Molefe on the value of community for personhood

Abstract

In his book, An African Philosophy of Personhood, Morality, and Politics, Motsamai Molefe defends a character-based ethics where the goal of morality is to achieve personhood (in the African normative sense of the term). He moves away from many in the African tradition who hold that community is intrinsically valuable, and instead contends that community is instrumentally valuable in that it is the means by which agents achieve personhood. According to Molefe, if the community is intrinsically valuable, then there will be intuitively unacceptable trade-offs between individuals and the community. I argue that Molefe faces an unpalatable dilemma: Either it is logically impossible to achieve personhood apart from community or it is not. If it is logically impossible, then the distinction between intrinsic and instrumental collapses and his account is susceptible to the unacceptable trade-offs he claims for accounts that hold community is intrinsically valuable. If it is not, then it is difficult to understand the primacy of community in his account when there are other ways of achieving personhood.