Communality, Individuality and Democracy: A Defense of Personism

Abstract

This thesis re-examines the basic premises of the individualism-communitarianism debate to unravel what the disagreement is really about and to show how they can be overcome. I argue that the tension in that classical debate is rooted in a flawed conception of individuality and personhood vis-à-vis community and human society; and that such false categories entailed in the debate hinders any attempt at a genuine construction of a formidable grounds for democracy especially in post-colonial African contexts. Adopting chiefly an analytic approach and engaging both African and non-African perspectives, I argue that ‘the person’, who is both necessarily individual and communal at once, should be the focus of the debate and, consequently, of social and political theory and practice. The argument of personism, it is hoped, dispels many quandaries of the debate since it better emphasizes the complementarity of both aspects of the composite person and better overcomes the challenges of both individualism and communitarianism. More importantly, the personist thesis exposes to a greater degree, what should be one main, if not the main, concern of the debate which is the question of who or what has legitimacy to mitigate the unending tensions entailed in self-rule in all its ramifications.

Consequently, the thesis points to ‘self-rule’ as central to democracy as a political system whether labeled as liberal, communitarian, social, majoritarian, deliberative, or consensual. I argue that the concern of democracy remains how to ensure ‘self-rule’: that the gap between the ruler and the ruled is bridged. Focusing on the question of what ‘self-rule’ is, and not who ought to have it, I argue for a harmonious dialogical and continuous mediation, as far as possible, of my rule of my composite self, our rule of our collective self, my rule of our self and our rule of my self. That is, a simultaneous dialogical mediation of the person’s necessarily individual and communal self; persons’ rule over other persons even in the context of an uncompelled collective; and, the regulation of the exercise of power between and among collectives. The proposal is that for rule at all levels to be legitimate and progressive, a gradual, non-coerced, continuous dialogue, deliberation, consensus pursuit and a genuine sense of ‘we’, as a ‘whole’ not necessarily as ‘one’, remain fundamental.

This study, thus, offers a holistic conception of ‘self-rule’ that is genuinely democratic and that curtails extremes of either unbridled individualistic independence or restrictive communitarian solidarity in the theorizing and practical formulation of socio-political policy especially in post-colonial African contexts. The proposal is that the thesis of personism which grounds self rule in all its ramifications, is not only useful for overcoming the binary tensions of the debate, but is also useful in analysing and effectively negotiating some inherent problems of democracy generally, but more specifically of post-colonial multinational African democracies.