Quaestiones Infinitae

DECLARATION I declare that all ideas in this thesis, except for the reference to works which have been duly cited and acknowledged, are a product of my own intellectual effort and that it contains material that has been read and considered as adequately satisfying the requirements for the award of the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Philosophy.

Communality, Individuality and Democracy: A defense of personism

Gemeenschappelijkheid, individualiteit en democratie:

Een verdediging van personisme

(met een samenvatting in het Nederlands)

Proefschrift

Ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof. dr. H.R.B.M. Kummeling, ingevolge het besluit van het college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op vrijdag 28 augustus 2020 des middags te 12:45 uur

door

Nancy Ama Myles

geboren op 12 februari 1983 te Accra, Ghana Promotor: Prof. dr. H.H.A. van den Brink Copromotor: Dr. H. M. Majeed

Assessment committee:

Prof. dr. R. Claassen (Utrecht University)

Prof. dr. K. Flikschuh (London School of Economics)

Prof. dr. M. Frederiks (Utrecht University)

Dr. D. Gädeke (Utrecht University)

Prof. dr. B. Meyer (Utrecht University) DEDICATION

To the memory of my invaluable mother – Araba, and to Bright, Micky, Emmani, Ella

and Gaby

The same Hand that started it shall complete it!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My initial interest in the debate between ‘communitarians’ and ‘individualists’ was stimulated by Emeritus Professor Kwame Gyekye during one of the sessions of my MPhil studies under his supervision. I have been hooked to the problem of that disagreement ever since. As supervisor of this thesis until his passing, the interesting discussions we had over the subject contributed immensely to the laying of the foundations of this thesis. I remain heavily indebted to him.

I cannot even begin to express my gratitude to Prof. dr. Bert van den Brink for taking me on as a PhD student and inspiring me to critically reflect outside my familiar grounds and stay critical. His dedication, meticulous correction work, patience and unfailing enthusiasm have been indispensable to the successful completion of this thesis. Keen on structure and the formulation of ideas, Prof. van den Brink has been frank when necessary but sympathetic through the whole process. I feel privileged to have worked so closely with such a great mentor and an understanding social and political Mind.

The encouragement and candid contributions of Dr. Hasskei Mohammed Majeed, co-supervisor of this thesis, cannot be over-emphasized. The arguments have been improved considerably by his detailed and constructive responses to a number of drafts. I would like to thank Dr. Majeed for his critical, constructive and very helpful comments.

This thesis has been supervised by professors of both University of Utrecht and University of Ghana, and I have been fortunate enough to be able to travel between these two countries for my short stays through the generous support of the Faculty of Humanities and The Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of the University of Utrecht. I should also like to thank the Office of Research, Innovation and Development of the University of Ghana for the award of the Faculty Development Grant at the onset of this study. It gave me a boost financially to start the project. Also, I wish to express my gratitude to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, for the award of small grants for graduate support.

During my short stays at the Netherlands I was generously welcomed by members of the Department especially the Ethics Institute of the University of Utrecht. I want to specially thank Suzanne van Vliet for helping me out with many of the day-to-day issues surrounding my stay while in Utrecht and away. Thank you for your patience and all the help.

I am truly grateful for the unfailing support of my entire family both emotionally and logistically. Thank you, Mum, Peggy and Josephine, for helping with ‘precious four’ while I had to be away. This has been greatly appreciated. Thank you, Micky, for sacrificing a good part of your growing years to be a big brother. Thank you Emmani, Ella and Gaby for holding up and giving me reason to continue; you were all born during the writing of this thesis and you collectively served as an inspiration.

Without the support of Bright, I would not have made it here. You bore the brunt of my thesis- stress and you managed it well. Thank you for being such a good companion.

Finally, thank you Almighty God.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Contents 1 Introductory chapter 3

Chapters:

1. Communitarianism and individualism: Africa and the West 12 1.1 Introduction 12 1.2 The community and the individual from the standard African perspective 12 1.3 The individual and the community from the standard Western perspective 23 1.4 Communitarianism in political philosophy 29 1.5 Individualism in political philosophy 37 1.6 Democracy: individualistic/liberal or communitarian/social? 44 1.7 Conclusion 50

2. ‘The Individual’: Individuality and communality 52 2.1 Introduction 52 2.2 From ‘the individual’ to individuality 53 2.3 From ‘the community’ to communality (and from ‘the individual’ to ‘the person’) 58 2.3.1 Examining the communitarian argument 58 2.3.2 Examining the communitarian critique 64 2.4 Consequences for individualism and communitarianism 68 2.5 The person: between individuality and communality 71 2.5.1 Individuality of the person 75 2.5.2 Communality of the person 75 2.5.3 A comparison with Mead’s ‘I’ and ‘me’ 78 2.6 The debate in the light of personism 80 2.7 Conclusion 84

3. Understanding ‘self-rule’, change and progress 87 3.1 Introduction 87 3.2 Self-rule: from my rule of my ‘self’ to our rule of our ‘self’ 88 3.2.1 My rule of my ‘self’ 88 3.2.2 Democracy: our rule of our ‘self’ 92 3.3 Reconciling the tensions ‘within’ and ‘without’ 95 3.4 Dialogue and deliberation in self-rule: a case for wholeness not oneness 102 3.5 Change and social-political progress 110 3.6 Conclusion 116

4. Democracy by and for the people 118 4.1 Introduction 118 4.2 Democracy as centered on the people 119 4.2.1 Introduction 119 4.2.2 The People in democracy: individual or collective? 119 4.2.3 “We the people”: a democratic preamble 123 4.2.4 The problem of representation and majoritarianism 125 4.3 Confronting the inherent challenges of democracy: inclusion and consensus pursuit 128 4.3.1 The politics of inclusion 129 4.3.2 Pursuing consensual politics 131 4.3.3 The way forward 136 4.4 The compelled state and democratic self-rule 142 4.4.1 Examining the state as an encorporated ‘self’ and its interests 143 4.4.2 The parallelism in the defense of empire and the encorporated state 147 4.4.3 Towards genuine self-rule in an encorporated state 151 4.5 Conclusion 154

5. African traditional democracy and the colonial legacy: the need for a critical return to the past 156 5.1 Introduction 156 5.2 Democracy(self-rule) in traditional Africa: Communal, consensual and humanistic 157 5.3 The urgent need for re-conceptualizing post-colonial African democracies 172 5.4 A call for a critical ‘sankↄfaism’ 184 5.4.1 A return to a humanistic ethic and a consensual democracy 186 5.5 Conclusion 191

Concluding chapter 192 Bibliography 200 Index of names 217 Summary in Dutch 223 Curriculum Vitae 226 Quaestiones Infinitae 227

INTRODUCTION

Background

In the latter part of the previous century, social and political thinkers in the West1 raised worrying concerns about the prevailing unbridled individualism characterizing Western society, and the attendant emphases on the primacy of rights, autonomy and the self which featured prominently in socio-political theory, system and practice. Under the label of ‘communitarians’, and with various renditions of critiques, authors sought to correct this thought error of extreme individualism by either reversing the order of ontological and/or moral primacy of the individual over community, or subsuming individuality into community. This anxiety finds expression in what has now become widely known labels such as Sandel’s notion of the individualist

‘unencumbered self,’ MacIntyre’s postulation of individuals as actors within a ‘narrative,’ and

Charles Taylor’s rejection of ‘atomism,’ among others (Avineri & De-Shalit, 1992; MacIntyre,

1984; Sandel, 1982; Taylor, 1985a).

Around the same period, some African authors, Kwame Gyekye for instance, rather bemoaned the extreme collectivist thought, couched in community-centered terms, which dominated the writings of certain African thinkers 2 as the alleged outstanding, defining feature of

African ontology and normative philosophy. Kwesi Dickson (1977), for instance, as cited by

Gyekye (1997), writes of community as a “characteristic of African life to which attention has been drawn again and again by both African and non-African writers on Africa. Indeed, to many this characteristic defines Africanness” (p. 4). Kenyatta (1965) also writes, “Individualism and self-seeking were ruled out…. The personal pronoun ‘I’ was used very rarely in public assemblies.

1 I refer to Anglo-American and European writings. 2 Mostly political thinkers but also socio-political theorists some of whom I discuss shortly.

The spirit of collectivism was (so) much ingrained in the mind of the people” (p. 188). Elsewhere he writes regarding the traditional life in Kenya, “According to Gikuyu ways of thinking, nobody is an isolated individual. Or rather, his uniqueness is a secondary fact about him; first and foremost he is several people’s relative and several people’s contemporary” (p. 297). For Leopold

Senghor, the African “puts more stress on the group than on the individuals, more on solidarity than on the activity and needs of the individual, more on the communion of persons than on their autonomy. Ours is a community society.” He adds that the African “society is collectivist or, more exactly communal, because it is rather a communion of souls than an aggregate of individuals”

(Senghor, 1964, pp. 49, 93-94). On the same phenomenon, John Mbiti makes the famous expression about the interaction between the individual and the community in African societies thus, “Whatever happens to the individual happens to the whole group, and whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual. The individual can only say: “I am, because we are; and since we are, therefore I am” (Mbiti, 1970, p. 141). The African concern raised by authors like

Gyekye (1995; 1997; 2004) and Kwame Appiah (1992; 2006), therefore, highlights a suffocation of individuality by such extreme stress placed on collectivity, solidarity and the common good, with a tendency of stifling individuality or worse still denying individuality completely.

Thus, while some intellectuals of the West have sought to bridge the supposed gap between the individual and the community by drawing the individual back into community to give life and meaning to individuality, so to speak, some African intellectuals have sought to do the same by rather relieving the individual of, at least, some of the entanglements of community to, as it were, expand and extend the freedoms of the individual. Meanwhile other intellectuals from both the

West and Africa have taken the role of mediators, howbeit, biased ones, one way or the other, in

4 my view, at resolving this seeming tension or worse still power-play between the individual and the community.

An off-shoot of this tussle is the view, purportedly supported by empirical evidence, that democracy - “a government of the people, by the people and for the people”3 - flourishes better in the West because an individualist society and its liberal tone of primacy of rights and emphasis on the autonomous self is a more formidable foundation and framework for the effective practice of democracy as compared to the totalitarian undercurrents of communitarianism resulting from intolerance and disagreements in the search for the collective and/or public good (van der Burg,

1995). Communitarians, however, insist that community and its pursuit of the common good rather increases inclusiveness, participation and involvement in public life and thus, is less likely to evolve an oppressive system of government (Arendt, 1958; Popper, 1945; Talmon, 1955).

Research question(s) and aim of the study

What would be the basis for describing a society as individualistic or communitarian? What meaning should be given to the terms ‘individuality’ and ‘community’ in the above-stated debate?

What constitutes community; what is its scope and scale; what are societies composed of? And what are the implications of these underlying assumptions on the moral foundations of democratic theory and the viable practice of democracy as an ethico-political principle especially in a post- colonial multinational context like Africa?

I aim to show that we are in need of a thorough re-examination of the basic premises of the individualism-communitarianism debate if we want to unravel what the disagreement or tension is really about and how they can be overcome. This, the study undertakes to do to show that the tensions in that classical debate is rooted in a flawed conception of individuality and personhood

3 A saying attributed to Abraham Lincoln.

5 vis-à-vis community and human society; and that the false categories entailed in the debate then foils any attempt at a genuine construction of a formidable foundation for democracy both as a moral ethic and a political principle especially in post-colonial African contexts.

Thesis statement and justification

The study proposes what I will label a ‘personist’ approach to democratic theory and practice. That is democracy as understood from a personist perspective: the concept of a person as a concrete embodied being encapsulating clarified notions of non-optional individuality and communality; never solely an individual, nor solely communal but necessarily and always a composite being. This clarification, as I see it, is necessary for understanding and analyzing various aspects of the problems of post-colonial African democracy and how to effectively negotiate responses to these problems.

Through the lens of the theory of ‘personism’, therefore, I seek to explore the ways by which the problems of post-colonial African democracy can be analysed and effectively responded to. For, if personism already incorporates both individual and communal dimensions of persons, then conceptualizing a viable system of democracy as self-rule in post-colonial Africa, from a personist point of view, would necessarily seek to recognize, protect and preserve both the individual and communal dimensions of the person (i.e. at once both social and liberal democracy).

Consequently, democracy in post-colonial Africa, as elsewhere, would be conceived as socio- liberal in its orientation, not solely social nor solely liberal nor a moderation of liberal and social as is the case in current political theorizing and practice.

Thus, my interest in the individualism-communitarianism debate is born from my interest in post- colonial African democracy and how the theory of ‘personism’ as a response to the debate would in turn be useful in analysing some problems of democracy generally, but more specifically of post-colonial African

6 democracy. In effect, the approach is to work towards the theory of ‘personism’ as a means to overcome the binary tensions in the debate which will in turn help my analysis of the problems of post-colonial African democracy especially, and consequently help me proffer arguments aimed at responding to these problems.

The study contends that individuality is only an abstract notion but the concept ‘a person’ connotes a concrete being whose existence necessarily entails both individuality and communality

– relationality or interrelatedness – at various levels of interaction that cannot be restricted solely to family, neighbourhood, tribe, ethnicity, nation, state, language, culture or any form of collective.

So, individuals may be self-complete without relations, but individuals do not live in society; persons do. Such a personist approach to democracy, it will be argued, would have significant advantages over the political theory and practice whose preoccupation seems only to be on the one hand, the protection of ‘community’ integrity and authenticity – including states, provinces, nation-communities, continents, ethnic groups, families, language groups, economic groups – regardless of the practical consequences on actual persons’ distinct individualities and their varied inter-relatedness.

On the other hand, a personist approach would be better immune to challenges confronting the political theory and practice which makes preservation of individuality – rights, liberties, and freedoms – its focus, with little emphasis on actual persons’ necessary and shared communality. A personist approach to democracy would appreciate and give due recognition to each person as a complex amalgam of both individuality and communality all at once in the theorizing and practical formulation of socio-political policy especially in post-colonial contexts.

Therefore, the study does not seek to develop a full-blown normative theory of democracy but ultimately seeks to lay the groundwork for a normative theory of the democratic state in Africa especially. The main interest is understanding, from the theory of ‘personism’, which engaging

7 and empowering aspects of African political practice and thought are undermined by the current posturing of the post-colonial African state. The study then proposes responses to these problems which, as I see it, will be effective for engendering an effective post-colonial African democracy.

On methodology

In terms of methodology, the study mainly adopts theoretical analyses of bodies of literature in political philosophy, the philosophy of social relations and post-colonial studies from both Western and African sources. In the West, I take a re-look at the liberal-communitarian debate of the last decades of the last century which many theorists in the West may consider to have been over flogged and therefore no longer high on the agenda. But I do not wholly agree with that for the African context. I think that that was a very important debate and that, especially in its implications for thinking through the social foundations of democracy in the African context, it has not been fully discussed. Here, in Africa, we have to continue to engage it because we seem to be still so much influenced by the post-colonial situation that we need to relook at some of the outcomes of that debate to get out of this whole constellation both conceptually and in practice.

As such, much attention will not be given to Western literature sources beyond the period of this influential debate since that will not be directly relevant to my project. But in Africa I look at literature beyond that period in determining the status quaestionis.

I critically examine the positions in the debate from both Western and African perspectives and make a conceptual analysis of the frameworks of thinking about individuality and communality. I ask myself whether these authors could not get rid of some philosophical and practical problems and solve a couple of normative, social-philosophical questions if they would actually look critically at the concepts that they use.

Consequent to the conceptual analyses, I make a proposal for a conceptual innovation. That is, I push for a conceptual innovation that follows if one does not put either individual or community on center stage but thinks of communality and individuality as aspects of one and the same thing – the person. This conceptual innovation is what I call personism, which is what I bring to the discussion on democracy and pre-colonial and post-colonial Africa.

The philosophical works of the eminent African philosopher, Emeritus Prof. Kwame

Gyekye, is very important to this study since he has been one of the biggest theoretical influences

I have had in philosophy. Not only was he and his works my main inspiration for venturing into the Philosophy enterprise in the first place. His supervision of my Master of Philosophy (MPhil) thesis put me on a certain path in Philosophy where I took a couple of steps while engaging a philosophical study of the notion of multiculturalism. Some of the questions I struggled with then are being dealt with in this study. Much of my approach at diagnosis here is inspired by the critical and analytic posture he adopts in reclaiming the core values and genius of the African past without succumbing to the allure of Afrocentrism. His works, especially Tradition and Modernity, point, in many respects, in the direction that this study takes. But while standing on his shoulders in some respects to argue, explain or substantiate a point, the study goes beyond him in other very significant aspects. His writings and philosophical Mind, which have deservedly earned him a permanent place in African thought and a merited international recognition and respect, will be largely referenced in this study.

Overview of chapters

Chapter one sketches the context of this thesis with a discussion of the community and the individual from both African and Western perspectives to reveal some convergences and divergences. It further explores and evaluates the concepts ‘communitarianism’ and

‘individualism’ in political philosophy generally from both perspectives and gradually situates it in the discourse on the conditions and object of democracy.

Chapter two exposes an underlying presupposition of the debate: an obfuscation of the linguistic construct ‘the individual’ with the idea of the individuality of the human person. This incorrect assumption and the misconceptions following from it are dissolved or dispelled through conceptual analysis. The chapter advocates making ‘the person’ and a consequent personist approach to socio-political thought the focus of socio-political discourse. The view is that a personist approach brings clarity to the substance of the debate and effectively responds to the concerns of both perspectives towards holistic development and progress.

Chapter three discusses ‘self-rule’ from a personist perspective. It argues that ‘self-rule’ entails a harmonious mediation of the person’s necessarily individual and communal self; a mitigation of unending tensions in persons’ rule over other persons even in the context of an uncompelled collective; and, regulating the exercise of power between and among collectives. That is, self-rule encompasses an interactive and dialogical overlap of my rule of my self, our rule of our self, my rule of our self and our rule of my self. The proposal is that the underlying principles that make self-rule possible in all its ramifications should ground democracy as a system of political rule, for change at all levels to be legitimate.

Chapter four looks at the consequences of the personist understanding of ‘self-rule’ for the theory and practice of democracy as government by and for the people. It argues for a rethinking of the current political order which indiscriminately defends the maintenance of state integrity especially for multi-national, multi-lingual and post-colonial African states. The point is to show that any rule or system of rule by an entity whose subjects do not consider to be part of their

10 collective ‘self’ cannot be a self-rule for, a genuine ‘self-rule’ and therefore a legitimate democracy prevails only if members of the composite ‘self’ own the rule.

Chapter five examines the purported empirical data that grounds the assumption that communitarian societies are less likely to evolve and sustain democracy compared to individualistic societies which are presented as the epitome of democratic theory and practice. This is done by exploring the communal, consensual and humanistic traditional African democracy in contrast with the political legacy of colonialism for ‘communitarian’ Africa. The exploration seeks to stress the main thesis of this study: a rule must be a ‘self’ rule if it can be rightly labelled as a democracy. Thus, the chapter concludes with a call for both a conceptual decolonization of

Africa’s present and a critical return to her past.

Conclusion

The study concludes with the proposition that much meaning would not be made of the description of a human society as either individualistic or communitarian, nor the characterization of the concrete human person as ‘an individual’ whether or not from Western contexts, nor yet the anthropomorphism of ‘community’ as understood from African and non-African perspectives.

Rather, that social and political thought and practice would be better served in its aims if it approaches socio-political problems from a personist perspective which is simply the view point that sees human society as constituted by concrete human persons each of whom is a complex embodiment of individuality and various levels of interrelated communality all in constant dialogical interplay at the various levels of relation. Thus, personist democracy rightly understood as the tool for intra-person, inter-person and inter-collective conceptions of ‘self-rule’ all at once, would be a more meaningful defining character of human society and most importantly its socio- political structures.

CHAPTER ONE

COMMUNITARIANISM AND INDIVIDUALISM: AFRICA AND THE WEST

1.1 Introduction

This chapter is devoted to giving some background to the main thesis of the study. The study focuses on this now more than thirty-years old debate because the debate has in many ways set the stage for our current-day philosophical understanding of the relation of individual and community in political theory.

The chapter starts with an overview of positions in Africa and the West and gradually introduces the question of conditions of democracy. Sections one through four take a new look at the concepts ‘communitarianism’ and ‘individualism’ from both African and Western perspectives which are, respectively, supposed to be strongholds of these socio-political doctrines to reveal some convergences and divergences, and finally situate the various perspectives in the discourse on democracy in section five.

The discussions in this chapter ultimately aim to show that the supposed African- communitarianism and the claimed Western-individualism may not be diametrically opposed in its object after all.

1.2 The community and the individual from the standard African perspective

An outstanding defining characteristic of an African society, it has been variously argued, is its communitarian character. The sense of community that characterizes the relationships among persons and social arrangements is not far-fetched in African socio-political contexts. The writings referred to in the general introduction of this study points to this general communitarian notion in

African thought which seems visibly opposed to some Western individualist theses to be discussed

12 shortly. The writings of these Western thinkers chiefly accentuate the sovereignty of the individual, stress the primacy and inalienability of rights and emphasize the pursuit of choices.

But in African thinking, community is perceived to be so central that it would be obnoxious if not abominable to think of the individual as having priority over the community she lives in.

The interest and welfare of others in the African setting are not considered subservient to her chosen ends, aims and aspirations. It is commonplace that the very concept of being a person is generally community-defined or articulated from a communitarian perspective (Matolino, 2009).

Even African thinkers such as Segun Gbadegesin (1991, p. 58) and Richard C. Onwuanibe

(Onwuanibe, 1984, pp. 183-197) who conceive of personhood from a metaphysical perspective nonetheless reserve a significant role for community in the actual realization of personhood which for some is a practical, not a theoretical, matter (Boon, 1996, pp. 70-74; Dzobo, 1992, pp. 123-

135; Sogolo, 1993, p. 190).

So Menkiti, for instance, will think of the question, “does the individual’s life belong to him or does it belong to the community?” as unintelligible because in his view, “it is the community which defines the person as person, not some isolated static quality of rationality, will or memory” and that “as far as Africans are concerned, the reality of the communal world takes precedence over the reality of the individual life histories, whatever these may be” (Menkiti, 1984, pp. 171, 172, 180). For Dickson (1977), this sense of community is “a characteristic of African life which attention has been drawn again and again by both African and non-African writers on

Africa. Indeed, to many this characteristic defines Africanness” (p. 4). To be African then, from the standard view, is to be communal.

African communitarianism derives its strength from the notion of ‘community’ which to the Ghanaian, and the generality of Africa for that matter, would, to a large extent, be coterminous

13 with the term ‘nation’, not only in status but more importantly in how it is conceived. That is to say, the African thinks of ‘community’ in terms of ‘nation’ (Guibernau, 1996, p. 47; Geertz, 1997, pp. 235-247). The idea of nation referred to here, is distinguishable from the modern nation as a state or country such as Ghana, Nigeria, Netherlands, with a defined territorial boundary, an established government or a central political authority or sovereignty over its ethnically and culturally heterogeneous constituent groups; and also from complex political organizations comprising a large number of independent states or countries of the world such as the United

Nations and Commonwealth of Nations. The sense of nationhood that can be equated to the African sense of community is the etymological meaning of nation which represents a birth-group or a blood-related group – a family – a conception whose implications has more far-reaching consequences than is often admitted. The observation of G. Herder would be pertinent here: “A nation is as natural a plant as a family only with more branches. Nothing therefore is more manifestly contrary to the purpose of political government than the unnatural enlargement of states, the wild mixing of various races and nationalities under one scepter; … such states are but patched up contraptions, fragile machines, for they are wholly devoid of inner life” (Herder, 1965, p. 324). In this regard, the general African understanding of nation-community would coincide, to a greater degree, with MacIntyre’s postulation of community as defined by or limited to family, tribe or neighborhood (MacIntyre, 1992, p. 4). For such a communitarian thinking, many contemporary states, especially in Africa, could not be said to hold the natural ties necessary for a genuine nation-community.

Community, in the general African view, therefore, refers to a group of people who believe, rightly or wrongly, that they naturally hail from a common ancestry and therefore share kinship ties. Such natural membership, real or fictive, is nurtured into a system of shared basic beliefs and

14 values that constitute the grounds by which the said natural members understand themselves and interpret their experiences. Community, such conceived, would evoke in its members natural sentiments of loyalty, commitment to the cause of the group and its integrity, sensitivity and responsiveness to the interest of fellow members of the group. It also invokes the feeling or consciousness of belonging together to that group whose integrity all members would have to consciously protect, sustain and seek to preserve. Relations between persons, who believe they share a common ancestral background, culture, language and history for instance, are often characterized by the ethos of cohesion, fellow-feeling, solidarity, mutual recognition, loyalty and most importantly a sense of belonging together. Members are concerned for the nation-community and interested in having its activities, institutions and norms flourish. Their primary sense of identity is often linked to the nation-community before the larger multi-ethnic state or country.

Thus, citizens of a state with such strong sense of sub-national communal ties would often prefer to express their nationality in terms of their believed ‘community’ affiliation thus, “I am Asante” or “I am Yoruba”. By this thinking, one would not be far from right in asserting that it is such psychological and emotional attachment to nation-community stemming from peoples’ belief, justified or not, real or fictive, that they are naturally bound together in many significant ways – blood, history, language, territory, culture – that holds members of African nation-communities together and accentuates communitarianism as an African ethos (Gyekye, 1997, pp. 78-79).

It is important to mention that the natural or nurtured bond that communitarian nationals often feel towards their claimed nation-communities is not easily detached; not by distance, forced integration through power-play such as colonial rule, war and conquest, or migrations due to economic or political circumstances. It is not surprising therefore that one of the most daunting and besetting challenges confronting a modern African state is how to draw primary allegiances

15 from its constituent nation-communities to the, in most cases, colonially-forged larger state composed of such multiple nations. The difficulty stems from the communitarian thinking that many states in post-colonial Africa could not be said to hold the natural ties necessary for belonging together as genuine nation-communities. This phenomenon likely accounts for Walker

Connor’s conviction that “since most of the less developed states contain a number of nations, and since the transfer of primary allegiance from these nations to the state is generally considered the sine qua non of successful integration, the true goal for such contexts is not ‘nation-building’ but rather ‘nation-destroying’” (Connor, 1972, p.336; 1994, p. 42).

African communitarianism, unlike that of the West, is further strengthened by the notion of community as language-defined. Africa is a continent with a very high linguistic diversity. There are estimated 1250-2100 (Heine & Nurse, 2000) official and spoken native languages of African countries, not to mention the dialects which are not always mutually understandable. If each of these languages represents a nation as argued by Fichte (1979) that “…wherever a separate language is found there a separate nation exists…” (p. 215) and Ludwig von Mises that “the essence of nationality lies in language” (Mises, 1983, p. 12), then African communitarianism would be more pronounced. Again if Schlegel (as cited in Berry, 1981) is right that “the older, purer and unmixed is a tribe, the more customs it has… which are genuinely persisted and adhered to, the more it becomes a nation” (p. 84), then a common language would make for sharing and interdependence which would in turn draw members, bonded by national ties, further closer together. A common language constitutes the context of social identity and induces national consciousness which serves as a basis for unity. The argument then is that the sense of belonging together and sharing a common nationality in the African sense i.e. birth-group with common ties of history, ancestry and culture, coupled with the very essential component of linguistic

16 homogeneity, make the phenomenon of communitarianism more prominent in Africa, perhaps, than elsewhere.

Other factors that may account for the African’s perceived deeper sense of communitarianism over individualism would include the customs, traditions and institutions. The king or chief is considered both the political and the religious head of that nation-community. The stool (throne or skin) the chief occupies and the territory he or she is a custodian of is believed to be ancestral and thus, his or her position and word are regarded sacred. This belief is one main source of the immense dignity, respect and veneration accorded to kingship and this makes the

African nation-community not only a socio-cultural phenomenon but also a political one with religious connotations (Gyekye, 1996, p. 83).

From the foregoing, it would seem absurd to the African mind to speak in terms of autonomy, primacy of rights or freedom of the will as the chief defining feature of the human person. It would rather seem appropriate to conclude that individuality would rather tend to be submerged in the African communitarian context. The natural sociality of humans, also argued by

Aristotle (1944), would rather be held as primary and essential in the general African thinking for, if the individual human being is born into an existing human society and therefore into a nation- community which existed before her, then her very being in such a context would be perceived to be the nation-community’s creation and ‘property’. It will be thought that the individual’s rights, freedoms and will, even if recognized, would rather be subordinate to that of the community which is upheld as ontologically and morally prior to the individual and his interests.

In fact, an Akan maxim reinforces the foregoing point when it states that when a person descends from on high, she descends into a human society (onipa firi soro besi a, obesi onipa kurom) (Gyekye, 1995, p. 155). This suggests that the former must be a product of the latter and

17 therefore suggests that there can be no individual without a nation-community. In the words of

Gyekye, “the human person does not voluntarily choose to enter into human community, that is, that community life is not optional for any individual person”; “that the human person is at once a cultural being” (Gyekye & Wiredu, 1992, p. 104). For Kenyatta (1965, p. 297), “… nobody is an isolated individual. Or rather, his uniqueness is a secondary fact about him; first and foremost, he is several people’s relative and several people’s contemporary.” Senghor would stress that the

African society “puts more stress on the group than on the individuals, more on solidarity than on the activity and needs of the individual, more on the communion of persons than on their autonomy. Ours is a community society” (Senghor, 1964, pp. 49, 93-94). For this reason, the individual would be expected to yield her rights, in most circumstances, to that of the community which “alone constitutes the context, social or cultural space, in which the actualization of the possibilities of the individual person can take place, providing the individual person the opportunity to express his individuality, to acquire and develop his personality and to fully become the kind of person he wants” (Gyekye & Wiredu, 1992, p. 106).

Such an understanding of community is, to some extent, akin to Will Kymlicka’s assertion that the individual’s rights and choices are made meaningful only by cultural membership which provides the “contexts of choice” because it is an individual’s culture that defines the options available to her; options which are presupposed by the concept of choice (Kymlicka, 1995, p.89).

In other words, deciding how to live our lives, framing, revising and pursuing our life goals, is a matter of exploring the possibilities made available by the cultural community and therefore from the outset she needs this nation-community to develop her capacity to meet basic human requirements and satisfy human needs. For the standard African view therefore, it is human to necessarily belong to and participate in a nation-community. A nation-community is thus, not

18 optional to the individual. Being a natural phenomenon therefore, belonging to a nation- community is considered necessary for the full realization of one’s humanness. And the necessity of community for the African then requires that it be sustained, protected and preserved first and foremost.

It is worthy of note that Gyekye (1997), in contrast with Menkiti and Mbiti, espouses what he calls moderate communitarianism (pp. 35-75) which seeks to reveal an extent of individualism accent in African thought systems as expressed in his argument that community emphasis in

African contexts is not to be thought of as a denial of individual autonomy, will and rationality.

As he puts it, “The capacity for self-assertion that the individual can exercise presupposes, and in fact derives from, the autonomous nature of the person. By autonomous, I do not mean self- completeness but the having of a will, a rational will of one’s own, that enables one to determine at least some of one’s own goals and to pursue them, and to control one’s destiny”( p. 54). Further on the autonomy of the individual, Gyekye writes: “In the light of the autonomous (or near autonomous) character of its activities, the communitarian self cannot be held as a cramped or shackled self, responding robotically to the ways and demands of the communal structure. The structure is never to be conceived as reducing a person to intellectual or rational inactivity, servility and docility” (pp. 55-56). Therefore, as Gyekye (1995) sees it, the African ethos of community rather recognizes the inadequacies and ‘limited character’ of the possibilities available to the individual which diminishes his or her self-sufficiency (p. 156). This observation then seems to underscore his argument for the ontological and moral primacy of community (Gyekye, 1997, pp.

35-75; 1996, p. 35).

However, Gyekye’s ‘moderate communitarianism’ has been challenged by thinkers who contend that the supposed gap between ‘moderate communitarianism’, as Gyekye presents it, and

19 the ‘radical communitarianism’ he criticizes may not be as widely apart as he believes them to be

(Famakinwa, 2010; Matolino 2009). They argue that although Gyekye recognizes the rights of individuals, this recognition, just like that of the radical communitarian’s, is actually for the sake of the community not for the individual and therefore would not be distinct from the ‘unrestricted’ communitarian view of especially Mbiti and Menkiti whom he criticizes. This is so in his view because Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism would still uphold the primacy-of-community thesis which asserts the moral supremacy of the community over the individual and never considers the rights of the individual to be the primary social value.4

Famakinwa (2010) maintains that Gyekye’s stress of the supremacy of love over justice as the first virtue of social institutions rather undermines the intention to balance individual rights with social responsibilities which is the focus of the moderate communitarianism thesis. This is so, for him, because in the instance of a moral clash between the community and the individual, the community “ought to be favored” (p. 2). What is more, in the event of an anti-social act by the individual, Gyekye urges that the community is to take necessary steps to maintain community integrity and stability. But his contention is that the justifiable limits of these steps are never stated by Gyekye (Famakinwa, 2010, p. 72). The objection here is that if the moderate communitarianism project sets out to give equal treatment to both the individual and the community, then there would be no justification for prioritizing one over the other nor giving one an indiscriminate upper hand over the other. He adds that since moderate communitarianism like the supposed ‘radical’ view depicts the parent-child model where the child (the individual) is nurtured by the parents (the community) and therefore has certain obligations towards the parents (the community) that nurtured her, then moderate communitarianism, in upholding the primacy of the community thesis,

4 Famakinwa refers to Gyekye (1997, pp. 57, 62-63, 66, 71). 20 reduces to radical communitarianism. His conviction is that “the goal of Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism is still the moral protection of the community. Both moderate and unrestricted communitarianism celebrate the community, not the individual” (p. 73) and, contrary to Gyekye’s view, even the claimed ‘unrestricted communitarianism’ also recognizes rights of individuals (pp.

72, 77).

Matolino, along the same lines of reasoning, also questions the claimed distinction between

Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism and the ‘radical’ communitarianism he rejects on the grounds that Gyekye agrees with the radicals that personhood is not innate but attained.5 Referring to Gyekye’s assertion that “Personhood, in this model of humanity, is not innate but is earned in the ethical arena: it is an individual’s moral achievement that earns him the status of a person”

(1997, pp. 51-52). Matolino concludes that Gyekye’s “failure lies in his inability to show that radical communitarianism abridges individual rights and oppresses autonomy whereas moderate communitarianism seeks to protect these individual endowments. He (Gyekye) also concedes that his scheme, just like radical communitarianism, takes moral worth seriously in ascribing the status of personhood to individuals” (Matolino, 2009, p. 166). Thus, for Famakinwa and Matolino, the strictly communitarian view of African socio-political thought and structure is not contestable

(Ikuenobe, 2017).

But in a rebuttal Hasskei Majeed (2018a) has defended ‘moderate communitarianism’ against its critics by arguing that their positions are not sustainable and that ‘moderate communitarianism’ is significantly different from ‘radical communitarianism’.6 To make his defense, he proposes a two-level conception of the claimed clash between community and

5 Compare Ikuenobe (2017) and Agada & Egbai (2018). 6 See also Molefe (2017).

21 individual rights in Akan culture which he labels as the practical and the metaphysical. Though he concedes that such a clash of rights may be possible in the “complex context of practical life (p.

4)”, he urges that at the metaphysical level possibilities of such a ‘clash’ in the Akan context “are in some ways non-existent, superficial or unreal (p. 4)”. For Majeed, since it is the metaphysical feature that is important to Akan culture and offers the core basis of understanding the Akan communitarian set-up theorized by Gyekye, clashes about practice are insufficient for equating moderate communitarianism to radical communitarianism as critics would want to suggest with their critique of moderate communitarianism. Consequently, Majeed (2018a) grants that both scholars could be correct in their argument that just like moderate communitarianism radical communitarianism also recognizes rights, but he disagrees with their conclusion that this makes the two versions of communitarianism the same.

It bears noting though that Majeed (2018b) agrees that because of certain “difficulties existent in Gyekye’s own arguments”, there seems to be a lack of coherence in his conceptions of

‘person, personhood and community’ (p. 36) which consequently generates a lack of clarity in his view. He observes that such incoherence arises because of “the way Gyekye goes about his argument which, sometimes, seemingly portrays him to be abandoning his own communitarian leanings” (p.6). A case in point he alludes to is the systematic ambivalence one detects in Gyekye’s claim that the individual is naturally autonomous – self-directing, self-legislating or self-governing

– (1997, p. 54) and yet, at the same time, his belief in “the ontological primacy of the community”

(Gyekye, 1997, p. 47). In the words of Majeed, “It might be supposed that his position is systematically ambivalent between standard moral individualism and radical communitarianism”

(2018a, p.7).

I myself have elsewhere identified a fundamental conceptual and linguistic challenge underlying the debate itself (Myles, 2019), which ought to be addressed to expose the actual bone of contention between communitarians and individualists from both Western and African perspectives. Adopting a ‘personist’ approach to the debate dispels many of the quandaries generated by the doctrines of individualism and communitarianism, both of which wrongly conceive and label ‘the person’ as an individual entity contending with the supposed ‘community’– another entity–for the place of supremacy ontologically and/or morally. I will defend here the view that both communality and individuality are not optional to the being of a person. Since a person is necessarily and naturally both communal and individual independently of her choice, the contention could not be between two distinct entities as suggested by the debate as it stands. All this relates to a main concern of social and political theory and practice; the question as to who or what ultimately remains the agent of ‘self-rule’. The ‘personist’ approach and its consequent notion of ‘democracy-as-self-rule’ will be given an elaborate exposition in this study.

For now, it should suffice to state that the various nation-communities found in traditional

Africa routinely accept the fact that empirically and normatively speaking African thought is characterized by some sort of communitarian ethos.

1.3 The individual and the community from the standard Western perspective

An undisputable fact about any Western society, it is supposed, is its stress on the individual as the fundamental unit of ontological and moral concern in its socio-political and moral thought. The individual, in Western thought as advanced by John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin and

Robert Nozick among others, is conceived of as the sovereign self whose rights and choices hold a superior place over and above that of the community. Some proponents of Social Contract theories, Thomas Hobbes especially, who are also described as the intellectual forbears of Western

23 individualism invariably argue that the natural state of the individual prior to any form of community is a state of perfect freedom to order one’s actions, dispose of one’s possessions as he or she deems fit, within the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other individual (Locke, 1988). The typical western individualist doctrine therefore conceives of the individual in terms of rationality, will or memory, and in consequence regards the individual with dignity: a free, autonomous and rights-bearing self, capable of detached choice of ends prior to or independent of community attachments.7 In other words, the dominant political theories of

Western societies place greater emphasis on the freedoms and interests of the individual than on that of the group. Autonomy and independence are considered higher values, which tend to take precedence over dependence or group attachment. The interest and welfare of others towards the collective good, in such a context, are considered subservient to her chosen ends, aims and aspirations. The standard Western society is, thus, generally considered to be more individualistic8 than non-western cultures.

From the conception of the ontological and moral primacy of the individual, the community, in the typical western context, is conceived of as the aggregate of particular individuals. This means that the interests and good of the community, in such a context, is conceived of as the aggregate combination of the interests and preferences of the individuals in the community. The 19th century British individualist thinker Jeremy Bentham, for instance, defines the common good as “the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it” (i.e., the community) (Bentham, 1948, p. 126). Kymlicka (1990), a contemporary individualist thinker, also

7 Think of Rawls’ “veil of ignorance.” See Sandel (1984). 8 I prefer the term ‘individualism’ to ‘liberalism’ because the latter has different meanings to different people; the former would be a more accurate description of the society that stresses individual interest and rights and is more appropriate in a discourse on the relation between the individual and the community.

24 holds that “[i]n a liberal society, the common good is the result of the process of combining preferences, all of which are counted equally (if consistent with the principles of justice)” (p. 206).

Such thinking maintains that pursuing the good of community outside of the combination of the individual interests and preferences of its individual members would not only do violence to the autonomy, freedom and happiness of the individual and stifle her ability to choose her own good, but would also result in intolerance of other conceptions of the good which have equal status and ought to be equally respected as well. Community, then, in western individualist thought has come to be understood as a free non-coerced association of individuals for mutual benefits (Gauthier,

1986).

However, the foregoing conception of the relation between the individual and the community which try to defend in some sense the superiority of the individual and his rights over the community is what, for instance, has generated the compelling undermining tag of ‘atomism’ by Taylor. Yet, this tag may only be ideal-typical since, as the concept is defined, there would be very few real atomists in Western socio-political thought; perhaps Hobbes in his seventeenth century ‘social contract’ theory would qualify. But what is interesting, though, is that John Locke,

Jean Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and John Rawls may not be strict in their supposed atomism as they are often taken to be. What this could mean is that their philosophical tradition is in need of such an atomist reading to make sense of certain ways of thinking about the ontological and normative priority of the individual over the community. The central doctrine of this tradition is an affirmation of what he labels as the “primacy of rights” thesis. In his view, the primacy of rights thesis entails that certain rights are ascribed to individuals, while the same status is denied to the principle of belonging or obligation to the community (Taylor, 1992). By this thesis, the

25 individual is prioritized over the community. She is not obliged to sustain or interact positively with the community or society of which she is a member.

Advocates of ‘atomism’ and its consequent ‘primacy of rights’ doctrine, according to

Taylor, insist that the relationship of individuals to community, their sustaining it and their obeying its authority are simply conditions placed upon them when they consent to join it and that is because it serves their interest. By this understanding, community would only serve a purely instrumental purpose. That is, people would join and uphold community only because of what it offers them. This thinking in Western thought has also been rejected by authors such as Michael

Sandel, Alasdair McIntyre and Michael Walzer, who in various ways object to the ‘atomistic’ definition of freedom as individual independence. They would rather identify freedom as collective self-government.

In his Atomism, again, Taylor unequivocally questions why this claim for individual rights is given such weight. His argument against the supposed predominant Western view of the individual and the community, just like the African view discussed earlier, fundamentally borrows from the Aristotelian notion of man as a “social animal” incapable of surviving outside the polis.

