Is your inner life what makes you, you? Or is your identity about connecting to your community? How can West African philosophy help us think about the self? This week, we’ll be thinking aboutAkan Philosophy, specifically its conception of personhood.

阿肯哲学是来自西非的一个有几个世纪历史的传统，它讨论一些大的话题，比如自由的意义、最道德的生活方式，以及作为一个人的意义。像任何一个哲学家团体一样，阿肯哲学家之间也有很多争论和分歧。但说到做人，就有一些共同的主题。

在阿肯传统中，作为一个人要对你的家庭和社区做出贡献:参加当地的仪式，做重要的工作，结婚生子。这对我作为美国人的情感来说是相当震惊的:为什么每个人都必须结婚生子才能算作一个人呢?难道我们的社区不应该为单身人士留出空间吗?

But this is less shocking when you remember that we’re talking about a conception of personhood that arose in a particular West African cultural context. If you wanted to translate Akan values for contemporary America, you’d probably have to think about what “family” and “community” mean over here. In the cultural context I’m used to, there are plenty of ways to contribute to your community without being a parent: you can take your nephews and nieces to a ballgame, work in a soup kitchen on weekends, or even teach the next generation.

对阿坎人格概念的另一种可能的批评是对家庭和社区概念本身的挑战。我们真的应该从他人的角度来定义自己吗?当你和周围的人和谐相处时，这似乎很好，但当你试图不同意或批评他们时，会发生什么?你的人格会被剥夺吗?

The philosophers Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye arguethat a dissenter can still count as a full person on the Akan conception. Such a person is still in dialogue with the values of their community. And such a person is also valuable: wouldn’t it be worse if the community did morally questionable things without reflecting on itself?

即使抛开对批评者和异议者的担忧，你可能仍然会担心阿肯哲学对社区贡献的强调。那些不能做出贡献的人呢，要么因为他们是残疾人，要么因为他们从未接受过适当的教育?他们被认为是不值得的人格吗?

Philosophers disagree about the answer, but I like Kwasi Wiredu’s approach: you have to adjust for people’s level of opportunity. Someone who overcomes obstacles and makes a small contribution to society could count as more of a person than someone who makes a big contribution, but only because they started out with every privilege.

All this talk about society might make you wonder what Akan philosophers have to say about people’s inner lives. In hisbook on African philosophical thought, Kwame Gyekye devotes a chapter to this question. He writes that on the traditional Akan view, each human being is composed of three parts: theokra, which roughly translates as “soul”, thesunsum, which roughly translates as “spirit”, and thehonam, which roughly translates as “body”. Theokrais an essence that is the same in all humans, while thesunsumis different in different people, and explains why we have different personalities.

Mapping this picture onto any particular Western philosophical scheme is fraught. Is it like the views of Plato and Freud, which say that human beings have three parts? Or is it more like Descartes’s theory, which says that we’re composed of a body and a mind, and we need some explanation of how they interact? Are some of the different Akan words just ways of picking out the same thing?

说到阿肯哲学，我是一个非常业余的人，所以我不知道所有的答案。我很高兴能从我们本周的嘉宾，来自科罗拉多大学伯克利分校的Ajume Wingo那里得到专家的意见。

Image from Muséum de Toulouse, CC BY-SA 4.0, viaWikimedia Commons