Personhood and Moral Recognition in African Moral Thought

Abstract

This article philosophically explicates the relationship between personhood and moral recognition in African ethics. Specifically, it reveals the two distinct forms of moral recognition associated with personhood. It conceptualises moral recognition in terms of recognition and appraisal respect. To clarify the relationship between personhood and moral recognition, it makes three interventions. Firstly, it draws a distinction between the normative concept of personhood and the ethics of personhood. The normative concept of personhood specifies the final good of character perfection (virtue) and the ethics of personhood refers to a moral theory comprising (1) the fact of being human, (2) a theory of human dignity (or, moral status) and (3) the final good of virtue, the former is one component of the latter. Secondly, it indicates two aspects of value constitutive of the ethics of personhood - human dignity (or, moral status) and virtue (normative notion of personhood). Finally, it associates the aspect of human dignity with the primary form of moral recognition — recognition respect and it associates virtue with the secondary form of moral recognition — appraisal respect. The major insight of this article is to alert us of the primacy of human dignity in the ethics of personhood.