Though he admits that most proponents of the atomistic point of view would not necessarily hold that a person could physically survive outside of community, as is assumed in some contractarians’

‘state of nature’, there is still a suggestion of self-sufficiency in their arguments if they take the individual as the starting point of morality and politics but community only as the derivative. The contention raised by him then, is not the question of whether a person can survive outside of community. Instead, the issue for him is that individuals are incapable of achieving or developing their characteristically human capacities outside of a community context and its structures, chief among which is language. He argues that “… an individual is constituted by the language and

26 culture which can only be maintained and renewed in the communities he is part of,” for “outside of the continuing conversation of a community, which provides the language by which we draw our background distinctions, human agency… would be not just impossible, but inconceivable

Taylor, 1985a, p.8)”. His contention is if persons can develop rational capacity, moral agency and other specifically human potentials only within the framework of community, then it would be impossible to give an atomistic defense of the primacy of the individual over the community. If humans can only realize their potential (of being human) by being part of community, then advocacy for the primacy of rights would work against the individual. The point for him, which seems to be the case of African communitarians, Gyekye for instance, to a large extent, is that affirming the worth of these capacities amounts to affirming the worth of the community(s) within which alone these capacities can be developed. And thus, he reiterates, it would be incoherent to assert these rights while denying our equal obligations to the community(s) we are naturally a part of.

Like Taylor, Sandel objects to the standard Western conception of ‘the individual’ as the

‘unencumbered self’, which he contrasts with a conception of the individual as a whole person with ‘constitutive ends’. To him, this constitution, is a function of the community and its attachments which the individual belongs to necessarily and independently of her choice (Sandel,

1984). But given that Sandel somehow rejects the notion of the “sociologically conditioned subject” (Sandel, 1982, p. 12) nonetheless, one could come to the conclusion that insofar as the individual possesses such a community-based “core self”, she is at the very least partly socially constructed if not a radically “situated self” (p. 172). In terms of the individual’s rights, therefore,

Sandel holds a reserved view, which maintains that it would only be necessary to insist on rights if communal relations have been distorted or harmed. In his words, in “a more or less ideal family

27 situation… individual rights and fair decision procedures are seldom invoked, not because injustice is rampant but because their appeal is pre-empted by a spirit of generosity in which I am rarely inclined to claim my fair share”(p. 33). Therefore, in the context of healthy and harmonious communal relations, the need to invoke the individual’s rights, for him, should not arise at all.

MacIntyre’s outright rejection of Western individualism is captured in his insistence that,

“… my life is always embedded in the story of those communities from which I derive my identity… The possession of an historical identity and the possession of a social identity coincide.

Notice that rebellion against my identity is always one possible mode of expressing it” (MacIntyre,

1984, p. 221). To him, the image of the individual who has natural rights with fundamental primacy prior to or detached from communal attachments is dubious, “the truth is plain: there are no such rights, and belief in them is one with belief in witches and in unicorns” (p. 69); that such “natural or human rights… are fictions” (p. 70). He urges that the individual is “never able to seek the good or exercise the virtues only qua individual” (p. 221). Yet he admits to some sense of individuality when he argues that, “the fact that the self has to find its moral identity in and through its membership in communities… does not entail that the self has to accept the moral limitations of the particularity of those forms of community” (p. 221).

For Walzer (1983), since there cannot be a meaningful, universal or absolute, yet just morality outside of specific community context, it is community that prescribes and underwrites moral value and autonomy. From this premise, Walzer admits to the implied moral relativism entailed in his position that justice demands that general conceptions of values be expressed in community-specific terms even if it is obvious that such a conclusion may have fundamental implications for social and political thought and practice.

From the foregoing analyses, it would remain to show how a supposed doctrine of

‘atomism’ or ‘primacy of rights’ would be attributable to Western political theories as the standard perspective on the relationship between the individual and the community. Studies in developmental psychology (Winnicott, 1971; Benjamin, 2010) and social philosophy (Honneth,

2012; Mead, 1967) would further show empirically, historically and conceptually that the formation of a person, in contemporary western thought, would be constitutively dependent on intersubjective always already social dependencies and relations.

1.4 Communitarianism in political philosophy

The communitarian contention, regardless of the particular differentiation per author, centers on the Rawlsian notion of the individual conceived of as a free autonomous self, capable of making rational choices of ends prior to or independent of social attachment (Rawls, 1971).

Communitarianism, whether from western or non-western contexts, questions such a conception and rather thinks of the individual as at least an entity defined and ‘constituted’ by social attachment and a natural obligation to belong to community of a kind.9 The main communitarian challenge to individualism then is the necessary and natural sociality of humans. (Aristotle, 1944;

Senghor, 1964, pp. 49, 93-94).

Western communitarianism, from its Aristotelian antecedents, through Rousseau and

Hegel especially, whose important distinction between Moralität and Sittlichkeit (‘morality’ and

‘ethical life’) inspired the main strands of western communitarian writings in the latter part of the

20th Century until now, has been committed to championing the course of community and its attachments. The ‘communitarian writings’, expressed in labels that I discussed such as the

9 Sandel (1984), MacIntyre (1984) and Taylor (1992) for Western contexts; Menkiti (1984; 2004), Gyekye (1997), and Gyekye & Wiredu (1992) for African contexts. 29

‘unencumbered self,’ individuals as actors within a ‘narrative,’ and a rejection of ‘atomism,’ have emphasized the significance of community for the individual. By distinguishing between morality as Moralität – abstract, universal rules and principles of morality – and morality as Sittlichkeit – community-specific ethical precepts and practices – Hegel (Wood, 1991, pp. xii-xiii) and his later followers like Taylor for instance, set out a foundational distinction that was to serve as, perhaps, the most enduring basis for a great revisional outlook in the Rawlsian tradition and its implied

‘atomist’10 tendencies already discussed in the preceding section.

Likewise, from an African perspective, communitarianism, as espoused by Placide

Tempels, Mbiti, Menkiti, among others, stands opposed to the conception of persons as individuated things existing in themselves, apart from their ontological relationships with other living beings and from connection with animate or inanimate forces around them.11 Rather, this communitarianism is grounded in the thought that a person is fundamentally a social being whose personhood can only be defined in relation to other beings he or she is communally related to.12

According to Mbiti, it is the community that makes the individual to the extent that without the community, the individual has no existence. In his words, somewhat opposed to Cartesian Cogito

Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I am), “Whatever happens to the individual happens to the whole group, and whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual. The individual can only say: ‘I am, because we are; and since we are, therefore I am’” (Mbiti, 1970, p. 141). By this thinking, a human being becomes real only in her relationships with others in a community or a

10 A label that even proponents of individualism themselves preferred not to admit to, even if the substantive grounds for that designation had not changed much in their theoretical foundations. (Taylor, 1985a, pp. 187, 189). 11 Tempels (1959, p. 103); Menkiti (1984, pp. 171-181); Menkiti (2004). 12 In fact, an Akan maxim reinforces this point when it states that when a person descends from above, he descends into a human society (onipa firi soro besi a, obesi onipa kurom). Gyekye (1995, p. 155). 30 group and consequently, the growth and fulfillment of the human being is inextricably tied to the harmonization of this interaction. So, Kenyatta insists, while writing about the traditional Gikuyu ways of thinking, “… nobody is an isolated individual. Or rather, his uniqueness is a secondary fact about him; first and foremost he is several people’s relative and several people’s contemporary” (Kenyatta, 1965, pp. 188, 297). Senghor also urges that the “African society puts more stress on the group than on the individual, more on solidarity than on the activity and needs of the individual, more on the communion of persons than on their autonomy. Ours is a community society.” He buttresses the point with his claim that the African society is “collectivist or, more exactly communal, because it is rather a communion of souls than an aggregate of individuals”

(Senghor, 1964, pp. 49, 93-94). Such African communitarian understanding of being would then be best captured in relational terms as “I am related, therefore we are”13 instead of the Cartesian individualistic definition of a human-being as an entity defined by thought, “I think therefore I am.”14

Thus, for communitarianism of all perspectives, western or non-western, the ontological and moral primacy of the individual defended by individualism is not only in varying degrees considered false, meaningless and non-realizable, but more importantly not conceivable. The various communitarian critiques of individualism therefore could be summarized as a failure to account for the complex set of social relations that human beings everywhere are a part of necessarily. Adopting the communitarian terms earlier referred to, the concern is that the implied

‘atomism’ underlying individualism of the various kinds is rooted in an untenable ontology that

13 Notice the place of individuality in the use of ‘I’. 14 Notice the total negation of community, communality or relationality in the determination of being. 31 posits the existence of generic ‘unencumbered selves’ but fails to account for communal

‘embeddedness’ or ‘constitutiveness’ of such human beings.

On the contrary, the standard communitarian argument is that since individual identity, self-understanding and agency is at least partly constructed by culture, language and social relations, there are no such generic individuals but rather concrete community-situated persons with a shared context of a kind at every point in time – family, neighborhood, nation, state, historical or linguistic group, ancestral or blood-related group – depending on which communitarian one reads. The communitarian regards this communal context – Asante, Bantu,

Gikuyu, German, Russian or Turk – as necessary for giving actual meaning and substance to moral values and achieving genuine autonomy, rights and moral freedoms of the individual. (Taylor,

1992; Sandel, 1984; Senghor, 1964; Menkiti, 1984; Gyekye, 1997). He states this point vividly thus, “… an individual is constituted by the language and culture which can only be maintained and renewed in the communities he is part of,” for “outside of the continuing conversation of a community, which provides the language by which we draw our background distinctions, human agency… would be not just impossible, but inconceivable” (Taylor, 1985a, p.8).15 Sandel also makes the following observation: “As a self-interpreting being, I am able to reflect on my history and in this sense to distance myself from it, but the distance is always precarious and provisional, the point of reflection never finally secured outside the history itself” (Sandel, 1982, p. 179). Even more pronounced is this thinking in traditional African communitarianism which is not only

15 my emphasis to show how the individual as used here depicts concreteness, not a dimension or an aspect of a person; which usage seems to be a source of the challenge against communitarian thought touching on the place of creativity, innovation and responsibility in the absence of disengaged identity. 32 politically based generally but is also believed to be based on common ties of history, ancestry, linguistic homogeneity, and religion (Gyekye, 1996, p. 83).

From the foregoing, goes the communitarian critique, there would be no coherent way of formulating individual rights or interests in abstraction from actual social or communal contexts.

Consequently, attempting to establish a theory of justice on principles decided behind Rawls’ veil of ignorance, for instance, then would be inconceivable because not only is the individual incapable of making rational choices of ends, goals and aspiration in such a context but more fundamentally individuals cannot exist in such an abstracted pre-communal or pre-social state, even in principle. The nature of political community then, by communitarian thinking, is misunderstood by individualists who describe it as a neutral framework of rules within which a multiplicity of commitments to moral values can coexist. Rather, argues the communitarian, good societies would have to rely not only on supposed neutral rules and procedures but on some kind of shared notions of right and wrong –shared moral culture.16 Therefore, for Walzer (1983), and more explicitly MacIntyre (1984), such particularistic values are actually the kind of values which matter; that conceiving morality in universal terms is another deception of individualism.

It is worth emphasizing that the communitarian, western and non-western alike, argues that, unlike the individualist’s community, the notion of community is not to be regarded as a simple aggregate or mere association of individuals with the character depicted in social contract theories, whose agreed cooperation is based on the search for mutual benefits. Kwame Gyekye, in this regard holds instead that “what distinguishes a community from a mere association of individuals is the sharing of an overall way of life” (Gyekye, 1997, p. 42). The notion of community understood as causal dependency between ‘the individual’ and her ‘community’,

16 See Van den Brink’s treatment of this tension in the liberal thought (2000). 33 defended by individualists like Gauthier (1986) then does not, in the communitarian view, only undermine the very identity of the individual which is, according to Taylor, communally constituted, but more fundamentally, it takes from the worth of community17 which communitarian’s hold to be desirable in itself. In his discussion on community-membership,

Walzer reiterates the position that belonging to a community is not only valuable for the goods that it brings but more importantly and fundamentally, that the sense of communal belonging is itself a good that is worthwhile (Walzer, 1983).

By extension then, the communitarian’s notion of ‘community’ would need not be understood to mean ‘bounded-wholes’ where each is detached from the other as one room can be distinguished from another even if located in the same building. For, such a conception would reduce the notion of community to geographical location which does not necessarily guarantee the sense of belonging underscored by the need for community as a desirable good defended by communitarians, whether Western or African. Obviously, people may live together and share the goods that proceed from their mutual engagements but that would not guarantee an attachment to, and a responsibility towards this shared life that such relatedness comes with. Rather, from the communitarian perspective, it would have to be the sense of belonging together which derives chiefly from attachment to common aims, aspirations and goals, regardless of persons’ physical location, blood relation, inter-relatedness or interactivity, that makes community a desirable good, not the mere cohabitation within a specific territorial boundary, even though persistent proximity would more likely foster a deeper sense of relationality. Amitai Etzioni (1996a), one of the leaders

17 Notice another ambiguity in the debate as both debaters talk past each other with different senses of the term community: the communitarian sense of community, itself straddling between a closed social, linguistic or territorial unit in some contexts but in other contexts referring to the relational ties, attachments or bonds themselves; while the individualist argues with the mindset of ‘community’ as association or accidental collectivity of a kind. 34 of the American communitarian movement’s characterization of community is pertinent here:

“first, a web of affect-laden relationships among a group of individuals, relationships that often crisscross and reinforce one another, and second, a measure of commitment to a set of shared values, norms and meanings, and a shared history and identity – in short, to a particular culture”

(p. 127).

If the communitarian’s notion of community is to be understood as people related to one another in different ways such as family, neighbors, common ancestry, linguistic group, but also friends, competitors at the market, citizens and so forth, not necessarily biological, then it suggests that community or communal relationships may be fraternal but need not be unitary. After all, there is nothing in a person’s biological make up that necessarily makes him or her say, Asante rather than Ga. Language, culture, ethnicity, nation or state are all society-defined notions picked up from humans’ relation with other humans and therefore it would be specious to think that the claim that “someone’s upbringing isn’t something that can just be erased; it is, and will remain a constitutive part of who that person is” (Kymlicka, 1989, p. 175), does mean that one is brought up in an enclosed world inaccessible to ‘non-members.’ That is to say, it would be difficult to defend strictly a family, neighborhood, culture, language, ethnic-group, nation, state or territory specific context as the community constitutive of a person without conjuring a mythos “…‘natural’ form of association, based on physical proximity and traditional ties” or “…unitary relationships….” (Miller, 1992, p. 100). Such a difficulty is appreciated by van der Burg when he writes, “What counts as a cultural community? If we recognize the Turkish immigrants in the

Netherlands as such, then the next question is whether we should also recognize the Turkish Kurds as a separate community. And so on: what is the minimum size of a group to be recognized as an independent community…” (van der Burg, 1995, p. 243).

Besides, given the inherently dynamic nature of culture and its accompanying

‘intercultural’ and ‘intra-cultural’ borrowing, ‘culture’ is always in transition. As a consequence, one will be in error to seek to argue that “it is this specific minority culture that is relevant to a citizen’s flourishing and that it is his membership of this cultural group that is a primary good, ....”

(van der Burg, 1995, p. 224). One cannot defensively lay claim to being born into or belonging to a culture where ‘culture’ is understood to mean an authentic or original sealed world bounded, as it were, from other worlds. Put this way, there seems to be a conflation of culture, which is simply the way people, persons or humans live, with a cultural group or nation-community. One would first have to distinctly identify ‘a people’ to be able to tell if they share a common cultural life. We are, thus, launched into circularity. Other claimed definitive features betray same or worse inadequacies (Myles, 2013, pp. 147-164).18

As it stands, therefore, there is no one answer that would enable one to state unambiguously and objectively what defines the communitarian’s ‘community’. ‘Community’, as used in the debate could have a restricted meaning as a social entity whose members are, “… a face-to-face group based on personal acquaintance and direct practices of mutual aid, or if they are linked in some sort of fraternity” (Heeger, 1995, pp. 11-22), or an open meaning to refer to a nation, a state or even the international or global community as captured in the claim, “thus, the family (both nuclear and extended), clan, village, tribe, city, neighborhood, nation-state- all these are kinds of community. (we even talk about the ‘international community)” (Miller, 1989, p. 100; Gyekye,

1997, p. 43).

18 Compare Appiah’s treatment of race in his In my father’s house and Gyekye’s analysis of ethnicity in his Tradition and modernity, Appiah (1992); Gyekye (1997).

In sum, the scope and scale of the communitarian’s community then could be small and localized or more-expansive even to supra-national levels as the reach of economic and technological forces extend the need to provide effective normative and political guidance on the many challenges that people, no longer divided by continental or state boundaries, now face globally such as the threat of nuclear war, environmental degradation and economic crises. If community is such understood, it becomes apparent that with the size of modern nation-states and the complexity of relations, the necessary requirement to establish affectedness or attachment to community lies in reasoned conviction and commitment to values, aims, interests, goals and aspirations worked out together as persons publicly sharing a culture, and not necessarily on biological bonds (Tonnies, 1955, p. 49).

1.5 Individualism in political philosophy

A central thesis of individualism in political philosophy is its emphasis on the moral worth of the individual and its stress on human independence, individual self-reliance and liberty. At its core, individualism is simply the view that the individual is a separate entity, who makes her own choices, thinks her own thoughts and is responsible for her own choices. Any form of individualism takes the human individual as a central unit of analysis ontologically and morally.

That is to say, individualists generally conceive of a person as a free, autonomous, rights-bearing being, prior to any attachment with community of any form, capable of making free rational choices of ends towards the realization of her potentials in living a life most worthwhile (Rawls,

1995). For individualists, therefore, a person’s autonomy, freedom and dignity stand superior and prior to any form of group interest or welfare; and these values are considered not only worth respecting and preserving but also inviolable. To quote Rawls, “each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override… the

37 rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests”

(Rawls, 1995, pp. 3-4).

From its claimed Lockean antecedents,19 western individualism characterizes the freedom to pursue individual goals and argues that obligations to community may only be contracted voluntarily by consent. Locke argues that individual rights are natural properties that are present even before individuals enter into any social or political contract to secure them. As such, they precede and overwrite any political power (Simmons, 1993, pp. 3-12). In his words, “Men, being… by nature all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political power of another without his consent” (Locke, 1988, p. VI). To him, before subjecting themselves to contracts or political power, individuals are first and foremost naturally free already; this freedom means self-ownership, self-rule or personal sovereignty. As he puts it, “every man has a property in his own ‘person’” (p. V). This means Locke’s individualism views the individual subject as primary to the structures of community, and consequently individual rights, which precede any cooperative action, form the basis of morality and politics. Since his sense of rights20 is not truly alienable, “Artificial political bodies [. . .] cannot for Locke (or Lockeans) possess rights naturally; only persons have that capacity” (Simmons, 1993, p. 59) and “[o]nly fully voluntary alienation of the rights by the rightholder – consent (contract, trust) – can give another person or body political power over the rightholder”. Thus, “only consent can ground a person’s obligations” of any sort (p. 59).

Individualism, such understood, would primarily maintain a fundamental incompatibility with egalitarian political philosophies that seek to promote equality of mankind and emphasize the

19According to Taylor, the thesis of the primacy-of-rights is “plainly that of Locke” (Taylor, 1985b, p. 188). 20 Understood as moral not legal properties 38 desirability of economic and social equality. As argued by Nozick (1974), pursuing egalitarian ideals would imply an encroachment on individual rights. At best, he advocates for a minimal state

“limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on” (p. ix). However, in his A Theory of Justice, John Rawls, who is considered a main proponent of western individualism, argues to show not only that political individualism is not antithetical to egalitarianism, but more importantly that a commitment to individualism and its pursuit of rights and liberties depend significantly on the maintenance of the egalitarian principle of social and economic equalities. Rawls thinks of human society as a system of cooperation for mutual advantage between individuals. As such, he sees society as marked by conflicting differing individual interests or individual conceptions of right but also an identity of shared interests. Such a contractarian perspective to society, the view that society is a matter of cooperation for mutual advantage, for Rawls, would require principles of justice that would “define the appropriate distribution of the benefits and burdens of social co-operation” (Rawls, 1971, p. 9). To ensure a fair, impartial procedure of distribution devoid of any possible bias towards, say, the rich or the poor, the religious or the atheist, the male or the female, He requires the assumption of a ‘veil of ignorance’ in the formulation of the principles of justice which “free and rational persons concerned to further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamental terms of their association” (p. 11). For Rawls then, assuming not to know what our position in society will be, or what our idea of the good is at the ‘initial position’ is key to ensuring:

that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in the choice of principles by the outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances. Since all are similar situated and no one is able to design principles to favor his particular condition, the principles of justice are the result of a fair agreement or bargain. (p. 12)

In sum, he views society as a cooperative pursuit of what is in each individual’s interest; an interest which in his view can be identified by persons conceived of as free and equal moral individuals prior to their actual existence in human society and therefore prior to any society’s conception of the good. Such individualism then rules out any theory that sees communal bonds as intrinsically good, rather than a means to our individual advantage. It takes as a given that we are fundamentally separate rather than naturally social and as a result primarily disinterested in each other’s welfare.

In defending the usefulness of his ‘original position,’ Rawls, in Sandel’s view, assumes that we can meaningfully identify individuals as selves who hold values that give our lives meaning even after his hypothetical ‘veil of ignorance’ has stripped them of any ideas to serve as content for these values, rights and identities. The communitarian contention, from both western and non- western perspectives, to this thinking, already discussed in the previous sections, is that not only can we not meaningfully conceive of individuals with identities and values behind such a ‘veil of ignorance’, but the principles of justice supposed to be the result of such a thought experiment would be meaningless if not impossible to conceive. Our values and conception of what is good, for the communitarian, are gained and held in common with other people in the context of community of a sort.21

Consequently, Ross Zucker questions the degree of compatibility between pursuing both individual rights and socio-economic equality as a good in Rawls. He is concerned that in the long run individualism and its pursuit of rights restrict the development of socio-economic equality and its pursuit of the good. For Zucker, egalitarianism would thrive better if it is rooted in a socialist collectivist foundation rather than Rawls’ individualist model which conceives of the self as an asocial being endowed with particular rights–claims against community–and which consistently

21 See earlier references to communitarian thinkers. 40 underplays community’s influences and constraints in forming the individual’s identity. Zucker’s individualism consistently maintains that community is not a condition for the emergence of individual talents, needs, and abilities. His individualism instead posits an individual “who is highly independent in the midst of social relations, because his or her nature is ultimately formed autonomously rather than by social conditioning”22 (Zucker, 2000, p. 29).

The implication of Zucker’s view of the egalitarian doctrine of economic and social equality, contrary to Rawls’ individualism, is that the individual’s claims on society are restricted; in turn, the obligations the individual owes to others within the community also diminish. By this thinking, the special place of priority of the individual as a sovereign and her ‘inalienable’ rights, freedoms and autonomy, which are guaranteed by their deontological23 nature, are better preserved, and given priority over the good (Dworkin, 1978, p. 198; Nozick, 1974, pp. 31, 32) since the individual is conceived of, and treated, as Kant’s ‘end’ and not as a means to an end

(Kant, 1993, p. 30). After all, “there is no social entity with a good that undergoes some sacrifice for its own good. There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives. ... Nothing more. … Talk of an overall social good covers this up” (Nozick, 1974, pp. 32-33).

However, John Stuart Mill, another prominent advocate of individualism, in his On Liberty articulates an individualist perspective that brings attention to the need for a balance between personal liberty and state authority. In agreement with Locke, Mill holds that “Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign” (Mill, 2006, p. 13). To him, individuals are

22 Emphasis added. 23 See a discussion of Rasmussen & De Uyl’s argument on the morally derivative status of natural rights which Hasnas (1995) considers to be instructive to communitarian critiques of liberalism since it calls to attention a distinction between what he calls the moral and political domains. (Rasmussen & De Uyl, 1991, pp. 80-90). 41 rational enough to make decisions about their well-being and therefore ought to be free to do as they wish unless their act causes harm to others. Where an act of omission or commission breaches his ‘harm principle’ (p. 13). He argues based on utility that government should interfere, even if against the will of such individuals, for the protection of the collective. So his arguments in On

Liberty, grounded on the principle of utility and not on appeals to natural rights, seek to maintain a compatibility of ‘the primacy of rights’ with the welfare of the community as “no one exists in isolation”. He holds that harm presumed to be done to oneself may also harm others, and destroying property deprives the community as well as oneself (Mill, 2006, pp. 153, 206). It is worth- mentioning that Mill’s advocacy for free speech, his case against the Subjection of Women and his opposition to Slavery are not just aimed at protecting the natural rights of individuals but is mainly a commitment to the eradication of ‘chief hindrances’ to the progress of humanity in general (Cudd

& Andreasen, 2005, pp. 17-26). Yet, he concurrently maintains a defense for individual rights when he stresses that freedom of expression, for instance, is crucial for personal growth, individual talent development and the realization of person’s potential and creativity (Mill, 2006, pp. 83-84).

From a non-western perspective, the conception of individuals as free and equal moral beings existing prior to actual human society runs contrary to Akan thought, and African thought in general, on individuality, for instance, in the view of Kwame Gyekye. As naturally social beings, a rejection of an original pre-social character of man in the concept of the ‘state of nature’ in social contract theories, not only is it improper for individuals to live in isolation but “the individual’s capacities are not sufficient to meet basic human requirements…. [since], the individual inevitably requires the succor and the relationships of others in order to realize or satisfy basic needs”

(Gyekye, 1995, p. 155). In effect, the claim is that the natural sociality of man in Akan thought does not absorb the individual’s personal will, rationality, initiative and responsibility because

42 each person is at least recognized as having her own destiny, and destiny is that which determines the uniqueness and individuality of a person (p. 155). This observation then seems to underscore his defense of what he calls ‘moderate communitarianism’ earlier discussed (Gyekye, 1997, pp.

35-75). Thus, from both African and Western communitarian perspectives, community-belonging and participation is seen as natural and/or necessary to human-beingness and thus, not optional to the full realization of one’s humanness. The necessity of community then requires that it be sustained, protected and preserved.

In sum, the foregoing discussions have presented various ways of understanding individualism in political philosophy, the predominant strands being a philosophy in which the ideals of individual rights, freedoms, autonomy and equality are to be upheld. It is evident that the individualist believes that any form of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among people can only be achieved based on the recognition of individual rights and that a group, as such, has no rights detached from the individual rights of its members. For the individualist, social reality strictly speaking consists of persons who choose and act but not collectives, such as a social class, state or a group. After all, thought, creativity, critical reflection, inventiveness, imagination, ingenuity and the capacity for moral judgment are all individual capacities in the strict sense. For this reason, tolerating different beliefs and different ideas on what constitutes a good life is essential to any form of individualism (Gray, 2000, pp. 1-33).

But should that mean individualists would have to tolerate anti-individualist beliefs and ideas as some individuals’ notion of a good life and therefore acceptable? Should individuals be left to determine their own notion of the good regardless? The discussions so far show that while some individualists, like Rawls, have argued for the maintenance of some kind of compatibility between individual rights and obligations towards the collective, others, like Locke, deny the

43 legitimacy of any obligation towards a collective without the consent of the individual. Whichever way one looks at it, it would seem that true individualism means recognizing that every person has a right to her own life, freedoms and autonomy; but it would also have to mean ensuring the welfare and interests of every person by preserving the institution(s) that protect these rights. The ensuing section situates the debate so far in the discourse on democracy.

1.6 Democracy: individualistic/liberal or communitarian/social?

The theory and practice of democracy has fallen prey to the contention between communitarians and individualists. Consequently, democracy is approached and labeled differently by different theorists who, this study contends, only represent different perspectives of the same phenomenon and therefore may only appear to disagree. The section briefly explores various perspectives of what the moral foundations of democratic theory and the viable practice of democracy as an ethico-political principle is. The exploration seeks to show that there might not be a substantive disagreement about the object of democracy after all whether labeled as liberal, social, individualistic or communitarian.

Democracy has been conceptualized by many theorists in communitarian terms. John

Dewey (1927), for instance, holds that “the ideal of community life itself…. The clear consciousness of a communal life, in all its implications, constitutes the idea of democracy” (pp.

148-49). To think of democracy in this light easily attracts the label of a ‘communitarian democrat’. However, Robert Bellah (1995-96), like others who seek the values and ideals of community in individualist contests, would consider himself a ‘democratic communitarian’. Even though he subscribes to individualist conception of the individual as a sacred being, he, like the typical communitarian, views community beyond the sum of its individuals; yet, not as the communitarian’s unitary homogeneous super-organism demanding perpetual conformity from its

44 members. Neither does his conception of community defend a rejection of ethical universalism and an uncritical adherence to particularistic loyalties. Rather, he conceives of society as an ongoing conversation about the nature of the good and his ‘democratic communitarianism’ defends community as a “lifeworld” of overlapping and complementary associations of families, schools, religious, economic and cultural groups that offer a viable framework for individual flourishing.

By this thinking, Bellah’s ‘democratic communitarianism’, even though community focused, may not after all differ substantially in its goal from the liberal/ individualist theorists of democracy who think of society mainly in some terms of a social contract for fair distribution of the social goods. Individualist or liberal democrats often place a premium on individual political freedoms and interests with less commitment to elevating economic and social rights as equally necessary rights. Such a conception of democracy is held by ‘communal democrats’ like Gyekye to be narrow since it confines democracy’s concerns “to protecting and furthering the political rights of individuals and, only incidentally – not as a matter of belief or policy – to social and economic rights” (Gyekye, 1997, p.141). It seems then that his arguments eventually take an individualist/ liberalist twist and emphasis, even though he actually set out to argue for a kind of communitarianism that is compatible with democracy and its ideals. That is, the thrust of his argument is to contest the either/or contention between individuals’ political freedoms and community’s welfare by stressing that the two represent a continuum or even a necessary complement one to the other (Bellah, 1995-6, pp. 49-54). But though he contends that community is not only necessary but desirable, he at the same time insists that community need not be antithetical to equally essential procedural norms of fairness aimed at maximizing the opportunities of individuals. He urges that free enterprise and welfare liberal ideologists’ world of individuals and administrative systems on their own do not address humans’ actual “lifeworld” of

45 families, neighborhoods, ethnic-communities, towns and nations (as opposed to states), where actual humans dialogue on standards, norms and values towards evolving agreed form(s) of the good life. With the argument that the first principle of his democratic communitarianism is to seek to “define and further the good which is the community’s purpose” (p. 52), he conceives of human life as fully defined and realized only in and through solidarity from such “lifeworld”. Thus, he is emphatic on the communitarian view that “strong, healthy, morally vigorous communities are the prerequisite for strong, healthy, morally vigorous individuals” (p. 53).

Yet, he seems to divest community of its essential prerequisite of actual shared values and goals of a ‘lifeworld’ which is central to his democratic communitarianism. This is so because he subscribes to the notion of community as “complementary association” (Boswell, 2013, pp. 13, 39,

41) as a way of widening the ‘boundaries’ of community-belonging to include “varied social- groupings: the family, the local community, the cultural or religious group, the economic enterprise, the trade union or profession, the nation-state” (p. 39), but at the same time rejects an accompanying notion of a stateless society fit for such “complementary association”. In simple terms, his ‘democratic communitarianism’ eventually tends to accommodate less of the role of the kind of community he advocates for.

Another democratic thought that stems from the communitarianism/individualism contention is a socialist conception of democracy. This kind of democracy restricts its focus to a concrete translation of social and economic equality and, in consequence, is solely committed to fulfilling the socio-economic needs of the collective – welfare of the community – to the general disregard of the individuals’ political freedoms. But just as focusing solely on individual political freedoms by the individualist/liberalist democrats is narrow and inadequate, so would a socialist conception of democracy which makes social and economic rights its sole pre-occupation.

According to Gyekye, “underlying the two different conceptions of democracy, the individualist (or “liberal”) and the socialist, is the perception that there is a conflict between individual freedom and social equality. Such a perception, however, is false. For I think that it is possible to integrate political liberty (individual freedom) and social welfare;… the two values should not be held as incompatible” (Gyekye, 1997, p. 141). Thus, in reference to what he calls modern Africa, Gyekye advocates for a communal democracy. In his words, “The communitarian ethos of the traditional African social life… should inspire and undergird a communal democracy”

(p. 293). Such a notion of communal democracy, Gyekye argues, entails a strong sense of community which is itself built on a strong sense of family. Since the family is considered a valuable institution in African communitarian contexts, the consciousness of kinship ties, he argues, undergirds personal character formation, serves as an effective tool for developing and inculcating moral values as well as ensuring social and economic morality in the fair distribution of resources and services. His point is that if family ties are non-existent or fragmented, it would be transferred to community and its bonds and the character of individuals would degenerate to ultimately undermine the integrity of the nation. So, for Gyekye (1997), the “creation of modernity–of African modernity–should not lead to the disintegration of the family or community life. That will spell the moral as well as the social doom of the modern African nation-state” (p.

293). Thus, the values of love, care, cohesion, solidarity, interdependence, mutual sympathy, responsibility and helpfulness are given full expression in a democracy if that democracy is communal in orientation, and a communal orientation to democracy will serve against degeneration of the person’s character.

From the foregoing instances, it becomes apparent that the debate and its tensions have implications for the theorizing and practice of democracy as a social ethic and a political system.

Regardless of the seeming differences however, one would notice upon closer look that all these perspectives of democracy outlined above are agreed on the view that participating in community is valuable. Whereas individualistic/liberal democracy focuses on the individual as the basic unit of measure and is skeptical about the community (state) acting as the best distributor of resources, social democracy would rather reject individualism and its market-based approach to resource allocation. Instead, social democracy would place premium on group rights and community welfare over individual freedom and liberties, making the community (state) the main actor in socio-political discourse and practice, yet for the benefit of the very individual.

Communitarian democrats (Katz, 1997) on the other hand would agree with individualists/liberals that participation in community is valuable. However, they would insist that integration or belonging to actual community is fundamental to human-beingness and as such human life can only be meaningful when lived as part of such an organic community which is necessary for individual autonomy. This view is expressed in Kymlicka’s claim that, “Liberals should be concerned with the fate of cultural structures, not because they have some moral status of their own, but because it’s only through having a rich and secure cultural structure that people can become aware, in a vivid way, of the options available to them, and intelligently examine their value” (Kymlicka, 1989, p. 165). Here again the focus is ultimately the welfare of individual persons.

Likewise, democratic communitarians (Bellah, 1995/96, pp. 49-54) would also agree with social democrats on the importance of community in offering a formidable framework for sustaining individuality and defining options that make individual freedom and liberties meaningful. Nevertheless, as to whether the pursuit of such cultural rights is to be considered a means of achieving unlimited continued existence of cultural traditions and customs, Amy

Gutmann (1994) responds thus, “granting minority cultures equal rights of recognition and co- existence with dominant groups is a fulfillment of individual rights of free association and non- discrimination, which does not, and should not, guarantee survival for any culture” (p. x). The demand for cultural liberty, per democratic communitarian interpretation, is to be understood to be a demand for recognition, not necessarily an argument for a defense of cultures because communities do not have any rights at all independent of the rights of individual members who participate in them. This should explain why Chandran Kukathas, for instance, would maintain that to promote the interests of a minority cultural group, one ought to emphasize respect for individual rights of its members. In his words, groups are “mutable historical formations – associations of individuals – whose claims are open to ethical evaluation. And any ethical evaluation must ultimately consider how actual individuals have been or might be affected, rather than the interests of the group in the abstract” (Kukathas, 1992, p. 112); he further insists, “we need rather, to reassert the fundamental importance of individual liberty or individual rights and question the idea that cultural minorities have collective rights” (p. 107).

Kukathas nonetheless admits the crucial role played by community membership when he writes that, “individuals invariably find themselves members of groups or associations which not only influence their conduct but also shape their loyalties and their sense of identity…”. But what cannot be accepted according to him is “… the proposition that fundamental moral claims are to be attached to such groups…” (p. 110). The agreeable grounds then for both individualist/liberalist democrats and communitarian/socialist democrats would be that communities matter only because individuals do, and therefore cultural claims have moral legitimacy only to the extent that these bear on the lives of actual humans.

Thus, one could not agree more with the observation that if rights are properly conceived, they should mediate the precarious balance between the individual and the community. But where rights are associated only with the individual, it leaves that community hard pressed to pursue the public good. To buttress this synthesized position, Gyekye’s concluding remark on the debate is significant:

But in view of the fact that neither can the individual develop outside the framework of the community nor can the welfare of the community as a whole dispense with the talents and initiative of its individual members, I think that the most satisfactory way to recognize the claims of both communality and individuality is to ascribe to them the status of an equal moral standing (Gyekye, 1997, p. 41). 24

1.7 Conclusion

The aim of this chapter was to give some background to the communitarianism- individualism debate, which has in many ways influenced current-day philosophical understanding of the relation of individual and community in political theory, and to situate the various perspectives in the question of the conditions of democracy.

The chapter set-off in the first and second sections with an overview of positions in Africa and the West on the concepts ‘the individual’ and ‘the community’. The third and fourth sections discussed communitarianism and individualism in political philosophy generally from both

African and Western perspectives which are, respectively, supposed to be strongholds of these doctrines to reveal some convergences and divergences. The discussions sought to show that the supposed African-communitarianism and the claimed Western-individualism may not be diametrically opposed in their goal after all. Section five then explored the implications of the debate for the discourse on democracy to show that there might not be substantial disagreement

24 My emphasis, to be elaborated in the following chapter.

50 about the object of democracy after all whether labeled as liberal, social, individualistic or communitarian. The study observes that the various perspectives appeal to similar arguments but only seem to differ in their conclusions.

The point sought to be made with this analysis is that the discourse begs for a conceptual redefinition of democracy as the socio-political framework whose focus is to equally embrace the claims of both individuality and communality. For, though communities may not have rights qua rights, persons do have rights, which are both individual and communal. This clarification, for the study, is necessary for understanding and analyzing the various aspects of the problems of post- colonial African democracy and for effectively negotiating responses to these problems.

The chapter following seeks to re-enforce the foregoing point by examining a fundamental underlying presupposition that, this study contends, has not only given rise to the debate in the first place but also nourishes its tensions – the conceptual and linguistic obfuscation of the construct ‘the individual’ with the idea of the individuality of the concrete and embodied human person.

CHAPTER TWO

‘THE INDIVIDUAL’: INDIVIDUALITY AND COMMUNALITY

2.1 Introduction

This chapter addresses an unanswered question for the communitarianism-individualism debate: the question of what the ultimate object of the debate is. The argument here is that the main underlying presupposition that gives rise to the debate, and which also nourishes its tensions, is the conceptual obfuscation of the linguistic construct ‘the individual’ with the idea of the individuality of the concrete human person. To deal with this fundamental challenge, the chapter advocates making ‘the person’ the focus of the argument: the theory of ‘personism’ entails a complex dialogical interplay of individuality and communality.25 The conclusions drawn here are original and should not only correct the identified conceptual error but should also bring clarity to the substance of the debate. A personist approach to democracy for the post-colonial African context would be effective in decolonizing its systems and institutions and improving the peoples’ sense of belonging together as a whole while giving due recognition to their diversity. This should, ultimately, advance holistic development and progress.

The first and second sections examine the use of the constructs ‘the individual’ and ‘the community’ in the debate. Section one exposes a central point of disagreement for the debate and concludes that there is no justification for conflating a person’s individuality with the concrete human person herself. Section two presents a two-fold analysis: first, of the communitarian argument itself and second, of the communitarian critique of individualism. The analyses here reveal implicit incoherencies entailed in replacing a person’s communality or relationality with

25 Communality is used to avoid confusing persons’ natural(involuntary) sociality or relationality with certain communitarian conceptions of community which restricts to specific sharing-units or groups.

‘the community’ she belongs to and propose a revision that makes a more defensible communitarian argument. On the communitarian critique, the question raised is whether, and to what extent, one succeeds in correcting the error embedded in individualist conceptions of the human subject while using the very conceptually tangled linguistic construct ‘the individual’.

Section three discusses the consequences of exposing the underlying misconceptions for individualism and communitarianism. It implicitly proposes the thesis of personism as a more defensible alternative to the two debating views by arguing for the complementarity of the individual and communal aspects of the composite person.

Section four then explores the notions of individuality and communality in personism as necessary aspects of the composite being of the person; her individuality being the active, creative, yet covert aspect which remains in constant interaction and interplay with her communality which is the acquiescent, receptive, yet overt aspect of her being. The section further discusses the similarities in these personist concepts and George Herbert Mead’s ‘I’ and ‘me’ dimensions of the self.

The final section explicitly outlines the advantages of personism over both individualism and communitarianism and makes a case as to why a personist approach to social and political thought is more fruitful in its object than individualist or communitarian approaches are.

2.2 From ‘the individual’ to individuality

Notwithstanding the varying degrees of difference, various individualists have been accused of conceiving of ‘the individual’ in terms of consciousness, rationality, will or memory, and consequently in terms of primacy of rights, free choice, dignity and autonomy.26 But

26 See the critique of ‘communitarians’ like Sandel (1984), MacIntyre (1984), Taylor (1992) discussed earlier in this thesis. 53 individualists generally maintain that the thought of a free autonomous subject is not an illusion as contended by communitarians. Put differently, some individualists postulate an image of an abstract, rational, free and autonomous right-bearing moral subject, who is an entity unto herself, and who has inalienable rights prior to and ‘outside’ of community27, but communitarians object to this image and its implications.

A close examination of individualist theses reveals that they are premised on the fact of the capacity of consciousness, autonomy, freedom, uniqueness, and some such. But these terms, as I see it, describe characteristics, properties or states-of-being borne by a subject. Whether or not this free rights-bearing and autonomous subject is a concrete, embodied human being, the capacities, properties or characteristics she bears are distinct from the bearer of those capacities. The individualist, by this postulation, has not given the constitutive make-up of the bearer yet. The postulation only affords a description of characteristics that this certain bearer, concrete or not, has. Therefore, to say that this bearer is defined solely by uniqueness, primacy of rights, autonomy and freedom, as does individualist postulation, is to describe characteristics or properties that this bearer has. That is, the characterization of individuality borne by the bearer and not the being of the bearer. If correct, then this subject cannot be rightly labeled ‘the individual’.

If the foregoing analysis is valid, then the individualist is not justified in arguing from the character of individuality to the conclusion ‘the individual’ who is the concrete human subject bearing the character of individuality – conscious, rights-bearing, unique, autonomous and free – because that conclusion would not have been argued for yet. In simple terms, the individualist per this postulation, on the one hand, has not defined the constitutive nature of the subject who bears individuality. On the other hand, and following from the first query, she has not given reasons why

27 As discussed in chapter one of this study.

54 the individuality of this undefined subject ought to be accorded uttermost priority ontologically and morally; by, and over, who? Taylor complains about this when he argues that individualists would not explicitly admit that advocacy for the primacy of rights is invariably a commitment to a view about the nature of this right-bearing being. He maintains that the question of what it is to be a human subject and how that is to be defined and sustained is the actual matter of contention between ‘atomists’ and ‘non-atomists’ which cannot be side-stepped (Taylor, 1992, pp. 32, 49-

50).

