What Is a Person? Untapped Insights from Africa

What makes us 'persons' in the moral sense, beings with a certain dignity and worth? What Is a Person? Untapped Insights from Africa explores this question by bringing African and Western philosophies into conversation. Chapter 1 characterizes the contemporary scene in Africa and the West, noting striking differences. It proposes that these differences were not always present, are hardly inevitable, and can and should be bridged. Chapter 2 introduces Emergent Personhood, a new philosophy of personhood that combines insights from Africa and the West. It holds that beings with superlative worth emerge through social relational processes involving human beings, yet they are more than the sum of these relationships. Persons have an identity of their own and exhibit superlative moral worth, a remarkable feature not present at the base. Emergent Personhood justifies personhood for all human beings from birth to death, held equally by them, that cannot be lost or diminished. It also gives strong support to personhood for a wide range of animals, soils, rocks, and ecosystems. Focusing on human personhood, chapters 3 and 4 argue that high moral status emerges at birth, is stable across the lifespan, and reaches a terminus with death's declaration, which ends the human-human associations that enable personhood to arise. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 turn to non-human personhood, considering personhood for artificial intelligence, animals, non-living nature, and extraterrestrial life and lands.