An Appraisal of Parmenides Notion of Being in Understanding African Person

Abstract

This paper is an appraisal of Parmenides' notion of being in understanding the African notion of personhood. The concept of personhood is a central debate in African philosophy. This has led to two major camps on what constitutes a person. On the one hand, the liberal school conceives personhood from de-emphasizing the role of social relationships. On the other hand, the communitarian school accentuates the role of social relationships in accounting for personhood. In view of this divide, this paper examines the idea of personhood within the theoretical framework of Parmenides' notion of being. This is to ascertain the possibility of an onto-praxeological conception of the African notion of human person. In order to achieve this objective, the paper, using the method of textual analysis, presents Parmenides' notion of being and the African notion of person in order to work out an onto-praxeological notion of personhood. The paper discovers that the immensity of being cannot be exhausted by mere conceptualisation, but in addition through social relationship. The combination of conceptualisation of being and relationship make the realisation of onto-praxeological notion of personhood possible.