For the reasons just stated, the subject would not warrant the label ‘the individual’ as it stands, and from that, neither would this individualist notion of ‘the individual’ address the fundamental concern of the communitarianism-individualism dispute. The concern, this study contends, is principally the question of what the nature of the being or subject who bears the property of individuality is. It is especially so for this debate whose disagreements center chiefly on the concrete embodied human being who inhabits human society and not an immaterial subject such as Plato’s spirit or soul. This concern seems to be the core perspective drawn by the communitarian. Besides, to think of the subject as Rawls’ hypothetical being only placed in conditions under which a justified judgment about justice can be made would be inconceivable, from a communitarian perspective, since the subject requires a social context to make an actual, rational and moral judgment. Thus, there seems to be a necessary commitment to an ontological claim in Rawls’ original position, even if unintended, and with it an accompanying atomism.

Consequently, individualist claims about rights should read, and mean, respect for the primacy of individuality and not respect for the primacy of ‘the individual’ over her community ontologically and/or morally. This is so, for the methodological reason adduced that what constitutes the subject’s being, which must precede an argument for any ontological or moral

55 primacy, would not have been argued for yet. And, the claim of individuality of this individuality- bearing subject would not preclude the possibility of the subject bearing some other quality or being some other thing other than individuality-bearing, as already argued.

Meanwhile, it is significant to note that advocating for individuality – and its accompanying rights, autonomy, uniqueness – would not raise contentions for communitarian perspectives, since the communitarian objection is not against rights, autonomy or uniqueness per se. The communitarian admits of respect for individuality – rights, autonomy, uniqueness – even if it requires in some sense a connection of a sort with community. There is evidence of this observation in Taylor’s assertion that, “the identity of the autonomous, self-determining individual requires a social matrix … which … recognizes the right to autonomous decision and which calls for the individual having a voice…” (Taylor, 1992, p. 49), but only insofar as it is recognized that this

“free individual who affirms himself as such already has an obligation to complete, restore, or sustain the society within which this identity is possible” (p. 49). Likewise, Sandel’s intoned admission of the resort to individual rights even if only in circumstances when communal bonds have been distorted, expressed in his argument that in “a more or less ideal family situation… individual rights and fair decision procedures are seldom invoked, not because injustice is rampant but because their appeal is pre-empted by a spirit of generosity in which I am rarely inclined to claim my fair share” (Sandel, 1982, p. 33), supports respect for individuality by communitarians.

The same is seen in MacIntyre’s hinted admission of individuality when he insists that “the fact that the self has to find its moral identity in and through its membership in communities…does not entail that the self has to accept the moral limitations of the particularity of those forms of community” (MacIntyre,1984, p. 221). In similar fashion, Walzer regards national rights as originated from individual rights. In his words, “…territorial integrity and political sovereignty …

56 belong to states, but they derive ultimately from the rights of individuals, and from them they take their force. ‘The duties and rights of states are nothing more than the duties and rights of the men who compose them’… for whom states are neither organic wholes nor mystical unions. And it is the correct view” (Walzer, 1977, p.53; 1980, pp. 219). This should make it explicit that the communitarian argument is not against respect for individuality and therefore not antagonistic to rights, autonomy or freedom as such. Even the relatively stricter African communitarian perspectives earlier mentioned do admit of individuality–uniqueness, autonomy, rights–either in relational terms to ‘community’ as in Senghor’s statement earlier referred to; that the African “puts more stress on the group than on the individuals, more on solidarity than on the activity and needs of the individual, more on the communion of persons than on their autonomy” (Senghor, 1964, p.

49); or, in terms of less priority to ‘community’ as rendered by Kenyatta, “… rather, his uniqueness is a secondary fact about him; first and fore-most he is several people’s relative and several people’s contemporary” (Kenyatta, 1965, p. 297). Such lines of reasoning in the communitarian view should indicate that the concern is rather with the nature or constitution of who or what is claimed by individualists to be ‘individual’ and not necessarily with being individual.

Considering what has been argued so far, the actual underlying question of the debate between communitarians and individualists unveils as, “what is the nature of the subject – ‘the individual’ – that is conscious, free, right-bearing and autonomous; or in different terms, that bears individuality?” (Taylor 1992, pp. 49-50). Would it be defensible to conceive of and refer to this individuality-bearing subject as ‘the individual’ even if there is justification that this subject would bear something more than individuality? Or, yet still that this subject would be something more than just individuality-bearing. The study contends that the communitarian argument, if purged of its linguistic ambiguities and consequent conceptual incoherencies, is that this subject is something

57 more than a being with an individual dimension. Consequently, the case being made in this chapter is that, it would be a conceptual error to label this subject as ‘the individual’ since there is no justification for extending the argument for respect for individuality to a defense of the ontological and moral primacy of the subject who bears individuality, whether abstract or embodied.

2.3 From ‘the community’ to communality (and from ‘the individual’ to ‘the person’)

The communitarian argument, this study contends, is itself saddled with a linguistic imprecision in the use of the terms ‘the community’ and ‘the individual’. The result is a conceptual confusion which obscures the principal thrust of the otherwise worthwhile communitarian argument itself on one hand, and on the other, its critique of individualism which is directed at ‘the individual’ as the presumed right-bearing embodied human subject. The lack of linguistic clarity,

I argue, consequently generates cross-purposes (Taylor, 1995) of both the communitarian and individualist positions and makes the line of reasoning of the communitarian especially, but also the individualist response, somewhat confused and muddled, if not inconsistent. This section will discuss the incoherencies and propose a way out for each.

2.3.1 Examining the communitarian argument

From the discussion so far, one observation one can make is that the communitarians discussed seek to correct an error in certain individualists’ lopsided conception of the being of the person. But over-emphasizing the communal aspect of the person in the rather engrossed attention towards negating the individualistic construal of rights and morals seems to suppress persons’ individuality into ‘the community’ to the point of non-retrieval.

These communitarians, as I see it, seek to complement individualists’ skewed conception of the human subject by projecting the equally communal constitution of the person. However, this valuable project, in my view, cannot be discharged fruitfully without attracting criticisms that

58 question the place of individuality if community is conceived and presented as a fixed, immutable enclosed collective detached from other such enclosed ‘bounded-wholes’. The point is that the communitarian argument is greatly undermined if it is presented to suggest that a person is stuck to some fixed collective body called ‘the community’ defined in terms of language, history, culture, blood-relation or ancestry, geographical location, race, tribe, clan, nation, state or some such, depending on which ‘communitarian’ one reads.

The reasoning is worse if the argument is presented, even if unintended, as though it is this

‘community’ alone that determines and defines the being, thought, will and moral capacity of the person such that outside of this ‘communitarian community’ the person is rendered incapable of rational and critical thought, will, choice, moral evaluation or self-understanding. A case in point is the view that, “As a self-interpreting being, I am able to reflect on my history and in this sense to distance myself from it, but the distance is always precarious and provisional, the point of reflection never finally secured outside the history itself” (Sandel, 1982, p. 179). Again, it is problematic to argue that outside of ‘the community’ context, “human agency… would be not just impossible, but inconceivable” (Taylor, 1985a, p. 8). This preceding statement is not the same as the claim that outside of a community context human agency is not possible.

Even more undermining are claims that are presented, even if unintended, as outrightly denying individuality such as: “Ours is a community society”… “African society is collectivist,… because it is rather a communion of souls than an aggregate of individuals” (Senghor, 1964, pp.

49, 93-94); “it is the community which defines the person as person, not some isolated static quality of rationality, will or memory”; “as far as Africans are concerned, the reality of the communal world takes precedence over the reality of the individual life histories, whatever these may be”

(Menkiti, 1984, pp. 171, 172, 180).28 As already argued for earlier in this chapter, a closer and comprehensive look at the writings of these authors will show that they do not deny individuality such as rationality or will. However, this way of presenting the communitarian argument, as I see it, suggests a reference to a specific and unambiguously defined ‘community’ responsible for the role assigned to it by the communitarian.

But, the fundamental challenge for the foregoing understanding of community would be how to objectively and unambiguously determine what the legitimate scope and limit of this fixed and immutable ‘communitarian community’ is since, belonging to a common geographical location or being linked by some fraternal ties would not itself guarantee the sense of belonging underscored by the need for community which is defended by the communitarian. ‘The community’, as used in the debate, could also refer to a nation, state or the global community.

(Heeger, 1995, pp. 11-22). The question to be asked then is which ‘community’ would discharge the role defined by the communitarian argument and what justification would be adduced for that.

The point of stress is that individualists could not be said to have meaningfully denied that people belong to or participate in some communal relation even if only for mutual advantage and other instrumental purposes (Gauthier,1986, pp. 330-55) such as protection and enforcement of contracts

(Nozick, 1974, p. ix). The communitarian objection of individualism would therefore be unwarranted if not clarified.

The alternative approach of defining ‘the community’ in terms of culture is not spared the challenge of ambiguity, neither is it a reliable definitive feature of ‘the communitarian’s community’ because of the dynamic nature of culture and the accompanying ‘inter’ and ‘intra’

28 Emphasis to show the assumption of specificity entailed in the use of ‘the’ in describing community but a denial of same specificity for individuality: “whatever these may be”. 60 cultural interaction attested to by history. No existing and functioning culture29 can be said to be impervious to change. Therefore, one cannot defend the claim that it is this specific ‘culture’ that defines a person’s nature. After all, all ‘cultures’ are already hybrids and will continue to borrow and inter-borrow as people seek to fashion out alternative means of engendering human well-being

(Myles, 2013).

Often couched in the name of some kind of community-consensus, which itself does not negate the dominance of certain person’s individuality over others’, pursuing a not-clearly-defined homogeneity could extend to a defense of ‘group rights’ sometimes to overshadow and relegate individuality–autonomy, rationality, creativity, innovation, ingenuity and uniqueness–to the background. It would raise serious moral concerns when members succumb to decision-making power by a small, sometimes dominant, segment of a group just for the sake of preserving and protecting a group’s homogeneity, authenticity and integrity. Such an outcome, as I see it, is what an individualist like Nozick (1974) seeks to object to with his emphatic assertion that the talk of an overall social good is a cover up for the good of different individual persons and not that of any claimed social entity.

However, one cannot deny the important role of community30 in offering a formidable framework for sustaining individuality and defining options that make individual liberty and choice actual, possible and meaningful. A communal context constitutes the “social or cultural space, in which the actualization of the possibilities of the individual person can take place, providing the individual person the opportunity to express his individuality, to acquire and develop his personality and to fully become the kind of person he wants” (Gyekye & Wiredu, 1992, p.

29 Properly understood as the way of life of people, not necessarily of ‘a people’ (Myles, 2013). 30 Not ‘the community’ but rather a shared or relational context at every point in time.

106). The same makes the notion of right and choice meaningful in the view of Will Kymlicka

(1995) who maintains that deciding how to live our lives is a matter of exploring the possibilities made available by a cultural context. Respect for peoples’ communal rights is also admissible to

Chandran Kukathas (1992, p. 112) who would otherwise reject any moral status ascribed to ‘group rights’ independently of the rights of members who participate in that group. In other words, he accepts peoples’ communal rights as legitimate but not the rights of ‘the community’ people supposedly belong to. This is so because for him ‘the community’ does not have any moral status independent of the rights of actual people (p. 107). Thus, the legitimacy of cultural rights, understood as the group’s rights independent of the rights of members, remains questionable for

Kukathas.

Further, it remains to show what the source and the place of critical reflection, originality and capacity for moral judgment would be if the advocacy for communality is rather presented, even if unintended, as a defense of the ontological and/or moral primacy of a fixed, immutable

‘communitarian community’ as seen in writings earlier referred to such as: “Ours is a community society”… “African society is collectivist,… because it is rather a communion of souls than an aggregate of individuals” (Senghor, 1964, pp. 49, 93-94); “it is the community which defines the person as person, not some isolated static quality of rationality, will or memory”; “as far as

Africans are concerned, the reality of the communal world takes precedence over the reality of the individual life histories, whatever these may be” (Menkiti, 1984, pp. 171, 172, 180). If the claim is that both the choices that persons make and the moral worth of these choices are determined by

‘that community’, then a legitimate objection to be raised is how critical reflection of that community’s values is possible. It is important to note that this preceding statement is not the same as the claim that a person is capable of individual choice, but individual choice is itself possible

62 and meaningful only because of options defined in a communal – shared or relational – context and as such a sharing context is fundamental to evaluating the moral worth of that choice. This study defends the latter statement but rejects the former.

Not only would there be no reason to question ‘the community’ and its values, standards or practices if one goes by the rejected view in the preceding paragraph, but it would mean that criticizing such a conception of ‘the community’ would not even arise at all. This is because one would then think and evaluate only from the thought framework of ‘that community’ and therefore, would not even conceive of an alternative standard to serve as grounds for examining, and consequently criticizing or evaluating its ‘goods’. The point is that should such alternative standard of evaluation even arise from sources external to this supposed ‘community’, it would mean that people within ‘that community’ cannot access, assess and apply such values to a critical evaluation of the products of that ‘community’ so far as individuality is accounted for in the light of ‘the community’. These concerns undermine the communitarian argument. Yet, the fact that that does not seem to be the intention of communitarian thought can be seen in advocates’ attempt to account for individuality–rights, autonomy, freedoms, uniqueness– in terms of community of the sort previously outlined.

A way out of this fundamental challenge, offered by this study, is the clarification that to claim that community is essential to the being of a person should not be misconstrued to mean that people are inextricably tied to a specific defined fixed ‘community’. It should rather be understood to mean that a person, besides being individual, also compulsorily shares her life with others at different levels, necessarily, at any point in time, regardless of proximity. If understood as such, the various communitarian critiques of individualism would be presented as a failure on the part of individualists to account for the complex interconnected bonds that people everywhere share

63 necessarily. Most importantly for this study, a person’s communality does not simply refer to her various networks of interconnectedness, but the study also maintains that these networks of interconnectedness remain in constant flux. That is, communality refers to a complex blend of several intersecting and often conflicting interrelations; an aggregate or complex amalgam of all interactivity and interactions of a person which remain in constant flux. For this study, it is such a sense of communality that can be defended by the communitarian ethic and which can fruitfully serve the purpose of the communitarian argument. For, a person participates or relates at various levels far beyond the boundaries of proximate ‘community’, language or ethnicity. As such, a person is a complex of many different relatedness or a member of many different communities, using the communitarian language, but also related to her individual self as well.

As a result of such multiple affectedness, communal interactions would be governed by norms of the particular ‘we’ in question at any point in time such as norms of family, clan, friendship, religion, economic competition or loyalty to the nation or state (Miller, 1989, p. 251) and not a fixed immutable collective. Understood as such, it becomes apparent that communality or relationality likely begins with an immediate context but would not be restricted to it. Reasoned conviction and commitment to shared values, aims, interests and goals worked out together by persons publicly sharing a life is what would, and should, inspire a communal sense of relatedness.

These may begin with, but would still transcend fixed biological, territorial, linguistic, or historical boundaries of ‘the community’ even if persistent proximity would more likely foster a deeper sense of community.

2.3.2 Examining the communitarian critique

The communitarian critique of individualism, I argue, harbors at least three ambiguous uses of the label ‘the individual’ which undermines its consistency. First, the term ‘the individual’

64 is used by the communitarian in some contexts to refer to individualists’ abstract image of individuality which communitarians criticize as abstract and thus, meaningless or absurd without the concrete human person. An expression of this is found in his critique of ‘the individual’ as an

“extensionless subject, epistemologically a tabula rasa…” (Taylor, 1992, p. 50). Second, and in the same context, the communitarian uses the term ‘the individual’ to refer to individualists’ implicit and inaccurately conceived community-detached yet concrete human person which communitarians criticize as a false image because of its dubious supposition of such a community- detached human person. This is the point of Sandel (1984) and Taylor’s (1992) criticizing labels

‘unencumbered’ and ‘atomic’ respectively.

Yet, in a third sense, the term ‘the individual’ is used implicitly by communitarians, to refer to “men”, but this time to mean the duly community-constituted concrete human person who, communitarians argue, is the actual resident of human society and thus should be the appropriate referent of the linguistic construct ‘the individual’ not an abstract individuality, nor a dubious

‘atomic’ concrete human subject. Consider, for instance, Taylor’s critique which regards as

‘atomist’ the views that take as, at least, a

…fundamental principle of their political theory the ascription of certain rights to individuals and which deny the same status to a principle of belonging … that is a principle which states our obligation as men to belong to or sustain society, … Primacy-of-right theories in other words accept a principle ascribing rights to men as binding unconditionally,... [b]ut they do not accept as similarly unconditional a principle of belonging or obligation (Taylor, 1985b, p. 188).

The same is seen in Walzer’s definition of states’ rights, earlier referred to, as ultimately deriving

“from the rights of individuals, and from them they take their force. ‘The duties and rights of states are nothing more than the duties and rights of the men who compose them’” (Walzer, 1977, p. 53;

1980, pp. 209-29, 219). Here, both Taylor and Walzer equate the term ‘individual’ to ‘man’ who is the duly community-situated human subject defended by communitarians.

The issue is if such equation is acceptable to the communitarian, then the communitarian complaint against individualism is undermined, for the thrust of the communitarian critique is that it is man – a community-situated concrete human person – who lives in human society, not an abstract individuality, nor a dubious ‘atomic’ man. So, if the communitarian has no issue with labeling and conceiving the person as ‘the individual’, then she forfeits her grounds for advocating for an equal and necessary communality of persons. After all, the whole point of the communitarian critique of individualism is to show that there is more to being a human person than having rights, autonomy and freedom – individuality.

The tension that arises from this seemingly superficial characterization of the person–man– as an individual however for Taylor, for instance, is what justification he would now adduce to deny men of rights, since per his own communitarian argument man, unlike ‘the individual’, is not what he describes as an “extensionless subject, epistemologically a tabula rasa and politically a presuppositionless bearer of rights” (Taylor, 1992, p. 50), nor is man the free individual “…in a state of nature where he could never attain this identity and hence never create by contract a society which respects it” (p. 49). But men, according to Taylor himself, already have their identity “partly defined in conversation with others or through the common understanding” (p. 49) and are therefore firmly constituted in a social matrix which “recognizes the right to autonomous decision”

(p. 49) as well as obligations. But by implicitly admitting that ‘the individual’ is the same as man

–the concrete person– the communitarian forfeits the legitimacy to question an already equally faulted individualist thesis on how it is that ‘the individual’s’ rights could be accorded primacy without a concomitant recognition of her obligations to community. Such a query would only be potent if addressed to man since it is man whose being, per communitarian reckoning, is

66 preconditioned by communal belonging, not Rawls’ subject who is claimed to be capable of conceiving and having rights ‘outside’ of actual community.31

By the same token, he would have misfired when he criticized individualists of denying that the right-bearing person also equally belongs to community. This is because individualists have not denied that men belong to community per se. Rather, the individualist has argued that people’s individual rights, autonomies and freedoms precede their communal obligations and/or that obligations to community are only derivative.32 Therefore, the labeling of individualism as

‘absurd’ on one hand and ‘atomist’ on the other, by his ‘communitarian’ critique of individualism for instance, was only sustainable where he could distinguish between individualists’ ‘individual’, communitarians’ man,33 and the notion of individuality. But his critique fails if it equates the concrete man to a dubious ‘individual’ or worse still to an abstract individuality.

In the same vein, in questioning the rational for starting “… a political theory with an assertion of individual rights…” (Taylor, 1985b, p. 189) the intended target of his objection – individuality – is confused with “man” to give the impression that Taylor here objects to people bearing rights. But if scrutinized, it comes to light that what he contests is why the assertion of individuality should start a political theory, given that the human person in a political setting is equally, necessarily and fundamentally communal. Thus, as stated at the onset of the preceding section, straddling the concepts seems to undermine the potency of his contention that the whole effort towards finding a background for the arguments which start from rights is misguided.

31 Compare the social contract tradition’s ‘state of nature’ (Hobbes 1969, Locke 1988) and ‘veil of ignorance’ (Rawls 1971). 32 See earlier discussions on communitarianism. 33 Who is constituted by individuality and communality 67

Nevertheless, his conceptual difficulties in the face of the conflation of the term ‘the individual’ with the concrete human person seems to be least problematic among the communitarians discussed because it could be salvaged by a linguistic clarification of the differences between ‘the individual’ he rejects and ‘the individual’ he admits in his communitarian critique. Perhaps this is what his ‘atomism’ critique is intended to do, though it does not seem to have been completely successful. But the same cannot be said for MacIntyre, for instance, who outrightly denies individual rights based on the same obfuscated presuppositions.

To sum up, the preceding sections have argued that the debate between communitarians and individualists rests on an inaccurate conflation of individuality with personhood on one hand, and the equation of communality with an anthropomorphized ‘community’ on the other. I have argued that if the communitarian critique, as well as the individualist claims and responses to this critique, is disambiguated of its linguistic and conceptual incoherencies, it would become self- evident that both maintain a synthesized thesis not substantively different from this: that, actual human society is not constituted by atomic ‘individuals’, abstract ‘individualities’ or anthropomorphized communities but only by concrete human persons whose being is naturally and necessarily both individual and communal(understood as relational), whether or not the persons themselves conceive it as such.

2.4 Consequences for individualism and communitarianism

The foregoing conclusions have consequences for both communitarianism and individualism as discussed so far. From the discussions above, communitarianism, at least as espoused by MacIntyre34 and Senghor, which may be interpreted as repudiating a person’s individual reason, volition and initiative and, reducing individuality to a feeble, dependent and

34 See section 1.3 of this study. 68 dispensable or worse still imaginary fragment of ‘the community’, tribe, ethnic-group, state or continent would not be sustainable. For, it is when community is anthropomorphized into something other than and superior to the sum of persons, with individual abilities, constituting it, that its cold grips compel members to remain faithful and submit to it even outside their will. That then gives credence to the fear of totalitarianism and authoritarian thought to be embedded in the communitarian ethic (Arendt, 1958; Popper, 1945; Talmon, 1955).

But the discussions, it is hoped, shows that granted that the claims of even the most ‘radical’ communitarianism were true, it does not take from a person’s individuality which includes her ability to critically examine her said community’s notion of the good life captured in its beliefs, practices, norms, culture and institutions. I have argued that a person is equally a being with a capacity or faculty to frame, revise, and rationally pursue aims or ends and a conception of the good that may or not coincide with that of a community context. For, if aspects of a culture can be criticized, revised and jettisoned by its participants after rational deliberation reveals internal inconsistencies, dis-functionality or ineffectiveness of such beliefs and norms on the well-being of life, then the collective may influence a person’s choice but it still remains what it is: her individual choice influenced by her group membership.

In other words, the claim of ‘non-reductivism’ of collective intentionality: that people can collectively share intentional attitudes in more than a merely distributive sense of sharing,35 could be granted to be true and compatible with the ‘Individual Ownership Thesis’ which basically states that each individual has her own mind, and thus has a sort of intentional autonomy (Schweikard &

Schmid, 2013). Yet, insofar as intentionality is conceived as a feature of individual minds, not collective minds, we may act in a collective or joint manner but that does not diffuse the fact that

35 In a non-reducible way. 69 everyone has her own mind (Schweikard & Schmid, 2013). In simple terms, there is no group brain or mind, strictly speaking. Reflection, perception, and choice are expressions of individuality, and people are only convinced by others to give up and take up forms of life by appealing to, or imposing on, their individual reason.

Accordingly, talk of group creation, belief, norm, culture would have to be understood as ultimately the outcome of individual reason or evaluation generally accepted and shared by a collective. A cultural, communal, social or relational, product, value or good may, thus, be characteristic of a group, but it is always a creation of individual imagination, initiative, effort, ingenuity and reason, never a collective thought. It will, therefore, be hard to defend the thought that community is the ultimate originator of values, aims, goals or beliefs. It is for the same reason that reasoned dissensions are apt and ought to be respected for, notions like personal identity, moral responsibility and choice make sense and are founded only on the possibility of individuality.

To add, not only are cultural forms created by people’s individual initiative but even where such cultural products attain collective recognition and acceptance and are identified with a said community, it cannot be said to be an original or authentic definitive feature of that ‘community’ since elements of that form would have been borrowed from other cultures after reflection and evaluation by particular participants. After all, several cultural forms would have been incorporated from nearby societies in the distant past which are currently not recognized (or suspected) as such. The participants borrow the elegant aspects of these ‘other’ cultures and refine or improve upon them to make them their own (Myles, 2013).

However, even though the ability to reason, reflect or think and choose implies that one has free will; that one is able to, or has the capacity to choose, to question and to evaluate yet, the

70 content of choice and values, or better still what choice is about is necessarily communal or relational. For instance, the insistence on a right to X makes sense only because one can be divested of the supposed good, she has a right to. This means rights-talk suggests that there are competitors or potential invaders who could obstruct it. It also suggests that at least someone plays a role in ensuring the fulfillment of that right.36 So, talk of rights necessarily involve relational others since they are shared. After all, if I were alone in this world then who would have cared about my having a right to freedom of expression, association, self-defense; from and over who?

Thus, it is not wrong to insist that a person’s rights and autonomy require a shared social context to be meaningful; they require coordinated activity and shared statuses (right) among community members.37 That is also a reason for ensuring that conditions for common or joint activity necessary for individual self-development are not hampered. (Gould, 2001, pp. 43-57).

The point then is that a person’s communal context influences the content of her choice. But what becomes apparent is that individuality cannot be meaningfully discussed in isolation from communality. Social and political theory, therefore, must engage the composite person as the focus of discourse.

The section following engages personism as an alternative to the communitarianism- individualism debate by discussing the two interactive aspects of the person. The section following that will engage the advantages of personism.

2.5 The person: between individuality and communality

The thesis of personism brings clarity to individualism and communitarianism. This clarity does not only dissolve some of the pseudo-disagreements in the debate but also exposes the actual

36 See Taylor’s treatment in his, ‘Atomism’ (1992). 37 Compare Wall (2007).

71 concern of both views. The concern for the debate, as I see it, reads in simple terms as how, and who, to govern the necessary individuality and communality of persons: first, within the person herself; second, between (inter-) persons; and third, among several inter-related persons or collectives.

My interest here is, thus, not to engage the daunting philosophical question of what a person is, but to explore aspects of personhood which bear some resemblance with Mead’s concept of the

‘self’ and, subsequently, show how these aspects affect the conception of self-rule and, consequently, democracy as a system of government especially in post-colonial Africa.

The advantage personism has over both communitarianism and individualism is its ability to contest the conception and labeling of the person as ‘an individual’, without denying her natural and necessary individuality–autonomy, freedom38, uniqueness and right-bearing–on one hand, and at the same time its consistent and pragmatic defense of the person’s equally natural and necessary communality without restricting it to a fixed immutable unitary, fraternal or anthropomorphized notion of community.

2.5.1 Individuality of the person

Notwithstanding the variety of perspectives, it cannot be reasonably doubted that the need for each person to preserve and promote the sanctity of her life is fundamental to any rational conceptualization of being a person. This need in turn requires that a person recognizes her obligations to other persons she is living a shared-life with in very significant respects at every point in time, not necessarily sharing an overall way of life as earlier criticized. To have a right to life implies that a person must be presumed to have certain capacities or properties. One cannot be assumed to have rights without a pre-requisite assumption of her being capable of bearing rights.

38 Including the freedom to think, analyze, criticize etc. 72

But what capacities or properties should human beings necessarily possess to make them capable of having rights?

A reasoned judgment in response to the foregoing question suggests that a human person must be self-sensing; capable of thought, reason, or intelligence; able to make choices; capable of making moral judgments,39 and some such related notions. These minimally necessary and basic notions would have to be presupposed as basic to being a person. Consciousness would have to be presupposed as a basic requirement for being a person in this sense since an embodied being must be aware of her being in some sense if she can bear rights at all. And, the conscious self would have to be in some sense contiguously linked to her past, present, and future conscious self (Locke,

1975). She would also have to be presumed to have the rational capacity to reflect on the options and arrangements that would best encourage the preservation, sustenance and flourishing of her own life. By the assumption of the capacity of autonomy, and consequent creativity, originality, and innovation, she would make reasoned and intelligent choices. A person having moral capacity presupposes that she is presumed to be endowed with the ability to make not only reasoned choices but correct, good, or right choices that would promote the preservation of her life primarily but also the lives of other persons who are compulsorily a part of her being.

Particularly, the distinctiveness of each person would be underlined as hinged on these notions being private to each person in the sense of not being transferrable nor alienable. In other words, we think of consciousness, reason, autonomy and moral capacity, among other such dimensions of a person as distinctive subjectively privileged aspects of each person which are directly accessible only to the sensing, thinking, choosing, or judging self. That is, only a person

39 ‘Moral’ here depicts mainly the capacity to make the right choices and not necessarily making the right choices per se for, actual content of morality, I argue later, would have to be based on shared and contextual meanings even if derived from generalizable categories. 73 is directly aware of the thinking of her own thoughts for instance. Not even the expression of a thought or feeling to another person by the person herself can guarantee its sincerity or certainty.

So, Jürgen Habermas (2008), for instance, does not regard such sincerity or “truthfulness claims” about a person’s interior subjectivity such as feelings, desires, beliefs, moods, and the like, as open to discourse proper. He holds that claims of subjectivity are open to rational assessment not in discourse but by comparing the claim with the actor’s behavior. As Bohman and Rehg (2017) illustrate, “if a son claims to care deeply about his parents but never pays them any attention, we would have grounds for doubting the sincerity of his claim. Note that such insincerity might involve self-deception rather than deliberate lying.”

However, it must be acknowledged that practically speaking, some of these subjectively experienced aspects may sometimes be judged by others to be handicapped or damaged in such instances where a person is perceived to be inept, mentally retarded, unconscious or even suffering from amnesia. Yet, even in such claimed objective circumstances, it would not take from nor undermine subjectivity as a directly experienced aspect of a person since the truth of such an assessment would always lie with the sensing, thinking or judging person herself. In other words, a person is distinguished by her exclusive, direct access to her subjective experiences including but not limited to her consciousness, autonomy, and thoughts. In fact, it is possible for the person to be deceived by herself unwittingly to some extent. But here again, it is the same person alone that is directly able to detect such self-deception since, in the final instance, and often after consultation with others, only the self has such privileged access to her subjective experience.

The point of the preceding analyses is a very important one describing the individuality of a person as her subjectively experienced dimension which is directly accessible only to her conscious, thinking, choosing and willing self, though perceivable by others when expressed. It

74 remains the creative drive of the person and thus, the ultimate source of originality, innovation and initiative as she interacts both with herself and with others. Until such elusive moments of overt expression of individuality, mostly upon provocation–positive or negative–such as to resist an oppression of her autonomy, to register an appreciation or disapproval of a value, to assert herself in a context where she feels sidelined, or to express a critically thought out point of view, this dimension of a person, even though constantly present and extremely potent and active, remains covert. Such understood, not even the person herself can negate or dispense with her individuality, for her attempt at suppressing her individuality is itself an expression of her individuality.

Thus, the individuality of a person is the privileged and direct access a person has to her being. But as will be shown subsequently, what thought is about, or autonomy entails, or yet still morality prescribes, are necessarily communal. To this aspect of a person the next sub-section turns.

2.5.2 Communality of the person

Just as a person realizes her necessary individuality, she also recognizes her necessarily communal – relational – dimension; first, with herself, but also with other persons as well as collective persons. The claim of natural communality, as already stressed, should not mean that a person is solely tied to, bonded by or embedded in a collective, bounded and enclosed

‘communitarian community’ within which her individuality could be submerged or rendered inconsequential. It rather should be presented in a way that means that just like individuality, communality is also an inalienable and non-transferrable dimension of her being.

A person’s given communality is distinguishable from her membership or participation in a said ‘community’ defined by kinship-ties, language, culture, history, territory, among others, yet not totally detached from community of a kind at any point in time. That is, to be communal

75 necessarily requires communal others, and that includes members of community of all kinds at any point in time. Thus, communality will entail community-membership, but community-membership will not necessarily entail communality. And community-membership, it has been argued earlier, transcends the boundaries of belonging together as members of a geographical, linguistic, biological or ancestral group for, people necessarily share in values, aims, goals and aspirations of others who may not necessarily ‘belong’ to their ‘communitarian community’. Besides, in a fast- globalizing world, different persons would necessarily affect and be affected by the values, aims, goals and aspirations of ‘others’ who are presumed to be external to their ‘community’. The ties and boundaries of community then would itself not only vary but would be very elusive. Therefore, it would be more defensible to think of persons as communal (relational) beings than as beings defined by and restricted to linguistic, ancestral, geographical or some such ‘communitarian community’.

Communality, like individuality, is also a given aspect of a person and therefore not a question of choice for any person. Its origin, just like individuality, cannot be conclusively explained by science, religion, or philosophy without justifiable contestations. This is seen in the fact that as a person comes to the realization of her being individual, she would already be a communal, related or interrelated being; first with herself, then with immediate ‘significant others’ such as family, the ‘communitarian community’ and its essential systems, structures, language, history, culture and particular forms of life that contribute to forming her being, and then also with the external world and several others in different ways some of which might be distant and yet very significant. In simple terms, a person, individual as she is, realizes that she is also necessarily connected to other persons in various significant ways already, some independently of her choice.

Inasmuch as that would not be a claim of supremacy of a person’s communality over her

76 individuality, it is an acknowledgement of the very significant and active role of community to the being of a person.

In the first place, her very existence is the outcome of communal interactions of various forms between and among persons. She participates in community to develop herself in a cultural, linguistic, and socio-historical environment that, together with her individual dimension, molds her very identity and self-understanding (Taylor, 1994). So, while acknowledging that a person is capable of reason, autonomy, and morals, it must also be acknowledged that the content of her rights, autonomy and rationality stands in relation to other persons. It means that, even though she, as an agent, bears these individual capacities, the capacities themselves presuppose relational or sharing others. In the words of Benson (2005), “the contents of the preferences or values that agents can form or act on autonomously are subject to direct normative constraints.” Annette Baier would also point out that agents are “second persons”, that is, “persons are essentially successors, heirs to other persons who formed and cared for them” (Baier, 1985, p. 85) and therefore, a person’s communal relationships influence the development of her autonomy. Thus, “if we ask ourselves what actually enables people to be autonomous, the answer is not isolation, but relationships—with parents, teachers, friends, loved ones” (Nedelsky, 1989, p.12). Communality then, is not only a constitutive or a “defining condition” of autonomy (Christman, 2004, p. 147), but it also causes autonomy to develop, and thus a lack of appropriate communal relationships could stunt the development of autonomy (Friedman, 1997). In the same vein, a supposed communally oppressive context may promote or impede the capacity for individuality – autonomy

– in effect (Meyers, 1989).

To illustrate the foregoing, I may own my thoughts, feelings and consciousness, or even talk and interact with myself, but the meanings I ascribe to those thoughts, or the language in which

I express, think or reflect on those thoughts are not created by myself prior to those thoughts. They are part of my understanding of those symbols that I reflect on. Those symbols are themselves captured into my thoughts through an on-going interactive process of life (Mead, 1967). But, even though communality, like individuality, is subjectively experienced, it is, unlike individuality, overt, passive, and acquiescent. It is the constantly observable aspects of a person that seeks to fit in, receive and obey rules; it is the part that is conspicuous about a person in her interactions with herself and with others; it is that dimension of a person that expresses the status-quo.40

Thus, it is a person’s given communality that gives content and substance to her given individuality, while her individuality in turn creates, revises, shapes, and influences her communality by its creativity, innovation and originality to define the being of a person as an on- going interplay between individuality and communality.

2.5.3 A comparison with Mead’s ‘I’ and ‘me’

The picture of the self-interactive nature of a person presented in the previous sections bears some resemblance with Mead’s theory of the self, which distinguishes the ‘I’ of the self from its ‘me’ as representing the active and socialized aspects of the self respectively. The ‘I’, according to Mead (1967), represents that aspect of a person that is expressed in moments of originality and creativity while the ‘me’ reflects the social norms in relation to which the ‘I’ stands. Mead’s ‘I’, like the individuality espoused here, only shows up spontaneously when it is triggered but returns to its more comfortable covertness after operation. It plays a significant role in determining the identity of a person. But even though the ‘I’ is the active and creative part of the self; it remains covert until when provoked to action to assent to or reject the status-quo. Therefore, active, willful,

40 Compare my discussion of G. H. Mead’s work in the next section (1967). 78 purposive and goal-seeking acts of the self, described as actions, are not only possible but palpable, at least in moments in social life where the status-quo gives way to ingenuity and novelties.

Likewise, the communal aspect of a person fits Mead’s notion of the ‘me’ to a large extent.

A person’s communal aspect is immediately conspicuous; from the racial imprints – physical features, skin or hair color and type, accent– to language, history, cultural habits, among others.

Like Mead’s ‘me’ the communal aspect of a person is overt and acquiescent to the status-quo and therefore stable. It is this aspect that is copiously referred to by others in interactions with them while the ‘I’ is actively engaged but only covertly.

Yet, none of these aspects on its own can determine the identity of the person as a self. For

Mead, the self is a complex emergent product of social interactions, experiences and activities developed over time as one observes and interacts with others, responds to and internalizes their opinions as well as one’s own internal feelings about oneself and interprets them. The self, he maintains, would therefore be in constant evolution from the interactions between its ‘I’ and its

‘me’ in relation to other selves within human society. A person’s identity formation would thus be inextricably linked to different levels of socialization that depend on participating in relationships of mutual recognition. Unlike Mead’s ‘self’, however, which gives no significant place to biological factors or inherited traits as constitutive of a person, this study argues that biological factors such as the parents one is born to, and the consequent traits one inherits from them, are all constitutive aspects of the being of the person which evolves, though, through various interrelations with others and thus, is not static. That is to say, for this study, biological antecedents cannot be disregarded in defining the being of a person.

Thus, like Mead’s ‘I’ and ‘me’, a person’s communal self, together with her individual self define her composite being41 which constantly undergo change as they interact with each other and with other such selves.

2.6 The debate in the light of personism

This final section reconstructs the main points of disagreement between communitarianism and individualism in the light of the personist thesis espoused to demonstrate how the disagreements in most cases dissolve or are at least clarified.

First, the fundamental disagreement of the debate that is dispelled in the light of personism is the communitarian contention that to understand ‘the individual’ she ought to be placed in a community context since, “… the reality of the communal world takes precedence over the reality of the individual life histories, whatever these may be” (Menkiti, 1984, pp. 171, 180) and “it is the community which defines the person as person, not some isolated static quality of rationality, will, or memory” (p. 172). Both MacIntyre’s and Taylor’s concerns dissolve as soon as ‘the individual’ is replaced with ‘the person’ in the debate. According to MacIntyre, “… my life is always embedded in the story of those communities from which I derive my identity. I am born with a past; and to try to cut myself off from that past, in the individualist mode, is to deform my present relationships” (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 221). Taylor (1992) complains about why we should “find it reasonable to start a political theory with an assertion of individual rights”. If ‘the person’, a composite of individuality and communality, is made the subject of focus in the debate, then from the onset both perspectives allude to individuality and communality, and all its implications.

Therefore, a personist stance would render as superficial and even obnoxious the artificial and

41 Which seems to be the thrust of the communitarian arguments of Mbiti (1970), Menkiti (1984), MacIntyre (1984), Sandel (1984), Taylor (1992). 80 instrumental individualist view of community, which is a major concern for the communitarian.

Personism would favor the compelling communitarian critique of individuality and render as incomprehensible the individualist image which seeks to discuss the person as if she were an abstract entity whose values, aims and ends exist independently of communal context.

Second, and on the other hand, making the complex person the focus of the analysis in place of ‘the individual’ would afford individualism the firm basis to advance arguments, in the proper context, that favor the free, autonomous, creative and innovative aspect of a person – her individuality – which is entitled to unencumbered expression so far as it operates simultaneously with her communality. Communitarians would come to the reflective realization that submerging a persons’ rationality, autonomy, ends, and choices in its totality into community is not only practically contentious because of persons’ given individuality, but conceptually incoherent and problematic. Nonetheless, it would have become obvious to the individualist also from start that even though a person does have an undeniably free dimension of individuality, it would be false to posit an image of a person as free from “the dictates of nature and the sanction of the social roles” (Sandel, 1984, p. 81-96) for, it would be obvious that a person is also necessarily unfree by virtue of her given and, therefore, involuntary communality.

Third, substituting ‘the person’ for ‘the individual’ in the debate would make immense contribution to actual political theory and practice by reconciling public life participation and inclusion with private individual creativity both as necessary aspects of the composite person. On the assumption of ‘the individual’ as the focus of the disagreement, communitarians emphasized involvement, participation and inclusion in public life as values for the politics of the common good which, from the communitarian perspective, would make the emergence of an oppressive government less likely, while individualists’ contention was, rather, that politics which is focused

81 on the common good is likely to generate intolerance and evolve quasi-totalitarian or even fully totalitarian regimes. On a personist view, however, the disagreement diffuses since participation or involvement in public life and individuality or distinctiveness are both viewed as necessary and fundamental aspects of the being of the person and, thus, require equal moral standing and recognition for harmony within, between and among persons.

A fourth concern of the communitarianism-individualism debate which is dispelled with the conceptual replacement of ‘the individual’ with ‘the person’ is the unintended implied claim of some communitarian writers that we do not choose freely but rather our values and choices are determined by ‘the community’; and, the consequent critique of individualists which questions how it is that internal criticism of one’s community is possible. In personism, since the person is properly conceived to be a composite of individuality and communality, explaining the source of reflection and consequent critical evaluation of her community becomes apparent. It becomes obvious that even if the person is also necessarily communal, it is her individuality that accounts for such rational and creative community-detached evaluation and consequent innovations.

Fifth, if the debate assumes a personist posture, it becomes self-evident from start that obligation towards community, its viability and its integrity is not instrumental but of intrinsic worth for the sake of the person herself who would already have been acknowledged as also necessarily communal or relational. That is, if ‘the person’ replaces ‘the individual’ in the debate, individualists like Gauthier who think of obligations to community only in instrumental terms as a process of cooperation with each other for mutual advantage would embrace the non- instrumental value of community in defining the contents of her values, goals and aspirations.42

42 See Walzer’s response to such instrumentalist interpretation of the value of community (1983). 82

It should be stressed here again, for this personist mediation, that the sense of communality emphasized as constituting a person’s natural and involuntary self would be distinguishable from the notion of community as a sharing collectivity. Further, that personism does not defend ‘the community’ as a closed restricted unit of people necessarily related by blood, history, common ancestry, territorial boundary, or some such which seems to be the argument of some communitarian thinkers discussed. Instead, for the personist approach, because a person engages and is engaged at various levels of interrelatedness – communality –, community refers to various overlapping collectivity at various levels of interaction all in constant flux. From interaction with her ‘self’ through immediate biological family, neighborhood, ethnic-group, nation, state, region, continent to the entire human society, coupled with intermediate collectives such as those based on gender, language, religion, historical and economic (Miller, 1995) sub-groupings, a person at every point in time will be engaged in interactions with a myriad of communities all in constant flux. This is so, in the personist view, even though proximity would more likely place emphasis on certain communal interactions than others from the closest through to today’s ‘globalizing’ world at large. The communal nature of persons therefore accounts for people’s ability to transcend community-defined spaces and creatively evolve, adapt, and adopt elements of ‘other’ contexts for incorporation.

