CUN Journal

The ongoing debate on the concept of person in contemporary African intellectual milieu continues to gain new grounds as partners in the debate strive to wade through the troubled waters of the distinction between the concept of person in Africa and the concept of African person. Even where distinction between the two concepts seems to have been presumed, overemphasis on descriptive approach appears to blur the difference between the conceptions of person and the substantive fact about personhood, which could be distinguished from the question of the relation of person to other issues of philosophical interest, such as community, morality, values, etc.

The result is that the ontological consideration of personhood is sacrificed at the altar of phenomenological facts of extraneous factors such as status, circumstance and perception. The paper argues that personhood is ontologically linked to identity as first principle of being and it is inherent and essential to self. While appreciating the depth and ramifications of the discussion so far, the paper maintains that there is still the need to gain more insight into the nature of person as such with a view to underscoring the essential element of personhood. It has, therefore, for its objective the rediscovery and re-appropriation of the ontological root of personhood. The paper uses descriptive and analytic methods given the phenomenological and metaphysical nature of personhood.