Personal Identity in African Metaphysics

Lecture Overview

Leke Adeofe

(1) Quick Overview of Metaphysics

a. Metaphysics describes the mechanisms that make Nature work (Physics is
the study of Natures working, Metaphysics is the study of what makes
Nature in the first place)
b. Its often the study of pure being. Ontology is similar, asking what does
it mean to be a certain thing (what is the essence of a chair? What makes
a human a human and not something else?) Metaphysics, however, asks
what does it mean to exist at all? Where does existence at all even come
from? If everything is brought into existence by something else, does that
mean that there had to have been something in the beginning that didnt
come into being, thats always been in being, and that brings everything
else into being?
i. In other words: if Physics is the study of gravity and the elements
and growth and decay and movement and change, Metaphysics
asks what does it mean to be at all (prior to changing or decaying
or growing or moving, things must first exist, they must be, and
metaphysics
(2) Quick Overview of the Problem of Identity
a. The problem of identity is linked to ontology and metaphysics. It asks:
since everything seems to be constantly changing, can we say that theres
anything stable over time?
i. On the one hand, the body is clearly always changing (trust me, I
used to have so much more hair than I do now)
ii. On the other hand, the mind is also changing (my beliefs [Peirce],
my memories, my personality, everything)
1. So if both body and mind are changes, what, if anything, is
staying the same if Im still me over time?
So the question here is: from the perspective of African philosophy, what does it mean to
be human?

Pre-theoretic concerns about personal identity challenge us to provide a coherent and

unified response to the following questions: What is a person? What is it for a person to
be the same persisting entity across time (or at a time)? How many ontologically distinct
entities constitute a person? What relationship, if any, exists between an individual's firstperson, subjective experiences and our objective, third person's perspective? African
philosophy takes the challenge much more seriously than Western philosophy.

(3) Quick Overview of Human Being in the West

a. Aristotle: 3-part soul
i. Reason exclusive to humans
ii. Desire sense experience, shared by humans and animals
iii. Nutritive growth, organ function, taking in food, etc., shared by
humans, animals, and plants
b. St. Augustine (combing Aristotle with Scripture). God made everything
the way Aristotle said it was. If so, what makes humans special is their
capacity for Reason which they share with neither animals nor plants.
Therefore, we ought to use Reason more than any other part of the soul.
i. If the soul is ordered that way, the individual is virtuous
ii. If the soul is ordered with desire above reason, the person is a
fool, defying Gods plan for what it means to be human.
1. The fool, drive by desire above reason, loves things more
than God (sex, food, material goods, etc.)
c. Ren Descartes (modern period)
i. Taking Augustines three-part soul (which he, in turn, got from
Aristotle), Descartes demonstrates that we dont need a body to be
considered human. I think therefore I am means that I can doubt
I have a body but still be thinking, meaning what I am (essence) is
Reason. The other two parts of the soul (Desire and Nutritive) are
bodily (sense desires are bodily, nutritive is bodily), and we dont
need those to explain what it means to be human. So instead of a
three part soul, Descartes said the soul is Reason, period, and all
else is body.
1. He created a dualist philosophy: humans are Reason (mind)
and the body is inconsequential
A tripartite conception of a person characterizes the African thought system.
- Sounds like something similar to Aristotle/Augustine, maybe?
According to African philosophy, its quite different from anything in that Western
tradition. A human is a union of:
(1) ara (body) - physical
(2) emi (mind/soul) mental/spiritual
(3) ori (inner head) mental/spiritual
-

ori is considered ontologically independent of the other two. So its not

Cartesian dualism. Those Western terms simply cant reach the complexity of
whats going on here.

Whereas the Western tradition maintains that a single God created a human with either
three (Aristotle/Augustine) or two (Descartes) parts, African philosophy maintains that a
different deity created each individual part of the three (ara, emi, and ori).
-

Ara (the body) is constructed by Orisa-nla (the arch deity)

Emi (the mind/soul) is constructed by Olodumare (God or Supreme Deity)
Ori (the inner head) is constructed by Ajala

Emi (the soul) is immortal and transmigratory.