The foregoing leads to the sixth advantage of personism over individualism and communitarianism. The personist conception of community and communality in terms of related, interrelated and overlapping sharedness addresses another basic individualist fear that creativity and ingenuity will be stifled within community in the pursuit of the common good. In a personist mode, the ‘boundaries’ of community are fluid and not clearly defined. This opens every collectively held ideal, aim and value to individual scrutiny from ‘within’ or ‘without’ of that

83 community. Therefore, the focus of moral, social, and political thought and practice remains the composite person. In the same vein, the communitarian argument that autonomy is better attained and given actual meaning in the context of ‘the community’ is rather enhanced by widening the brackets of community without undermining persons’ natural and involuntary relatedness necessary for maintaining the communitarian’s sense of a sustained identity.

In summary, it would be seen that it is when the human person is defined as a community- embedded concrete being that her self-evident creative abilities cannot be accounted for. On the other hand, when the human person is defined as a free-willed, isolated, community-detached yet concrete embodied human being, then the communitarian concern for her natural relatedness reaches unanswerable limits. But, if the human person is conceived as a being who at once embodies both individual and communal dimensions undergoing various overlapping levels of interactivity, then several of the contentions of the debate dissolve and a clearer view of the actual concerns of individualism and communitarianism are revealed. A personist approach makes better the efforts at responding to the concerns of both individualism and communitarianism which border on rights and equality for the Rawlsian tradition and moral obligation, responsibility, public order, solidarity, fellow-feeling and mutual respect and recognition for the Hegelian following.

2.7 Conclusion

This chapter addressed the question of what the ultimate object of the communitarianism- individualism debate is. The study identified a flawed, inadequate, and incoherent thinking underlying the debate: the conceptual and linguistic obfuscation of the construct ‘the individual’ with abstract individuality on one hand and the concrete human person on the other. To dispel this challenge and bring clarity to the substance of the debate, the proposal is to rather make the person the object of focus. The person, here, is conceived as a composite embodied union of individuality

84 and communality at once, not one over the other.43 Personism has the advantage of overcoming the inaccurate labeling of the person as ‘the individual’ without denying her necessarily given individuality–autonomy, freedom, uniqueness and right-bearing–on one hand, and at the same time makes a consistent and pragmatic case for the person’s equally necessary and given communality without restricting her to a fixed immutable, unitary, fraternal or anthropomorphized notion of the community.

The first and second sections examined the use of the constructs ‘the individual’ and ‘the community’ by analyzing the arguments and the critiques of both perspectives. Section three reviewed the consequences for individualism and communitarianism and argued to show the complementarity of both aspects of the composite person. Section four then explored the individuality and communality of the composite human person to reveal her individuality as the active, creative, yet covert and elusive aspect which remains in constant interaction and interplay with her communality as the acquiescent, receptive, yet overt and stable aspect of her being. It further discussed the similarities in these personist concepts and Mead’s notion of the ‘I’ and the

‘me’ of the self. The final section then spelt out the advantages of personism and argued to show personism as a more fruitful approach to social and political philosophy than the debating views.

The next chapter discusses the concept ‘self-rule’ from a personist perspective. It argues to show the principles of democracy as the most appropriate social and political tools of ‘self-rule’ both as the person’s rule of herself and persons’ rule of themselves. It is envisaged that the discussion on ‘self-rule’ from a personist perspective will have positive consequences for the

43 See earlier references of communitarians like Menkiti, Mbiti, Kenyatta, Senghor for the African divide and MacIntyre, Taylor, Sandel for the Western and, individualists like Gauthier, Nozick, Dworkin of Western thought and Gyekye, Kymlicka, Miller who straddle both perspectives. 85 theorizing and practice of democracy as a system of government especially in post-colonial and multinational Africa.

CHAPTER THREE

UNDERSTANDING ‘SELF-RULE’, CHANGE AND PROGRESS

3.1 Introduction

Contemporary political theory of ‘self-rule’, as is evident in discussions on citizenship and the ‘politics of recognition’, has predominantly focused on the question of who ought to have self- rule (Kymlicka & Norman, 1995, pp. 304-08). This chapter however pays particular attention to what ‘self-rule’ is, not who ought to have it. The argument here is that ‘self-rule’ entails a person’s mediation of her individuality and communality; the mitigation of the tensions in persons’ rule over other persons even in an uncompelled collective; and the regulation of the exercise of power among collective persons, all at once. Referencing Mendel-Reyes (1999), the chapter argues for a reconciliation, as far as possible, of four overlapping senses of ‘self-rule’ in practice which entail my rule of my self, our rule of our self, my rule of our self, and our rule of my self. The view is that it is such a holistic conception of ‘self-rule’ that would reconcile and curtail extremes of either unbridled individualistic independence or restrictive communitarian solidarity.

In the immediate section, I present ‘self-rule’ as overcoming the tensions in a person’s rule of her ‘self’ and in persons’ rule of themselves as persons and collective selves. The proposition is that there must be some ‘internal’ mechanism of continuous dialogue, tolerance, solidarity and consensus search ‘within’ a person, hinged on a recognized sense of ‘we’ between her individuality and her communality, that makes her rule of her dual self possible and viable. I argue that these principles are even more needed in inter-person and inter-collective rule if the aim is to achieve a democracy (self-rule: a government of the people, by the people and for the people) since, interpersonal self-rule, unlike a person’s rule of her ‘self’, is not confined to a fixed human body to necessarily encourage interactive coexistence.

Section two explores why and how to reconcile intra-personal, inter-personal and inter- collective self-rule from a personist perspective; again, to curtail extreme, unbridled pursuit of individuality on the one hand and a restrictive, coercive communality on the other.

Section three then explores dialogue and deliberation as concepts necessary to, and underlying, the idea of ‘self-rule’ and all its ramifications. The section gives some attention to the

Dialogical Self Theory (DST) of Hubert Herman and colleagues and Habermas’ account of

‘communicative action’ among other scholars of deliberation. The exploration seeks to show that for the vision of bridging the inherent gap between self-rule and selves-rule to be achievable in a just way, it would have to be rooted in a gradual, self-evolved, dialogical and non-coerced sense of community as ‘wholeness’ not ‘oneness’.

Section four then looks at the implications of the discussions on the notion of change and socio-political progress as an outcome of self-rule ‘within’ and ‘without’.

3.2 Self-rule: from my rule of my ‘self’ to our rule of our ‘self’

3.2.1 My rule of my ‘self’

The conclusion of the preceding chapter is that the human person is at once communal and individual. The person is both individual – makes, chooses, and judges her own rules – and communal – obeys, succumbs to, and is judged by, rules of her relational others. That means, from her rational capacity, creative ability and individual ingenuity and initiative, she may make her own rules and judge these rules herself, but such rules cannot conclusively be created, and practiced, independently of the standards and rules of her relational others – her communality. In the same vein, a person’s relation to others may prescribe rules and standards of right conduct to her but she cannot conclusively adopt such prescriptions independently of her individual reflection, judgement, and choice. That means that even though a person undoubtedly bears the

88 individual capacities of autonomy, rationality, creativity and originality, the contents of these capacities are the result of on-going relationally defined and prescribed products. On the other hand, communal institutions, systems, structures, and practices may be collectively adhered to or practiced, yet they are essentially products of persons’ individual initiative and ingenuity that have attained collective acceptance and ownership. As argued earlier in the study, there obviously cannot be a group brain strictly speaking; but there could be a group-accepted thought.

A person, then, at every point in time would necessarily engage her dual and composite

‘self’ in that ‘internal’ perpetual conversation between her individuality and her communality to attain a consensual dialogical outcome of which aspect to play the role of ruling while the other aspect is ruled at any particular time. To be a self, therefore, is to be at once both free and unfree; both an actively ruling and a passively ruled being. That means a person is a self-sufficient dependent being who is at once free and unfree all the time, not sometimes free, sometimes unfree, but always both free and unfree at once. And, it is such complex beings called persons that constitute human society.

Therefore, ‘self-rule’ as my rule of myself is the rule of an aspect of my composite self through a dialogical role-playing between my dual self. In consequence, a person’s self-rule cannot at any point in time mean the absence of being ruled or the absence of ruling. Rather, it would necessarily mean the dialogical outcome of consenting to be ruled by one’s ‘self’ while ruling one’s ‘self’ or, consenting to rule one’s ‘self’ while being ruled by one’s ‘self’. Self-rule in this sense only becomes a state of achieving an agreeable role-playing between a person’s individuality and communality at any point in time. That also means no dimension of a person rules, or is ruled, indefinitely. The interactivity engendered by this perpetual internal tension and consequent

89 conflict of perspectives in the two given dimensions of a person when well-managed sets the stage for the ‘emergence’ of innovations in society.44

Therefore, ‘self-rule’ as my rule of myself means I may own my thoughts, feelings or freedoms, or even talk and interact with myself only, but besides my very being, the meanings I associate with my thoughts or the language and linguistic symbols by which I express, reflect or evaluate those values, as Mead argues, are not created by myself prior to those thoughts. As we have seen earlier, they are a part of the understandings I capture into my thoughts through interactions with ‘significant’ others who are part of my on-going interactive process of life. As

Taylor also puts it, this self-understanding of who I am as a person cannot be detached from the communal context by which it was constituted. My very self-expression and understanding of concepts of rationality and morality, as we saw earlier in chapters one and two, are coded, so to speak, in the meanings of this communal or shared context. A person, then, at every point in time would necessarily engage her ‘self’ in that ‘internal’ perpetual conversation which already relates to her communal others, guided by fellow-feeling, solidarity and harmony within her ‘self’, to attain a consensual dialogical outcome of which aspect of her ‘self’ is to play the role of ruling while the other aspect is ruled at any particular time. The point I seek to make is that a person’s

‘self-rule’ would necessarily entail a person’s ‘self-being-ruled’ at once; her individual dimension wielding unbridled freedom which is mitigated by her communal aspect which harbors restrictive and coercive force.

For such an understanding of ‘self-rule’ as my rule of my self, the question that arises is what mechanism would allow for harmony between the contrasting aspects of her being in the face of perpetual difference one from the other. That is, what ‘internal’ mechanism would allow for a

44 Compare to my earlier discussion of G.H. Mead’s work (1967). 90 congruous co-existence of a person’s active but covert individuality and her acquiescent but overt communality both of which necessarily make up her being and remain in constant flux as she interacts with other such composite selves? Some ‘internal’ virtues that would be necessary for fostering co-existence in a person, such conceived, as we will see, would include genuine dialogue, compromise and cooperation, genuine consensus pursuit, solidarity, reciprocity, and mutual recognition. From these, other notions like adaptability, intelligibility, intersubjectivity and sociality would emerge. It also becomes apparent that proximity would play a45 significant role in aiding such co-existence.

If the preceding analysis is correct, then I argue that the same underlying principles necessary for intra-person harmony should be considered key mediation tools for inter-person and inter-collective rule of selves: our rule of ourselves. In other words, just as rule over one’s own self cannot be done solely by reference to her individuality without dialogue with her communality, so and even more should it be objectionable for a person to rule, temporarily or indefinitely, another person or an entire collective, whether she is a part or not, without due recognition and application of these fundamental principles. The point is just as a person’s ‘self- rule’ entails her ‘self-being-ruled’, persons’ ‘selves-rule’ also entail their ‘selves-being-ruled’ necessarily. Thus, the underlying principles for mediation should not be different.

It is pertinent to state that dialogue and the search for consensus would even be more desirable in our rule of our self than in my rule of myself because there is likely to be a difference between my ruling the ‘other half’ of myself which I cannot possibly denounce, and ruling the

‘other half’ of our ‘self’ which I can choose to denounce. After all, as has already been mentioned, an interplay between my individuality and communality resulting in certain tensions and need for

45 A person’s individuality and her communality are both fixed in one physical body. 91 negotiation would still occur in my single physical body; it would still be my judgment in relation to myself. But in relation to other persons, it would be my judgment in relation to other persons even if such persons are considered part of our communal ‘self’. This difference requires that the need for constant dialogue, deliberation, cooperation, compromise, tolerance, fellow-feeling, solidarity, consensus seeking and, most importantly, a genuine sense of ‘we’, which are underlined as fundamental to a genuine democracy as a socio-ethical and political concept, are given more serious attention in self-rule as our rule of our self than would be required in self-rule as my rule of my self.

3.2.2 Democracy: our rule of our ‘self’

From its etymology democracy, unlike monarchy, aristocracy, and oligarchy, does not make clear the difference between the ruler and the ruled. Whereas the “king,” the “better,” or the

“few” rule the rest of the people in a monarchy, an aristocracy, and an oligarchy respectively, a democracy does not distinguish the ruler(s) from the ruled. As a seemingly clear and straightforward concept, demokratia which translates as “the rule of the people” from its Greek antecedents demos, “the people,” and kratia “rule” (Dahl, 1989, p. 3), suggests a rule in which ‘the people’ rule the people; a rule or government in which the people both wield power as the ruler and yet are powerless as the ruled.

This two-sided perspective to democracy as a system of the ruled-ruler, intended to preserve freedoms and autonomy makes it, according to Rousseau, the only form of political association whose collective force guarantees security of “each associate, and by which each person, while uniting himself with all, shall obey only himself and remain as free as before”

(Rousseau, 1947, pp. 14-15). Inspired by this conception of ‘self-rule’ Robert Paul Wolff writes,

“the responsible man is not capricious or anarchic, for he does acknowledge himself bound by

92 moral constraints. But he insists that he alone is the judge of those constraints…. We may say that he gives laws to him-self, or is self-legislating” (Wolff, 1970, pp. 13-14). Such an intuition renders democracy as people’s self-rule in singular terms and suggests that democracy is solely a system of governance that underwrites the rule of each person by her own self only, even as part of a collective. In other words, democracy as people’s self-rule would mean that power for governance dwells in everyone, and that reduces governance to each person’s rule of her own self even while in association with other person(s).

But if democracy as people’s self-rule is defined only as “making and following my own rules,” then the challenge of how to deal with conflicting persons’ rules and actions in a complex human world remains insurmountable, especially since – practically speaking – in any organized and functioning human society the person(s) who exercise(s) power is/are not always the very person(s) over whom power is/are exercised. More importantly, and central to this study, since communality is as necessary to the being of the person as individuality, it would not only be questionable but also false to conceive of ‘self-rule’ only as the rule of each person’s individuality over her composite ‘self’.

Neither would it be tenable, for the liberal tradition, to think of the self-rule entailed in democracy as a government of “each by all the rest” (Mill, 1965, pp. 257-58) for, liberals argue that that would reduce democracy to a domination of each by “all the rest”. Yet still, sometimes the doubt is rather as a result of the fear of the rule of ‘all’ by ‘each’ (Wolin, 1996, p. 110). In this second instance, the anxiety stems from the fear that under the guise of democracy as ‘the people’s’ self-rule, peoples’ autonomies would be yielded to a single person to alone act as the embodiment

93 of ‘the people’ and constitute the autonomous self whose rule over the people would then be inadvertently regarded as the people’s self-rule.46

In pragmatic terms, therefore, democracy as the people’s self-rule has become “the rule of the few supposedly in the interests of the many” (Arendt, 1987, p. 269). Yet often, and to varying degrees, the interests of the many – women, poor, and minority ethnic groups – are not given due inclusion even in some acclaimed world democracies. It should be mentioned that objections have been raised as to the meaningfulness of ‘self-rule’ if significant governance decisions emanate from or are influenced by bureaucratic systems, agencies and “multinational corporations”

(Mendel-Reyes, 1999), who are mostly not the actual ‘beneficiaries’ of the outcomes of the decisions they make. It would not be surprising, then, for some to suggest that the idea of self-rule in democracy may itself be an illusion where neither persons nor collective(s) can be meaningfully said to rule themselves (Arendt, 1972, p. 178).

Nonetheless, to the contemporary mind, the perspective that conceives of ‘self-rule’ as an ideal that actually reduces to “the rule of the few” in practice, seems to raise little inherent conceptual contention since the “rule of the few” is supposedly granted and founded on the assent of “the many” who are less interested in active public life involvement (Richard, 1989; Gutmann,

1994). Thus, it would seem that “democracy does not mean and cannot mean that the people actually rule…. Democracy means only that the people have the opportunity of accepting or refusing the men [and women] who are to rule them”47 (Schumpeter, 1976, p. 284). By this thinking, it would seem that ‘the people’s’ direct and full participation in governance would not

46 A skepticism that may be associated with the role of Chiefs in Africa. See also an illustration in Mendel-Reyes (1994, pp. 142-50). 47 In his words, democracy is “the rule of the politician” (1976, p. 285).

94 only be regarded as near-impossible in today’s complex, diverse and large societies, but would also need not be necessary to democratic governance so far as the appropriate systems and structures for legitimizing such transfer of power from “the many” to “the few” is well in place to ensure accountability to “the many” and the preservation of their liberties.

But the contention for this study is that the reality of being ruled at any point in time does not negate a person’s desire to rule her ‘self’, since persons are dialogical selves in constant conversation with their individual and various communal aspects. To bridge this perpetual gap, constant dialogue, cooperation, tolerance, compromise and consensus search should be thought of and underlined as necessary mediation tools for mitigating or reconciling intra-person, inter-person and inter-collective tensions to maintain harmony and healthy co-existence within and among persons.

3.3 Reconciling the tensions ‘within’ and ‘without’

From the preceding discussions, it becomes apparent that at any point in time, a person is engaged in different kinds of dialogue and interactivity which demands various levels of tolerance, compromise, fellow-feeling, mutual recognition, reciprocity and consensus search. She is a part of many different communities that constitute her communality, such as being Ghanaian, Akan,

Fante, female, mother, academic, Christian, and so on all at once. These communities themselves, including the environment, remain in constant flux. For such a complex interconnected being of a person, the question is which aspect of her composite self has legitimacy of rule at any point in time and why. The question is a more complex one in actual human society because the tension is not only within the person as she undergoes a continual self-interactivity to decide which aspect rules the other consensually at one time or the other. Actual human society also must deal with

95 inter-person and inter-collective tensions of individuality and communality. It is important to note also that not every communal relation in human society is an already given one.

So, at one level is each person dialoguing with her composite self and seeking new and better ways of responding to her needs and welfare as they relate to her various communal others.

At another level is each identifiable community –nation, state, ethnic-group, department, clan or family, etc. – acting as a ‘self’ and dialoguing with other such selves not only to seek to maintain harmony and healthy co-existence ‘within’ but to also accelerate holistic development and progress. Hence, in human society everywhere, one cannot deny the likelihood of inter-person and inter-collective frictions that could heighten and degenerate into unresolvable conflict if not managed well.

As a response to the question regarding which aspect of a person (or persons’ individuality or communality) ought to rule, Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism, earlier discussed in chapter one, advocates for a moderation of what he labels as ‘extreme’ or ‘radical’ communitarianism to make room for the expression of individuality. However, as discussed in that chapter, Gyekye’s

‘moderate communitarianism’ has been challenged and skepticism raised about how wide the difference is between his view and the ‘radical communitarian’ view he criticizes (Famakinwa,

2010; Matolino, 2009). Majeed’s concession of clashes of rights in the “complex context of practical life” (2018a, p.4) even in his defense of Gyekye should make clear the reality of this tension in practical human society and how it is organized.

For European and Western socio-political contexts which generally emphasize persons’ individuality over communality the argument has been to tilt the balance towards communality as is seen in the writings of Kymlicka, Taylor, Sandel, MacIntyre and the Etzioni (1993) led

Communitarian Agenda which was committed to “creating a new moral, social, and public order

96 based on restored communities” (p. 2). Here also, the various opposition to their views could make the very avowed advocates of the ‘communitarian’ ideal denounce the label of a communitarian48 in preference for ‘a liberal’49 or ‘a republican’50.

Yet, for this study, since every human society, East, West, North or South of the globe is composed of such complex persons, to ensure lasting peace and harmonious co-existence within, between and among persons and collectives of any socio-political context, a constant, continuous attention and effort from the ‘self’ in question towards maintaining a healthy balance between individuality and communality at any point in time is worthwhile. At all levels of interrelation and interactivity therefore, the “most human and humanizing activity that people [should] engage in is talking to each other”,51 not resorting to forcible imposition of any form of rule on others regardless of the expected outcome. For, if government is ‘self’-evolved, every society’s rule would be what it is; a government of itself, by itself and for itself and therefore, a democracy regardless of the tag put on it.52 Besides, societal development and progress is hinged on maintaining a healthy balance between and among ‘selves’. So, even though individuality depends on communality for its continuous existence, survival and preservation, it is equally important to protect and preserve peoples’ individuality since that is the source of creativity and original ideas that counteract stagnation and accelerates societal change and progress.

48 MacIntyre claims that “in spite of rumors to the contrary, I am not and never have been a communitarian” (1991, pp. 91-92). 49 In Gutmann (1992), both Taylor and Walzer identify themselves as liberals. 50 Sandel adopts the tag ‘republican’ instead in Sandel (1996; 1998). 51 Herbert Blumer’s conviction captured in Griffin (2006, p. 56). 52 In this regard, a monarchy, oligarchy or aristocracy would qualify as a democracy in so far as that system of government is dialogically chosen by a people who consider themselves to be a ‘we’. The following chapter discusses the notion of ‘we’ in the conception of democracy. 97

The concern, however, is whether to promote individual creativity unreservedly by restricting institutional domination, or rather to allow institutions to dominate as a means of providing ordered structural framework and firmer institutional foundations to offer stronger receptacle for nurturing and sustaining innovative and original ideas which would evolve anyway from individual ingenuity. It would be problematic to indiscriminately allow space for acts of individuality which could inevitably collapse society’s institutional foundations that make for mutual understanding and allows for the emergence of individual creativity in the first place. For, not every change in society, spearheaded by individual ingenuity, would be necessarily developmental or progressive. But, neither would extreme restrictive institutions of community integrity auger well for the emergence of innovative ideas necessary for avoiding stagnation and improving on institutional values, practices, systems, and structures. The question to ask then is what posture human society generally ought to take towards socio-political democratic practice given persons’ interactive, intersubjective, and dual-dimensional being. More importantly, who or what is justified at any point in time to ensure this harmony since every human person is herself a complex of her own individuality and communality.

In responding to the intricate question of whether, when, how, who, or what is to rule in a socio-political context, the responsive approach this study proposes is to allow a constant dialogical interaction of the several individualities and communalities in that given context. And, the interactions be allowed to take their own democratic course from the closest community – family – through to the farthest level of community conceivable in today’s “globalizing” world, while at the same time allowing for intra-person dialogical interactions which engenders creativity.

In simple terms, persons’ themselves within any shared collectivity at various levels of communality – family, neighborhood, locality, region, ethnic-group, nation, state, continent – must

98 be allowed to determine who or what should rule them through meaningful intra-person, inter- person and inter-collective dialogical interplay since each level of interaction defines an overlapping level of ‘selfhood’.

To illustrate the foregoing point, a person could be, and relate, as an Akuffo-Addo, and at the same time an Akyem, which is itself an ethnic sub-grouping within the larger Akan ethnic- group of Ghana, a Ghanaian, a West African, an African, a Christian, a female, an elite, an academic, a human being, a living being, and many other relations, interrelations and relationality at various levels, besides her given individuality. If my ‘self’ includes such a complex communality at different levels, as well as my individuality as extensively discussed in chapter two, then a democratically agreed rule of any of the communities (that constitute my communality) over my individuality would constitute ‘self-rule’ understood as our rule of my ‘self. 53

In the same vein, but on the other hand, a democratically agreed rule or government of my individuality over any of these communities I belong to would likewise constitute ‘self-rule’ understood as my rule of our ‘self’. Either way then, in the socio-political context, just as in intra- person democratic rule, in so far as the sense of ‘we’ – sharedness, relatedness or communality – persists between and among persons or their communities, and democracy and its ideals–constant continuous dialogue, mutual respect and recognition, fellow-feeling, consensus pursuit, tolerance, reciprocity and solidarity–prevail, the ruled would have to embrace this government as ‘self-rule’ and therefore a democracy, regardless of which person or collective takes its turn to rule. It is only if conceived as such that the government or rule would be considered by the person and her various communities as her rule of her ‘self’ and our rule of our ‘self’ concurrently, even while being ruled.

For, as already emphasized, ‘selfhood’ or ‘personhood’, such conceived, would necessarily

53 Compare Mendel-Reyes’ self-rule matrix (1999, pp. 25-43). 99 embrace an inherent tension of ruling myself (and/or ourselves) while being ruled by myself

(and/or ourselves). This perpetual internal tension, which extends to other persons and their communities will be given attention in section three.

Therefore, it is reasonable to maintain that the closer the bonds of community, the relatively easier it is to reach harmony. One can, thus, not deny that proximity plays a critical role54 in defining one’s relatedness and fostering effective democratic practice. Stronger communal bonds, inspired by common language, aims, interests and aspirations, is likely to generate an emotional and psychological sense of belonging which encourage convergence as is the case with intra- person self-rule. It is the same sense of genuine ‘we’ that would ground institutional decisions of kings, chiefs, presidents, priests, in choosing for the community in those instances when discussion has to come to an end or when the community through dialogue or other means cannot steer itself.

Such rule, for this study, remains ‘self-rule’ as our rule of my self.

It must be admitted that a threat of imposition may be entailed in the concept of ‘self-rule’ understood as our rule of my self such as when the dictates of family, ethnic group, nation or any such community a person has relational ties with,55 override a person’s individual choice or decision against her will. However, if she considers such a rule as an imposition from a communal part of her ‘self’ then that imposition still constitutes a ‘self-rule’ though not a consensual one for, her communality is still an aspect of her being. In such a situation where some underlying principles of democratic governance, dialogue for instance, have been overlooked and a practice imposed on a person by her ethnic group, for instance, harmony and peaceful co-existence, should

54 Technological advancement may have toned down the need for physical proximity in building closer communal bonds, but it cannot be said to have totally eradicated it. 55 That need not be based on kinship or ancestry but founded on common interests, aims, objectives, goals, or aspirations. 100 be easier to restore and maintain because of the sense of ‘we’ she feels towards her communal-self and the consequent values of tolerance, fellow-feeling, reciprocity and solidarity necessarily associated with a genuine sense of communality. The expectation is that the principles of democracy would be easier to restore so that the ruled can own the rule as required by self-rule as our rule of my self. That is, so far as there is a sense of uncompelled ‘we’ any imposition entailed in our rule of my self should be easier to reverse.56

The same, however, cannot be said of an imposition that arises from a source, no matter how proximate, that is regarded by the ‘self’ as external to itself. Such a rule or government, regardless of its appropriateness or good intentions, is likely to face resistance because it would not belong to any of the senses of ‘self-rule’ that has been discussed so far namely: my rule of my self, our rule of our self, my rule of our self, and our rule of my self. For such an imposition, like colonial rule, the government is not only non-democratic fundamentally because it would not have evolved from consensual interaction within, between and among the ruled persons, but it would also not be a ‘self-rule’ because it would not bear the genuine sense of ‘we’ on which constant dialogue, cooperation, compromise and tolerance, among other democratic virtues, stand.

The absence of a sense of ‘we’ would detract from the idea of ruling-while-being-ruled embedded in the concept of ‘self-rule’ already espoused. An externally57 imposed rule would therefore be confronted with the two-fold herculean task of having to first evolve a sense of emotional and psychological attachment to the imposed government and its systems and practices so that ‘the ruled’ can identify with ‘the imposed ruler’ as belonging to its ‘self’ and consequently,

56 Compare Hanna Pitkin’s description of ‘self-rule’ as a dialectical concept in which its different meanings not merely conflict but actually enhance and depend upon each other (1998, pp. 246- 250). 57 External to persons’ individuality and communality. 101 own the rule. Second, and following from the first, there still would remain the task of creating a theoretical foundation and practical systems and structures to foster a meaningful and genuine mode of inter-person and inter-collective continuous dialogue necessary for balancing the tilt of governance to achieve a healthy balance all the time. Such democratic dialogue requires, among others, trust, mutual respect, and fellow feeling that would ordinarily emanate without coercion from persons who already consider themselves as having genuine non-exploitative shared ties.58

3.4 Dialogue and deliberation in self-rule: a case for wholeness not oneness59

The understanding of the person as dialogical which is discussed in the preceding sections bears some resemblance with the Dialogical Self Theory (DST) (Hermans, Kempen, & Van Loon,

1992) of Hubert Herman and colleagues, which joins two opposite concepts: the self, usually thought of as ‘internal’ to the person, and dialogue, a term typically associated with something

‘external’ to the person in communication. The theory sees the individual self as social in origin and dialogical in its potential. The authors describe the dialogical self in terms of a person’s ability to imagine different positions in an internal dialogue while in close connection with external dialogue. This view, therefore, goes beyond the self-other disjunction because it infuses the external to the internal and inversely, introduces the internal into the external (Hermans &

Hermans-Konopka, 2010). As such, the concept of the dialogical self does not only include

‘internal’ positions such as ‘I’ as the daughter of my father, ‘I’ as a lecturer or ‘I’ as a mother, but also ‘external’ positions like my parents, my ethnic group, my students. For this view, the self functions as a dynamic multiplicity of i-positions. With such multiple ‘self-positions’, the self functions as a “society of mind” (Minsky, 1985) or in the society of minds and appropriates the

58 Relational ties that need not be biological. 59 ‘Wholeness’ and ‘oneness' as used by Allen in her Talking to Strangers (2004). 102 voices of society and significant others: voices that are seen to be in dialogue with each other.

Therefore, within the functioning of the self, it is able to entertain dialogical relationships with each other.

In other words, the dialogical-self-theory blends activity within a person with processes that take place between and among people in communication which makes the concept of self an extended one. The theory does not assume that the other is simply outside of the person, but rather considers the other as an intrinsic part of self-hood: the other-in-the-self (Hermans & Hermans-

Konopka, 2010). By implication, self-conflicts and self-criticism take place in different domains of the dialogical self: within the internal domain, e.g. disagreeing with myself on a thought; between the internal and extended domain, e.g. the voice of my priest in myself criticizing me; and, within the external domain, e.g. the way the couple next door interact with each other leads me to decide for a change of residence.

From the foregone illustrations, what is evident is that there is not always a wide gap between the self within and the external world. One detects a gradual transition from one domain of the self to the other, not a sharp distinction (Rosenberg, 1979). Where some position in the self suppresses others, the result is a monological relationship. However, where the differences in positions, within and between internal and external domains of the self, are recognized and accepted, dialogical relationships emerge with prospects of developing and renewing the self and the other as parts of society at large (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010).

The foregoing theory of the dialogical self is closely linked to the concept of deliberation which Maeve Cooke (2000) holds to be “an unconstrained exchange of arguments that involves practical reasoning and always potentially leads to a transformation of preferences” ( p. 948). This

103 view points to the thinking that in deliberation, and in deliberative ‘self-rule’ in all its ramification for that matter,

… actors listen to each other with openness and respect, provide reasons and justifications for their opinions, and remain open to changing their view about public policy problems; they should be oriented toward mutual understanding, the goal of coming to some level of agreement, and should want to learn the reasons why they agree or disagree. They must be driven not only by a search for their personal notion of the best policy, but by a search for reasons that would warrant them and their fellow citizens in believing a policy to be the best. Deliberation is not just an opportunity to learn things others know or what they think, but to more fully articulate a public justification for actions on matters of common concern. That is, deliberators discuss what we should do as a political community rather than (or in addition to) what I want as an individual.60

Arguing for a deliberative democracy as a supplement and not a replacement to what he calls aggregative democracy, Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani maintains that deliberation should be considered central to legitimate decision-making and that, deliberation, properly understood, is not a mere aggregation of already existing fixed preferences (Ani, 2013). In his view, a deliberative process offers adequate justifications for opinions which make for better informed judgments and lead to decisions for the ‘common good’ which are collectively binding. The absence of such a culture of deliberation, Ani urges, would likely reduce democracy in Africa to what Goold et al

(2012) calls a “self-defeating technocracy.” Deliberative politics then seems to be much more needed in heterogenous contexts like post-colonial Africa given its current mixed configuration, than in traditional Africa’s largely homogenous societies. Diversity is presupposed by deliberation.

Deliberation, thus, refers to the process of arriving at decisions through publicly justifiable reasons not merely by power play, individual biases, or competition between conflicting interests.

This idea of deliberation is more pronounced in Habermas (1984), who describes a deliberative judgment as one that is based on the validity of the information brought into deliberation and the

60 (Goold et al., 2012).

104 justifications offered by deliberators, who in his view should be conceived of as competent and knowledgeable interpreters with the capacity of rationality. Rationality, as he sees it, is to be conceived in epistemic, practical, and intersubjective terms (p. 11). That means to be capable of rationality, in his view, is not so much a question of subjectively possessing a particular knowledge but is rather expressed in how subjects who speak and act acquire and use knowledge, especially in argumentation and, indeed, deliberation: to support claims with valid reasons, and to learn also from the refutation of hypotheses, and from interventions that failed (pp. 16-18). The question is whether or not the speaker communicated meaningfully and presented valid and sound arguments that convinced deliberators to accept the claim or judgment on its own merit. In simple terms, the rationality of the outcome is connected to the rationality of the discourse. In his words:

Anyone participating in argument shows his rationality or lack of it by the manner in which he handles and responds to the offering of reasons for or against claims. If he is “open to argument”, he will either acknowledge the force of those reasons or seek to reply to them, and either way he will deal with them in a “rational” manner. If he is “deaf to argument”, by contrast, he may either ignore contrary reasons or reply them with dogmatic assertions, and either way he fails to deal with the issues “rationally” (Habermas, 1984, p. 18).

The kind of cooperative action people engage in in the process of mutual argumentation and dialogue where the claims implicit in the speech act are rationally tested to establish whether they are justifiably true, correct or authentic is what Habermas labels as ‘communicative action’ and contrasts with ‘strategic action’ (Habermas, 1970, pp. 91-92). Habermas’ theory of communicative action, as reiterated by Ani, stresses the need for the absence of coercive force, mutual search for understanding and the compelling power of the better argument, as key elements necessary for determining intersubjective rationality (Ani, 2013, p. 209). That means a person’s moral judgment, for instance, would be rationally acceptable, for Habermas, only if it is the outcome of engaging in actual discourse with all the people who are affected; where one does not

105 only seek their inputs – or that of trustworthy representatives – to inform the action she takes but more importantly, makes certain that they reasonably agree.

However, where each actor aims not at understanding each other, but at achieving the individual goal each brought to the situation, the method of deliberation, for Habermas, is not

‘communicative action’ but ‘strategic action’. In strategic action, says Habermas, the cooperation engendered is not based on the inherent value or worth of the argued position, but on what the actors stand to gain from the bargain such as avoiding an implicit threat or obtaining a promise.

Therefore, whereas the success of deliberation as ‘communicative action’, consists chiefly in speakers harmonizing their action and pursuit of ends on grounds of a shared understanding that those ends are reasonable or worthy of merit (Habermas,1998, chapt. 7), deliberation as ‘strategic action’ only succeeds when actors attain their individual goals brought to the discourse.

Habermas’ communicative action thus entails an inherent consensual form of social cooperation, where actors muster their potential for rationality with the aim of reaching a rationally motivated agreement through ordinary language and consensual norms (Habermas, 1998). This requires his notion of a “lifeworld” which refers to “the background resources, contexts, and dimensions of social action that enable actors to cooperate on the basis of mutual understanding: shared cultural systems of meaning, institutional orders that stabilize patterns of action, and personality structures acquired in family, church, neighborhood, and school”.61 Reaching a deep consensus in complex, multinational contexts like post-colonial Africa would be difficult.

Habermas argues that it is reasonable to permit weaker forms of communicative action in which not all types of validity claims are at stake for such contexts. Further, since the theory connects the

61 See the criticism against his strong distinction between system and life-world by McCarthy (1991, pp. 152-180) and Fraser (1985, 97-131). 106 acceptability of a claim with its meaningfulness, emphasis is placed on social intelligibility of interaction over semantics. This means the validity claim must not only be sincere, but must also be socially appropriate or right, and must be factually true, to be acceptable.62

For Mercier & Landemore (2012), a genuine deliberation would not have taken place if people only reasoned to come up with arguments for or against a claim but failed to evaluate the arguments. This, they maintain, is so in both private (‘internal’) and public (‘external’) deliberation. If a person internally reflected on and synthesized the several opinions of others only to find supporting grounds for her own opinion, that constitutes mere reasoning not deliberation

(p. 10). In the same vein, deliberation would have been unsuccessful between and among persons if the reasoned view did not benefit from the shaping and rational evaluation of participants.

The scholars further maintain that actors would not have engaged in genuine deliberation if listeners only used the given arguments of the speaker as a basis for advancing opposing arguments without actually examining that argument. If I do not withhold my opinion in a discussion but express it, and if my expressed opinion is evaluated by others, and further still if the concerns raised in evaluation are responded to, then my opinion, in their view, can rightly be said to be a part of the deliberative process (p. 10). Thus, for Mercier & Landemore, reasoning would be required for a process to be deliberative, but reasoning about an issue is not the same as deliberating on an issue. For them, a basic feature that cannot be shirked is the need for mutual justification (Thompson, 2008, p. 504) which likely brings out the best in reason and grants legitimacy to the decisions arrived at in deliberation.

62 For a critique of the theory of communication underlying Habermas’ deliberative action, and responses, see Neblo (2007), Young (1996), and Sanders (1997).

107

To be effective, then, proponents urge that deliberators should be willing to offer justification for views they put forward; respect other people and their views enough to be accommodating; be open to criticism enough to give in in the face of superior argument(s) regardless of who the source of the counter-opinion is; be public spirited enough to pay due attention to the collective interest; emphasize equal participation of all; value reciprocity; among others (Thompson, 2008, p. 504; Wesoloska, 2007, p. 665; Barabas, 2004, p. 699). The claim is that such attributes or attitudes make the procedure a fair one, deepens the epistemic value of the decisions reached, and increases community power (Cooke, 2000, p. 947).

James Fishkin (2011) reiterates the worth of deliberation thus: it makes information available to all; gives different perspectives which helps to maintain a healthy balance and diversity; and instills conscientiousness in participants as well as equal consideration of all views

(pp. 2-3). Consequently, opinions on a matter are revised (Linderman, 2002, p. 199; Mackie, 2006, p. 295) based on better-informed evaluation and broader viewpoints (Chambers, 2003, p. 307).

Extremism is curtailed as tolerance is increased (Gutmann & Thompson, 1996, p. 96) and interests evolve or are transformed (Karpowitz & Mansbridge, 2005, p. 356). And, even though substantive equality is never guaranteed, when deliberation is successful the gaps of bias, prejudice, dominance as a result of difference in deliberative capacity, and ignorance, are bridged to make it easier to pursue consensus (Ani, 2019, pp. 299-322; Wiredu, 1996, p. 182; Wiredu, 2012, pp. 1055-

1056).

However, the deliberative process need not aim at consensus or unanimity all the time on all matters since not all decisions are meant to converge at a central point (Ani, 2013, p. 213). Even where that is the goal of the deliberative process, such as settling a dispute or charting a common course of action, aiming at ‘oneness’ on the decision often fails. Sometimes the goal is simply to

108 make relevant justified information available to actors to inform valid choice such as when delegates must choose between two constitutionally recognized alternatives by voting (p. 213). In this regard, the goal of deliberation may not necessarily be to achieve consensus as ‘oneness’ but as ‘wholeness’.63 For insisting on consensus as oneness often results in ignoring critical dissentions in the name of group cohesion. It could undermine the epistemic worth of the decision made since the more reasonably valid opinion could be opposed to the unanimous view after all. Such a situation could lead to a forged unanimity and a consequent detachment from the decision and its implementation.

In her book, Talking to Strangers, Danielle Allen argues to the effect that the fiction of

‘oneness’ hinders the democratic process. The problem with oneness as a concept, as she sees it, is that it allows democracy to function in a way that inaccurately represents the public as a feigned, homogenous and uniformed ‘one’, instead of a real ‘whole’ with various constituent differences.

Such thinking, as she sees it, ignores the various concessions by minorities and their reluctant acceptance of certain disadvantaged positions only for the population to constitute a ‘one’.

The result of such over-simplified imaginary of sameness is the creation of marginalized communities and a resultant distrust that arises from a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’. This, she argues, does not only discourage ‘talking to strangers’ but also feeds the perception that citizens’ needs and desires are not mutually dependent. Oneness, in her view, also directs people’s trust from each other to the state and its institutions. Allen believes that the negative consequences of a model of oneness – mistrust and distrust – “can be overcome only when citizens manage to find methods of generating mutual benefit despite differences of position, experience, and perspective” (Allen,

63 See her distinction between ‘oneness’ and ‘wholeness’ (Allen, 2004). 109

2004, p. xix). To approach ‘wholeness’, she advocates for the principle of reciprocity built on a politics of friendship and equitable self-interest.

From the foregoing discussions, it would be reasonable to conclude that a culture of deliberation is necessary to democracy everywhere, for “democracy depends on trustful talk [even] among strangers” (Allen, 2004, p. xiii) in ways that diffuse cleavages and consequent distrust especially in multicultural contexts like post-colonial Africa. I argue that genuine deliberation, as extensively discussed, serves to bridge these various gaps which are often widened by ethnicity- inflected policy debates in post-colonial Africa. Thus, whether internal or external, private or public, if deliberation is engaged it shapes or/and transforms opinions of all actors towards wholeness though not necessarily oneness. The process of transformation then should be allowed a gradual non-coerced space and time to evolve, especially on matters that border on worldview and fundamental ontological and normative principles.64

The section following examines some implications of the idea of ‘self-rule’ discussed so far and its relevance to the discourse on change and socio-political development and progress. I argue that the perception of the world as divided into false, or at best not clearly defined, categories such as ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’ nations have negative effects on nationals of both the latter and the former in their rule of themselves.

