An African Perspective of the Personae.

The human personality also known as the human consciousness is the ultimate basis of all developmental processes in the world. It is for this reason that a people’s conception of the human personality determines the rapidity or otherwise of their material development. Ancient African elders were not so much concerned with the material development of individuals and society. Emphasis was placed on humanistic, moralistic and spiritual balance of both the human person and the society. For this reason, ancient African elders saw the human spirit (i.e. Benin ehi, Igbo chi, and Yoruba emi/ori) as the most fundamental part of the human entity. They saw the human spirit as the essence of the creator in man. It is quite the contrary with the Western civilization. Beginning with the Greeks, at least, emphasis was on how the human intellect could master and control the forces and resources in the universe for the rapid and physical transformation of the society. This drive towards the material transformation of society gathered greater momentum in the modern period during which time the basic concern of Europe was science. Great efforts were made to discuss the structure of the human intellect and how it proceeds to form concepts and ideas for world transformation.
The philosopher known as Rene Descartes opened the eyes of Europeans to the fact that the ultimate basis of knowledge and truth in general is the cogito or the “intellectual I”. Immanuel Kant went ahead to let Europeans know that this “intellectual I” which Kant prefers to refer to as “the transcendental self” is the designer or fashioner of all systems and institutions within the human world. In fact, it was Kant that drew the pattern that European colonization of the world followed. He challenged Europeans to realize the powers of their intellect and to proceed to impose and transpose their thought systems upon the rest of the world. After Kant, it became the norm for German philosophers to harness philosophy for the development of the Western world and to the detriment of the rest of the world. This zeal by Western philosophers to propagate Western norms over and above the rest of the world is variously known as the doctrine of “Eurocentrism” (Serequeberhan, 1997, 142), “religious patriotism” or “national philosophism” (Momoh, 1997, xvi). We can now see how a people’s conception of the human personality can either promote humanistic or materialistic notion of development. Thus, “whereas Western philosophy aims at the winning of arguments, the contriving of linguistic and conceptual analysis in order to throw up individual prodigies and intellectual giants, the aim of African philosophy and ancient elders was to understand, co-operate, empathize with nature, environment and creation and mould a moralistic, humane and communal universe” (Momoh, 2000, xviii). The fact that materialistic pursuit has thrown the world into turbulence such that humanity now craves to return to the path of humanism, empathy and communalistic existence, makes the African and ancient conception of the human personality and development most original. However, the task of re-enacting this ancient order has become most herculean due to the fact that the challenges on ground have transcended both the ancient and modern conceptions of the human personality and development. The task before us today is to move towards a holistic conception of both the human personality and development to include the striking of a balance between spiritualism and materialism.