Abstract
Society is (ideally) built on principles such as fairness and equality, which are designed to protect the wellbeing of all human beings. Thinkers such as John Rawls and Immanuel Kant provide us with theories that are supposed to help us understand that the valuable relationship among persons should be built on principles of equality and non-discrimination. While Kant’s theory of personhood can be used as an example of a view that contributes to building societies of persons who deserve equal consideration, Charles Mills, following Emmanuel Eze, rightly points out that Kant’s theory was not an inclusive theory of persons as it relegated the black race, among other races, to the category of sub-persons, if not non-persons. Put differently then, only certain races, because of their personhood status, would be deserving of being treated fairly as beings of equal value to any other. How then do we talk of distributive justice when the very principles of justice, in some texts, are designed for some people and not others? My aim is to suggest that we (re)configure personhood to affirm the value of all individuals through an analysis of ‘personhood’ as presented by Kant. I will also consider the African view of personhood in order to make a recommendation that puts forward the value of persons as a necessary condition for the foundation justice. My overarching view is that theories of personhood cannot help us respond to distributive justice that relates to needs if the starting point of those theories discriminates against individuals based on race.
A word of gratitude to Tony Oyowe and Chris Alsobrook whose comments benefitted this paper.
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Notes
- 1.
Kant does not single out black people. His taxonomy of race includes Indians and Americans, with black people being the lowest ranking race because their complexion is the darkest in comparison to the other races. He argues that non-Europeans lack rationality. For the purpose of this chapter, I focus on black people.
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Tshivhase, M. (2021). Understanding and (Re)configuring Personhood Contra Systemic Dehumanisation. In: Molefe, M., Allsobrook, C. (eds) Towards an African Political Philosophy of Needs. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64496-3_6
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