3.5 Change and social-political progress

It is important to make the case that human society anywhere will undergo change regardless of how close the bonds of its members are to the structures, systems, norms, culture, or institutions of that collective. No human society can claim to be impervious to change of any form

64 Such as “beliefs on whether people are evil or socially redeemable; how we should rank values such as freedom and security; and whose welfare should count the most” (Sabatier, 1998, p. 103). 110 at all, conceptually and empirically speaking. Whether from individual creativity of persons within a said collective or external to it, change is inevitable. As such, the dichotomous wholesale labeling of some nations, states, regions, or nation-communities as ‘modern’ in contrast with others regarded as ‘traditional’ and therefore not yet fit to rule itself, would fundamentally entail a contradiction in terms.

Indeed, the qualitative ascription of such notions as ‘modern’, ‘developed’, ‘civilized’ and

‘first-world’ to a nation or state, for instance, in its totality to contrast another nation or state deemed ‘traditional’, ‘developing, under-developed or less-developed’, ‘uncivilized’ and ‘second, third or umpteenth world’ would be a false and ill-conceived dichotomy whose bias is exposed upon critical scrutiny. The objection to each dichotomy lies basically in its employment of an ambiguous understanding of the terms to the nations/states they have been applied to without clearly delineating what the essential features of each ought to be. But if the term modern, for instance, derives from the Latin modernus, meaning “recent” or “present”, and was used as the reverse of the term “old” or “ancient”, itself derived from the Latin antiquus, vetus and priscus

(Calinescu, 1987, pp. 13-14) then to what extent would one nation be ascribed the attribute

“modern” and the other not, if both can rightly be said to have a past and a present national life: present life which is perceived to be an undetached improvement–but not necessarily in all of its aspects–of its past.

More importantly, why would certain nations or states be labeled modern but others not if such ‘improvements’ that occur everywhere incorporate borrowed, adopted, adapted and appropriated elements into the self-evolved aspects of culture from within or without a national context? If all societies, West, East, North or South of the globe would always have very elegant,

111 but also inelegant and reprehensible cultural aspects, worthy of appropriation or rejection respectively, then it calls to question what meaning one is to make of such wholesale labeling.

Europe’s borrowing and assimilation of African art and Chinese compass for instance is a case in point to stress the fact of cultural borrowing present in every ‘modern nation’. According to Shils, “The laying open of Africa to explorers and colonizers was followed by the bringing back to Europe of works of African art which were assimilated into and changed greatly the tradition of

European painting and sculpture” (Shils, 1981, p. 260). One would not be wrong in contending that this act of “bringing back” has not changed in Europe or elsewhere. It has been and will always be a feature of human societies everywhere, regardless of its size, its claimed “primitive” or

“modern” status, “urbanized” or “localized” ascriptions.

Human society, thus, is a continuously evolving project whose actors–the human persons– themselves are constantly in a state of flux as they search for and negotiate better means of surviving and fostering human flourishing as much as is humanly possible. These changes that occur in humans as they interact with their social others themselves generate the emergence of a new sociality which in turn interacts with its membership to evolve new social selves (Mead,

1967). The fact that this process is never-ending cannot be denied through resort to categorical tags, such as “developed” or “underdeveloped”. Therefore, advancement, progress, improvement, or modernization of the aspects of human life would have to be considered as integral to the dynamics of social-living everywhere and is aimed at bringing meaning and flourishing to human life. To illustrate, if one considers the American ‘Communitarian Agenda’, earlier mentioned, and its commitment to “creating a new moral, social, and public order based on restored communities”

(Etzioni, 1993, p. 2), one sees an indication of some apprehension, at least, towards the extreme individualism that characterized Western modernization then, and its accompanying

112 industrialization and urbanization which in many instances called to question the value of human life and worth. The resultant shift in Western individualistic outlook, after scores of scholarly works stressing the value and need to embrace a sense of community into public life is itself a manifestation that in a sense there was a lack in the then “Western modernity” social outlook.

Besides, if the very essence of the term ‘development’ is to presuppose a progressive or continuous activity, then it is not clear what meaning is to be given to the attribution of the terms

“developed” or “advanced” to certain nations and states. Disambiguating the notions, to my mind, should render all nations as developing, since the quest to improve human lives everywhere is implicitly an unending process. Moreover, granted that some nations may be well ahead in their achievements in science, technology, and economic terms for instance, others may in turn be well advanced in social, architectural, moral, or humanistic terms (Gyekye, 1994). And even though science and technology are undeniably very valuable in so many ways, they cannot be said to be the sole criteria for determining which nation or state is ‘developed’. In this regard, moral and ethical soundness, in my view, would rather have been better criteria for distinguishing ‘a developed’ society from one that is not developed since such a criteria self-evidently speaks to the dignity and flourishing of the human person. However, since societies may not agree on the specific application of moral values even if they agree on the universality of those values, contextualized applications of moral values must not be the standard for determining how developed one nation is from the other. It will also be inappropriate to measure a nation’s development by how much technology, high-rise buildings, military accoutrement, or wealth it superintends over. To add, no collective of any sort –nation, state, ethnic-community– can be said to have ‘advanced’ in all aspects.

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It is instructive to note, therefore, that no matter the level of technological, economic or scientific advancement achieved by a nation in the name of modernity, the self-justifying fundamental value of the dignity of human life everywhere, underscored by respect for persons’ autonomy would remain one fundamental standard of evaluating the worth of such technological, economic or scientific advancement. Towards this end, actual human societies would have to make the collective decisions, guided by the principles of meaningful democracy which is only based on the freedoms and actual express will of the people as captured in the concept of ‘self-rule’ and

‘selves-rule’. This understanding seems to find expression in the words of Kenneth Kaunda, the first President of Zambia when he writes about the African people thus: “However ‘modern’ and

‘advanced’ in a Western sense the new nations of Africa may become, we are fiercely determined that this humanism will not be obscured. African society has always been human-centered. We intend that it will remain so” (Kaunda, 1966, p. 28).

It must be mentioned that the consequences of such false labeling as ‘modern’ and

‘advanced’ could be more detrimental than meets the eye especially in post-colonial contexts because a person’s, or collective’s, conception of herself as inferior to others would more likely suppress creative, imaginative thinking. But as already mentioned, without novel ideas a society’s development would be stagnated or at best stalled since ideas develop from individual creativity, inquisitiveness, and imaginative search for ‘better’ ways of responding to the challenges of socio- political experience. Technological, architectural, agricultural and transportation advancements, to mention a few, arise out of curiosity and the search for better options other than the status-quo. If the African’s ‘colonized mindset’, for instance, assumes that the West has the best in all,65 then there would seem to remain little need for such ingenuity and search for better alternatives in

65 A phenomenon Gyekye labels as ‘colonial mentality’ (1997, pp. 26-27, 234). 114 development fit for the African socio-political and geographical terrain. The remaining option would be a perpetual unrestricted pursuit of Western ‘modern goods.’ Yet, the foregoing analyses have sought to show that notions like ‘modernity’, ‘developed’, ‘civilized’, and ‘first-world’ are replete with contentious conceptual underpinnings which make their concrete applications less objective than it seems.

A more defensible, alternative view of socio-political development or progress would seem to be the view that every society is a tradition giving way to modernity, itself a tentative tradition awaiting modernity, ad infinitum. Given such a dialectical relation which is itself in constant flux, coupled with the fact that creativity emerges from individual ingenuity and initiative before attaining collective acceptance, and yet still the obvious fact that not all aspects of a society’s products can either be said to be worthwhile or to have outlived its relevance, the meaningfulness of a wholesale characterization of a specified collective – nation, state, ethnic or linguistic group

– as ‘modern’ or ‘traditional’ leaves much to be desired.

The implications of the foregoing discussions for self-rule is that the question as to whether, and to what extent, to emphasize individual creativity and innovation over community’s integrity and stability to accelerate the emergence of novelties necessary for human development and progress in a socio-political setting is a value-laden and an intricate one. The quandary in this question lies not only in determining whether, when and how individuality should rule over communality or vice versa in intra-person, inter-person and inter-collective interaction, but fundamentally in who or what to determine this rule, what its tenure should be and most importantly what justifies that rule. Obviously, the quandary would seem less problematic in intra- person tension since here a person’s already given individuality and communality are both inextricably bound to a common territory –the physical body. Therefore, a dialogically agreed rule

115 of one over the other is a rule of both at once. This phenomenon encourages habituation arising from continuous self-interactivity within. However, as has been stressed, the same cannot be said for inter-person and inter-collective democracies which are not necessarily given nor always restricted to proximate communality or community. So, it becomes apparent thus far that proximity coupled with constant interaction ultimately aimed at a common goal of collective flourishing would aid effective and sustainable democratic practice and in consequence real development or progress.

3.6 Conclusion

This chapter focused on the concept of ‘self-rule’ and what it is. It argued that ‘self-rule’ entails four overlapping senses: of rule in practice: my rule of my self, our rule of our self, my rule of our self and our rule of my self all at once. The view is that it is such a holistic conception of

‘self-rule’ hinged on a genuine conception of dialogue and deliberation internally or externally that would reconcile and curtail extremes of either unbridled individualistic independence or restrictive communitarian solidarity to make for change and socio-political progress.

Section one presented ‘self-rule’ as overcoming the tensions in a person’s rule of her ‘self’ and how it translates to persons’ rule of themselves. It proposed that there must be some ‘internal’ mechanism of continuous dialogue especially ‘within’ a person, hinged on a recognized sense of

‘we’ between her individuality and her communality, that makes her rule of her dual self possible and viable. I argued that same principles should be applied to inter-person rule.

Section two was devoted to democracy as inter-person self-rule and why the need for dialogue and deliberation is key to achieving a genuine democracy (self-rule: a government of the people, by the people and for the people). It also explored why and how to reconcile intra-person, inter-person and inter-collective self-rule from such a personist perspective to curtail extreme

116 unbridled pursuit of individuality on the one hand and a restrictive, coercive communality on the other.

Section three explored dialogue and deliberation as concepts necessary to and underlying the idea of ‘self-rule’ in all its ramifications giving particular attention to Hubert Herman and colleagues’ Dialogical Self Theory (DST) and Jürgen Habermas’ ‘communicative action’ among other scholars of deliberation. The section shows that bridging the inherent gap between self-rule and selves-rule in a just way requires a gradual, dialogical, self-evolved, and non-coerced sense of community as Allens’ ‘wholeness’ not ‘oneness’.

Section four then engaged some implications of the discussions on the notion of change and socio-political progress as outcomes of self-rule ‘within’ and ‘without’.

The next chapter discusses the people-centeredness in democracy as a sequel to this chapter. It goes into representation and majoritarianism as inherent challenges of democracy that must be curtailed with inclusiveness and the search for consensus. The argument is that democracy, whether labeled as communitarian or liberal, would be viable when taken seriously as what it is: a self-rule evolved by persons, out of their interactions, experiences, and shared meanings, for their own flourishing simpliciter.

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CHAPTER FOUR

DEMOCRACY BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE

4.1 Introduction

The personist understanding of ‘self-rule’ espoused in the preceding chapter has consequences for the theory and practice of democracy. It calls for a rethinking of the current political order which is chiefly focused on maintaining state integrity. This is especially so for multi-lingual, multi-national and multi-cultural post-colonial African states whose subjects are confronted with various senses of communality mainly as a result of the conceptually devastating history of extensive colonialism then, and in its duplicitous form now as neo-colonialism.

The argument in this chapter is that democracy is centered on persons who are at once individual and communal, and therefore a democracy is a self-rule of persons in constant interaction who consider themselves as a collective ‘we’, not a rule by an imposed entity the subjects of which do not consider themselves to be a part of a collective ‘self’. Thus, democracy by and for the people should mean persons’ rule of their own ‘selves’ at any point in time.

Section one discusses the people-centeredness entailed in democracy generally and goes into representation and majoritarianism as inherent challenges of democracy. It argues that the viability of democracy, whether labeled as communitarian or liberal, lies in taking the concept seriously as what it is: a self-rule evolved by persons, out of their interactions, experiences and shared meanings, for their own flourishing simpliciter.

Section two discusses inclusiveness and consensus pursuit as notions crucial for confronting the inherent challenges of democracy even in the face of complexities of societies and relationships of modern times. It further devotes attention to the need for a sense of ‘we’ as key to confronting the fundamental inherent challenges of democracy in theory and practice.

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Section three then examines the origins and conceptual foundations of the state in relation to conquest to argue that the state’s rule, like that of any social organization, would be a genuine

‘self-rule’ and therefore a legitimate democracy only if members of the composite ‘self’ own its rule.

4.2 Democracy as centered on the people

4.2.1 Introduction

This section generally analyzes and clarifies the concept of ‘the people’ postulated in the democracy discourse. The clarification is necessary if the people’s self-rule is what is prescribed by democracy. That is, the fundamental, often overlooked or at best presumed subtle agreement on a prototype meaning of the idea of ‘the people’ is examined to ensure that it is not distorted or misplaced.

4.2.2 ‘The People’ in democracy: individual or collective?

Regardless of which variant of democracy one has in mind, defining the concept cannot rightly overlook its ‘people-centeredness’. From its Athenian-Greek antecedents, the term dēmokratía, deriving from (demos) “people” and (krátos) “power” or “rule”, translates as “rule or power of the people”. In its recent conceptions, it has been severally defined. The Oxford English

Dictionary defines it as a “system of government in which all the people of a state or polity… are involved in making decisions about its affairs, ….” Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the term as “a government by the people; especially: rule of the majority; a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation….” Elsewhere, it is defined as a “government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system” Longley (2020). In this regard, the famous and perhaps the most

119 widely accepted phrase, “government of the people, by the people and for the people” should be acceptable as definitive of democracy and, “the-people-centeredness” should suffice as fundamental to the theorizing and practice of any political thought or socio-cultural system that labels itself as such.

Conceiving of democracy as ‘the-people-centered’ does imply that not only would the people own, possess or wield the power of self-determination or self-sovereignty in a democracy but more importantly, that they would, and should, administer, regulate, control and execute the actual exercise of this power. It emphasizes the active role the people ought to play in making decisions concerning the affairs of the state, nation, polity or group towards their own well-being.

Such decision-making would be based on principles, guidelines, codes, systems and formulations that should be born, not imposed, of the hopes and aspirations of the people, and/or borrowed, adapted and adopted, fashioned, nurtured, refined and shaped by their goals, values and ideals, to reflect their wishes, desires and expectations. Without such involvement of the people in the making of the governing rules and governance itself, their intellectual and psychological sense of proprietorship would be immensely undermined and that would in turn likely affect their interest in, and commitment to, the course of the collective in pursuit of its own ends. Thus, a state, nation or any collective qualifies to be named a democracy not merely by attributions or claims of ownership of political power, but more importantly, by the degree of actual expression of the people’s will, involvement, participation and inclusion in self-governance; in how much of a say or control members actually have and are able to contribute to decisions concerning their rule of themselves towards their own set aims and aspirations even if through representation.

At first sight then, the central role expected to be played by the people give credence to the view that democratic thought and practice would have its foundations exclusively in collectivism.

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For, ‘the people’ would have to refer to a defined collective who would have to share, at the minimal, common principles, values, aims, and aspirations, common values which would be necessary to the creation and formulation of common rules of self-governance, systems and structures of functioning and enforcement of the set rules for actual practice of self-governance.

That is not to say, for this view, that there would not be varied opinions about the good in such a system. But, rather, that as a socio-political association of a kind seeking the benefit and welfare of all, members – at least the majority – would ultimately, and to a large extent, have to share common agreeable notions of what constitutes good or right, worthwhile or reprehensible; they would have to share common language, meanings and understandings, culture, history66, and possibly a territory. The people, in the view of Gyekye, would have to hold shared beliefs, cherish common social values and conceptions of “peace, harmony, stability, solidarity” and mutual reciprocities and sympathies (Gyekye, 1997, p. 65).

For the continuous survival and satisfactory functioning of any human society would largely depend on these and other related values. In fine, they would have to be a community, in the sense of sharing such essential communal or relational values, to undertake a meaningful project of self-governance at all.

If the preceding analysis is tenable, then there must be some justification to the claim that democracy may not only be compatible with communitarianism and, thus, thrive better in a communitarian context, as argued, but, more importantly that democracy would have to be founded on and practiced by the communitarian ethic that gives utmost moral recognition to the sustenance of community. For this approach therefore, democracy as people-centeredness would

66 See Miller’s note on myth-based history (1989, p. 243).

121 have to be understood as democracy as community-centeredness (Etzioni, 1996b; Bell, 1993). As

Gyekye puts it, “The communitarian ethos … should inspire and undergird a communal democracy” (Gyekye, 1997, pp. 293-94). In the opinion of Dewey (1927), democracy “is the idea of community life itself…. The clear consciousness of a communal life, in all of its implications, constitutes the idea of democracy” (pp. 148-149). But granted that this analysis gives an account of democracy as community-centeredness, it still remains to show what the scope and limit of community is in democracy defined as such. As well, what would it mean for democracy to be communitarian in character? At the same time there is the need to probe the value of community itself in democratic theory and practice for, community in democracy may only be worthwhile for the sake of the persons67 whose ends it ultimately seeks to guarantee, preserve, protect and enhance.

Thus, from another perspective, ‘the people’ in democracy as ‘the-people-centered’ system of rule could mean focusing on the individual person as the subject and object of democracy. For this thinking, the emphasis on ‘the-people’ in a democracy means making the individual person, his freedoms, dignity and intrinsic worth the emphasis of democracy as the people’s rule? In this case, the trailing question for the study would be whether a person could be meaningfully delineated as the subject and object of governance outside of community and, to what extent would individual liberties be guaranteed, preserved and promoted outside of such communal context.

However, such an individualist reading of democracy as people-centered may still not be defeated if the suggestion is that community in democracy is of value only insofar as it entails, or is tied to the person’s existence, self-understanding, meaningful recognition and expression of her

67 Not just ‘individuals’ but rather beings with both individual and communal dimensions all at once as discussed in chapter two. 122 rights and her freedoms.68 Besides, it would not be wrong to say that community is attained and maintained through persons’ individual commitment of creative attention and resource to their shared life and interrelatedness. Moreover, there could be some justification to the view that the community itself constitutes an entity of a sort and therefore is worth such a pride of place like any ordinary person. Yet the basic question remains whether it is defensible to talk meaningfully of the person as an individual as though communality were a detached dimension of her being.

Here again the communitarianism-individualism tension is seen in the question as to which, if either, more easily makes for democracy as a socio-political institution both in theory and practice. But the foregone analysis shows that democracy is neither solely individualistic nor solely communitarian because persons, who are its actual object, are necessarily both individual and communal. Therefore, the theorizing and practice of democracy is better served in its aims when approached from a personist perspective which necessarily incorporates individual and communal aspects of persons as composite beings.

4.2.3 “We the people”: a democratic preamble

The idea of democracy has a broader application or wider outlook: as a social ethic that guides or regulates people’s relationships with each other or as a political value that underlies systems and structures of political organizations such as states, nation-communities and polities.

But whether in reference to a social group, an academic or business organization, polis, state or nation, the discussion below applies. The focus here though is mainly the political context: democracy as a political institution in an organized political body and as a form of government.

The expression ‘we the people’ is a preamble that begins the constitutions, written and unwritten, of many nations and political collectives in today’s contemporary world: from nation-

68 See Kukathas’ liberal defense of collective rights (1992). 123 states like the Asante and Igbo kingdoms of Ghana and Nigeria respectively, through states, multinational states to poly-national political organizations like the United Nations.69 The declaration,

“we the people” is the opening phrase of the Preamble to the Constitutions of United States (1787),

Ghana (1992), India (1949), Ireland (1937), Russian federation (1993) among several others. This pronouncement is not an unreasoned ad hoc tag for a mere embellishment but is intended to stress the central idea of ‘the-people-centeredness’ underlying the democratic ideal; a notion that accounts largely for the attractiveness of democracy as a form of government whose victories for many a nation cannot be over-emphasized. The expression is intended to show that the contents of the said constitution derive from the mentioned collective as a body and it seeks to re-affirm the fundamental say members of the said collective have in applying the contents of the constitution to affect their lives and engender their wellbeing. Simply put, the expression “we the people” is supposed to show that the constitution reflects the collective will of the people mentioned.

However, this study agrees that it is the same valuable precept of people-centeredness that has regrettably been a bane to the effective institutionalization of democracy generally (Gyekye,

2013). One cannot contest the fact that democracy has gained wide accent and has been celebrated worldwide. Yet, paradoxically, not attaining a full grasp of the notion of people-centeredness and its concrete realization is one main underlying reason for most of the discontents associated with the notion by both adherents and non-adherents alike. First, in the context where a well-defined, unambiguous collective ‘we’ has been established the almost insurmountable hurdle of achieving true representation and its concomitant challenge of ensuring all-inclusiveness and participation

69 The Charter of the United Nations signed on 26 June 1945, in San Francisco, at the conclusion of the United Nations Conference on International Organization, and which came into force on 24 October 1945. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/docs/UNcharter.pdf (last consulted on July 14, 2020). 124 pertains. But second, more crucial and often overlooked, is the context where the discontent stems from members’ non-attachment to, or non-identification with, the state, nation or polity in question because that collective is forcibly composed or amalgamated into a ‘we’. When membership is compelled, democracy as ‘we the people’ is greatly undermined and rendered questionable.70

Put differently, the resilient nature of the problem of representation is clearly demonstrated in the fact that even where an unambiguous and well-defined collective ‘we’ who share a common sense of identity and sense of belonging together is established, the fundamental challenge of attaining true representation remains. The following section looks into the problem of representation and majoritarianism.

4.2.4 The problem of representation and majoritarianism

From its conception, democracy would have been best practiced without the mediation of representation. That is, all persons should be able to say or register their views directly, without intermediaries, in the decision-making process of self-government and on issues that affect their lives. Some early proponents of direct democracy maintain that this is the only form of decision- making which preserves people’s freedoms and personal autonomy71 for, it is reasonable to assume that none can proffer a person’s views, wishes and preferences in a way better than the rational and autonomous person herself who is directly affected by such decisions. And, if one of the chief goals of democracy is institutionalizing the freedoms that persons necessarily have and reinforcing the dignity, sovereignty, rationality and equality of all peoples as persons, then no defense no matter how well articulated could justifiably ground a relay of such sovereign right to another

70 Chapter 12 of Robert Dahl’s On democracy (1998) notes cultural diversity, among others, as a potential threat to modern democracies and advocates for some level of homogeneity as necessary for effective democratic decision-making. 71 See Grant’s discussion of Rousseau’s political ideas (Grant, 2003). 125 human person in the name of representation. This is more so if such transfer of sovereignty is to grant the receiving agent power to rule the giver, or presumably in her stead.

The idea of representation, therefore, harbors an inherent tension which ab-initio presents it as incompatible with the concept of democracy since it takes from the notion of ‘self-rule’ which this study underlines as fundamental to democracy in theory and practice. Yet, because of complexities of society and the ever-growing and varied population configuration, there seems to remain few and limited opportunities for the practice of direct democracy as a political virtue.

Again, humans may be assumed to be equal but the same cannot always be said of equality of intellectual depth on all public issues for all members. It is representation, it seems, that allows the governed to choose officials who, in their stead, engage an intense, thoughtful and sustained deliberation on complex issues of governance in a systematic manner that makes an extreme demand on time and effort which would mostly be impassable to many. In the same vein, representative democracy serves as the mechanism for mitigating, among others, disparities in economic and social status, dissimilarities in vocal assertiveness and incongruent political views on public decisions.

Thus, on the one hand, representative democracy would be conceived as a necessary tool for advancing an efficient, qualitative and ordered administration of institutionalized democratic governance yet, on the other hand, it should be deemed an unavoidable blight that has to be constantly mustered if the governance of the people by the people and for the people, definitive of democracy, can be achieved at all. For this reason, a democratic system would necessarily have to incorporate within itself an arrangement that ensures that the governed are truly represented in this sense; and, are able to constantly demand of their representatives to represent the true views and

126 positions of their electorates as much as the practical difficulty of gathering and collating of the wishes of all members of a polity, for instance, allows.72

Further, the concept of majoritarianism that characterizes democratic practice in various forms certainly flies in the face of democracy as a self-rule by the people. Democracy, essentially speaking, should not have been conducted by some of the people, majority, super-majority, or not.

However, like representation, majoritarianism has become inescapable because, in addition to the conditions that necessitate representation, there exist basic differences of individual choices, interests and wishes. Also, there is the practical difficulty of gathering and collating every individual wish or preference, and the self-evident impossibility of including every individual desire and preference in its detail into every public decision, supposing that the difficulty of gathering and collation could have been overcome. The concept of majoritarianism, thus, in principle admits of a limitation of the interests of at least some minority constituents and in most instances, effectively excludes to a greater degree their views, choices and wishes. Needless to say that, not even the requirement of a supermajority–two-thirds majority–method of reaching decisions demanded by the American democratic system, for instance, on certain crucial matters could be said to be completely immune to this inherent weakness of majoritarian ‘tyranny’.73 But

Anthony McGann (2004) argues that if all members are treated as free and equal under the rule of law,74 then majority rule helps to protect minority rights. In his view, majority rule encourages

72 See Wiredu’s emphasis on decisional representation and how he distinguishes that from nominal representation in chapter five of this thesis (1997). 73 It is worth asking, for instance, how much of a majority advantage could justifiably have been claimed by George Bush over Al Gore in US presidential elections of Nov. 2000 If the highly contested outcome of the elections pitched Bush at 0.5% ahead of his opponent against the background of evidential irregularities and allegations of electoral fraud which had to be finally settled by a perceived Republican-biased US Supreme Court verdict. 74 As maintained by Dahl (2001, pp. 3-17). 127 minority participation and compromise because there actually are few permanent losers in a majority rule since decisions can easily be overturned by another majority such as one constituted by a coalition of the minority with enough group members to achieve more than half of the total members’ approval. This, for McGann, fosters systemic stability as is evidenced in the

Netherlands, Austria, and Sweden for instance. Yet, Ben Saunders (2010) maintains that majority rule may not be of much help to most despised minorities.

4.3 Confronting the inherent challenges of democracy: inclusion and consensus pursuit

As it stands, the problem of representation and majoritarianism and their effects would be deeper and more pronounced in multi-national, multi-lingual and post-colonized contexts like

Africa, but in various forms also in other contexts. This raises fundamental questions about the meaningfulness of the expression ‘we the people’ underlined by the constitution of states calling themselves democracies. If it is true that rhetoric is one thing, but actually doing what is desired to attain true representation of the people’s will is another –i.e. working together in a bipartisan approach to attain the people’s goals and seeking to incorporate and integrate political minorities’ concerns into political decisions and policies– then one would not be far from correct in asserting that not even the touted ‘world democracies’ could be exempt from the inherent challenges of representation and majoritarianism even if at varying degrees.

Deliberate effort at inclusion, therefore, has become necessary for the meaningful and effective practice of democracy, especially in such contexts. Participation, bipartisanship, dialogue, deliberative accommodation, reciprocity, fair opportunity, and consensus method

(Gutmann & Thompson, 1996) have been emphasized as notions necessary for democracy. The section following gives attention to the notion of inclusion, as pivotal to the notion of ‘we the

128 people’, and how to improve upon it towards fulfilling the ideals of democracy, whether named communitarian or liberal.

4.3.1 The politics of inclusion

The politics of inclusion is the quest for processes and systems to achieve true representation for members of traditionally underrepresented groups such as minority opposition political parties, immigrant communities, women (Okin et al, 1999) and religious bodies, whose incorporation and influence in the making of political decisions, formulation of laws, and administration of programs remain structurally and centrally problematic and unequal (Mendel-

Reyes, 1999). The concern for inclusion, certainly not only for the disadvantaged, is an ideal that goes beyond the rhetoric of popular sovereignty and the routine formalism of ballot-box and/or majority-driven decisions which are erroneously taken to be solely definitive of a system being democratic. The politics of inclusion aims at ensuring that institutions and structures are effectively laid out to give persons a real avenue for meaningful participation, even if through mediating bodies that constitute their immediate and mediate communality such as their nation-communities, churches, political parties and the like.

The point is political debate and deliberation, characteristic of the democratic process, is more effective and fruitful if the debating bodies or groups are truly the people affected by the conclusions of the debate. On that account, the practical difficulty of assembling all the people to a common location to personally debate and make inputs directly into the process of decision- making should not preclude an intentional, structural and systematic effort at constantly granting that opportunity, at various levels, to the people to exercise their rights and responsibilities as best possible. For, in a democracy, people transfer their rights of self-sovereignty to others to govern in their stead, as prescribed and determined by the governed, for the mutual benefit of both

129 governor and governed.75 Such a system operates on the assumption that the sovereign rights are still owned and regulated by the governed who can re-claim such rights at any time if the supposed contract or agreement is not followed to the letter. If reference is made to the governed in the governance process so as to ensure that the governor, or representative in governance, is continually doing the bidding of the governed then democracy thrives.

But the question to ask is whether each voter can realize their individual desires and wishes amid the several and varied wishes and interests of the many persons within any collective, no matter how much localized the grouping is. Not even in the basic family-unit setting can each person expect to attain their will, preferences, and desires without a commensurate forfeiting of that of another. Competing needs, interests and wishes are therefore inevitable at all levels of intersubjectivity even for a person herself. This then necessitates the need for deliberation, debate and reasoned compromise to help delineate the complex private and public issues in a thoughtful and systematic manner to arrive at policy decisions that are acceptable to, even if not necessarily endorsed by, all the people or, at least, models their various wishes and expectations (Waldron,

1999, p. 206).

In Democracy and Disagreement, Gutmann & Thompson (1996) argue that an effective democratic procedure, therefore, does not focus on eliminating fundamental moral disagreements which are after all inescapable but seeks to narrow the scope of disagreement by open dialogue on them and living with those that remain. They hold the view that moral disagreements on public policy should be openly discussed by the disagreeing parties based on the principles of reciprocity, deliberative accommodation, and fair opportunity. The authors maintain that the disagreeing parties ought to continue to engage in conversation together to reach mutually acceptable

75 Recall my discussion of self-rule in chapter three. 130 decisions, rather than resort to power politics or interest-group bargaining. These, according to the authors , are conditions based on the guidelines of basic liberty and fair opportunity which are needed to manage moral conflict in socio-political life; conflict that is bound to arise because of diversity in the conception of the good and our incomplete human understanding, as well as scarcity and limited generosity.

4.3.2 Pursuing consensual politics

The inevitable competing interests, almost unavoidable conflicting positions and consequent dispute situations also require that consensus pursuit is underlined as basic to the very worthwhile values of dialogue and deliberation necessary for democracy both as a form, and a valuable tool, of governance. If the virtues of openness to criticism, reciprocity, fellow-feeling, solidarity and mutual recognition of the views and interests of others are systematically adhered to, and the ineluctable hurdles of partisanship and its accompanying dissatisfaction and rancor in democracies everywhere, though at various degrees, are tempered with a consensual approach, itself aimed at reaching a consensus, then political decisions, public and private, made by “we the people” would have an inclusive outlook, and democracy would live up to its valued expectations

(Gutmann & Thompson, 1996; Gyekye, 2013). In other words, in the face of competing interests, conflicting positions and almost unavoidable dispute situations embedded in democracy practice, the need for consensus search would have to be underlined as a necessary virtue of democracy

(Gyekye, 2013, p. 244).

The consensual method of practicing democracy, namely seeking for solutions together, itself presupposes, and is achievable, in the context of common identities of interests and aspirations of the collective in question–group, assembly, society, nation-community, state, nation-state, continent or globe. It is predicated on the belief in shared values and principles, and

131 common aims, purposes, and goals. Since the notion of communality embodies a sense of common and shared values, goals and interests required by the consensus procedure of democratic decisions, the need for communality assumes a necessary role for the effective pursuit of consensual decision and action. Consensual decision-making, then, would require a certain sense of communality–shared life–as a precondition for viability. The next chapter gives some attention to the practice of consensual democracy from a traditional African perspective.

Besides improving accountability and justice, making consensus pursuit central to democratic deliberations improves cooperation and the quality of decisions made since deliberators are given the opportunity to criticize the decisions, consider its justifications and modify it where possible to suit the very people. Discussions from such deliberation are likely to enhance the legitimacy of the policy and increase degree of member compliance. Consensual deliberation also makes relevant resources and information available to improve methods and strategies of decision implementation for the very people - both the ruling and the ruled (Fung,

2003). This is what gives meaning to democracy as the-people-centered system of politics.

However, besides the near impossibility of attaining absolute consensus on most issues and the difficulty of consensus formation itself, the process of deliberation could also be hamstrung by prolonged meetings and delays. Consensual democratic decisions could have the tendency of being tedious, overly controlled by claimed experts of an issue under discussion or even paternalistic if unchecked. Fung (2003), for instance, urges that efforts at deliberation and public engagement which aim at at once enhancing participation, creating deliberative democracy, improving civic engagement and making government more accountable, would obfuscate the various and multidimensional elements of the practice of public deliberation. So, Fung advocates that deliberate institutional design choices such as emphasizing political education, social solidarity,

132 political critique, or popular control for specific grouping rather than ‘taken-for-granted’ habits would make better contributions to democratic governance.

For this study however, the more worthwhile values of extensive deliberation in consensual democracy, persuasive stance, mutual exchanges of ideas and a posture of tolerance and compromise that yields true inclusiveness, far outweighs the presumed advantage of perfunctory political decisions which mostly would not include or reflect the interests, proposals or preferences of the minority in real terms. Its less-swift decisiveness could rather be viewed as a value that makes for the integration of all interests, as much as possible, in a collectively regulated manner; an approach which encourages real collaboration and commitment of all involved in the decision- making process (Hendriks, 2010). This posture is most valuable in the context of post-colonized multilingual and multinational imposed state situations. And if democracy is a government based on the supremacy of the will of the people, not majority or most, then consensual inclusive politics with a communal character is the way to go in such contexts especially.

If the above discussions are valid, then consensual decision-making would be more effective if it begins at a localized level where members, with mutual understanding, can be said to share more common interests, outlooks, aims or goals; where members are more likely to have more common needs, goals and expectations; where members are more likely to identify as a community of people with closer ties, fraternal76 or not, not merely an association of people who are compelled to belong to a whole, the greater part of whose interests might not coincide in concrete and significant respects. Pursuing consensus against the background of such compelled

76 Mutz (2006) however argues that deliberation aimed at consensus in politics works best in formalized political settings. She opines that fraternal ties encourage groups following. But the view here is that the case would be different in contexts where politics and political structures are themselves built on presumed fraternal ties such as ancestry, royal lineage, blood-line rule, family/nation community politics. 133 membership undermines the sense of ‘we’ necessary for effective dialogue or deliberation. For, the fundamental presuppositions of respect for human dignity, autonomy, freedoms, and rights, on whose bases any such deliberations and consequent outcomes are grounded, would have been undermined from the onset. And therefore, there would seem to remain little strand of common grounds for actual, genuine and productive formal organization or strong institutional measures, which are equally necessary, for deliberation. The search for consensus in democracy, which could not be a mere desirable goal, as argued, but necessary for democracy to be really democratic, would thus be more fruitful where a viable sense of affectedness–communality– exists (Bellah,

1995-96).

So far, it has been argued that the view that consensual democracy is only well-grounded within a communal socio-political context derives its strength from the very conception of democracy as the peoples’ rule of themselves. The point of emphasis has been that true democracy–consensus-based democracy–takes off with an unambiguous and un-obfuscated acknowledgement of the people who own or create the rules for their own self-governance. As such, at any point in time it calls for a clearly defined referent collective, with clearly defined scope of membership underscored by essential and common outlooks, interests, goals, and aspirations which need not be fraternal. This approach may give some credence to the view that democracy should be conceived in parallel terms of African, Western or Greek democracy, akin to the parallelism that pertains to African, Western, and Greek Philosophies for instance (Eboh,1997, p.

163). But, inasmuch as this study agrees to such an intuition, the immediate community(s) of people should rather be the focus of democratic institutionalism, even if only as the starting point of democratic governance. Community should be envisioned as at once a complementary notion and a continuum whose basic unit could be likened, in a sense, to the African nation-community.

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As and when the common ties, mutual understanding, fellow-feeling among various collectives, as a matter of inevitability, widen, interrelate and deepen, the scope of the defined people also widens to make it possible and meaningful to even talk of a global democratic community, although this project is to be gradual and self-evolved, not coerced.

Thus, democracy would need to be systematically and structurally conceptualized and laid- out, and its governance modeled on a form of consensus search propelled by a conception of a true sense of institutionalized community which aims, ultimately, at benefiting the constitutive persons themselves – their rights, interests and wishes. This need is much more felt in compelled- membership situations characteristic of states, constituted by multiethnic and multilingual nations, with a history of, or an association with, colonialism. Typical examples of such situations are found in the contemporary states of Africa which this study focuses on. The irony is that traditional

Africa, its peoples and their socio-political cultural meanings, experiences and systems, to a great extent, could be said to have exuded such a sense of community and the need for consensus formation both as a socio-cultural ethic and a political virtue which to a large extent translated into governance.77 But post-colonial African politics has struggled with the new forms of political organization bequeath to it by colonial statism and thus, has less to show for meaningful consensual democracy.

However, if person’s natural sociality or relatedness is anything to go by, then a viable democracy for a nation could not be built firmly on a system whose actual social meanings are yet to be fully grasped by the people. The African is no exception to this basic conception of a person as both an individual and a socio-communal self; a self who is formed only within community,

77 I discuss this subject matter in chapter five of this study. 135 itself generated from the interaction of selves and their “significant others”78 and therefore, the type of individuality that is achieved in community would itself be dependent on the type of community generated by the self and vice-versa. If this picture of persons as intersubjective and interrelated selves, already discussed in earlier chapters, is hard to contest, then the viable system of democracy that would thrive in the African setting would have to be the one derived, built and sustained by the African’s self-created social meanings – pre or post-colonial – experiences.

4.3.3 The way forward

For this study, therefore, it is more basic to ensure first that the conception and practice of democracy is predicated on the existence of a collective whose members conceive of themselves and identify themselves as belonging together as a collective ‘we’, not compelled from within or without to belong together. This is especially so in post-colonial Africa where the creation of most states comes nowhere near the idea of consent. As a result, a post-colonial African state is typically composed of various nations within forged states where members have been compelled to belong together and identify as one people by the whip of the colonial ‘master’ under the rulership of the single scepter designated as the state.79

Such artificially80 compelled nation-state membership is another aberration of the fundamental understanding of democracy as a system aimed at protecting and preserving the

78 See Mead (1967) and Sullivan & Mullahy (1947). 79 In Ghana for instance the false partitioning of Africa by the colonialist has separated Ewes in Ghana from those of Togo, the Nzema of Ghana from those of Cote D’Ivoire, etc. The same phenomenon pertains in Nigeria where the Hausas of Nigeria have been separated by a thin line by the colonialist whip. The consequences of this single act are still felt today. 80 Notice that such imposition would not be the same as one’s given communality which is itself also not chosen. Yet whereas I would not be able to meaningfully detach myself easily from my given communality such as the parents and family I am born to, the cultural traditions I am raised in and my history since these are compulsorily part of the givenness of my being (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 221), the same cannot be said of an artificially imposed sense of identity determined by 136 people’s autonomy and dignity as persons with individual freedoms to belong where they choose.

Without such sense of belonging or attachment to the collective that describes itself as the ‘we’, one could not correctly describe the views, preferences, and prescriptions of that constitution as the people’s will and thus a democracy. If membership is compelled or imposed, then no matter the effort at the politics of inclusion and participation which, as discussed, has become necessary to democracy, the worthwhile prospects of democracy might continue to fail in such contexts especially. Members of such forged compelled states might not consider themselves a part of the colonialist’s created whole and consequently, the sense of attachment necessary for thinking in terms of national integrity and cohesion, solidarity, fellow feeling among others would adversely be affected. Rather people’s allegiances would remain with their ethnic or tribal groups, which they consider to be naturally given and so feel an emotional and a psychological sense of belonging to, even if such claimed belonging may often not be historically or logically justified.81 The latent questions would still remain: which people, whose rule, what democracy?

Besides, the very necessary democratic values of openness to criticism, compromise, tolerance, consensus pursuit, reciprocities, and sympathy for the views of other members in decision-making would be immensely undermined if members have been compelled to belong together. This concern, in its various forms, is a fundamental discontent that undermines democracy especially in post-colonized contexts: largely artificial nation-states created out of compulsion by colonial rulers who assumed, wrongly, that they could create Ghanaians, for instance, from a creation of a territory called Ghana. As I see it, this same error that eliminates

a colonial other in the search for her own colonial ends while disregarding people’s sense of belonging, dignity, autonomy or will. 81 Just as it cannot be expected that a German, for instance, would easily be made to think of herself as being English just because the world is considered a global village; worse still when this switch in the sense of identity is instigated by the colonialist’s whip. 137 respect for persons’ autonomy and dignity as members of nation-communities resonates to a large extent in the general socio-political order.82 The imposition of state-membership is a basic challenge, often overlooked, to the effective practice of democracy everywhere, but worse still in post-colonized African contexts.

There is therefore the need to confront this concern seriously; to take another look at the current artificially created multi-national states and re-think of governance in two ways: either to make conscious efforts to pursue the herculean task of forging a unity from the diverse constituent nations in the artificially created states so as to hopefully attract allegiance from the members of constituent nations to the artificially-created whole, even if unjust, or to take the bold step at decolonizing the current artificial colonial state and its structures.

That is, in my view, only two options remain in the theorizing and practice of democracy for states with a history of such compulsion in its various forms. The choice, on the one hand, of seeking to protect the integrity of such an artificial state, even if that would be tantamount to a perpetuation of an already unjust situation, by consciously eliminating members’ allegiance from constituent nations to favor dominant constituent nations where possible. This might mean creating citizens, not human persons with natural social attachments, who are molded along a single model individual, according to Rousseau (cited in Canovan, 1983); citizens whose loyalty would compulsorily have to be directed by the state to itself, being an artificial entity, through the creation of a “unitary space that enacts a single system of social interaction, or society” (Cavanaugh, 2011, p. 30) just to ensure its own continuous survival. On the other hand, it is still open for choice a rejection of the perpetuation of what is no less an injustice entailed in contemporary political discourse which solely aims at how to build a more stable and just state, only by subordinating and

82 Refer to Nkrumah’s view on what he calls neo-colonialism (1966).

138 unifying the disparate nations within its bounds. As Cavanaugh rightly points out, the ‘state grew by absorbing the rights and responsibility of this plurality of social groups’ (2011, p. 26).

Rather, this other option advocates for granting true liberation to persons who have collectively suffered an abrupt suppression or destruction of their already functioning societies.

