been genuinely created in error, and most crucially, if the DOI has never been published anywhere online or in print and never otherwise distributed to or communicated with anyone (autho…
Conceptualizing Racism and Its Subtle Forms
Many people are talking about being in a post‐racial era, which implies that we have overcome race and racism. Their argument is based on the fact that manyof the virulent manifestations of racism are not prevalent today. I argue that racism is not seen as prevalent today because the commonplace views of racism fail to capture the more subtle and insidious new forms of racism. I critically examine some of these views and indicate that racism, its…
Human rights, personhood, dignity, and African communalism
I articulate and defend a plausible conception of substantive human rights that is grounded in an African communal conception of dignity and personhood that emphasizes individual responsibilities. I contrast this conception with the dominant Western liberal view of moral dignity as a basis for human rights, which involves an individualistic self-regarding entitlement that inheres in human nature. The Western overemphasis on rights as entitlements…
Social ontology, practical reasonableness, and collective reasons for action
I argue that the ontology of human social institutions and collective intentionality could be anchored in the normative notion of ‘practical reasonableness’ as collective reason for action. This involves the deontic idea of mutuality, accepted rules, and shared attitudes of other‐regardedness. I examine John Searle's three primitive notions of social ontology: collective intentionality, assignment of social functions, and constitutive rules and p…
Conceptualizing and Theorizing About the Idea of a “Post‐Racial” Era
I critically examine the eliminativist theories of race or racism, and the behavioral theory of racism, which provide the theoretical foundation, respectively, for the nominalist and substantive conceptualizations of the idea of a post‐racial era. The eliminativist theories seek to eliminate the concepts of “race” or “racism” from our discourse. Such elimination indicates a nominalist sense of the idea of a post‐racial era. The behavioral theory …
The Parochial Universalist Conception of 'Philosophy' and 'African Philosophy
In the past three decades, philosophers-especially African-born who are trained in Western philosophy-have engaged in a metaphilosophical debate over whether there exists an African philosophy and, if so, what its nature is. This debate regarding the nature and existence of African philosophy has culminated in two camps, which I shall call the universalists and the particularists. Wiredu characterizes the latter as the anti-universalists or the n…
White-on-Black Racism and Corlett’s Idea of Racism
Optimizing Reasonableness, Critical Thinking, and Cyberspace
Questioning as an Epistemic Process of Critical Thinking
(2001). Questioning as an Epistemic Process of Critical Thinking. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 33, No. 3-4, pp. 325-341
Colonialism in Africa, Culturally Induced Moral Ignorance, and the Scope of Responsibility
This paper analyzes colonialism in Africa to show a plausible connection between culture and human agency and to highlight the conceptual problem of ascribing responsibility in the context of the notion of culturally induced moral ignorance. It argues for the plausibility of the inability thesis, which states that people can be rendered morally ignorant by their culture, using as a backdrop, Moody‐Adams’ account of the connection between culture …
The Parochial Universalist Conception of 'Philosophy' and 'African Philosophy
In the past three decades, philosophers-especially African-born who are trained in Western philosophy-have engaged in a metaphilosophical debate over whether there exists an African philosophy and, if so, what its nature is. This debate regarding the nature and existence of African philosophy has culminated in two camps, which I shall call the universalists and the particularists. Wiredu characterizes the latter as the anti-universalists or the n…
Moral Education and Moral Reasoning in Traditional African Cultures
Colonialism in Africa, Culturally Induced Moral Ignorance, and the Scope of Responsibility
This paper analyzes colonialism in Africa to show a plausible connection between culture and human agency and to highlight the conceptual problem of ascribing responsibility in the context of the notion of culturally induced moral ignorance. It argues for the plausibility of the inability thesis, which states that people can be rendered morally ignorant by their culture, using as a backdrop, Moody‐Adams’ account of the connection between culture …
Rationality, Practical Reasonableness, and the Social and Moral Foundation of a Legal System
Questioning as an Epistemic Process of Critical Thinking
(2001). Questioning as an Epistemic Process of Critical Thinking. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 33, No. 3-4, pp. 325-341
The Meta-Ethical Issue of the Nature of Lying
Optimizing Reasonableness, Critical Thinking, and Cyberspace
The Idea of Personhood in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
In this paper, I explore the African normative idea of personhood as a philosophical theme in Things Fall Apart.^ I do this in the context of communalism, which involves the mutual dependence between individuals and community. This dependence, which provides the foundation for people's actions, characters, and identities, is founded on the view that people have complex normative and spiritual relationships with others and with their ancestors in …
Philosophical Perspectives on Communalism and Morality in African Traditions
This DOI is not currently attached to any metadata records. DOIs can’t actually ever be deleted (they’re persistent), but sometimes our members create DOIs in error. We do have a process to approximate deletion which we follow only in rare cases where the DOI has been genuinely created in error, and most crucially, if the DOI has never been published anywhere online or in print and never otherwise distributed to or communicated with anyone (autho…
