biological or otherwise. This means that without
persons and therefore interpersonal relationships
and communication there will be no community,
and this means, in turn, that it is the reality of the
community that is dependent and derivative, the
community not having a life of its own. The com-
munity cannot bestow personhood on the individ-
ual in some pontifical manner. Neither can the
community be used to define and confer person-
hood on the human being. Furthermore, one
cannot have a community without communication.
It does not exist apart from human communica-
tion, that is, persons communicating.
Person in CommunityThe ontological completeness of the human per-
son is not by any means to be regarded as paral-
leled by social completeness. In the social context,
the individual person is not complete. To say that
the human individual is self-complete in his or her
being does not in any way imply that he or she can
be conceived as essentially without relations to
other human individuals. This is where communi-
cation enters the picture more fully. Just as the
community does not have a life of its own onto-
logically, so has the individual person no life of his
or her own socially. Although complete in his or
her nature, the human person has needs, desires,
ambitions, visions, and hopes that can be realized
only within the community of other persons.
Socially, then, he or she remains incomplete.
In Akan philosophy, the human person is con-
ceived as originally born into a human society,
and therefore as a social being right from the out-
set. This conception is expressed in the wisdom
fragment, “When a person descends from heaven,
he/she descends into a human society” (Onipa firi
soro besi a obesi onipa kurom). It is held that the
human being is created by the Supreme Being in
the sky (Soro). Created in the sky, the reality of the
person is prior to, not derived from, the commu-
nity. However, the person who “descends” into
a human community cannot live in isolation
because he is naturally oriented toward other
persons and must communicate with them to be in
relation to them.
The Akan artistic symbol of the chain is a sym-
bol of human relationship. It means “We are
linked together like a chain; we are linked in life,
we are linked in death; persons who share a com-
mon blood relation never break away from one
another.” The symbol depicts unity and interde-
pendence, the idea of each person as a unit in the
chain. This symbol is thus intended to indicate the
fundamentally relational character of the person
and thus the interconnections of human individu-
als in matters of their basic needs and expectations.
Despite his or her ontological completeness, the
individual person’s capacities, talents, and disposi-
tions are not sufficient to meet his or her basic
needs and requirements. The reason is formulated
in the statement, “A person is not a palm tree that
he/she should be self-sufficient” (Onipa nnye abe
na ne ho ahyia ne ho). Because the human individ-
ual is not self-sufficient, he would necessarily
require the assistance, good will, and the relation-
ships of others. He must be a communicating
human to fulfill his basic needs.
Another statement makes it pretty clear that
“the well-being of man depends upon his fellow
man” (obi yiye firi obi), a fragment that is logically
related to, or is the consequence of, others such as
“One finger cannot lift a thing,” “The left arm
washes the right arm and the right arm washes the
left arm,” and “If the lizard is a blacksmith, the
monitor does not lack a cutlass.” The reasons for
the existence of the community are thus clear: The
individual’s capacity is finite and limited without
the community. This fact diminishes the individ-
ual’s self-sufficiency and enthrones the need to
emphasize the value of collective action, mutual
assistance, and interdependence.
The community (or communitarian) life main-
tains that the good of all determines the good of
each or, put differently, that the welfare of each is
dependent on the welfare of all. It follows from
this that the success of the individual person’s life
is linked with him or her identifying him- or her-
self with the community. What emerges, then, is
an organic, symbiotic relation between the indi-
vidual person and the group (i.e., the community).
This organic relation has given rise to several
questions, false impressions, invalid inferences,
and outright condemnation of the communal sys-
tem of social arrangement.
It must be noted, however, that having relations
with other human persons does not diminish or
subvert the ontological completeness of the indi-
vidual person, nor does it rob him of his personal524 Personhood