An attempt at reparation would, therefore, call for a de-statization83 outlook of governance at all levels to correct their damaged, transformed or obliterated forms of life and sense of identity which underscores the natural sociality of all human persons and which fosters respect for the freedoms and rights of the person.

It should be stated that these options may hold in varied forms for many post-colonized compelled states of Africa. While some states like Ghana and Botswana have continually worked at responding to the colonial heritage differently, Ghana continues to have its fair share of the inherent challenge of the colonial heritage. Botswana may be hailed as Africa’s best democracy in recent times since it has successfully held multi-party elections since independence in 1966.

However, Botswana’s relatively smaller population size is largely ethnically homogeneous compared to the several multi-national and tribal constituents of a large part of colonized Africa.

This means it will not be a good example of the compelled states inherited from colonialism which is under scrutiny. The peculiar circumstances of Botswana perhaps make its democracy yet to be tested by a strong opposition since a single party, evolved by the people from their traditions of chieftaincy, has ruled since the colonial regime ended.84 Botswana’s first post-colonial president

83 The argument need not mean a total breakdown of state structures. The point being made is that emphasizing membership in constituent nations is rather a better means to creating and strengthening a ‘self-evolved’ multinational state that the members of constituent nations can identify with and own. 84 Including a grandfather during the pre-colonial era, a father and a son during the post-colonial era. (See, ‘Sir Seretse Khama’ in Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Seretse-Khama [last consulted June 28, 2020]). 139

Seretse Khama, grandson of Khama III the Good, only succeeded his father to the chiefship of his people at a tender age. His own son Ian Khama also became president of Botswana in 2008 after

Seretse Khama’s successive terms. One may therefore exercise reservation in attributing the positive story of Botswana since independence to a successful development of the Western colonial model by its “decent leaders”. It would rather seem more defensible to argue that the people’s homogeneity, coupled with their sense of belonging with the rulers, and their adaptation of the imposed system of rule may be better reasons for the hailed successes of Botswana.

From the foregoing discussions, one may draw the wrong conclusion that democracy then is not the appropriate system for political organization for such contexts in the face of the challenges implicit in its governance and the fundamental injustices concealed in the current postulation of a sovereign state: injustices, chiefly, against the colonized nation-communities but also to a certain extent the general populace of the colonizing states themselves. Yet one cannot stress enough that with all its faults, varied inadequacies and consequent domineering tendencies, democracy, properly understood and practiced as ‘self-rule’, remains a better alternative for socio- political organization and governance. Alternative systems of government such as autocracy and oligarchy betray worse inadequacies that render them less worthy of consideration if the people’s self-rule is the expected end. It is only a properly conceived socio-political democratic system that would allow for mutual self-expression, mutual recognition, respect for dialogue and consensus search, a sense of cohesion and solidarity necessary for the emergence of a genuine sense of ‘we’ which is itself necessary for meaningful self-rule at any level and in any context.

However, the demand these challenges make on its adherents is a re-think of democracy as a work in progress, conducted by the people –a defined collective at any point in time whose

140 constituents identify themselves as such–to whom this work affects and thus requires a constant attention towards restructure and re-form by the people as and when the social and political demands of the said people emerge. That is, the central role that any collective people must play in self-determination is what is to be fully appreciated, defended, instituted, and pursued for that system to be properly labeled as a democracy.

Yet, this claim would not have to be an argument in defense of the kind of relativism that denies the possibility of an objective outlook to democratic practice. This is because democracy starts from the assumption that all members of the political community are free, equal, and mutually engaged in a project of pursuing their wellbeing as a collective. The essential universality of certain fundamental human values then, as Gyekye (2004) argues, cannot be denied to the extent that organized and functioning human societies exist. Distinguishing ‘essential universalism’ from

‘contingent universalism’, Gyekye (1997) argues that values such as respect for human life, prohibition of lying and elimination of suffering are intrinsically universal and therefore, cherished by human society everywhere. Unlike ‘contingently universal’ values which depend on functionality, historical significance, or relevance for its universality, ‘essentially universal’ values are intrinsic to the very existence of every human society. As he argues, should any society permit and endorse the ‘value’ of indiscriminate killing, and embrace or encourage acts that are self- destructive, that society would cease to exist (pp. 32-33). So, his point is, the very existence of human society anywhere presupposes that that society cherishes and recognizes certain intrinsic human values such as the dignity of human life, regardless of the obvious and very important differences in expression of these values that must be appreciated. The intrinsic values could serve as the philosophical basis for looking beyond the boundaries that seem to divide (Gyekye, 2004).

And, Wiredu (1996) agrees with Gyekye on the conclusion that universal, objective rights are

141 possible and meaningful even if such rights start of, or emerge, from community-based democratic engagements.

Consequently, the emphasis on the ‘we’ should not lead to a denial or denigration of the rights and freedoms – individuality – of the persons constituting such collectives in the name of improving or pursuing the democratic ideal for, that would amount to a contradiction in terms.

Rather, the conclusion one could immediately deduce from the foregoing is that democratic practice has a general universal outlook in terms of its underlying principles of preserving individual freedoms and advancing human rights, but its actual and concrete practice would have varied forms depending on the ‘we’ who identify themselves as such at any point in time. Such difference in form then should not make that system any less a democracy insofar as it does not entail a denigration of the fundamental and undeniable human rights and freedoms of the constitutive persons.

The relativism that should be appreciated and admitted by the democracy discourse, therefore, is the one that recognizes and embraces the interaction between various individualities and communalities at any point in time and, accommodates various levels of ‘we’ who consider their composite self as belonging together as a historical, geographical, linguistic or national group in the decision-making process of ‘self-rule’.

4.4 The compelled state and democratic self-rule

This final section examines the origins and conceptual foundations of the compelled state in relation to conquest, colonialism, and empire creation. It seeks to show why the state’s rule, as it stands, has an undermined legitimacy. The case here is that the state’s rule, like that of any social organization, would only be a genuine ‘self-rule’ and therefore a legitimate democracy if its members actually own its rule.

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4.4.1 Examining the state as an encorporated ‘self’ and its interests

A general view of the state which has gained currency in contemporary political thought is one that presents it as a form of political association to which the constituent people(s) belong, owe allegiance and obedience and regard as embodying their collective will, or acting for their common good through institutional agents empowered to do so by its citizens. The underlying assumption for this thinking is that states so empowered are capable and well-advised to serve, and actually do serve, the interests of their populations even when they are found beyond the state’s boundaries in certain contexts.

Understanding the state in such terms cannot mean a mere collectivity of persons or groups of persons but something more. In the view of Martin Van Creveld (1999), the state emerged because of the limitations of the innumerable forms of political organization that existed before it

(pp. 52-8) such as clans, tribes and dynasties and their chiefs, lords and kings respectively. The literature of contemporary political theory thus recognizes the state as a corporate entity: a unified

‘self’ different in significant respects from those forms of political association that preceded it in

Africa, for instance (Kukathas, 2008).

The state today is conceived as a corporate entity, a legal person, with its own interests fundamental to which are self-preservation and survival (Creveld, 1999, p. 1). As a legal person, unlike a people or a public, the state has a capacity not only to act “as if it were a real, flesh-and- blood, living” (p. 1) being, but can also be held responsible for its actions and inactions. It is seen as an entity able to hold property, have rights and duties, powers and liabilities that belong to itself and not to any of the actual persons who comprise it, nor are these rights and duties reducible to these persons. This is so even though as a corporation; it cannot exist without the concrete persons who constitute it. Like a university whose property cannot be said to belong to any of the human

143 officials who run it, Creveld argues that the modern state’s property, raised by levying of taxes, imposition of tariffs and the like, cannot be said to belong to any of the actual persons who exercise authority in the name of the corporate entity. So, even though the state as an abstract corporate entity can neither be seen, heard, nor touched, it owns accrued property which it cannot use on itself but only has a sole responsibility of redistributing among its agents through whom it exercises power and among others whom the agency is able or obliged to favor.

The state as a single abstract sovereign entity, for Hobbes, is necessary to preserve order, peace and stability in the face of challenges to peace posed by, among other things, other political associations he describes as in the ‘state of war’. But a single abstract sovereign entity, as I see it, need not be necessary to serving peace and order. Beside the fact that the state, such conceived, sometimes acts in ways that rather destructs the peace and order of its indigenous populations, there is empirical evidence to show that peace and order prevailed in societies that had no unified state apparatus such as the Tallensi of Ghana (Wiredu, 1999, p.1) and some Igbo states of pre- colonial Nigeria, where there were no kings or presidents but an older member of a clan represented his people in the elders’ council (Obioma, 2017). Among the Berti of Sudan, for instance, maintaining the peace among one’s own family or national group was central to becoming a “talking chief”. They held that one who is not able to strengthen his own cattle-pen should not seek to strengthen that of his neighbor (Holy, 1974, p. 121). Political associations have existed and thrived prior to the conception of state as a single abstract corporate entity.

Not only has order existed without the state such conceived, but Hobbes’ postulation of a voluntary agreement to transfer power to a sovereign corporate agent in a Hobbesian ‘state of war’ social context could not be possible if the ‘state of war’ per his own argument was not conducive to making or keeping agreements. But since it is possible to make and keep agreements even in

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Hobbes’ own ‘state of war’ social context, then a non-unitary government system should be conceivable, viable and effective to the maintenance of peace and order especially in the context of a plurality of nation-communities such as prevails in Africa.

On Rousseau’s view, from another perspective, the state as a corporate unitary entity is formed to enhance humans’ natural freedom by making it possible for us to be subject not to others but to ourselves through the laws we legislate for ourselves as embodied in what he calls the general will. In other words, by Rousseau’s thinking all subjects of the state are free when governed by laws that reflect the general will. But here again, an identifiable challenge is that if subjects have different competing and conflicting interests and some can prevail only at the expense of others, then the claimed freedom served by the state would only be an illusion for some because at least some subjects’ interests would be subordinated to that of others. The deciding factor(s) in most instances would favor the one who holds the reins of power. The corporate state then might only serve interests of persons who have managed to capture it for their own purposes. This concern is stressed by Karl Marx in whose view the modern sovereign state is rather a vehicle for propagating class divisions, especially the interests of the ruling class. If this concern has any merits, then the claim that the corporate state is necessary for serving freedom to its subjects and curtailing imbalance in status, class, among others, in a better way than the political associations preceding it, may also not be wholly plausible after all. It may rather be a tool used by some agents to deprive at least some subjects under its corporation the very freedom it claims to enhance. This seems largely so for post-colonial Africa where most of its states are not self-evolved by their subjects but are forcibly created by colonial rulers, and their systems and institutions imposed on the colonized people(s) only to meet the set ends of the inventors of those states.

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Yet, arguing from the unquestioned assumption that the imposed state offers cultural, economic, political and ethical advantage over the forms of political associations that preceded it, the incorporation of persons or nation-groups into the larger single corporate state has become the dominant concern and preoccupation of contemporary political thought generally. As such, arguments aimed at correcting the injustices of colonialism and the consequent empires created rather inadvertently end up actually offering a justification for them.85 This complaint is legitimate if advocates rather argue for a suppression of local and particular nationalities and identities to ensure the integrity of the created states or colonies by appealing to the same considerations that motivated colony and empire builders. The undesirable consequences of a blind defense of a unitary state is not far to see in multinational and multicultural Africa where most of the created post-colonial states to a large degree can be, in the words of Herder, said to be patched up contraptions or fragile machines which are wholly devoid of inner life (1965, p. 324.).

The point of concern for these contexts is that little to no attention is given to the palpable incongruence that arises between the interests of the imposed single sovereign abstract entity and its varied populations. The consequences of such disregard have been detrimental, especially in the various instances where the project has been encorporation and not simply incorporation of persons or groups into the corporate state. The difference between the two challenges, as I see it, is that whereas incorporation entails one thing including or becoming a part of the other, encorporation depicts the forceful bringing into existence of a wholly new condition or thing. The quest to incorporate nations in Africa into a whole is itself a herculean one given the diversity and variety of the sense of nationhood and communality defining persons in such a context. It would

85 See Kymlicka’s defense of multiculturalism in his Multicultural Citizenship (1995) for instance. 146 have to be non-coerced and gradual not imposed and abrupt. But to seek to create states by a crack of the whip and demand that nations are encorporated into defined boundaries, not only incorporated into constituent nations to form nation-states, as happened in Ghana, Nigeria and other states of Africa during the scramble for Africa, is one main source of distrust in the relationship between the people(s) and the ruling agents of post-colonial African states. This undermines the people’s sense of ownership of governance and that needs to be confronted more directly. For, the argument for the being of the encorporated, and encorporating, states bear significant resemblance with that of empire and therefore, to the extent that the case for empire creation is questionable, so and even more is the case in defense of state as an encorporation.

4.4.2 The parallelism in the defense of empire and the encorporated state86

Contemporary defenders of conquest and empire creation argue that empire brought modernity, which is an unquestionably good thing, to the people under its sovereignty (Lal, 2004;

Ferguson, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2011). According to Deepak Lal, for instance, the “purpose of the

American imperium… should be as it was for the British in the nineteenth century, to promote that globalization which leads to modernity” (Lal, 2004, p. 66) since for him, “the dominant international system in world history has been hegemonic and imperial rather than anarchic” 87

Arguing along same lines, Niall Ferguson advocates for imperial rule at both domestic and international level. What is not clear in their argument, however, is whether they agree on who or what is to exercise imperial rule and what kind of imperial rule is desirable. But both enthusiasts

86 This section is inspired by a conference paper on Global Justice organized by the Government Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) London, between 6th and 8th July 2012 delivered by Prof. Chandran Kukathas which challenges the state and any form of institutionalism. 87 Lal argues along the lines of Doyle (1986, p. 40), in distinguishing imperialism from hegemony, by noting (p. 4) that empires control both the foreign and domestic policy of their allies or supplicants, while hegemons control only their foreign policy. 147 of empire maintain that it brought modernity to the conquered, and modernity couched in economic, cultural, political, and ethical terms is a good thing.

Ferguson, in defense of empire, contends that “Colonial governments balanced their budgets, kept tariffs low and maintained stable currencies. The rule of law was institutionalized.

Administration was relatively free of corruption, especially at the top. Power was granted to representative assemblies only gradually once economic and social development had reached a level judged to be propitious” (Ferguson, 2004, p. 198). The collective effect of the foregoing, he urges, is the transfer of wealth, at a relatively cheaper cost than the independent countries could have afforded, in the form of capital and technology to the supposed poor countries. With such line of analysis, he would regard even the countries that remained considerably poor under colonial administration as better off under colonial rule than they would have been under alternative regimes (p. 198). Lal’s reasoning path is not distinct from Ferguson’s when he asserts that “By creating order over a large economic space, empires have inevitably generated Smithian intensive growth” (Lal, 2004, p. 43).

In cultural terms, defenders of empire, like state, argue that the complex economic modernity required a conducive cultural setting to make its activity possible and therefore empire, goes the argument, also laid the foundations for transferring ‘civilization’ cheaply to the

‘uncivilized’ cultures. In the view of Ferguson, it is the “Western-style aspirations for political freedom” (Ferguson, 2002, p. 308) which emerged from empire that led to the propagation of rule of law, rights of contract, private property, stable and non-corrupt governments among other socio- cultural institutions. This, to him, brought progress and prosperity to the world at large but chiefly to the claimed backward societies, who as it were, could not have easily achieved such a feat unaided (Mill, 1972, p. 73).

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Therefore, the supposed political advantage of empire, and therefore state, over earlier forms of community or social organization, with all of its claimed “non venal” – “sins of omission, not commission” (Ferguson, 2002, p. 307), is peace: first, within the community, nation, nation- state or territory that is otherwise unable to govern itself and thus whose internal peace is threatened; and second, to preserve worldwide peace and security by overpowering and occupying threatening states, nations or territories (Boot, 2002; Purdy, 2003). The suggestion in both contexts is that if nations subject to, or are forcibly subjected to, the control of the government or ruler of another particular nation, country or territory then peace is sustained.

For the ethical justification, proponents stress the value of liberty for all human beings as the central benefit whose cause is promoted by empire. Robert Kagan (1998), for instance, argues to the effect that sustained human freedom may require the machinery of empire, or at least a benevolent hegemony to thrive continually since a powerful empire, to him, would be better placed to intercept an oppressive regime, cease power and return it to the people. That is, even if “no one wants imperialism to win, no one in his right mind can want liberty to fail either” (Ignatieff, 2005).

The state as an encorporation is perceived to be the appropriate agent of progress such that without it, the argument is, we can have neither prosperity, nor culture, nor peace, nor freedom.88

The comparison between state, most African colonial states in this instance, and empire is not unjustifiable because both have histories marked by important similarities: the suppression of local or indigenous traditions (Abudu, 2012, p. 1045), the systematic expropriation of property,

88 As Hobbes (1969, p. 65) argues: ‘In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ 149 the elevation of political elites beyond the reach of the law and the exercise of murderous violence depending on which political theorist one reads. The dominant narrative from contemporary liberal theorists is that the colonial state was a solution to sectarian violence which was rampant in multi- ethnic precolonial Africa just as early modern Europe was a continent wracked by religious sectarian wars until the emergence of the secular state which consolidated and unified the many jurisdictions under the sovereign authority of the unified state (Rawls, 1996). However, things might look different when one turns to some modern historical analyses, Charles Tilly’s for instance, which argue that the modern state was not so much a solution to the problem of violence as the source of that violence. Tilly (1975) argues that state-building required, most importantly, a war-making capacity learned and secured by state-builders as they extracted resources from unwilling populations and built administrative structures to secure those gains. It was, for him, an art that deployed violence with increasing ferocity to subjugate recalcitrant populations, or particularly, the local elites of nation-communities, towns and cities. For Michael Howard, “the entire apparatus of the state primarily came into being to enable princes to wage war” (Howard,

2000, p. 15).89

But the point of critical importance for this study is that the creation of both state and empire in these contexts involved the forcible suppression, absorption or destruction of already functioning societies and their self-evolved systems of law, institutions of learning and forms of civil life. These forms of life, for most of post-colonial Africa, have been damaged, transformed or obliterated, and replaced by new structures of the colonialist state that in most cases fit awkwardly because the peoples’ traditions hardly recognize or understand them (Abudu, 2012).

89 This view is supported by Tilly (1975) and a variety of scholars. Also, see Cavanaugh (2009, pp. 162-164) for a survey research on this. 150

That phenomenon already undermines democracy as the people’s rule, for the people and by the people. The thought that the state and its imperial rule fostered economic growth in its colonies is, at best, overstated. The entire colonial apparatus in Africa, it has been argued, was rather engineered to grow imperialist economies through the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the carving up of Africa in 1886 after over three centuries of plundering that continent (Lauer & Anyidoho,

2012). To claim that imperial states civilized hitherto savage, barbaric, or unsophisticated societies is only “a substantial alibi which accompanied the equally squalid lie that” (Lauer & Anyidoho,

2012, p. 1037) there was the need to carry the art of government to the “inferior” races of distant lands. If one considers the bloodiness of wars of resistance waged by indigenous populations and the history of subjugation of local elites and populations by colonial rulers, (Kukathas, 2005) one is likely to be unconvinced that an imposed unitary state established peace and freedom.

4.4.3 Towards genuine self-rule in an encorporated state

Subjects of many post-colonial states, in Africa especially, are still grappling with the challenge of addressing the colonial legacy of encorporated states and how to treat constituent nation-groups in such already pluralist societies. Advocates of multiculturalism acknowledge the need to recognize the claims of minorities for recognition by, or protection from, society in such states (Kymlicka, 1995; Kukathas, 2013). Most of the debates about multiculturalism in political philosophy are thus focused on the extent to which such claims should be accepted, and how far recognition should be extended. Kymlicka, in an important distinction he draws between groups’ claims for external protections and their claims for internal restrictions, helps draw out the central issue in the multiculturalism debate. The advocacy is that in dealing with the claims of minority cultural groups of the encorporated colonial states, the state should protect groups from undesirable interferences from outside society by ensuring that they have the means for cultural survival, but

151 not by tolerating any group’s efforts to control or restrict the freedom and equality of its members.

So, for an African state like Ghana for instance, the advocacy is to give equal recognition to constituent nation-groups like Asante, Ga or Anlo but at the same time not to tolerate Asantes’ efforts to control or restrict the freedoms and equality of their fellow Asantes.

A fundamental problem identifiable with most of the theories of multiculturalism however is that, for all their concern for the well-being of the minorities they champion, the theories are grounded in a commitment to the interests of the corporate abstract unitary entity called state.

Such a commitment, I seek to suggest, makes it difficult to pursue or sustain any genuinely pluralistic social organization, purportedly advocated for by multiculturalists, since the test of every measure is whether it harms – or fails to enhance – the interests of the supposed neutral entity called the state. The negative consequences of this difficulty are well-felt in post-colonial

African politics.

As earlier argued, the contemporary state, in sum, seems to be a created ‘unitary space that enacts a single system of social interaction, or society’, and which requires that every type of social transaction pass through its organs (Cavanaugh, 2011, p. 30). The African state today has evolved to the point of subsuming and absorbing every aspect of society under its single authority since contemporary political thought takes it for granted that it has the right “to a monopoly of all the force within the community, to make war, to make peace, to conscript life, to tax, to establish and dis-establish property, to define crime, to punish disobedience, to control education, to supervise the family, to regulate personal habits, and to censor opinions” (p. 28). The problem with the creation of such a unitary structure, however, is that it makes diversity or deep pluralism, such as characterizes multi-national and multi-ethnic contexts like Africa especially, near-impossible. For, the limits of diversity – cultural, religious, or ethical – is set by the need to preserve the integrity

152 of the state as a single ethical and political unit and, therefore, the diversity of constituent nation- groups, especially the minority, may be recognized and regarded as worthy of consideration but yet cannot be given any independent weight because there is no space for such perspectives.

To further defend the point, a unitary state cannot be limited since there would be no forces to compete with it. As the people develop a direct relationship with the state their reliance on other forms of association diminishes and those associations, and all it means to their being, wither away.

On the other hand, to the extent that those associations resist the centralizing and absorptive tendencies of state life, they incur the hostility of the state, which cannot by its nature tolerate the threat that pluralism poses to its existence. This seems to be the point of the pluralists who maintained that a limited state could only exist ‘where social space was complexly refracted into a network of associations, that is, where associations were not “intermediate associations,” squeezed between state and individual, at all’ (Cavanaugh, 2011, p. 32). If diversity or pluralism then is seen as a threat to the survival of the unitary state as argued, then the only options available to the state, as conceived, are either eliminating non-conforming/dissenting groups or absorbing them by regulating and transforming them into components of the whole. It is important to understand that the negative effects of such transformative oppression do not affect only social institutions but also impact negatively on individual psychologies.

This tendency was noticed early by Rousseau who understood that the survival of the state depended on its creation of citizens – persons whose first loyalty was to it – not men. For, as actual men rather than citizens, Rousseau understood that persons could not be ruled even by themselves since there would be so many different people, with their own inclinations and tendencies, shared with clusters of others. To be subjects of the abstract entity then, citizens had to be forged from

153 actual concrete human persons who are already constituted by both individual and communal relations.

The point of the foregoing then is that democracy fails at its core if it uncritically admits of a rule by an entity called the state which the governed people, do not consider to be constitutive of their ‘self’ and thus, unable to meet the fundamental requirement of ‘self-rule’. In other words, democracy as ‘self-rule’ is greatly undermined if it is rather focused on the preservation of the state as a sovereign force even where its rule and interests do not coincide with that of the people supposed to be living under its sovereignty. The notion of we-the-people embedded in the concept of democracy would be lost. The argument for this chapter therefore is to defend a conception of statehood in post-colonial Africa which takes seriously and reconciles, as much as possible, the various ramifications of self-rule in practice for, it is only in this that democracy in Africa would be democratic and consequently effective and viable.

4.5 Conclusion

This chapter argued that the response to the question whether democracy is individualist, or communitarian is rooted in the concept of democracy itself. The position is that a government, whether named individualistic or communitarian, would only be correctly characterized as a democracy if it is a government of, by and for the people themselves for, that alone gives meaning to democracy as the rule of “we” the people.

Section one focused on the people-centeredness entailed in an accurate conception of democracy by going into the notions of representation and majoritarianism as inherent challenges of democracy. It maintained that democracy, whether labeled as communitarian or liberal, would be viable if it evolves and is based on the people’s shared interactions, meanings, and experiences.

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Section two discussed inclusion and consensus pursuit as notions crucial for confronting the inherent challenges of democracy even in the face of complexities of societies and relationships of modern times. The section devoted attention to the need for a sense of ‘we’ as key to confronting the fundamental inherent challenges of democracy both in theory and practice.

Section three then examined the origins and conceptual foundations of the post-colonial state to reveal the parallelism in the creation of such encorporated states and empires. The section argued that the state’s rule, like that of any social organization, would only be a genuine ‘self-rule’ and therefore a legitimate democracy if members of the composite ‘self’ own their rule of themselves.

The next chapter looks at traditional African socio-political system and its consensual and communal nature in contrast with the colonial legacy and prescribes conceptual decolonization as a response to many of the varied challenges of Africa. The discussions should give practical meaning to ‘the-people-centered’ outlook to democracy whose defense the discussions in this chapter have so far explored.

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CHAPTER FIVE AFRICAN TRADITIONAL DEMOCRACY AND THE COLONIAL LEGACY: THE

NEED FOR A CRITICAL RETURN TO THE PAST

5.1 Introduction

This chapter looks at the traditional African socio-political system in contrast with the colonial legacy and prescribes conceptual decolonization90 as a response to many of the varied challenges of politics in Africa today. The chapter argues that a critical return to the past would make the practice of democracy better in contemporary Africa and give meaning to ‘the-people- centered’ outlook to democracy which the previous chapters explored.

The chapter straddles a descriptive and normative approach. The aim of this dual-approach is two-fold: first, to uncover valuable aspects of traditional African politics which have been jettisoned in contemporary times; second, to discuss the extent to which such worthwhile elements may need to be refined and incorporated into contemporary socio-cultural and political democratic practice. In this respect, the chapter argues for a more effective practice of democracy as grounded on a more accurate personist understanding of democracy as self-rule.

The chapter is divided into three main sections: section one explores democracy in traditional Africa to reveal its humanist, communal and consensual foundations; its indigenous, non-party91 system of communal rule rooted in traditional African humanist conceptions. The section argues that these aspects of African democracy(self-rule) have been altered chiefly by imperialist impositions, and the depth of this disruption does not allow the benefit of evaluating democracies in Africa from an actual self-evolved context over a relatively less-interrupted time,

90 The expression ‘conceptual decolonization’ is extensively used by African thinkers (Wiredu & Oladipo, 1995). 91 As described by Wiredu, to be discussed subsequently. 156 which then makes inaccurate the view that democracy founded on the communitarian ethos harbors totalitarian undertones (Arendt, 1958; Popper, 1945; Talmon, 1955).

Section two discusses the effects of the colonial legacy to make a case for conceptual decolonization. It argues that democracy(self-rule) in most African states has been deeply ruptured and disrupted at its core following the colonialist encounter. And, the ruinous effects of this long history of colonialism then, and in a lingering revised form now as ‘neo-colonialism’ and ‘colonial mentality’, are still more pervasive in post-colonial African politics and national life than the simplistic dismissal it often meets in contemporary scholarly political discourse.

Section three then makes a case for critical sankↄfaism92. Unlike the defenders of a wholesale return for everything in the indigenous cultural past of Africa, the section argues, in agreement with Gyekye, that the worth of specific cultural products, past or present, indigenous or foreign ought to be tested on normatively independent grounds to determine their value in the life of today. It proposes that a critical look at traditional Africa’s self-evolved humanistic, communal, and consensual culture would reveal its relevance in the politics of Africa today.

5.2 Democracy(self-rule) in traditional Africa: Communal, Consensual and Humanistic93

Democracy, as a concept and a political practice, has been an aspect of the political and socio-cultural experiences of African traditional societies well before the disruptive colonial invasion and consequent partitioning of Africa, between 1876 and 1912 (Pakenham, 1991). This

92 Sankↄfa is literally translated from the Akan language as “return for it”. Critical sankↄfaism is a response coined from Gyekye’s mediating position between what he calls the “unrestricted cultural revivalism” and “unrestricted cultural anti-revivalism” (Gyekye, 1997, p. 241). 93 I should point out that this section does not seek to claim an impeccable system of politics in pre-colonial traditional Africa, but rather seeks to illuminate the significant elements of genuine democratic politics some of which could be appropriated to contemporary politics. The discussions mainly focus on the Akan system of Ghana and extrapolate to the African situation which, mostly do not differ in significant respects. 157 claim, attested to by both foreign and local scholars writing about Africa, is justifiable if by democracy one refers to self-rule which is a government that evolves and is sustained by its people, or through their named representatives who wield this political power. The claim cannot be contested if by democracy one refers to the politics receptive to the peoples’ conception of free expression fostered by the peoples’ conception of equality of all persons which is itself underlined by their understanding of the dignity of the human person. And, if these are given expression in the enduring dependence on dialogue, deliberation and the constant search for consensus, with an accompanying openness to the values of tolerance, cooperation and compromise and a fixation on attaining inclusiveness; and, the supremacy, and due process, of the people’s law regardless of political, economic or religious status.94

Not only have there been such significant elements and institutions of democratic governance in the traditional African setting, but more importantly African traditional democracy is mainly undergirded by the communal, consensual and humanistic ethic – an ethic of Ujamaa for instance which, according to Julius Nyerere, would not seek to look on one class of human beings

94 The following observation made by Rattray about the democratic character of Asante (a subsection of the Akan) politics is worth noting. “Nominally autocratic, the Ashanti constitution was in practice democratic to a degree. I have already on several occasions used this word ‘democratic’, and it is time to explain what the term implies in this part of Africa. We pride ourselves, I believe, on being a democratic people and flatter ourselves that our institutions are of a like nature. An Ashanti who was familiar alike with his own and our [British] Constitution would deny absolutely our right to apply this term either to ourselves or to our Constitution. To him a democracy implies that the affairs of the Tribe [the state] must rest, not in the keeping of the few, but in the hands of the many, that is, must not alone be the concern of what we should term “the chosen rulers of the people,” but should continue to be the concern of a far wider circle. To him the state is literally a Res Publica; it is everyone’s business. The work of an Ashanti citizen did not finish when by his vote he had installed a chief in office. … The rights and duties of the Ashanti democrats were really only beginning after (if I may use a homely analogy) the business of the ballot-box was over. In England, the Government and the House of Commons stand between ourselves and the making of our laws, but among the Ashanti there was not any such thing as government apart from the people.” (Rattray, 1929, pp. 406-407). 158 as brethren and others as natural enemies (Nyerere, 1974, p. 11). An explanation to this ethic of

African humanism may be found in the Bantu understanding of the human-being which, according to Placide Tempels, cannot conceive of a person as an individual; as a force that exists by itself and apart from its relationships with other living beings around it (Tempels, 1959, p. 103). The

Bantu term Ubuntu is significant in classifying this conception of humanness as giving recognition to human qualities, regardless of difference, to foster respectful and harmonious relationships where people identify and exhibit solidarity towards one another (Eliseu, 2010). The African humanistic ethic therefore seeks to identify the conditions for the development of the person as a whole and of all people as a society for the underlying reason that one’s being human is inextricably linked to the humanness of others who stand in some form of relation to her. The expressions “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” which seeks to define personhood through relationships with others and the Chewa saying “kalikokha nikanyama; tuli tuwili nituwanthu” which translates as “what is one is brute animal, whatever or whoever has a neighbor is a human being” (Menkiti,

2004, 324-331) are captured in Mbiti’s famous summation of the African conception of the person:

“I am because we are and since we are therefore I am” earlier referred to. The recognition of our common humanness – belonging together as humans – a world family – Rwiza advocates, would serve humanity better if meaningfully extended beyond the lineage, community, nation or continent to embrace the whole humanity (Rwiza, 2010, p. 119).

To emphasize the humanist ethic of traditional African thought, Gyekye explains the Akan proverb, “it is the human being that counts; I call upon gold, it answers not; I call upon cloth, it answers not; it is the human being that counts” in the following manner: that gold and riches may be valuable and may therefore drive many to morally unacceptable extents, but for the Akan, and many African nations as a matter of fact, what ought to be given uttermost moral consideration is

159 the worth of human beingness for its own sake (Gyekye, 1997, p. 259). The same ethic is expressed in Kaunda’s assertion cited by Gyekye, “To a certain extent, we in Africa have always had a gift for enjoying Man for himself. It is the heart of our traditional culture.” In the view of Gyekye, such enjoyment of ‘Man for himself’ only means demonstrating compassion, generosity and hospitality towards a person just because he is human; being open to the interests and welfare of others and feeling a moral duty to offer help where it is needed only by virtue of our common humanness.

The humanistic essence of traditional African culture instantiated in Kaunda’s ensuing remark should speak for itself: “Our love of conversation is a good example of this [enjoyment of people].

We will talk for hours with any stranger who crosses our path and by the time we part there will be little we do not know about each other. We do not regard it as impertinence or an invasion of our privacy for someone to ask “personal” questions, nor have we any compunction about questioning others in like manner. We are open to the interest of other people. Our curiosity does not stem from a desire to interfere in someone else’s business but is an expression of our belief that we are wrapped up together in this bundle of life and therefore a bond already exists between myself and a stranger before we open our mouths to talk.” (Kaunda, 1966, p. 32).

Against the background of such a conception of African humanistic ethic, then, one could extract positive elements that could make valuable contribution to democracy in post-colonial African politics. In the following, I discuss some salient structures, systems, and institutions of traditional

African democratic politics in some detail making the ensuing references a starting point.

The basic idea of democracy in traditional Africa, namely, ‘the rule of the people’ is attested to by Dugald Campbell, a Briton who lived in central Africa and Zambia for close to three decades around late nineteenth century.

All government is by the will of the people, whether it be the choice and coronation of a king; the selection of a man to fill a new chieftainship; the framing, proclamation, and

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promulgation of a new law; the removal of the village from one site to another; the declaration of war or the acceptance of terms of peace: everything must be put to the poll and come out stamped with the imprimatur of the people’s will (Campbell, 1922, p. 42).

Eminent British anthropologists also note on African stateship that, “The structure of an African state implies that kings and chiefs rule by consent. A ruler’s subjects are as fully aware of the duties he owes to them as they are of the duties they owe to him, and are able to exert pressure to make him discharge these duties” (Fortes & Evans-Pritchard, 1940, p. 12). Writing about the people of Central Africa, the French scholar Adolphe Cureau (1915) also makes the following observation, “over the free citizens, the Chief’s authority is valid only insofar as it is the mouthpiece of the majority interest, lacking which character it falls to the ground” (p. 279). The purpose of these scholarly observations is to establish the centrality of the will of the people in the actual institution of political authority and the day to day administering of political power in the traditional African setting.95 The authority by which the highest political leader – chief or king – ruled was derived from the people even if in most cases the right to rule was hereditary. For, inherited chiefship could not necessarily be said to negate the people-centeredness96 of traditional

African democracy97 because in most of the states, royalty was recognized and accepted by the people themselves on the basis of history and custom, and since the actual exercise of political authority did lie mainly with the people, the people’s right to self-rule could not be said to have

95 I note here that traditional African political systems, displayed considerable variety: those with a centralized authority exercised through a government machinery such as the Zulu and the Ngwato of South Africa, the Bemba of Zambia, the Banyankole of Uganda, and the Kede of northern Nigeria; and those with no such centralized regulatory machinery called government such as Logoli of western Kenya, the Tallensi of northern Ghana, and the Nuer of southern Sudan (Fortes & Evans-Pritchard, 1940, p. 5). 96 Refer to discussion on people-centeredness in chapter four and why that is crucial to the theory and practice of democracy(self-rule) as grounded in personism. 97 See Gyekye’s examination and consequent refutation of Simiyu’s denial of democracy to traditional African political systems based on claimed hierarchical, nonegalitarian, gerontocratic and sexist features of the African sociopolitical structure (1997, pp. 118-120). 161 been undermined. In addition, the people may not have been directly involved in the election of the most acceptable member from the royal lineage because that was the sole prerogative of the kingmakers, who were themselves chosen in accordance with the customs and traditions of the people anyway, but it was required that the choice proposed by the kingmakers was suitable enough to be endorsed by the generality of the people or else the proposed chief could be rejected by the people and replaced with another royal who met the wishes and desires of the people.

In this regard, then, one could reasonably say that in most parts of traditional Africa political authority is not to be imposed on the nationals. The kingmakers, in consultation with the people, also have the constitutional mandate of an oversight responsibility over the king and his conduct privately and publicly. It would, therefore, not be wholly correct to equate traditional

Africa’s kingship with absolutism or tyranny. The Asante king of Ghana, for instance appeared absolute, yet he needed to procure the consent of the chiefs within the Asante confederation98 to embark on group action. The Zulu king was not allowed to make important national decisions without the ibandla, the highest council of state (Olivier, 1969). In the same way, the political authority of the Swazi king, ngwenyama, chosen by the ndovukazi (queen mother) was checked by the liqoqo (inner council) and the libandla (general council). According to William Abraham,

“because the king was surrounded by councilors whose offices were political, and was himself only a representation of the unity of the people, it was quite possible to remove him from office; the catalogue of the possible grounds of removal was already held in advance” (Abraham, 1962, p. 77).

98 Empires and kingdoms in traditional Africa are governed by the confederacy principle or marked by extensive devolution of authority so that local communities enjoy substantial autonomy to run their own affairs. This should partly explain why over 2000 distinct tribes remain in Africa today. 162

The Asante of Ghana for instance, de-stooled three kings in 1799, 1874 and 1883: first,

Osei Kwame Panyin for, among other reasons, absenting himself from Kumasi–the capital–and failing to perform his religious duties during the Adae festivals; second Otumfuo Nana Kofi

Karikari for extravagance among other failings; and third, Otumfuo Nana Mensah Bonsu for excessively taxing the Asante people (Ayittey, 1991; Boamah-Wiafe, 1993). Many such destoolments occurred among other cultural groupings with varied procedures of divesture.

Whereas the Serer of Senegal adopted a distinctive drumbeat to signal the end of a king’s reign, the Yoruba of Nigeria demanded the king’s suicide by a symbolic gift of parrot’s eggs.99

In traditional Africa, therefore, the chief only remains a symbol of authority, reverence and veneration mainly because of the religious connotation associated with his role as a link between the living and the departed ancestors who are seen to be supervisors of human interest even from the other world. Thus, for the Akan, kingship was considered more of a sacred office than a political one (Abraham, 1962). The political aspects of a king’s rule, according to Abraham, is to be the symbol of the unity of his kingdom and attend to ceremonial functions. This role did not include dictating to the ruling council or influencing the outcomes of council’s decision by virtue of his divine positioning. Contrary to what appears to be the case, the personal word of the chief is not the law, but his official word which represents the consensus of his council, is the law

(Wiredu, 1995). Thus, any announcement made by the ↄkyeame (the chief’s spokesman) in Akan tradition is preceded by the statement, “Thus says the chief and his council…” (Gyekye, 1997, p.

123) which supports the Akan saying that “there are no bad kings, only bad councilors” (Wiredu,

1995). It is the respect for the collective peoples that is transferred to the respect for their chiefs

99 For several instances of chiefs deposed for governing counter to the wishes of the people see (Sithole, 1959, p. 98). 163 and kings. Thus, the Basotho, for instance, holds that “A chief is a chief by the people” (Donnelly,

1984, p. 414). Respectively, the Lovedu of the Transvaal and the Ndebele of Zimbabwe uphold the saying that “chieftainship is the people” (Forde, 1954) and “The king is the people. To respect the king is to respect oneself. He who despises our king despises us. He who praises our king praises us. The king is us” (Sithole, 1959, pp. 96-97). Therefore, one could describe most African traditional politics as the politics of popular governance even though not necessarily that of popular sovereignty (Gyekye, 1996, p. 121). And the argument being made is that it is a democracy(self- rule) in so far as it is the people’s evolved system of rule of themselves by themselves and for themselves.

It is worthy of note here that the esteemed position accorded the people and their will derives from the underlying principle of equality of all persons, even if unequal in their physical abilities and attributes, social and economic statuses or political clout. This principle itself rests on the foundational African belief in the intrinsic worth and dignity of every human person. Typical of the African’s intensely religious heritage which permeates all aspects of her life, thought and action, the Akan for instance holds the cherished belief that “All human beings are the children of

Onyame (God); no one is a child of the earth” (Gyekye, 1996, p. 190). By this belief, the human person, like every offspring, is conceived as divine and bears a spark of Onyame in her called the

ↄkra (soul) which is also the transmitter of the person’s destiny (Gyekye, 1995, p. 85). A person’s

ↄkra (soul), as the recipient of a person’s destiny, underwrites the right of each person to pursue her own unique destiny assigned by Onyame and be ready to accept responsibilities for one’s own choices (Wiredu, 1996, p. 158). This divine and immortal essence of the human person makes her unique, dignified and an end in herself just as Onyame, her ultimate progenitor. The same conviction grounds the belief in persons’ distinctive creative capacity and agency. For the Akan,

164 therefore, a human being has intrinsic dignity and moral worth regardless, and the reverence accorded Onyame, the creator, whose life trait inhabits the human being as an offspring, translates to the person. Since the conception of such an ultimate, uncreated, and self-existent being is hardly contestable in the general African thought, the value and dignity of the human person is likewise hardly contestable in traditional Africa.100

The unique agency and dignity of every human person is given expression in the formal and substantive representation given to all members in decision-making from the very basic political unit called abusua (clan) to the governing body of the town or village called the council through the culture of consensual decision-making. Wiredu argues that the advantage of such a consensual approach to governance over majoritarian democracies is that it does not only guarantee a formal representation of chosen representatives in council but it also ensures the substantive representation of the people’s will in the decision-making process (Wiredu, 1997, 303-

312).101 That engenders cooperation and good-will from all participants whereas majoritarianism only seeks to consolidate the power of the majority and therefore has a tendency of generating antagonism and disaffection. Thus, consensual decisions ensure respect for “the right of any well- defined unit of political organization to selfgovernment, the right of all to have a say in the

100 I refer to most because like all other contexts, but most especially Africa with its various multi-nations, there would obviously be instances where people’s expression of respect for the value of human life and the dignity of persons, in relation to women, children and slaves, for instance, could rather lead to consequences that are morally inadmissible. Nonetheless, in some instances, such moral evils would be an expression of the varied collective experiences of the said peoples, which experiences undergo reform and revisions as the participants evolve more suitable ways of dealing with the challenges of social living. But in many other instances, the verdict is regrettably evidenced on the scientific observer’s own interpretation of symbols of ‘other’ social contexts by the meanings of her own context even if the symbols look the same or alike to both contexts of the observer and the observed (Majeed, 2012). The conclusion here is that if any society at all is not extinct, then its basic beliefs would necessarily entail the value of human life and its dignity given local expression. 101 See Fayemi (2010) for an examination of Wiredu’s decisional representation. 165 enstoolment or destoolment of their chiefs or their elders and to participate in the shaping of governmental policies, the right of all to freedom of thought and expression in all matters: political, religious and metaphysical…” (Wiredu, 1996, p. 169). Practical and functional systems and structures for decentralization are laid down to allow for the meaningful incorporation and expression of the substantive will of the people. The people’s will would usually be carried to the chief’s council, through first, the abusuapanin (clan head) who then relays the family unit’s position or view to the abusuampaninfo ahyiayℇ (clan-heads meeting) for their deliberation and a consensually agreed position. The collective decision at the clan-representatives’ level would further be passed on to nananommpaninfoↄ (council of elders) who, with the chief, sit to deliberate on the various consensually agreed views presented and argued for at the clan levels. The quasi- final decision arrived at by the chief or king and his council of elders would then be conveyed to the people through same channels for feedback before final out-dooring of the public or political decision made which mostly is cosmetic since members would already have been involved in the entire process and their concerns would have been well-incorporated in the final conclusions reached (Rattray, 1929, p. 87). This procedure would be more extensive in the larger political communities which formed a paramountcy.

