Dualistic conception of the human person in Yorùbá worldview (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Philosophy - Theoretical (Realisation, Science, Logic, Language), University of Ibadan, language: English, abstract: This paper attempts to provide a framework for understanding the concept of the human person in his essential and ontological beingness in the light of Yorùbá worldview. The paper argues that the mind-body problem that has taken a central seat in philosophy would be better appreciated if it is allowed to remain as culture-relative. In other words, it would a mistaken assumption of sort to assume that the western categories of monism or Cartesian dualism are sufficient theories around which the mind-body problem should be discussed. At the heart of the discussion is an attempt to open up the Yorùbá perspective to the mind-body problem which, though primarily acknowledges among other considerations that the human person is composed of both material-physical and immaterial-spiritual (metaphysical) aspects, insists a person is more than the mind and body. An attempt will also be made in this project to make a contrast between Cartesian dualism and Yorùbá worldview of the composition of the human person and draw a parallel between the two perspectives.

Central to the numerous challenges that confront philosophy and philosophers is inter alia the question of the composition of the human person. Essentially, philosophers, especially metaphysicians, grapple with the question of "who a person is?" Put differently, what constitutes the human nature? Integrally connected to such fundamental questions are other posers that bother on the mind-body problem, which, on the one hand, focus on the composition of the person as a material being. Such questions like "Is man a composition of mind and body? And, what kind of relationship or interaction (if any) goes on between the domains of substances? 'Is the human person an entirely physical entity?" Or, "Is he solely non-physical or, is he composed of both physical and non-physical features?" These are the interrogative legacies of Cartesian substance dualism and interactionism bequeathed to philosophy. There is no straightforward answer to these questions as a first-glance approach could present them to be.