Conceptualizing Racism and Its Subtle Forms
Many people are talking about being in a post‐racial era, which implies that we have overcome race and racism. Their argument is based on the fact that manyof the virulent manifestations of racism are not prevalent today. I argue that racism is not seen as prevalent today because the commonplace views of racism fail to capture the more subtle and insidious new forms of racism. I critically examine some of these views and indicate that racism, its…
White-on-Black Racism and Corlett’s Idea of Racism
Conceptualizing and Theorizing About the Idea of a “Post‐Racial” Era
I critically examine the eliminativist theories of race or racism, and the behavioral theory of racism, which provide the theoretical foundation, respectively, for the nominalist and substantive conceptualizations of the idea of a post‐racial era. The eliminativist theories seek to eliminate the concepts of “race” or “racism” from our discourse. Such elimination indicates a nominalist sense of the idea of a post‐racial era. The behavioral theory …
Matolino’s misunderstanding of Menkiti’s African moral view of the person and community
I provide an exposition of Ifeanyi Menkiti’s view of communal ethics in terms of his conception of moral personhood vis-à-vis community, in order to defend him specifically against Bernard Matolino’s criticisms. Matolino argues that Menkiti’s view of communitarianism is a metaphysical thesis about the essential ontological nature of the community as ontologically constitutive of personhood. He argues that this view is false because it cannot expl…
Radical versus moderate communitarianism
This essay provides an exposition and a plausible interpretation of Ifeanyi Menkiti’s conception of personhood vis-a-vis this community. I do this, partly, to rebut some specific criticisms by Kwame Gyekye and Bernard Matolino. They construe Menkiti’s account, primarily, as a metaphysical thesis about the community that provides the essential ontological basis for the nature of personhood. They argue that this view of communitarianism is radical …
African communal basis for autonomy and life choices
I argue that the metaphysical capacity of autonomy is not intrinsically valuable; it is valuable only when used in relation to a community's values and instrumentally for making the proper choices that will promote one's own and the community's well‐being. I use the example of the choice to take one's life by suicide to illuminate this view. I articulate a plausible African conception of personhood as a basis for the idea of relational autonomy. …
The Practical and Experiential Reality of Racism
Human rights, personhood, dignity, and African communalism
I articulate and defend a plausible conception of substantive human rights that is grounded in an African communal conception of dignity and personhood that emphasizes individual responsibilities. I contrast this conception with the dominant Western liberal view of moral dignity as a basis for human rights, which involves an individualistic self-regarding entitlement that inheres in human nature. The Western overemphasis on rights as entitlements…
Mental Emancipation in Nnamdi Azikiwe’s Political Philosophy and the Decolonisation of African Knowledge
This article examines Nnamdi Azikiwe’s idea of mental emancipation as the intellectual foundation for his political philosophy. Mental emancipation involves re-educating Africans to adopt scientific, critical, analytic, and logical modes of thinking. Azikiwe argues that development must involve changing Africans’ intellectual attitudes and educational system. He argues that Western education, through perpetuating negative stereotypes and engender…
Social ontology, practical reasonableness, and collective reasons for action
I argue that the ontology of human social institutions and collective intentionality could be anchored in the normative notion of ‘practical reasonableness’ as collective reason for action. This involves the deontic idea of mutuality, accepted rules, and shared attitudes of other‐regardedness. I examine John Searle's three primitive notions of social ontology: collective intentionality, assignment of social functions, and constitutive rules and p…
Menkiti on Community and Becoming a Person
Ifeanyi Menkiti’s articulation of an African conception of personhood—especially in “Person and Community in African Traditional Thought” —has become very influential in African philosophy. Menkiti on Community and Becoming a Person contributes to the debate in African philosophy on personhood by engaging with various aspects of Menkiti’s account of person and community. The contributors examine this account in relation to themes such as individu…
Priority of duties, substantive human rights, and African communalism
I argue for a plausible view of the African idea and practice of substantive individual rights. This view indicates that rights are a means of enhancing individual dignity in the context of a communal system of correlativity of duties and rights. This view is exemplified in Menkiti’s idea of the priority of duties. I explicate this idea and indicate how it highlights the inherent social-communal nature of humans that is implicated in African norm…
Communal Social Architecture, Individual Capacities, and Menkiti’s Personhood
This article examines two issues raised and addressed by Oyowe in his book, Menkiti’s Moral Man. The first involves two of Oyowe’s criticisms of Menkiti: One criticism is that his conception of personhood is unfairly gendered; the other is that Menkiti’s view involves the priority of the community over individuals. The second issue involves Oyowe’s criticisms of Ikuenobe’s analysis of some aspects of Menkiti’s view in the context of the above cri…
Sociology (19 obras) · Philosophy (17 obras) · Epistemology (16 obras) · African cultural and philosophical studies (11 obras) · Philosophy (10 obras) · Political science (10 obras) · Law (9 obras) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (8 obras) · Environmental ethics (6 obras) · Psychology (6 obras)