To ensure that these systems and structures are effective, regular family and clan meetings, often weekly, are the norm in most African traditional societies. At other times, depending on the issue in question, members of the community are assembled at the community square or the forecourt of the chief or king’s palace for dwabↄ – a market place of competing ideas – to openly discuss the issue(s) and allow for as many perspectives as possible.102 Here, “anyone, even the

102 Adwabↄ as the very expression for a market and a meeting-place in council is noted by Rattray as an “extraordinarily significant fact” (Rattray, 1929, p. 407).

166 most ordinary youth, will offer his opinion or make a suggestion with an equal chance of its being favorably entertained as if it proceeded from the most experienced sage” (Cruickshank, 1854, p.

251). For, the Akan, like many other traditional Africans, believes that “two heads are better than one”, and “one head does not go into council”. The Igbo would say, Onwe gi onye bu Omada

Omachara: No one individual is Mother Wisdom (Eze, 1997). More meeting days than usual for such ‘parliamentary sessions’ would be proposed in the rare instances of urgent but crucial matters that could not be agreed upon, or that needed further thinking through.

It is remarkable that each of these stages of decision-making is typically characterized by dialogue and deliberation on the various perspectives of the issue(s) under discussion. And since disagreement and opposing views are inevitable and apt, the concern is to allow, as many as possible, various perspectives. The relatively smaller numbers and with it a meaningful focus on the attainment of the common good –a good that need not be arrived at by the collective as one without difference, but rather arrived at by the collective as a whole (Allen, 2004) even in the face of dissensus– ensures the actual inclusion of the views of as many members as possible through effective dialogue and deliberation. Arguments are made, criticized, revised, jettisoned and finally agreed on mostly in the spirit of compromise, cooperation, tolerance and fellow-feeling more easily offered by the sense of communality and common interest which are stronger at this level because of the stronger sense of shared values and goals which derives from the strong belief that all members in the decision-making process are knit together and affected by common ties of kinship. Against the background of the ethos of humanism, it is easier for one to seek the interests of the other(s) whose wellbeing is believed to be tied to one’s.

Admittedly, at no time has any society been a realm of constant unbroken harmony. Africa could not be an exception. Conflicts within, between and among the several nation-communities,

167 ethnic-groups and lineages would therefore not have been infrequent in pre-colonial traditional

Africa. But Wiredu’s view is that the culture of consensus pursuit, both in principle and in practice, aided the discharge of joint actions which would not have been necessarily based on agreed notions

(Wiredu, 1995, pp. 53-64).103 This view is corroborated by Kofi Abrefa Busia when he writes,

“When a council, each member of which was the representative of a lineage, met to discuss matters affecting the whole community, it had always to grapple with the problem of reconciling sectional and common interests. In order to do this, the members had to talk things over: they had to listen to all the different points of view. So strong was the value of solidarity that the chief aim of the councilors was to reach unanimity, and they talked till this was achieved” (1967, p. 28).

Kaunda maintains: “In our original societies we operated by consensus. An issue was talked out in solemn conclave until such time as agreement could be achieved” (Mutiso & Rohio, 1975, p.

476). Nyerere adds, “in African society the traditional method of conducting affairs is by free discussion”, and quotes Guy Clutton-Brock, “The elders sit under the big trees, and talk until they agree” (p. 478). Ndabaningi Sithole also observes: “Those who have lived in Africa know that the

African people are democratic to a point of inaction. Things are never settled until everyone has had something to say. [The traditional African] council allows the free expression of all shades of opinions. Any man has full right to express his mind on public questions” and “to carry out any program required the sanction of the whole clan or tribe” (Sithole, 1959, p. 86).

Consequently, even in the face of mortal conflicts which would be rampant in a multinational context like Africa, the principle of consensus, as he sees it, would better serve as a mediation tool for the settlement of disputes and negotiations toward the attainment of reconciliation. Wiredu suggests, by this thinking, that the structural divisions of traditional African socio-cultural and political systems would have been more effectively tempered by its communal

103 See Ani (2014) for an examination of Wiredu’s view. 168 and consensual ethical outlook than the imposed Western model of democracy which is largely unfamiliar with the peculiarities of multi-nationalism. Not only is there no act of formal voting in traditional Akan political system, there also is no “winner” (and therefore no “loser”). By implication every ‘party’ is a governing power and the underlying principle of governance is the quest to reconcile varied and competing social interests, not the rule of the majority party (Wiredu,

1997, pp. 303-312). This way, the system is a non-partisan one. Such a system, in his view, avoids the evident problems of both the one-party dictatorship system and the multi-party, winner-takes- all, adversarial politics inherited from or imposed by the West which according to Ani, “has produced superficial forms of political/electoral choice-making by subjects that deepen pre- existing ethnic and primordial cleavages” (Ani, 2013, p. 207).

Eze (1997), however, is skeptical about Wiredu’s consensus politics as a ‘democratic’ solution to dealing with the problems of Africa’s politics since to him the principle is likely to be used undemocratically by central authorities under the label of a purported converging will of the people. Arguing that “the interests of some members or a member of a society may be to dominate the rest, for the sheer morbid enjoyment of power” (pp. 313-323), Eze questions the supposition that interests are the same for all members of society (Wiredu, 1997) and challenges the truth of the claim that “human beings have the [rational] ability eventually to cut through their differences to the rock bottom of identity of interests” (Wiredu, 1995, p. 57). Ani also cautions against the use of the procedural instrument of unanimous action without unanimity on what ought to be done.

Ani (2014) urges that not all group decisions are value-neutral, as Wiredu opines, and therefore entertaining differences in values would be a better option than sweeping them under the carpet in the name of pursuing consensus. But he nonetheless agrees that there must be some common interest underlying such confrontation of values anyway and that Wiredu’s call for consensual

169 democracy should be seen as equally driven by the concern for justification which arises from deliberation (Ani, 2013, p. 211).

In objection however, Matolino (2009) maintains that consensual democracy may have more appeal than Eze is prepared to concede. Matolino argues in agreement with Wiredu that the essential source of legitimization of political authority need not be divine or ancestral as insisted by Eze in his analysis of Wiredu’s presentation of the origins of Ashanti political authority which for Eze is not workable in Africa’s largely “secular” and “religiously pluralistic” states today.

Matolino contends that the king’s ceremonial function of leading religious celebrations, receiving guest chiefs or leading clan ceremonies may be ancestral or sacred but that cannot constitute the essential in legitimizing the chief’s functional authority. Rather, he argues, that the substantive and real power of a chief lies in his ability to logically persuade, adjudicate over competing arguments in search of a position agreeable to all parties, and articulate positions adopted by the competing parties. These qualities in a person, according to Matolino, are what legitimizes the authority and substantive function of a chief, not a recourse to religious or other beliefs.

On the claim that consensus is attainable because all members’ interests are identical at the

“rock bottom” although not realized by them because of misperception, Matolino agrees with Eze that Wiredu is mistaken. However, Matolino maintains that consensus is possible even if it is admitted that interests are not necessarily identical for all, as some may seek to dominate others.104

He insists that consensus, as advocated by Wiredu, is possible and attainable if it is centered on dialogue which only aims at uncovering and understanding the various underlying interests of the

104 Eze raises a pertinent question to illustrate his objection: “How do the commercial interests of a Texan oil company, or the Anglo-Dutch Shell oil company, in Nigeria simply to get oil out of the soil as quickly and as safely as possible, coincide with the political and survival interests of comparatively speaking, a few thousand people called the Ogonis?” (Eze, 1997, p. 318). 170 debating parties and seeks to bridge them by finding a “negotiated tolerable co-existence” but not to deny the existence of such difference in interests. The consensual approach, for Matolino, should therefore lead members to the realization that for one to be successful in one’s pursuits, one would have to give due regard to the interests of others. In the words of Matolino, “I do not take consensus to mean unanimity or total agreement. I do not even take it to mean a total conversion from one position to the other. I only take it to mean that a party to the dialogue recognizes that its adversary’s position is serious enough to cause it to adjust its own position; and the other party recognizes the same” (Eze, 1997, p. 40).

In consequence, Matolino makes a case for consensual democracy as a political system.

He however proposes two institutional requirements that, as he sees it, would strengthen the process of dialogue integral to the consensus method to ensure that the system remains a democracy: a self-rule. First, Matolino argues for a prominent place for free expression of the will of the participants. He contends that participants would claim ownership of decisions arrived at consensually if the process of dialogue allows all participants to freely express their will without inducement or coercion. Second, Matolino demands that all participants enter the process of dialogue in good faith as the values of equality, fairness, justice, and openness are upheld as basic and inviolable to the entire process.

Matolino urges that if consensus is hatched within the foregoing institutional framework, then consensual democracy as a political system has an effective force as a system that does not merely search for, or perhaps impose, an underlying “rock bottom identity of interests” as presumed by Wiredu but rather is a system that addresses the inevitable myriad of differences in human socio-political interests rightly pointed out by Eze. On the other hand, such a conception of democracy also aims at achieving more than Eze’s notion of democracy as a social compact that

171 merely secures a “means or a framework for initiating, cultivating, and sustaining disagreement and oppositional political activities” (Eze, 1997, p. 30). For Matolino, the advantage of consensual democracy over other political systems is that it asks the crucial action question of the best way to proceed when faced with competing desires and differences, and answers thus, “We shall sit and dialogue until we reach a consensus on the best conceivable way to proceed” (Eze, 1997, p. 42).

The aim then is not to deny competition but to engage dialogue to reach an agreeable position for all participants, unlike the majoritarianism that underlies today’s multi-partism. Going by consensual democracy (self-rule), the people’s wishes and expectations would be given actual meaning, and that evokes in the nationals a sense of personal commitment to the fortunes of the nation-community. It also gives the impetus for full involvement and makes for the much- cherished all-inclusiveness and real active participation in community and governance affairs which democracy today everywhere undeniably yearns for. These features, in turn, deepen the values of cohesion, fellow-feeling and solidarity necessary for tolerance, cooperation, compromise and the pursuit of the common good.

But if the foregoing account is largely representative of traditional African society and its politics, then the gloomy picture of many contemporary post-colonial African democracies would lie largely, even if not solely, in the legacy of colonialism. Thus, the proposal is to work urgently towards conceptual decolonization of Africa, its peoples and its democracy.

5.3 The Urgent Need for re-conceptualizing post-colonial African democracies

This section advocates for conceptual decolonization of contemporary African democracy as one of the prime, if not the prime, remedies to the rooted mutilations of Africa’s contemporary national life and democratic governance in particular. This concern must be taken seriously if

172 democracy (self-rule) is to thrive at all in Africa whether as a continent of compelled nation-states or, as a continent of supposed natural105 multi-national states.

By conceptual decolonization of African politics, I refer to two things. First, I mean a commitment to halting and reversing, through a critical conceptual self-awareness, the unexamined wholesale adoption and absorption of conceptual frameworks embedded in foreign political categories and traditions superimposed unto contemporary African political thought and practice through colonialism and neo-colonialism,106 (where existing and past arrangements–cultural dominance, economic pressure, political suppression– are used to perpetuate control of mostly colonized countries). Second, I refer to an unfailing commitment to a ‘critical sankↄfaism’: exploiting as much as is judicious, the resources of Africa’s self-evolved indigenous conceptual frameworks for contemporary national life in general but democratic governance in particular. The greater urgency to be attached to this call should equal, and even exceed, the subtle and pervasive means employed in superimposing this legacy on the evolving African democracy then, and in a revised duplicitous form now.

To understand the context of the preceding remarks, it is pertinent that one comes to terms with the depth of the affliction imposed by the colonialist project on Africa, its peoples, and politics. For, if according to Taylor, identity is “a person’s understanding of who they are, of their fundamental characteristics as a human being” which is “partly shaped by recognition or its absence” and “nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression,

105 Note the significance of Herder’s use of natural (1965, p. 324). 106 Nkrumah’s conviction was that neo-colonialist agenda of capital investment into Africa and other so-called less developed countries chiefly sought to exploit rather than develop. Thus, the struggle against neo-colonialism in Africa, he spearheaded, was not aimed at excluding capital investment in the said less developed countries per se but rather, targeted to prevent the use of financial power to widen the already existing gap between the rich and exploited, poor countries of Africa (Nkrumah, 1966). 173 imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being” (Taylor, 1994, p. 25), then the colonial legacy is a disordered confusion of the self-understanding of the African–a conceptual identity crisis stemming from what has been called “colonial mentality” (Gyekye, 1997, p. 27), and a translation of this crisis unto already unstable and flickering imposed political institutions and structures. Thus, the impairment from colonialism is twofold: to the individual self-identities of the African peoples as well as to the collective self-understandings of the socio-political systems of Africa. The African is torn between having to live both as a self-creating social-self 107 and a colonialist imposed created-self tagged with a created sociality. She continues to suffer a disconnect from herself and her identities which, if not halted, may leave the totality of her life on probation forever. That is, a colonial legacy of an internalized, yet-to-be-free identity formed from misconception of oneself, itself stemming from misrecognitions entailed in the colonialist thought, and the African must feel obligated “to purge [herself] of this imposed and destructive identity”

(Taylor, 1994, p. 25) as a matter of dignity.

It is important to make a necessary clarification here, that even though concepts may have universal connotations as already argued variously in this study, what these universal connotations denote and the particular modes of thought out of which these concepts are molded would more often than not reflect the specifics of a culture, its unique circumstances, context or even the accidental idiosyncrasies of the people and epoch, from which they evolve and are nurtured. That accounts for the varied conceptual disparities among different political traditions. (Wiredu, 1980, pp. 216-232; Gyekye, 1997, pp. 27-33). These differences would have to be acknowledged even by natives of an indigenous tradition in inheriting the concepts of their forbears and much more the case if the transition is from fundamentally contrasting thought categories– ‘Individualist’ and

107 As used by Mead (1967, pp. 222-226). 174

‘Communitarian’–at different epochs108, with substantially different social constitutions. But foisting a foreign colonial administration onto indigenous institutions, systems and structures of traditional Africa created a false fit which has contributed adversely to the gloomy picture of democratic governance in Africa today (Farah & Mazongo, 2011, p. 2). Thus, the view that the

“contemporary state in Africa is a remnant of a colonially imposed system” (Wyk, 2007, p. 3) would not be incorrect.

Not only was the inherited colonialist ‘democracy’ full of anti-democratic syndromes because it had not yet been fully weaned of its traits of feudalism and its monarchical and aristocratic posture (Lauer & Anyidoho, 2012), Ghana, like several African countries, is still striving to implement the imposed European-established cosmetic ‘democracy’ and its related institutions as it experiments with a “mixed bag of American presidential government combined with a confusion touted as the expression of the genius of Britain’s unwritten constitution” (Lauer

& Anyidoho, 2012, p. 1039). This ‘democracy’ is practiced mainly with the tenets of private enterprise capitalism with a consequent greed culture that has invaded an otherwise largely communal culture nurtured in the spirit of cooperation and accommodation and in the belief in an impartial regard for the interests of others including even the physical environment (Abudu, 2012, p. 1046). Its virus of moneycracy (p. 1053) and the attendant over-reliance on foreign donors to finance most elections and the financial demands of sustained civic education and coordination of the centralized arms of government109 have implications that need not be mentioned. Participants

108 It is important to note here that even Western democracies today have long revised their note on the extreme emphasis on individuality to the detriment of communality. Yet, this revision was made possible because the West only improved on its own evolved systems and is thus, living in another epoch of its life. The agony of the contemporary African situation is the needless grip on others’ garbage in terms of beliefs, systems, and structures they have long let go or revised. 109 See Kwame Ninsin’s chapter (63) and Samir Amin’s discussion in chapter 20 of Lauer & Anyidoho (2012). 175 of this transmitted ‘democracy’ are left as perpetual mutual adversaries seeking constantly to outwit and prey on each other (Abudu, 2012) “even if it means killing perceived and real opponents” (Mapuva, 2013, p. 89), to ensure that they secure numerical majority just to propagate party business ( Molomo, 2004; Chikwanha & Masunungure, 2007, p. 6). Crawford Young suggests that this phenomenon is one negative aspect of the colonial state bequest to independent

Africa as heads of patrimonial regimes “devised stratagems to deflect or even turn to their advantage electoral processes and multi-party regimes” (Young, 1998, pp. 114-115). In consequence, debates and deliberations on public issues mostly do not focus on improving the lives of constituents and meaningfully developing the nation, but are often characterized by rigid party positions driven by thoughts of how incumbent parties, mostly through vote-buying and sometimes “politically-motivated violence” can grip unto power indefinitely, or how the non- incumbent would attain power at all cost (Melber, 2002, p. 18; Chikwanha & Masunungure, 2007, pp. 5-6). This agonizing wholesale attachment to partisan views has been lamented as “excessive” and “adversarial politics”.110

The result of such extreme competitive and inherently divisive characteristic of the superficial ‘democracy’ imposed is a survival of the fittest or winner-take-all posture that makes politics tenaciously adversarial in ethnically heterogenous post-colonial Africa (Abudu, 2012, p.

1049). If left on its own, the inevitable consequences of an adversarial, cosmetic, ballot-box oriented ‘democracy’ and its commodification of power would be a stirring of age-old ethnic or tribal tensions which have the potential of fomenting civil strife as evidenced in Liberia, Sierra

Leone, La Cote d’Ivoire, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, among several

110 A phenomenon that Ghana’s former president John Kufour laments as “excessive”, and Atsu Ayee, an astute Professor of Political Science, labels as “adversarial politics” (Gyekye, 2013, p. 168). 176 others. It is particularly so in these post-colonial African countries whose resource, like other

African countries, have well been exploited by colonialism and whose largely illiterate and ignorant111 populations’ psyche have been deeply harmed. It should be emphasized that the imposition of uneven socio-economic foreign states and their institutions on the African peoples by colonial regimes in the “scramble for Africa” and the consequent forcible fragmentation of ethnic and national identities have further deepened already existing inter-ethnic cleavages

(Kidane, 2011, 15-16).

One adverse consequence of the colonial impositions is disaffection towards the forged colonial states due to the slave-master mentality that created them with little to no regard for people’s sense of ethnic belonging and allegiances. According to Raymond Copson, the colonial state was mainly used as an instrument of exploitation. He states unequivocally that “the colonial state in Africa was an authoritarian bureaucratic apparatus of control and not intended to be a school of democracy” (Copson, 2001, p. 12). As such the idea of popular participation, inclusiveness and consensus pursuit in governance, characteristic of the generality of pre-colonial

African democracy, was visibly absent during the colonial era (p. 12). The ruling colonial administrators and political elites made decisions on behalf of the ruled indigenous peoples without considering their views or consulting them (Bayeh, 2015, p. 90).

Unfortunately, most contemporary African states have adopted wholesale the centralized, authoritarian, and monopolized model and political institutions bequeathed to them by the colonial regime. As a result, many contemporary African ‘democracies’ remain authoritarian, exclusionary to other opposition groups and corrupt (Alemazung, 2010, p. 79; Njoku, 2005, 99–116). For

Mohamed Salih, since “African political parties originated in the non democratic setting of

111 In terms of central state activities. 177 colonial rule which was neither democratic nor legitimate” (Salih, 2007, p.41), even the concept of multi-partism introduced in Africa by the colonial regime has been infested with its ills.

Therefore, political parties may be allowed to emerge, but competition is curtailed (Gordon &

Gordon, 2013, p.4), and to prevent the regulation of the power of the ruling government, opposition political parties are gagged, criminalized or banned (p. 4). It is common to see many post- independent African governments reduce to one-party states or military dictatorships (Mazrui,

1994, p. 61). In consequence, post-colonial African politicking has become increasingly a top- down organizational structure reminiscent of the colonial era. Therefore, the historical foundation laid by colonialism cannot be overlooked if the current gloomy picture of democratic practice in post-colonial Africa can be meaningfully assessed and confronted.

The bleak image painted is chiefly because, these institutions did not evolve as part of the culture of the Ghanaian112 but are rather an expression of the dominant culture of their European or American origins, evolved over centuries of “conflict between adversarial socioeconomic classes, predatory wars, social upheavals and, occasionally, revolutions” (Abudu, 2012, p. 1046) and still undergoing refinement. Ghana, like her counterparts must realize that there must be good reason why no nation in Europe or America today would give up its own evolved version of

‘democracy’ for that of another.

The foregoing point seems to be emphasized by Dennis Austin when he writes,

“government will have native origins. It has been home grown in Western society and to seek to transfer its beliefs and habits to an exotic soil will always be difficult” (1993, p. 212); and that,

“democracy is not a set of constitutional arrangements to be taken off the peg for immediate use….

112 See an instance of Ghana’s British-managed introduction to superficial ‘democracy’ which created the first Legislative Assembly in contrast with the first establishment of parliaments in the UK, US and France in (Abudu, 2012, p. 1044). 178

The conditions under which parliamentary democracy evolved in the West were entirely different from those in Africa today” (p. 204). But the challenge confronting Austin is how he would reconcile these claims with his earlier claim, suggestive of the colonialist psyche, that “There is no alternative in … African tradition. …the colonial state is the indispensable framework for any prospect of democratic government that may emerge” (p. 204).113 Paul Johnson (1993) also writes, following the U.S. invasion of Somalia in 1992 that, “The basic problem is obvious but is never publicly admitted: some states are not yet fit to govern themselves. There is a moral issue here:

The civilized world has a mission to go out to these desperate places and govern.” Johnson’s comment did not claim that Somalia, and other states for that matter, has not mastered the art of practicing well Western democracy which had been forced on them by colonial rulers. In that case, the challenge would have been, why to expect any state to make it a preoccupation to master another state’s art of governance even if that system does not fit its context. If democracy, as has been discussed in the previous chapter, is the people’s chosen rule of themselves (self-rule) then it will be right to say that practicing Western democracy rather meant Somalia was not practicing democracy (self-rule), and that would have to be an issue that ought to be addressed by the

Somalian people themselves, not the colonialist, even if it meant borrowing ideas from others including the colonialist. The actual intention of Johnson’s proposition then seems evident in the title of his paper Colonialism Is Back: And Not a Moment Too Soon. His diagnosis of Somalia’s problem, like that of other colonized states, is explicit: these states “are not yet fit to govern themselves”. The “moral” prescription he offers is unequivocal: “The civilized world has a mission

113 But such a statement by Austin gives no regard to the difference in what minimally defines a traditional state – language, ethnicity, customs and traditions, territory – with attendant institutions for governance which are significantly different from the colonialist created state. Whereas the state, for instance, referred to ‘the people’ in real sense in traditional Africa, the colonial state referred to the ruling master. 179 to go out to these desperate places and govern.” The same impression is given by Ferguson (2005) when he argues in favor of the British Empire, despite his admission of its failure to live up to ‘its own ideal of individual liberty’, that French colonialism of Senegal, for instance, was beneficial to Senegal because “the counterfactual idea that somehow the indigenous rulers would have been more successful in economic development doesn't have any credibility at all” (Skidelsky, 2011).

To the upholder of the imperialist agenda, therefore, the withdrawal by the colonial powers was not only premature, but also a great disservice to the African peoples themselves who, according to such colonialist thinking, are incapable of self-rule (Johnson, 1993). It is this colonialist mindset, constantly imparted through the colonialist educational, cultural, and political systems and bequeathed to the African that seems to engender in the African the “colonial mentality”.

But an acquaintance with the general traditional African political setting, however, would reveal values of free expression, rule by consent, government by popular will, constitutional limit on political authority, due process of the law, equality before the law which guarantees basic human rights as enshrined in the beliefs, precepts and customs of the traditional African peoples.

Thus, it would not have required an imposed already-made statist structure, molded in a significantly dissimilar way, and cast under peculiar circumstances and contexts, unto the traditional African peoples’ own emerging nation-states114 to create an awkward fit. In reference to the colonialist imposed states, therefore, one could not agree more with Herder, the German thinker, that, “Nothing therefore is more manifestly contrary to the purpose of political government

114 Davidson (1992) confirms this: “The Europeans who first came in close contact with Asante, increasingly in the nineteenth century, certainly thought and wrote of Asante as a nation-state… because it had all the attributes that justified the label. It had a given territory, known territorial limits, a central government with police and army, a national language and law, and, beyond these, a constitutional embodiment in the form of a council called the Asanteman…. The Asante polity proceeded to behave in the best accredited manner of the European nation-state” (pp. 58- 59) (emphasis added). 180 than the unnatural enlargement of states, the wild mixing of various races and nationalities under one scepter; … such states are but patched up contraptions, fragile machines, for they are wholly devoid of inner life” (Herder, 1965, p. 324). And as I see it, no term best reflects the essence of naturality, as used here by Herder, than the will to belong to the said state no matter how “mixed” or “wild”. That is, unnatural enlargement of states would mean compelling people to be members of states they do not feel a sense of belonging, willing or choosing to belong to, and that according to Herder leads to states that are “devoid of inner life”.

As false and unfounded as the misconceptions and assumptions about statehood in pre- colonial African politics are, they have, regrettably, served to negatively impact the general

African psyche to create a mindset, akin to that of the colonialist, that regards everything branded in European or Western label as superior, more valuable and preferable to a corresponding object with African origin. From values to cultural habits, institutions and structures, the conclusion is often drawn prior to critical examination or rational normative evaluation that, “if it is from the

West, then it is best.” The consequence of such spurious perception is a blind glorification of almost everything Western. That in turn fuels an indiscriminate absorption of Western cultural elements or products even if not of comparable worth (i.e., even if its functional application to the

African context is wobbly) while perceiving everything with African origin or antecedents as inferior and thus, worthless. This perception, which ascribes a glorified position to everything

Western with an equivalent wholesale damnation of everything African, without critical objective examination, by the African herself mostly, is what Gyekye has called “colonial mentality”.

Bemoaning the unfortunate consequences of “colonial mentality” Gyekye writes, “It seems that the most enduring effect of the colonial experience on the African people relates to their self-

181 perceptions, to skewed perceptions of their own values–some of which (values) can, on normative grounds, be said to be appropriate for life in the modern world” (Gyekye, 1997, p. 27).

As I see it, such thinking betrays an underlying difficulty of coming to terms with the bare fact that people everywhere, including Africa and its counterparts, are capable of nurturing their own borrowed, adapted, appropriated or self-evolved “home grown” conceptual frameworks, systems and structures for socio-political organization situated within their own local circumstances or experiences. Therefore, the colonialist democracy and its statist systems, is as dispensable as any cultural product–native or exotic, past, or present–which, by critical examination, proves less worthwhile in the contemporary life of a people anywhere. Neither should this claim be understood to mean that cultures are insulated from contact with other cultures and therefore, impervious to change resulting from appropriation. Such an intuition would contradict the historical fact of cultural exchanges and resultant hybridity of most human cultures. Instead, the claim that the systems of the colonial state is equally dispensable rightly advocates that respecting the humanness of others only requires that they be granted the same autonomy to creatively adopt, adapt, improve or reject what is offered by ‘others’ to be incorporated into what already pertains to a social setting in its native form. In the same spirit of humanness, the benevolent other is expected to be humble and willing to receive such benevolence from others without an intention to exploit. By this principle of healthy reciprocity then, democracy everywhere would have benefited from the refine of each other’s culture. Democracy would have been democratic –respected freedoms, people based, equal and fair treatment of all persons, reciprocity, among others. But in the current situation where foreign modes of thought have been, and continue to be, forcibly instituted awkwardly on the very essential traditions of African

182 politics, the immediate call for reparation is a conceptual decolonization of Africa, its thought systems and its economic and socio-political institutions, chiefly its democracy.

If the preceding analysis have any merit, then the need for conceptual decolonization for

African democracy is in earnest for, the African could not expect another to evolve systems and develop a kind of democracy which fit the African situation and serve to promote the African course better than her own ‘self’115. The view advocated, then, is not to suggest that democracy in

Africa has not benefitted, or cannot benefit, from the democratic ideas of other societies, imperialist or not. Rather, it is stressed that democracy in Africa would flourish if it emerges and is nurtured from the particular circumstances and experiences of the African peoples, their interactions and their intersubjective relatedness, based on their modes of thoughts, self- understandings, and collective identities. Just as the non- African, the African is better suited to evolve the African kind of democracy, simpliciter.

Again, neither should this claim preclude the possibility of universal categories of democratic understanding to the extent that these universal meanings are borne out of critical and rational examination which can be reasonably assumed for all human cultures. The emphasis here is that granted that all rational deliberation assumes the form of an independent, or culture-neutral, grounds of thought, it does not take from a particularist understanding of the content of this thought for, meaningful and effective expression of the form would have to be in reference to particular contexts.116 The way to go then is well stated by Taylor: “we give due acknowledgement only to what is universally present–everyone has an identity–through recognizing what is peculiar to each.

115 ‘Self’ as both individual and communal (see chapter two). 116 Compare Taylor’s argument for recognition of collectives (Taylor, 1994, pp. 25-73) 183

The universal demand powers an acknowledgment of specificity” (Taylor, 1994, p. 39; Wiredu,

1996; Gyekye, 1997, p. 30).

5.4 A call for a critical ‘sankↄfaism’117

Even though the causes of Africa’s current socio-economic and political predicament may be legion, one root cause of its current woes which this study identifies with is the neglect, denigration or subversion of some important aspects of its traditional cultural values, systems and institutions in the life of today. Some have however denied the relevance of past traditions in the life of today. This section argues that there is a fundamental failure in each extreme position since both do not acknowledge the basic truth that every human culture at any point in time would always have both positive and negative elements which will continue to undergo change.

Therefore, neither a wholesale glorification nor a wholesale condemnation of Africa’s, and any other region’s for that matter, cultural past is defensible. The view defended here rather is that a value, practice or institution of a cultural past should be resuscitated and adapted by later generations only on rational and normative grounds to determine its usefulness to the present generation. And, for the politics of today’s post-colonial Africa, the case being made here is that the positive atavistic values of humanism and consensual democracy built on a self-evolved communal framework ought to be revived in earnest, reworked and given a significant place.

One of the advocates of the sankↄfa philosophy118, N. Dzobo (1981), like others, defines the phenomenon as “a necessary journey into the past of our indigenous culture, so that we can march into the future with confidence and with a sense of commitment to our cultural heritage”

117 Coined from sankↄfa, the Akan word meaning “return for it” or “go back for it” (Gyekye, 1997, p. 233). 118 See Eze’s reference to African thinkers like Amilcar Cabral, Wiredu, Senghor, Nyerere among others who advocate for a ‘return to the tradition’ or a ‘return to the source’ as the model for saving Africa politically from its current self-destructive existence (Eze, 1997). 184

(pp. 32–35). Such advocacy for an unqualified return to Africa’s cultural past obviously evokes opposing and disdainful sentiments in others who view a great part, if not the entire, traditional values, beliefs, practices and institutions of Africa’s indigenous cultural past as inadmissible in today’s modern scientific, advanced and industrialized world. Marcien Towa, for instance, objects to the sankↄfa philosophy with the argument that a cultural past that could so easily be thrashed upon encounter with another culture is not worth going back for (Irele,1995, p. 281). In a later work, however, he calls for a return for the critical spirit embodying African traditional folktale to construct a modern philosophical enterprise (Irele, 1995, p. 284), which is an admission on his part that Africa’s cultural heritage has some contribution to make in contemporary times after all.

Similarly, an ambivalence is noted in Paulin Hountondji’s denial of the very existence of a tradition of philosophy in Africa’s cultural past while acknowledging same when he writes:

“African philosophy, … like African culture in general, is before us, not behind us, and must be created today by decisive action. Nobody would deny that this creation will not be effected ex nihilo, that it will necessarily embrace the heritage of the past and will therefore rather be a recreation. But this and simple withdrawal into the past are worlds apart” (Hountondji, 1983, p.

53.

Later, Hountondji refers to “our cultural renaissance” and argues that “African culture must return to itself, to its internal pluralism and to its essential openness. We must therefore, as individuals, liberate ourselves psychologically and develop a free relationship … with African cultural tradition” (Hountondji, 1983, p. 166). Here again, we see an advocacy, by the very critic, for a return to something worthwhile in the cultural traditions of Africa which in his earlier view is supposedly “before us, not behind us, and must be created today by decisive action” (p. 166).

The point of critical importance for this study then is that the past has some elegant aspects useful

185 for the life of today, but that is not to deny, as pro-sankↄfa advocates do, that some elements of

Africa’s cultural past are rationally and normatively non-beneficial, if not reprehensible, and as such must remain buried in the past. One may cite Africa’s “intensely and pervasively religious”

(Parrinder, 1962, p. 9; Busia, 1967, pp. 1, 7; Mbiti, 1970, p.1) cultural heritage and some of its traditional inheritance systems as established and directly practiced in the light of the then older form of communitarian social arrangements as examples of such negative elements119

I turn presently to the worthwhile elements of humanism, communalism, and consensus method, earlier described in section one, as positive features of Africa’s heritage. These elements are worthy of refinement and adaption in the life of today because of their normative weight and relevance to the circumstances of today’s post-colonial Africa, its culture, and its politics.

5.4.1 A return to a humanistic ethic and a consensual democracy

One fundamental and pervasive concept notably visible in Africa’s indigenous past which undoubtedly yearns for a restoration in the life of today to give deeper meaning to the African’s socio-political life is its humanist value (Gyekye, 1995, pp. 143-46; Wiredu, 1980, p. 6; Dickson,

1977, chap. 1). Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, expresses this thought in the statement that the African leader’s aim, “ is to reconsider African society in such a manner that the humanism of traditional African life reasserts itself in a modern technical community,” and that “the restitution of Africa’s humanist and egalitarian principles of society requires socialism” (Nkrumah,

2007; 2009, p. 77). For such thinking, even if one agrees with Gyekye that there may not be a necessary relation between traditional African humanistic ethic and the economic system of

119 Gyekye observes that many nieces and nephews who belong to Africa’s matrilineal system of inheritance especially are unindustrious and solely dependent on uncles’ properties. Wives and children of such deceased husbands mostly suffer greater loss since in a matrilineal system, the man’s relatives per custom inherit his property even if such property was earned by his wife (See Gyekye, 1997, p. 253). 186 socialism (Gyekye, 1997, p. 159), and that the claimed egalitarianism of that traditional society may be objected to considering Africa’s typically hierarchical societal structure (Simiyu, 1987, pp.

55, 69, 64), one cannot deny that the concern for the well-being of other humans, regardless of their antecedents remained a cherished value then, and that needs to be resuscitated in African politics as a matter of urgency. Gyekye’s reference to the Akan proverb, “it is the human being that counts; I call upon gold, it answers not; I call upon cloth, it answers not; it is the human being that counts” (Gyekye, 1997, p. 259) which was earlier mentioned, gives expression to the worth of humanness for its own sake being advocated for. If the ethic that humans are “wrapped up together in this bundle of life and therefore a bond already exists between myself and a stranger before we open our mouths to talk”(Kaunda, 1966, p. 32) is revitalized in modern African politics, then Nyerere’s presentation of traditional African society as “an extension of the basic family”

(Nyerere, 1974, p. 12) where “we took care of the community, and the community took care of us” (pp. 6-7) would be the expected outcome. It would mean that just as in the main basic family members would normally care for and be sensitive to the needs of other members, so would humans demonstrate sensitivity to the needs and interests of other humans regardless. This ethic would not only strengthen the relational ties all humans necessarily have with each other, but would consequently lead to a reversal of the character of today’s politicking where most people and societies continue to subvert or abandon the intrinsic worth of humanity and pursue economic and technological wealth even at the expense of the well-being of other human beings.

A humanist ethical orientation, therefore, would spawn a kind of politics that is hinged on the value of communality: an almost seamless continuity of Africa’s civil life with its political life which is advocated by Wiredu (Wiredu, 2012, p. 1055). The same would undergird the search for cooperation and compromise and consequently consensual approach to decision-making in

187 politics. Such consensus search which, as already discussed, aims not at total unanimity on the truth or value status of an issue but rather most importantly at agreeing on what is to be done even where perspectives on an issue differ (Ani, 2014) is what has been undermined in today’s politics and needs to be revitalized and adapted. Being organically evolved from the indigenous culture of the African peoples, whether of the statal or non-statal type, and therefore not alien to the being of most part of its populations, consensual politics would constitute a fundamental, most indispensable principle for harmonizing human interests which require an impartial regard for the interests of others motivated by some minimum level of altruism (Wiredu, 2012, p. 1055).

Against its typically communal background, Africa’s humanist ethos would enjoin its peoples to think in terms of what we can gain from me in order that all can benefit and not what I can gain from them. Akan maxims such as ↄkyeman, yℰn nhwℰ mma nennsℰe (we will not sit aloof and watch the Akyem nation be destroyed) and obi pℰ adeℰ akↄ Kↄtↄkↄ aa, yℰnni no aborↄ (you do not frustrate the one seeking to bring something good to Kↄtↄkↄ (Asante nation)) express the sense of commitment to the welfare of the nation-community which the Akyem and Asante people see as part of their being(self). And it is this sense of attachment to the Asante or Akyem nation, and a commitment to its welfare even at the expense of members’ own ‘individual’ interests, that needs to be attracted to the contemporary states of Africa 120 today where the overly individualistic social ethic enshrined in the imposed ‘democracy’ has made citizens more interested in what their rights, interests and benefits are than what their responsibility and obligations towards the nation- state is.

If humanism, communality and consensus search are given prominence, the current outlook of contemporary politics which generally has the posture of a centralized imperialist or conqueror

120 See Gyekye’s argument for meta-nationality (Gyekye, 1997, pp. 103-106).

188 with an ambition to bring its conception of order, freedom, prosperity and civilization to the lands it rules would, as a matter of urgency, be replaced with a posture that meaningfully responds to the necessities of decentralization that such a multinational context begs for. In this regard, giving a significant place to traditional authorities in the current scheme of affairs should foster an effective and a sustained popular participation in governance since the members of such authorities consider their authorities as the embodiment of their nation-communities. A recognized place in the contemporary scheme of affairs would more likely be received by members as an expression of respect for their nation group, its members, values, and institutions and consequently, its peoples. For, “The king is the people. To respect the king is to respect oneself. He who despises our king despises us. He who praises our king praises us. The king is us” (Sithole, 1959, pp. 96-

97). This reversal approach, to my mind, is urgently needed to “debunk the colonial project of centralized power” (Lauer & Anyidoho, 2012, p. 1039) which, as I see it, is the only way to attaining actual self-rule (democracy) and preventing the continent from trying to become what it can never be – fully Euro-American Africa.

Returning for a consensual system would also reduce the many tensions of multiparty democracy and its ballot-box selection of political leaders. In effect, the people’s involvement in affairs of the nation-state, which established a close relation between the government and the governed then would be restored to make members see their being as part of the whole. This way, the people’s sense of ownership of governance which has been overturned by the colonialist state, its institutions and authorities since they are significantly detached from the cultural traditions and institutions of the people would be restored.121 Such a rule then would constitute self-rule

121 See Gyekye’s illustration of the Akan term aban (meaning castle or fort) which is still used to refer to the state as was the case with the colonial state which was detached from the traditions of 189 understood as our rule of my self. Compromise, which is integral to the search for consensus in political decision-making would take center-stage again as the member would think more in terms of the collective self as ‘us’ and our welfare than the individual self as ‘me’ and my interest. Not only would a humanistic and consensual democracy be better able to curtail the situation with multi-party majoritarian ‘democracies’ where when a party wins and gets into power, other parties, their ideas and policies, by constitutional default agreement of sorts, also lose and get out of power or stay out of it (Wiredu, 2012, p.1061) but deliberate obstruction by opposition party to undermine government policy would also be minimized if not expunged.

Thus, even if Ghana, and for that matter multinational Africa, cannot return wholly to the elements of its traditional cultural past because most of it hinged on a perception of communality derived from a sense of ‘natural’ kinship linkages which is not the case in present times, it is in the interest of contemporary African politics to recognize and make substantial room for such valuable traditional institutions and conceptions reworked in the context of the modern state system with relevant modifications where needed. That sense of natural-belonging, in the traditional setting, plays a significant role in nurturing a characteristic of human relation in which peoples’ rights, obligations, reciprocity and security emanate from sympathy and solidarity towards other humans they considered to be members of their collective ‘self’ (Wiredu, 2012, p. 1056). Not only is such sense of security easily lost in Africa’s relatively individualized urbanized cities today, with negative consequences for peoples’ psyches and society’s collective welfare, but the communal sense of ‘self’ as also necessarily relational to others which evinced habits of sensitivity to the interests of others has been lost with it. Therefore, a conscious effort towards evolving a sense of

the people, dictatorial and not transparent in its administration, exploitive in its economics and therefore never owned by the people to be worth committing to (Gyekye, 1997, pp. 128, 256).

190 nationhood; a genuine sense of belonging together, even if not natural, is what the tradition of humanism and consensual democracy, if revived, would bring to post-colonial African politics.

5.5 Conclusion

The chapter aimed at highlighting aspects of traditional African socio-political systems that are viable and ideal for governance in Africa today in contrast with the colonial legacy to make a case for conceptual decolonization as a fundamental response to many of the varied challenges of

Africa’s politics today, and to defend a critical return to Africa’s cultural past or traditions.

