ADVANCING THE CONCEPT OF PERSONAL IDENTITY IN AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY BEYOND CHIMAKONAM VERSUS BISONG’S CRITIQUE OF PERSONAL IDENTITY

Abstract

Considering the high level of technological invention of Dulls, Artificial Intelligence, Biomedical technologies resulting in gender transformation, facial surgery that have come to transform human looks and activities different from how they were biologically created, the question of Personal identity becomes a problem. The problem of what makes a person who that person is, is questionable and controversial. Arising from this, Chimakonam's view of body as a means of identity is not enough because it fails to account for the gap when such a person encounters two different societies while, Bisong's position is not complete because it does not capture the matter(body) upon which every consciousness rest. Consciousness does not just exist in its own it needs a body. Thus, this work concludes that personal identity is holistic and detailed when it combines both body and consciousness to give a personal identity, thus, insisting on one part as superior to one is false and inappropriate. The human person is a combination of consciousness and body and not as superior and inferior parts of which one alone is enough to give identity to the human person. This difference created by Bisong and Chimakonam’s arguments is a bifurcation created by western thought where body (matter) and consciousness (Substance) lay emphasis on one being superior to the other and can be understood without the other. Therefore, every human person has both body and consciousness uniquely functioning together without emphasis on superiority for personal identity to be possible.