Menkiti: The Made Self

You are not born a person; you become one slowly and over time. You have to earn your name and your identity through what you do and who you help. And you can fail at it. In the 1980s, the philosopher Ifeanyi Menkiti formalised a version of an African philosophy that has existed in various cultures for thousands of years. Menkiti argues that personhood is not some metaphysical fact about having a mind. It doesn't require any kind of ensoulment. Personhood is a status that we acquire through moral participation in our community, and so it comes in degrees, and it can also be lost. And so, if every time a child is kind to their siblings, or somebody offers help to their neighbour, they move one step closer to becoming a person. And inversely, if somebody cheats, or steals, or lies, or does any number of monstrous things, they can be unpersoned. Menkiti points out that in everyday language, somebody might say, 'He or she is not a person,' and that is not hyperbole. To some, this might sound odd. How can a newborn not be a person? But Menkiti asks us to flip the question the other way around. How odd it is to assume that a newborn is complete. How odd it is to imagine a person existing outside of their deeds within a community. And so, if we see ethics and identity in Menkiti's terms, we shouldn't ask, 'Who am I?' But rather, 'What do I need to do to become who I want to be?'