Section one explored the deeply ingrained and elaborate democracy(self-rule) in traditional pre-colonial Africa to reveal its humanist, communal and consensual foundations and a consequent

‘non-party’ system which have been disoriented through the influence of colonialist impositions and a consequent ‘colonial mentality’.

Section two discussed the effects of the colonial legacy to show the depth of the rupture and disruption caused by the long history of colonialism then, and in a lingering revised form as

‘neo-colonialism’. It argued for conceptual decolonization as a response to this ruinous effect on the socio-political life of post-colonial Africa.

Section three then made a case for critical sankↄfaism by proposing a critical relook at traditional Africa’s self-evolved humanistic, communal, and consensual culture as very relevant to

Africa’s socio-political outlook today.

The defended view is that a critical return to the past would make the practice of democracy(self-rule) better in contemporary Africa and give meaning to ‘the-people-centeredness’ of democracy(self-rule) which the previous chapters explored. The chapter, thus, concludes with a call for a more meaningful and effective practice of democracy (self-rule) as grounded in a reconceptualized Africa, its peoples, its identities, and more emphatically, its politics.

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CHAPTER SIX

CONCLUSION

This study has examined the underlying premises of the individualism-communitarianism debate, from both Western and African perspectives, and made significant contributions to the discourse by addressing an unanswered question of that classical debate and showing how

‘personism’, as a response to the binary tensions of the debate, is useful in analysing and effectively negotiating some of the problems of democracy generally, but more specifically of post-colonial multinational African democracies.

A significant contribution of this study is the clarity it brings to the discourse. Critically examining the various perspectives, I have argued to show that the debate between communitarians and individualists arises from, and is nourished by, a conceptual obfuscation of the individuality of the person with personhood on one hand, and the conflation of communality with an anthropomorphized ‘community’ on the other.

I have shown that the debating perspectives, as a consequence, have overlooked or ignored a common converging point for the various perspectives which is that human society everywhere is inhabited by composite human persons who are actual embodied beings encapsulating clarified notions of non-optional individuality and communality; never solely individual, nor solely communal but necessarily and always a complex. A critical examination of the various perspectives has revealed that both communitarians and individualists, ultimately, seek to protect and promote the person.

This clarification, as I see it, makes significant contribution to knowledge for, it shows that in spite of communitarians’ demand for recognition of community belongingness,

‘constitutiveness’, and ‘embeddedness’, it is not anti-individualistic. Rather, it is ultimately aimed

192 at the promotion and preservation of the person’s communality. In the same vein, individualists’ demand for individual rights is ultimately aimed at the promotion and preservation of the person’s individuality which is not necessarily anti-community of a kind.

Thus, I have made the case that if the communitarian critique of individualism, as well as the individualist arguments and responses to this critique, is disambiguated of all linguistic and conceptual incoherencies, a synthesized thesis acceptable to both perspectives is unveiled. It becomes evident that individualists and communitarians from Western and African perspectives alike are agreed that actual human society everywhere is not constituted by atomic individuals, abstract individuality or anthropomorphized communities, but rather by concrete human persons each of whom is a complex embodiment of individuality and various levels of unrestricted interrelated communality all in constant dialogical interplay at various levels necessarily, whether or not the persons conceive themselves as such.

Consequently, I have advocated making ‘the person’, such conceived, the focus of the debate and, by extension, of social and political philosophical thought and practice. I have defended this thesis of personism as a better alternative to individualism and communitarianism since it better emphasizes the complementarity of both aspects of the composite being of the person by defining personhood as a complex dialogical interplay of individuality and communality.

The thesis of personism, unveiled by this study, makes a notable contribution to social and political thought because it is able to overcome the inaccurate labeling of the human person as ‘the individual’ and all the conceptual challenges that such labeling brings, without denying her necessarily given individuality – with dimensions such as autonomy, freedom, uniqueness and bearer of rights. At the same time, it makes a consistent and pragmatic case for the person’s equally

193 necessary and given communality without restricting her to a fixed, immutable, unitary, fraternal, or anthropomorphized community as closed entities one from the other.

The study has not only contributed clarity to the debate and, in personism, unveiled a better response to the concerns raised by both perspectives but, it further answers one main question of this dissertation which is how a people-centered system of government – democracy – rather thrives in a supposed individualist context, if the empirical data on democracy were assumed to be wholly correct. It has come to light, through critical examination, that describing a society anywhere as individualist or communitarian would not be meaningful since, through the lens of personism, every society, like its constituents, is characterized by both individuality and communality all at once.

Accordingly, the study maintains that it would not be wholly accurate to argue that Western democracies have flourished because of their individualist orientation and liberal tone of primacy of rights compared to the totalitarian undercurrents of communitarianism in non-Western democracies which only results in intolerance and disagreements in the search for the collective and/or public good. Neither would it be wholly correct to insist that community and its pursuit of the common good rather increases inclusiveness, participation, and involvement in public life and thus, is less likely to evolve an oppressive system of government. The view put forward in this study is that the people-centeredness of democracy simply means its viability, whether labeled as communitarian or liberal, lies in taking the concept seriously as what it is: a self-rule evolved by persons, out of their interactions, experiences and shared meanings, for their own flourishing, simpliciter. For, if government is ‘self’-evolved, every society’s rule would be what it is; a government of itself, by itself and for itself and therefore, a democracy regardless of the tag put on it. That, for this study, is crucial for tangible development and progress.

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Further, the study makes another significant contribution to knowledge in the area of study by exposing the actual substance of the disagreement of communitarianism and individualism namely, the intricate question of who or what is justified at any point in time to ensure harmony

‘within’ and between persons as beings with individual and communal aspects. The responsive approach defended here, which builds on the works of Habermas and Hubert Herman, among others, is to allow constant and genuine dialogical interaction and deliberation ‘within’ and between persons.

The need for constant dialogue and deliberation emphasized in this study rests on the argument I have proffered that ‘self-rule’ does not only entail a person’s mediation of her individuality and communality, but also the mitigation of the tensions in persons’ rule over other persons even in an uncompelled collective; and, the regulation of the exercise of power among collective persons, all at once. In this regard, I have argued that dialogue and deliberation, especially, are key tools for reconciling, as far as possible, the four overlapping senses of ‘self- rule’ in practice: my rule of my self, our rule of our self, my rule of our self and our rule of my self.

This contribution to the discourse, I hope, bridges the gap, in scholarly as well as popular discourse, of the need to distinguish the rule of the self over itself from the rule of the self as a member of the whole over itself and other selves. I have argued that it is such a holistic conception of ‘self-rule’ that turns towards reconciling and curtailing extremes of either unbridled individualistic independence or restrictive communitarian solidarity.

Examining the concept of ‘self-rule’, I have argued that there must be some ‘internal’ mechanism of continuous dialogue, tolerance, solidarity and consensus search ‘within’ a person, hinged on a recognized sense of ‘we’ between her individuality and her communality, that help to muster the inherent tensions in a person’s rule of her dual ‘self’. I have urged that these principles

195 are even more desirable in inter-person and inter-collective rule if the aim is to achieve a self-rule of the people, by the people and for the people – a democracy that is - for, inter-person self-rule, unlike a person’s rule of her ‘self’, is even not confined to a fixed human body to necessarily encourage interactive coexistence.

Therefore, this thesis has stressed the importance of ensuring a sense of ‘we’ as essential to the theorizing and practice of democratic ‘self-rule’ which need not be construed as an argument for direct rule literally. For my analysis of the concept shows that ‘self-rule’ cannot at any point in time mean the absence of being ruled or the absence of ruling, and therefore could not suggest direct rule. However, it has been highlighted that since self-rule refers to the dialogical outcome of consenting to be ruled by the ‘self’ while ruling itself; that is, a state of achieving an agreeable role-playing of ruling while being ruled at the same time, there is the need for both ruler and ruled to identify as a part of the collective ‘self’ for self-rule to be legitimate, and to accelerate change and progress that such healthy interactivity drives. I maintain that for the vision of bridging the inherent gap between self-rule and selves-rule to be achievable in a just way, it would have to be rooted in a gradual, self-evolved, dialogical and non-coerced sense of community as Allen’s

‘wholeness’ not ‘oneness’. Here again, the study contributes to knowledge that helps to bridge the gap, since Rousseau, between the desire to rule one-self and the reality of being ruled all the time.

Consequently, a point of emphasis for this study has been the need for a recognized sense of self as ‘we’ the people for democracy as self-rule anywhere to be legitimate. Admitting the possibility of the threat of imposition in ‘self-rule’ as our rule of my self, where a rule is imposed from the communal aspect of a person’s ‘self’, the study has urged that it would still constitute a self-rule though an undemocratic or non-consensual one. Here, the study leaves an unanswered question that begs for further study, which is the challenge of distinguishing a person’s rule over

196 others by her individual self from her rule over others by appeal to her status in the shared communal context; a Chief, for instance. The concern is how to distinguish the Chief’s rule over her subjects by her individual choice and preference from her rule as the representative of the people she represents as ‘we’.

For this study, I have emphasized that the sense of coercion that cannot be admitted in the conception of self-rule espoused is the one that proceeds from a source not considered by the people as constitutive of their collective ‘self’. I have sought to show that for such a rule there can be no legitimacy. For, not only is the rule non-democratic and non-consensual, but it would not be a rule of the ‘self’ and therefore, not a democracy. Besides, I have argued that trust, on which dialogue and deliberation is based would have been undermined. Thus, democracy by and for the people, for this study, should mean persons’ rule of their own various ‘selves’ at any point in time.

Further, I have argued that the personist understanding of democratic ‘self-rule’ espoused in this dissertation has consequences for the theory and practice of democracy especially in post- colonial Africa today where the forcible creation of most states comes nowhere near the idea of consent; where subjects have been compelled to belong to forged states by the crack of the whip of the colonial ‘master’ and, are required to be, think and act as a collective ‘self’ by same. My reasoned analysis is that these states are devoid of inner life since its subjects’ sense of collective self is still deeply attached to their ethnic and linguistic groups. I have argued that without a sense of ‘we’ at the state level, the colonialist’s democracy bequeathed to most of Africa would remain cosmetic, oppressive, and unproductive in its quest for accelerated development and progress.

In this regard, I have pointed to two main negative outcomes of the colonialist encounter: a disordered confusion of the self-understanding of the African, itself translated unto already unstable and flickering unfamiliar political institutions and structures. The ruinous effects of such

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‘colonial mentality’ and colonial institutions, I have shown, are still more pervasive in post- colonial African politics and national life than the simplistic dismissal it often meets in contemporary scholarly political discourse.

In response to the diagnosed African situation, I have called for a rethinking of the current political order which is chiefly focused on maintaining the integrity of such imposed states indiscriminately. I maintain that the state’s rule, like that of any social organization, would be a genuine ‘self-rule’ and therefore a legitimate democracy only if members of the composite ‘self’ own its rule. Therefore, for the African context, I have argued for a critical return to its communal, consensual, and humanistic culture in place of the colonial legacy of adversarial, cosmetic, ballot- box oriented ‘democracy’ and its commodification of power. I have prescribed Wiredu’s conceptual decolonization as a viable response to the African’s ‘colonial mentality’ and many of the varied challenges of Africa’s politics, and social life, today.

However, unlike advocates of a wholesale return to Africa’s cultural past, I have argued, largely in agreement with Gyekye, that the worth of specific cultural products, past or present, indigenous or foreign ought to be tested on normatively independent grounds to determine their use in the life of today. I have proposed a critical look at Africa’s traditional self-evolved humanistic, communal, and consensual culture to reveal their relevance in the social and political life of Africa today. The case I have made is that Africa’s democracy would flourish by these principles since they are evolved by the people themselves and constituted by their shared meanings and experiences. Thus, I have argued for the need to adapt, revitalize, and incorporate such elegant elements into contemporary socio-cultural and political democratic thought and practice.

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In conclusion, this thesis argues that a personist approach to democracy as ‘self-rule’, for the post-colonial multinational African context would be effective in decolonizing its systems and institutions and improving the peoples’ sense of belonging together as a collective ‘self’ while giving due recognition to their given diversity. This, I have argued, would increasingly improve people’s sense of ownership of the systems and methods of rule which, I maintain, is crucial for advancing wholistic development and progress.

Such an approach to democracy, in my view, has significant advantages over the political theory and practice whose preoccupation seems only to be on the one hand, the protection of state integrity regardless of the practical consequences on actual persons’ distinct individualities and their varied inter-relatedness. On the other hand, a personist approach would be better immune to challenges confronting the political theory and practice which makes preservation of individuality

– rights, liberties, and freedoms – its focus, with little emphasis on actual persons’ necessary and shared communality.

A personist approach to democracy would appreciate and give due recognition to each person as a complex amalgam of both individuality and communality all at once in the theorizing and practical formulation of socio-political policy especially in post-colonial multinational African contexts.

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INDEX OF NAMES A Abraham, L.: 5 Abraham, W.: 162, 163 Abudu, A.: 149, 150, 175, 176, 178 Agada, A.: 21 Alemazung, J.: 177 Allen, D.: 109, 110, 167, Amitai, E.: 34 Andreasen, R.: 42 Ani, E.: 104, 105, 108, 169, 170, 188 Anyidoho, K.: 151, 175, 189, Appiah, K.: 4, 36 Arendt, H.: 5, 69, 94, 157 Aristotle: 17, 29 Austin, D.: 178, 179 Avineri, S.: 3 Ayittey, G.: 163

B Baier, A.: 77 Barabas, J.: 108 Bayeh, E.: 177 Bell, D.: 122 Bellah, R.: 44, 45, 48, 134 Benjamin, J.: 29 Benson, P.: 77 Bentham, J.: 24 Berry, C.: 16 Boamah-Wiafe, D.: 163 Bohman, J.: 74 Boon, M.: 13 Boot, M.: 149 Boswell, J.: 46 Busia, K.: 168, 186

C Calinescu, M.: 111 Campbell, D.: 160, 161 Canovan, M.: 138 Cavanaugh, W.: 138, 139, 150, 152, 153 Chambers, S.: 108 Chikwanha, A.: 176 Christman, J.: 77 Cooke, M.: 103, 108 Connor, W.: 16

217

Copson, R.: 177 Creveld, M.: 143, 144 Cruickshank, B.: 167 Cudd, A.: 42 Cureau, A.: 161

D Dahl, R.: 92, 125, 127 Davidson, B.: 180 De-Shalit, A.: 3 De Uyl, D.: 41 Dewey, J.: 44, 122 Dickson, K.: 3, 13, 186 Donnelly, J.: 164 Doyle, M.: 147 Dworkin, R.: 23, 41, 85 Dzobo, N.: 13, 184

E Eboh, M.: 134 Egbai, U.: 21 Eliseu, T.: 159 Etzioni, A.: 34, 96, 112, 122 Evans-Pritchard, E.: 161 Eze, E.: 167, 170, 171, 172, 184

F Famakinwa, J.: 20, 21, 96 Farah, I.: 175 Fayemi, A.: 165 Ferguson, N.: 147-149, 180 Fichte, J.: 16 Fishkin, J.: 108 Forde, D.: 164 Fortes, M.: 161 Fraser, N.: 106 Friedman, M.: 77 Fung, A.: 132

G Gauthier, D.: 25, 34, 60, 82, 85 Gbadegesin, S.: 13 Geertz, C.: 14 Goold, S.: 104 Gordon, A.: 178 Gordon, D.: 178

218

Gould, C.: 71 Grant, M.: 125 Gray, J.: 43 Griffin, E.: 97 Guibernau, B.: 14 Gutmann, A.: 49, 94, 97, 108, 128, 130, 131 Gyekye, K.: 3, 4, 9, 15, 17-22, 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 36, 42, 43, 45, 47, 50, 61, 85, 96, 113, 114, 121, 122, 124, 131, 141, 157, 159, 160, 161, 163, 164, 174, 176, 181, 182, 184, 186-190

H Habermas, J.: 74, 88, 104-106, 117, 195 Hasnas, J.: 41 Heeger, R.: 36, 60 Heine, B.: 16 Hendriks, F.: 133 Herder, G.: 14, 146, 173, 180, 181 Hermans, H.: 102, 103 Hermans-Konopka, A.: 102, 103 Hobbes, T.: 23, 25, 67, 144, 145, 149 Holy, L.: 144 Honneth, L.: 29 Hountondji, P.: 185 Howard, M.: 150

I Ignatieff, M.: 149 Ikuenobe, P.: 21 Irele, A.: 185

J Johnson, P.: 179, 180

K Kagan, R.: 149 Kant, I.: 25, 41, 223 Karpowitz, C.: 108 Katz, R.: 48 Kaunda, K.: 114, 160, 168, 187 Kempen, H.: 102 Kenyatta, J.: 3, 18, 31, 57, 85 Kidane, M.: 177 Kufour, J.: 176 Kukathas, C.: 49, 62, 123, 143, 147, 151 Kymlicka, W.: 18, 24, 35, 48, 62, 85, 87, 96, 146, 151

219

L Lal, D.: 147, 148 Landemore, H.: 107 Lauer, H.: 151, 175, 189 Linderman, M.: 108 Locke, J.: 24, 25, 38, 41, 43, 67, 73

M MacIntyre, A.: 3, 14, 28, 29, 33, 53, 56, 68, 80, 85, 96, 97, 136 Mackie, G.: 108 Majeed, H.: 21, 22, 96, 165 Mansbridge, J.: 108 Mapuva, J.: 176 Masunungure, E.: 176 Matolino, B.: 13, 20, 21, 96, 170-172 Mazongo, K.: 175 Mazrui, A.: 178 Mbiti, A.: 4, 19, 20, 30, 80, 85, 159, 186 McCarthy, T.: 106 McGann, A.: 127 Mead, G.: 29, 53, 72, 78, 79, 80, 85, 90, 112, 136, 174 Melber, H.: 176 Mendel-Reyes, M.: 87, 94, 99, 129 Menkiti, I.: 13, 19, 29, 30, 32, 60, 62, 80, 85, 159 Mercier, H.: 107 Meyers, D.: 77 Mill, J.: 41, 42, 93, 148 Miller, D.: 35, 36, 64, 83, 87, 121 Minsky, M.: 102 Mises, L.: 16 Molefe, M.: 21 Molomo, M.: 176 Mutiso, G.: 168 Mutz, D.: 133 Myles, N.: 23, 36, 61, 70 Mullahy, P.: 136

N Neblo, M.: 107 Nedelsky, J.: 77 Njoku, U.: 177 Nkrumah, K.: 138, 173, 186 Nozick, R.: 23, 39, 41, 60, 61, 85 Nurse, D.: 16 Nyerere, J.: 158, 159, 168, 184, 187

220

O Obioma, C.: 144 Okin, S.: 129 Olivier, N.: 162 Onwuanibe, R.: 13

P Pakenham, T.: 157 Parrinder, E.: 186 Pitkin, H.: 101 Popper, K.: 5, 69, 157 Purdy, J.: 149

R Rasmussen, D.: 41 Rattray, R.: 158, 166 Rawls, J.: 23-25, 29, 30, 33, 37-41, 43, 55, 67, 84, 150 Rehg, W.: 74 Richard, F.: 13, 94 Rohio, S.: 168 Rosenberg, M.: 103 Rousseau, J.: 25. 29, 92, 125, 138, 145, 153, 196 Rwiza, R.: 159

S Sabatier, P.: 110 Salih, M.: 177, 178 Sandel, M.: 3, 24, 26, 27, 32, 40, 53, 56, 59, 65, 80, 81, 85, 96, 97 Sanders, L.: 107 Saunders, B.: 128 Schlegel: 16 Schmid, H.: 69, 70 Schumpeter, J.: 94 Schweikard, D.: 69, 70 Senghor, L.: 4, 18, 29, 31, 32, 57, 59, 62, 68, 85, 184 Shils, E.: 112 Simiyu, V.: 161, 187 Simmons, A.: 38 Sithole, N.: 163, 164, 168, 189 Skidelsky, W.: 180 Sogolo, G.: 13 Sullivan, H.: 136

T Talmon, J.: 5, 69, 157

221

Taylor, C.: 3, 25-27, 29, 30, 32, 34, 38, 53, 55-59, 65-67, 71, 77, 80, 85, 90, 96-97, 173-174, 183-184 Tempels, P.: 30, 159 Thompson, D.: 107, 108, 128, 130, 131 Tilly, C.: 150 Tonnies, F.: 37

V Van den Brink, B.: 33 Van der Burg, W.: 5, 35, 36 Van Loon, R.: 102

W Waldron, J.: 130 Wall, S.: 71 Walzer, M.: 26, 28, 33, 34, 56, 57, 65, 82, 97 Wesoloska, E.: 108 Winnicott, D.: 29 Wiredu, K.: 18, 29, 61, 108, 127, 141, 144, 156, 163-166, 168-171, 174, 184, 186-188, 196, 198, Wolff, R.: 92-93 Wolin, S.: 93 Wood, A.: 30 Wyk, J.: 175

Y Young, C.: 176 Young, I.: 107

Z Zucker, R.: 40-41

222

SAMENVATTING

Deze studie onderzoekt de onderliggende premissen van het individualisme-communitarisme- debat, zowel vanuit Westers als Afrikaans perspectief. Het levert een bijdrage aan het discours door te laten zien hoe ‘personisme’, als antwoord op de binaire spanningen van het debat, nuttig is bij het analyseren en effectief oplossen van enkele fundamentele problemen van de democratie in het algemeen, maar meer specifiek van postkoloniale, multinationale Afrikaanse democratieën.

Hoofdstuk één schetst de context van het proefschrift met een bespreking van de gemeenschap en het individu vanuit zowel Afrikaanse als Westerse perspectieven, en brengt enkele convergenties en verschillen aan het licht. Het verkent en evalueert verder de begrippen ‘communitarisme’ en

‘individualisme’ in de politieke filosofie vanuit beide perspectieven en plaatst het geleidelijk in het discours over de voorwaarden en het doel van democratie.

Hoofdstuk twee legt een onderliggende vooronderstelling van het debat bloot: een conceptuele verwisseling van de individualiteit van de persoon met persoon-zijn aan de ene kant en de versmelting van de zin voor gemeenschap van de persoon met een antropomorfe gemeenschap aan de andere kant.

Deze onjuiste veronderstelling en de daaruit voortvloeiende misvattingen worden conceptueel geanalyseerd. Ik heb betoogd dat zonder deze dubbelzinnigheden en misvattingen individualisten en communitaristen, vanuit zowel Westers als Afrikaans perspectief, het erover eens zijn dat de menselijke samenleving niet wordt gevormd door dan wel atomaire individuen dan wel antropomorfe gemeenschappen, maar door concrete menselijke personen die elk een complexe belichaming zijn van individualiteit en onderling verbonden gemeenschappelijkheid, in constante dialoog, en op verschillende niveaus. De bijdrage die deze bevinding levert aan het discours is dat het de onnauwkeurige veronderstelling wegneemt dat het communitaristische argument anti-individualistisch zou zijn en het individualistische argument anti-gemeenschappelijk. Het hoofdstuk pleit ervoor om ‘de persoon’ en een

223 daaruit voortvloeiende ‘personistische’ filosofie de focus te maken van sociaal-politiek denken en handelen. Dit personisme helpt de complementariteit van beide aspecten van de samengestelde persoon beter conceptualiseren en onnodige conceptuele tegenstellingen vermijden.

Hoofdstuk drie bespreekt 'zelfbestuur' vanuit een personistisch perspectief. Het stelt dat

‘zelfbestuur’ een harmonieuze bemiddeling inhoudt van het noodzakelijk zowel individuele als gemeenschappelijke zelf van de persoon. Dit betreft een beperking van onvermijdelijke spanningen in de heerschappij van personen over andere personen, zelfs in de context van een ongedwongen collectief. Het betreft ook het reguleren van de machtsuitoefening tussen en binnen collectieven. Zelfbestuur betreft in mijn personistische visie een interactieve en dialogische overlap van mijn heerschappij over mezelf, onze heerschappij over ons zelf, mijn heerschappij over ons zelf en onze heerschappij over mijzelf. Het voorstel is dat deze onderliggende beginselen van zelfbestuur de democratie als een systeem van politieke heerschappij funderen. Continue dialoog, beraadslaging, het najagen van consensus en een gevoel van

'wij' zijn van fundamenteel belang voor zelfbestuur dat ruimte laat aan individualiteit en gemeenschappelijkheid. Een goede balans tussen beide aspecten leidt niet tot absolute ‘eenheid’, maar tot een zekere ‘heelheid’ van een volk gekarakteriseerd door zelfbestuur.

Hoofdstuk vier gaat in op de gevolgen van het personistische begrip van ‘zelfbestuur’ voor de theorie en praktijk van democratie als regering door en voor het volk, vooral in het postkoloniale Afrika van vandaag. Het pleit voor een heroverweging van de huidige politieke orde, die zonder onderscheid het behoud van de bestaande staatsintegriteit verdedigt. Dit is een probleem vooral voor multinationale, meertalige en postkoloniale Afrikaanse staten waar onderdanen gedwongen zijn te behoren tot politieke eenheden die zijn ontstaan door het kraken van de zweep van de koloniale 'meester' en dus gedwongen zijn te zijn, denken en handelen als een collectief 'zelf'. Daartegen houdt het hoofdstuk dat zonder een gevoel van 'wij' op staatsniveau de democratie van de kolonialist (die aan het grootste deel van Afrika is

224 nagelaten), cosmetisch, onderdrukkend en onproductief zal blijven in haar zoektocht naar versnelde ontwikkeling en vooruitgang. De bijdrage van dit hoofdstuk aan het democratiediscours is de opvatting dat de ‘volk-gerichtheid’ van democratie van doorslaggevend belang is voor de levensvatbaarheid van democratie, of deze nu als communitaristisch of liberaal wordt begrepen; een zelfbestuur van personen dat voortkomt uit hun gedeelde interacties, ervaringen en betekenissen, voor hun eigen welzijn. Dat is voor deze studie cruciaal.

De studie sluit af met de stelling dat niet veel betekenis kan worden toegeschreven aan de samenleving als individualistisch of communitaristisch, noch aan de karakterisering van de concrete menselijke persoon als 'individu', zoals gangbaar in Westers denken, noch aan het antropomorfisme van

'gemeenschap', zoals dikwijls van toepassing geacht op Afrikaanse contexten. Een personistische benadering van democratie heeft een aanzienlijk voordeel ten opzichte van de politieke theorie die zich bezighoudt met de bescherming van de voorgegeven staatsintegriteit, ongeacht de praktische gevolgen voor de veelvormige individualiteit en de diverse gemeenschappelijkheid eigen aan de persoon. Een personistische benadering is beter bestand tegen de uitdagingen waarmee de politieke theorie en praktijk worden geconfronteerd die het behoud van individualiteit - rechten en vrijheden - centraal stelt, met weinig oog voor de noodzakelijke en gedeelde gemeenschappelijkheid karakteristiek voor werkelijke personen.

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CURRICULUM VITAE

Nancy Ama Myles (1983) received her Bachelor’s degree from University of Ghana, Legon (2006,

First Class) and her Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in Philosophy from University of Ghana (2009, with distinction). Nancy wrote her PhD thesis at the Department of Philosophy and Religious

Studies of the University of Utrecht (2016-2020). Her thesis was supervised by Prof. dr. Bert van den Brink, Emeritus Professor Kwame Gyekye (late) and Dr. Hasskei Majeed Mohammed.

Nancy’s research interests and current publications fall in the area of social and political philosophy, philosophy of personhood, ethics, multiculturalism and African philosophy. She has been a full-time member of faculty of the Department of Philosophy and Classics of the University of Ghana since 2011.

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Quaestiones Infinitae Publications of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Utrecht University Volume 129

VOLUME 21 D. VAN DALEN, Torens en Fundamenten (valedictory lecture), 1997. VOLUME 22 J.A. BERGSTRA, W.J. FOKKINK, W.M.T. MENNEN, S.F.M. VAN VLIJMEN, Spoorweglogica via EURIS, 1997. VOLUME 23 I.M. CROESE, Simplicius on Continuous and Instantaneous Change (dissertation), 1998. VOLUME 24 M.J. HOLLENBERG, Logic and Bisimulation (dissertation), 1998. VOLUME 25 C.H. LEIJENHORST, Hobbes and the Aristotelians (dissertation), 1998. VOLUME 26 S.F.M. VAN VLIJMEN, Algebraic Specification in Action (dissertation), 1998. VOLUME 27 M.F. VERWEIJ, Preventive Medicine Between Obligation and Aspiration (dissertation), 1998. VOLUME 28 J.A. BERGSTRA, S.F.M. VAN VLIJMEN, Theoretische Software-Engineering: kenmerken, faseringen en classificaties, 1998. VOLUME 29 A.G. WOUTERS, Explanation Without A Cause (dissertation), 1999. VOLUME 30 M.M.S.K. SIE, Responsibility, Blameworthy Action & Normative Disagreements (dissertation), 1999. VOLUME 31 M.S.P.R. VAN ATTEN, Phenomenology of choice sequences (dissertation), 1999. VOLUME 32 V.N. STEBLETSOVA, Algebras, Relations and Geometries (an equational perspective) (dissertation), 2000. VOLUME 33 A. VISSER, Het Tekst Continuüm (inaugural lecture), 2000. VOLUME 34 H. ISHIGURO, Can we speak about what cannot be said? (public lecture), 2000. VOLUME 35 W. HAAS, Haltlosigkeit; Zwischen Sprache und Erfahrung (dissertation), 2001. VOLUME 36 R. POLI, ALWIS: Ontology for knowledge engineers (dissertation), 2001. VOLUME 37 J. MANSFELD, Platonische Briefschrijverij (valedictory lecture), 2001. VOLUME 37A E.J. BOS, The Correspondence between Descartes and Henricus Regius (dissertation), 2002. VOLUME 38 M. VAN OTEGEM, A Bibliography of the Works of Descartes (1637-1704) (dissertation), 2002. VOLUME 39 B.E.K.J. GOOSSENS, Edmund Husserl: Einleitung in die Philosophie: Vorlesungen 1922/23 (dissertation), 2003. VOLUME 40 H.J.M. BROEKHUIJSE, Het einde van de sociaaldemocratie (dissertation), 2002. VOLUME 41 P. RAVALLI, Husserls Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität in den Göttinger Jahren: Eine kritisch-historische Darstellung (dissertation), 2003. VOLUME 42 B. ALMOND, The Midas Touch: Ethics, Science and our Human Future (inaugural lecture), 2003. VOLUME 43 M. DÜWELL, Morele kennis: over de mogelijkheden van toegepaste ethiek (inaugural lecture), 2003. VOLUME 44 R.D.A. HENDRIKS, Metamathematics in Coq (dissertation), 2003. VOLUME 45 TH. VERBEEK, E.J. BOS, J.M.M. VAN DE VEN, The Correspondence of René Descartes: 1643, 2003. VOLUME 46 J.J.C. KUIPER, Ideas and Explorations: Brouwer’s Road to Intuitionism (dissertation), 2004. 227

VOLUME 47 C.M. BEKKER, Rechtvaardigheid, Onpartijdigheid, Gender en Sociale Diversiteit; Feministische filosofen over recht doen aan vrouwen en hun onderlinge verschillen (dissertation), 2004. VOLUME 48 A.A. LONG, Epictetus on understanding and managing emotions (public lecture), 2004. VOLUME 49 J.J. JOOSTEN, Interpretability formalized (dissertation), 2004. VOLUME 50 J.G. SIJMONS, Phänomenologie und Idealismus: Analyse der Struktur und Methode der Philosophie Rudolf Steiners (dissertation), 2005. VOLUME 51 J.H. HOOGSTAD, Time tracks (dissertation), 2005. VOLUME 52 M.A. VAN DEN HOVEN, A Claim for Reasonable Morality (dissertation), 2006. VOLUME 53 C. VERMEULEN, René Descartes, Specimina philosophiae: Introduction and Critical Edition (dissertation), 2007. VOLUME 54 R.G. MILLIKAN, Learning Language without having a theory of mind (inaugural lecture), 2007. VOLUME 55 R.J.G. CLAASSEN, The Market’s Place in the Provision of Goods (dissertation), 2008. VOLUME 56 H.J.S. BRUGGINK, Equivalence of Reductions in Higher-Order Rewriting (dissertation), 2008. VOLUME 57 A. KALIS, Failures of agency (dissertation), 2009. VOLUME 58 S. GRAUMANN, Assistierte Freiheit (dissertation), 2009. VOLUME 59 M. AALDERINK, Philosophy, Scientific Knowledge, and Concept Formation in Geulincx and Descartes (dissertation), 2010. VOLUME 60 I.M. CONRADIE, Seneca in his cultural and literary context: Selected moral letters on the body (dissertation), 2010. VOLUME 61 C. VAN SIJL, Stoic Philosophy and the Exegesis of Myth (dissertation), 2010. VOLUME 62 J.M.I.M. LEO, The Logical Structure of Relations (dissertation), 2010. VOLUME 63 M.S.A. VAN HOUTE, Seneca’s theology in its philosophical context (dissertation), 2010. VOLUME 64 F.A. BAKKER, Three Studies in Epicurean Cosmology (dissertation), 2010. VOLUME 65 T. FOSSEN, Political legitimacy and the pragmatic turn (dissertation), 2011. VOLUME 66 T. VISAK, Killing happy animals. Explorations in utilitarian ethics. (dissertation), 2011. VOLUME 67 A. JOOSSE, Why we need others: Platonic and Stoic models of friendship and self- understanding (dissertation), 2011. VOLUME 68 N. M. NIJSINGH, Expanding newborn screening programmes and strengthening informed consent (dissertation), 2012. VOLUME 69 R. PEELS, Believing Responsibly: Intellectual Obligations and Doxastic Excuses (dissertation), 2012. VOLUME 70 S. LUTZ, Criteria of Empirical Significance (dissertation), 2012 VOLUME 70A G.H. BOS, Agential Self-consciousness, beyond conscious agency (dissertation), 2013. VOLUME 71 F.E. KALDEWAIJ, The animal in morality: Justifying duties to animals in Kantian moral philosophy (dissertation), 2013. VOLUME 72 R.O. BUNING, Henricus Reneri (1593-1639): Descartes’ Quartermaster in Aristotelian Territory (dissertation), 2013.

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VOLUME 73 I.S. LÖWISCH, Genealogy Composition in Response to Trauma: Gender and Memory in 1 Chronicles 1-9 and the Documentary Film ‘My Life Part 2’ (dissertation), 2013. VOLUME 74 A. EL KHAIRAT, Contesting Boundaries: Satire in Contemporary Morocco (dissertation), 2013. VOLUME 75 A. KROM, Not to be sneezed at. On the possibility of justifying infectious disease control by appealing to a mid-level harm principle (dissertation), 2014. VOLUME 76 Z. PALL, Salafism in Lebanon: local and transnational resources (dissertation), 2014. VOLUME 77 D. WAHID, Nurturing the Salafi Manhaj: A Study of Salafi Pesantrens in Contemporary Indonesia (dissertation), 2014. VOLUME 78 B.W.P VAN DEN BERG, Speelruimte voor dialoog en verbeelding. Basisschoolleerlingen maken kennis met religieuze verhalen (dissertation), 2014. VOLUME 79 J.T. BERGHUIJS, New Spirituality and Social Engagement (dissertation), 2014. VOLUME 80 A. WETTER, Judging By Her. Reconfiguring Israel in Ruth, Esther and Judith (dissertation), 2014. VOLUME 81 J.M. MULDER, Conceptual Realism. The Structure of Metaphysical Thought (dissertation), 2014. VOLUME 82 L.W.C. VAN LIT, Eschatology and the World of Image in Suhrawardī and His Commentators (dissertation), 2014. VOLUME 83 P.L. LAMBERTZ, Divisive matters. Aesthetic difference and authority in a Congolese spiritual movement ‘from Japan’ (dissertation), 2015. VOLUME 84 J.P. GOUDSMIT, Intuitionistic Rules: Admissible Rules of Intermediate Logics (dissertation), 2015. VOLUME 85 E.T. FEIKEMA, Still not at Ease: Corruption and Conflict of Interest in Hybrid Political Orders (dissertation), 2015. VOLUME 86 N. VAN MILTENBURG, Freedom in Action (dissertation), 2015. VOLUME 86A P. COPPENS, Seeing God in This World and the Otherworld: Crossing Boundaries in Sufi Commentaries on the Qurʾān (dissertation), 2015. VOLUME 87 D.H.J. JETHRO, Aesthetics of Power: Heritage Formation and the Senses in Post- Apartheid South Africa (dissertation), 2015. VOLUME 88 C.E. HARNACKE, From Human Nature to Moral Judgement: Reframing Debates about Disability and Enhancement (dissertation), 2015. VOLUME 89 X. WANG, Human Rights and Internet Access: A Philosophical Investigation (dissertation), 2016. VOLUME 90 R. VAN BROEKHOVEN, De Bewakers Bewaakt: Journalistiek en leiderschap in een gemediatiseerde democratie (dissertation), 2016. VOLUME 91 A. SCHLATMANN, Shi‘i Muslim youth in the Netherlands: Negotiating Shi‘i fatwas and rituals in the Dutch context (dissertation), 2016. VOLUME 92 M.L. VAN WIJNGAARDEN, Schitterende getuigen. Nederlands luthers avondmaalsgerei als identiteitsdrager van een godsdienstige minderheid (dissertation), 2016. VOLUME 93 S. COENRADIE, Vicarious substitution in the literary work of Shūsaku Endō. On fools, animals, objects and doubles (dissertation), 2016. VOLUME 94 J. RAJAIAH, Dalit humanization. A quest based on M.M. Thomas’ theology of salvation and humanization (dissertation), 2016.

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VOLUME 95 D.L.A. OMETTO, Freedom & Self-Knowledge (dissertation), 2016. VOLUME 96 Y. YALDIZ, The Afterlife in Mind: Piety and Renunciatory Practice in the 2nd/8th- and early 3rd/9th-Century Books of Renunciation (Kutub al-Zuhd) (dissertation), 2016. VOLUME 97 M.F. BYSKOV, Between experts and locals. Towards an inclusive framework for a development agenda (dissertation), 2016. VOLUME 98 A. RUMBERG, Transitions toward a Semantics for Real Possibility (dissertation), 2016. VOLUME 99 S. DE MAAGT, Constructing Morality: Transcendental Arguments in Ethics (dissertation), 2017. VOLUME 100 S. BINDER, Total Atheism (dissertation), 2017. VOLUME 101 T. GIESBERS, The Wall or the Door: German Realism around 1800, (dissertation), 2017. VOLUME 102 P. SPERBER, Kantian Psychologism (dissertation), 2017. VOLUME 103 J.M. HAMER, Agential Pluralism: A Philosophy of Fundamental Rights (dissertation), 2017. VOLUME 104 M. IBRAHIM, Sensational Piety: Practices of Mediation in Christ Embassy and NASFAT (dissertation), 2017. VOLUME 105 R.A.J. MEES, Sustainable Action, Perspectives for Individuals, Institutions, and Humanity (dissertation), 2017. VOLUME 106 A.A.J. POST, The Journey of a Taymiyyan Sufi: Sufism Through the Eyes ofʿImād al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Wāsiṭī (d. 711/1311) (dissertation), 2017. VOLUME 107 F.A. FOGUE KUATE, Médias et coexistence entre Musulmans et Chrétiens au Nord- Cameroun: de la période coloniale Française au début du XXIème siècle (dissertation), 2017. VOLUME 108 J. KROESBERGEN-KAMPS, Speaking of Satan in Zambia. The persuasiveness of contemporary narratives about Satanism (dissertation), 2018. VOLUME 109 F. TENG, Moral Responsibilities to Future Generations. A Comparative Study on Human Rights Theory and Confucianism (dissertation), 2018. VOLUME 110 H.W.A. DUIJF, Let’s Do It! Collective Responsibility, Joint Action, and Participation (dissertation), 2018. VOLUME 111 R.A. CALVERT, Pilgrims in the port. Migrant Christian communities in Rotterdam (dissertation), 2018. VOLUME 112 W.P.J.L. VAN SAANE, Protestant Mission Partnerships: The Concept of Partnership in the History of the Netherlands Missionary Council in the Twentieth Century (dissertation), 2018. VOLUME 113 D.K. DÜRING, Of Dragons and Owls. Rethinking Chinese and Western narratives of modernity (dissertation), 2018. VOLUME 114 H. ARENTSHORST, Perspectives on freedom. Normative and political views on the preconditions of a free democratic society (dissertation), 2018. VOLUME 115 M.B.O.T. KLENK, Survival of Defeat. Evolution, Moral Objectivity, and Undercutting (dissertation), 2018. VOLUME 116 J.H. HOEKJEN, Pars melior nostri. The Structure of Spinoza’s Intellect (dissertation), 2018. VOLUME 117 C.J. MUDDE, Rouwen in de marge. De materiële rouwcultuur van de katholieke geloofsgemeenschap in vroegmodern Nederland (dissertation), 2018.

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VOLUME 118 K. GRIT, “Christians by Faith, Pakistani by Citizenship”. Negotiating Christian Identity in Pakistan (dissertation), 2019. VOLUME 119 J.K.G. HOPSTER, Moral Objectivity: Origins and Foundations (dissertation), 2019. VOLUME 120 H. BEURMANJER, Tango met God? Een theoretische verheldering van bibliodans als methode voor spirituele vorming (dissertation), 2019. VOLUME 121 M.C. GÖBEL, Human Dignity as the Ground of Human Rights. A Study in Moral Philosophy and Legal Practice (dissertation), 2019. VOLUME 122 T. VAN ’T HOF, Enigmatic Etchings. True Religion in Romeyn de Hooghe’s Hieroglyphica (dissertation), 2019. VOLUME 123 M. DERKS, Constructions of Homosexuality and Christian Religion in Contemporary Public Discourse in the Netherlands (dissertation), 2019. VOLUME 124 H. NIEBER, Drinking the Written Qurʾan. Healing with Kombe in Zanzibar Town (dissertation), 2020. VOLUME 125 B.A. KAMPHORST, Autonomy-Respectful E-Coaching Systems: Fending Off Complacency (dissertation), 2020. VOLUME 126 R.W. VINKESTEIJN, Philosophical Perspectives on Galen of Pergamum: Four Case-Studies on Human Nature and the Relation Between Body and Soul (dissertation), 2020. VOLUME 127 L.J. JOZIASSE, Women’s faith seeking life; Lived Christologies and the transformation of gender relations in two Kenyan churches (dissertation), 2020. VOLUME 128 M. KRAMM, Balancing Tradition and Development. A deliberative procedure for the evaluation of cultural traditions in development contexts (dissertation), 2020. VOLUME 129 N. MYLES, Communality, Individuality and Democracy: A Defense of Personism (dissertation), 2020.

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