Ori (the inner head) is the bearer of personal destiny and thus represents individual
personality.
What is a person in the African view? This question is ambiguous between two different
but related questions: What are the constitutive elements of a person? What makes a
person the same persisting entity across time?
In response to the first question, the constitutive elements are ara, emi, and ori. The task
is to determine the extent to which this response would help with the second but
interrelated question about persistence.
In other words, we now what makes a person a person (those three parts). But the
question now is, what is the essence of a person such it endures over time? Is there one
thats special (like Descartes said, the Mind, not the Body, endures over time)? Or two?
Or three? Which one (or more) persists over time, despite all apparent change that really
defines what a person is?
The emphasis in African philosophy is not on bodily persistence of time, nor really on the
souls immortality which is kind of a given and shared by everyone with a soul, what is
interesting to African philosophy is concern with personal identity is concern with my
psychic unity, not my soulunless I am worried about the possibility of life after death.
Concern with psychic unity is concern with the extent to which activities in my life fulfill
a purpose. The purpose in turn provides meaning to my life, and it is that meaning that
evidences to me psychic unity, that my life is on track.
Mental or psychic unity, the unity of personality, provides meaning to an individuals
life, creates a coherent narrative and story with goals and a lifes ultimate purpose.
A life lived consciously or otherwise in conformity with this state of becoming is a life
on course, and the purpose that emerges from it provides genuine psychic unity to the
individual. Ori, understood as destiny, embodies the quasi-historical self-actualization.
Trees do not have ori, and neither do cats, dogs, and dolphins. My concern with my
identity is with whether my life is on track.

In the West, when wrestling with what makes human special and we say Reason, thats
too vague, since, in many ways, animals have Reason, too. But African philosophy
makes this clearer: what makes a human a human, the essence, is a humans ability to
determine his/her destiny own destiny. No animal, as far as we know, can do that.
as African metaphysics suggests, our concern with personal identity is that whatever
projects we are engaged in are to be fulfilled as well as possible, then it is a mistake to
elevate these projects into a criterion of personal identity as the mental theorists have
done.
The projects dont define us; we choose the projects, and then set ourselves to doing them
as well as possible. This provides continuity through life via ori.
The concern with the continuity of our intentions, beliefs, and memories is a concern not
with specific projects but with the successful completion of whatever projects there are,
as long as they contribute to our self-actualization.
Were not defined by what we do, we are defined by a course of continuous life doing it
well.
Ori provides the needed metaphysical support to our social existence; it helps to make
our beliefs, character, and social projects really ours. With ori, our social existence
exemplifies a self-actualization process.
Clancys thoughts: this is the first time reading this. Inevitably, Im drawing connections
to things familiar to me. And this is so awesome nothing is really familiar and I love it.
The closest things I can think of that might resonate with his are not Western at all, but
Hindu and Buddhist (from Eastern philosophy, not Western).
-

Hinduism advocates yoga, a term which means union with the divine (which
doesnt apply here) but a secondary meaning is union with oneself, i.e., selfactualization which does at least seem to apply here. Yoga is not yoga in the
sense we in the West think it is (its been Westernized into a stretching/meditation
system). In India, however, there are many different types of yoga, i.e., many
different paths to self-actualization.
o If youre inclined towards study, theres jhana yoga where you selfactualize by studying and gaining knowledge throughout an entire life
o If youre inclined towards doing good, charitable works in life and helping
others, theres karma yoga
o If youre inclined towards theology and devotion to God, theres bhakti
yoga (a monastic life)
o Etc.

Certain forms of Japanese Buddhism has a similar sort of idea about selfactualization. Take for example the famous Sushi chef, Jiro. Jiro discovered what
he wanted to do with his life early on, it felt right, a perfect fit, and so he started
working, slowly, surely, harder and harder, day after day, year after year, to the
single end of perfecting his art. Now hes considered the greatest sushi chef in the
world and one of the greatest chefs in the world, despite his impoverished
beginnings, through hard work and self-actualization, he became (is becoming)
himself. And that might be the point, possibly: know yourself, in the West, is
only the start in African philosophy. Yes, we must know ourselves, we must
known what we want to become (again, only humans can do this), but African
philosophy goes further: we must not only know ourselves, we must then become
ourselves. And no matter how much our minds and bodies may change, what
strings a human life together is that drive to fully become oneself through the
medium of what we freely choose to become.