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DUTIES:
PERSPECTIVES FROM
LATIN AMERICA AND AFRICA:
MENCHU AND MENKITI
LESSON THIRTEEN STUDY GUIDE
In Lesson Thirteen we are thinking about the traditional African view of duties and rights along with a Latin American perspective on duties. Claims about rights and duties are intimately linked to concepts of personhood or what it means to be a person. Menkiti’s presentation of the traditional African perspectives on duties and rights includes a conception of personhood in which one can make ontological progress toward becoming a full person as one ages. The traditional African position, as presented by Menkiti, raises several sets of questions. One such
set of questions focuses upon the similarities and contrasts with the Existentialist
philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. Another important set of questions is that given the
traditional African view how should people of the community be treated if they are not construed as persons or as full persons. If only a person has rights and not all individuals in the community are persons, then what protects those individuals from others or from the community as a whole? Menchu’s Latin American perspective from Guatemala, like the traditional African view, focuses upon the primacy of duties to the community. Rights claims seem to be absent altogether in the Maya-Quiche community. Yet the Maya-Quiche people have been subjected to extreme oppression by some others in Guatemala. Are or would claims to human rights be helpful to the Maya-Quiche people or are there more effective bases for resistance?
GOALS OF THE LESSON
One goal of the lesson is for students to demonstrate the ability to recall and describe the defining characteristics of key concepts and arguments in the text readings. A second goal is for students to demonstrate the ability to analyze and evaluate philosophical concepts or arguments presented in the texts. The third goal is for students to demonstrate the ability to analyze and evaluate the manner in philosophical concepts or arguments can be compared, contrasted or resurface in new forms among philosophers and between historical eras. The final goal is the central goal of each lesson. It is for students to achieve the learning outcomes relevant to the
lesson.
The following is a list of some of the names and concepts with which
you should be familiar:
Ontology, epistemology, processual nature of being,
social self-hood, ontological progression, living dead,
ancestral community, the nameless dead, collective immortality,
personal immorality, John-Paul Sartre, choice, freedom,
Humanism, John Rawls, community, collectivities,
constituted human groups
Learning Outcome Three The successful student will be able to: Evaluate the relationship of philosophical ideas to the art, literature, political and economic structure, social hierarchy and the values of their respective societies. AND Learning Outcome Four The successful student will be able to: Assess how crosscultural interactions lead to diffusion of ideas and influence intellectual and cultural traditions.
RIGOBERTA MENCHU
Excerpt from I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala
OPPRESSION
As Mitchell points out, Rigoberta Menchu won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her work organizing the peasant people of Guatemala. ( Readings from the Roots of Wisdom , page 20) In
One of the central beliefs of the Maya-Quiche people is that suffering is their fate. While
Menchu does not provide a concept of fate in the excerpt in our text, in the more complete text
she clarifies that their fate of suffering is something that is imposed upon them by the
landowners, the government and the soldiers.^4 Menchu’s text presents an account of an evolving social, political and economic consciousness in which she address this fate of suffering. One of the significant issues is religion. We see in our excerpt that Menchu is critical of the Catholic priests in her community. The reason is that they are not supportive of Maya-Quiche traditions. However, there are two very important things to note. First, Menchu considers herself a Christian. Second, although she believed the priests had been helpful in the Maya-Quiche cause, they had ultimately undermined it. Menchu writes, I began traveling to different areas, discussing everything, I must say one thing, and it’s not to denigrate them, because the priests have done a lot for us. It’s not to undervalue the good things they have taught us; but they also taught us to accept many things, to be passive, to be a dormant people. Their religion told us that it was a sin to kill while we were being killed. They told us that God is up there and that God had a kingdom for the poor… It prevents us from seeing the real truth of how our people live.^5 Menchu argues that the priest taught the Maya-Quiche to be passive and that it was in heaven that they would have a kingdom. According to Menchu, these beliefs prevented the Maya- Quiche from grasping the reality of their situation and how they could respond to it. So, how do they respond to their situation? In view of the belief that the indigenous community is inextricably linked in a series of complex relationships, how does this shape their view of what they should and should not do? How should they approach work, the natural world, culture and customs, ancestors as well as future generations, and the problem of suffering? According to Menchu, the indigenous people of Guatemala are in relationship with the past, the present and the future as well as nature, a wider oppressive community and the universe. In Menchu’s account, how did these features of indigenous culture shape their philosophic ideas of
responsibility, dignity, and endurance?
IFEANYI A. MENKITI
Excerpt from Person and Community in Traditional African Thought Menkiti develops a fairly straightforward argument, so I will provide a brief outline of some of the crucial features. Menkiti begins with conceptions of personhood in traditional African and in Western. In the Western view, persons are identified through a physiological or psychological quality of the lone individual. In contrast, the traditional African view holds that the communal world has both ontological and epistemic primacy. Those facts make personhood possible. Second, the Western view holds one is either a person or one is not a person. In contrast, the traditional African view is that of a “processual nature of being.” ( Readings from the Roots of Wisdom , page 79) Stated differently, the view is that an individual is progressively incorporated into the community and transformed by that incorporation. The community plays a vital role as catalyst and as that which prescribes norms. One can fail at becoming a person. Full personhood is social self-hood and it characterized by inbuilt excellence. There is an ontological progression toward full personhood that continues through incorporation into the ancestral community of the living dead. Personhood, according to Menkiti, is inseparably linked to moral functioning as “one participates in communal life through the discharge of various obligations defined by ones station.” ( Readings from the Roots of Wisdom , page 82) One, for example, must have a sense of justice in order to be owed duties of justice. Similarly, one has rights if and only if one is a person. Consequently, the implication is that animals cannot have rights. Further, incorrectly ascribing rights to animals could result in resource allocation problems in which the problem of competition for scare resources would arise between those who are significantly disadvantaged and animals.
Menkiti points to the paramount importance of choice in JeanPaul Sartre’s theory. It is
through the individual’s choices that that person makes him or herself as a self. (Readings from the Roots of Wisdom, page 83) Further, according to Sartre’s theory, we are radically free. Each of us is a “free unconditioned being, a being not constrained by social or historical circumstances…” (Readings from the Roots of Wisdom, page 83) We are free, unconditioned beings in a second sense. Sartre is an atheist, so his theory is atheistic. (Readings from the Roots of Wisdom, page 61) In Sartre’s theory, we are not created by a deity nor does a deity have a role in the world. So, upon this view, there is no deity to whom we are responsible and there is no deity to save us. We are radically
free. Freedom is, according to Sartre, tragic, burdensome and anxiety
producing. But our radical freedom also provides us with a tremendous opportunity.
Sartre is a humanist , much in the sense, of the humanism of the Classical Greek
philosophers (those prior to the medieval philosophers) and many of the Renaissance
philosophers. Humanism , as Soccio reports, is the
name given to any philosophy that emphasizes human welfare and dignity; belief that human intelligence and effort are capable of improving conditions in the here and now. (Archetypes of Wisdom, page 564) Sartre, a humanist by his own description, believed that we are capable of improving conditions, here and now. (Readings from the Roots of Wisdom, pages 5964)
According to Sartre, we always have a choice and, therefore, we
determine who we will be. This freedom of choice extends to the
possibility of addressing social problems and how we respond to them.
The individual’s radical freedom and the central role of choice mean
that, in Sartre’s view, we can address the ills of society. We are not
determined by society. Instead, we always have a choice to act.
