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Vital Force, Personhood, and Community in African

Philosophy: An Ontological Study
Innocent Ngangah
Senior Lecturer, Department of Philosophy,
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Anambra State, Nigeria

Abstract:
Vital force is believed to be a peculiar trait of African philosophy and the cosmology which defines and shapes the
framework within which the interwoven concepts of personhood and community, as extensions of Africa’s concept of
“being”, are founded and reified. Vital force is at the core of Africa’s understanding of life which is deemed to begin from
the creator, from whom all created spring. Vital force permeates all creation, including every aspect of the environment
from where the person and the community jointly suck sustenance. Identifying this force as the core of the key differences
between African and Western philosophies, the study underpins certain fundamental distinctions, namely: Africa’s
dynamic notion of being vs.the static concept of Western philosophy; the inclusive view of community in African
philosophy vs. the reductionist notion dominant inWestern societies; and Africa’s notion of human rights as a derivative
of communal rights vs. Western notion of human rights as individualistic rights.

Keywords: Vital force, personhood, community, African philosophy, Western philosophy, ontology

1. Introduction
Ontology, the study of the nature of being, is the most general subdivision of metaphysics (Wallace 2011).Since
Parmenides’ claim that being is fixed, changeless and imperishable (DeLong 2019), philosophers have continued to
grapple with the intrinsic meaning of reality which, according to Heraclitus, is in a constant state of flux (Graham 2019).Of
the many debates provoked by this issue, Plato’s theory of forms (Mason 2010) and Aristotle’s contradictory response to it
(McMahon 2007) have remarkably shaped the thinking of many Western philosophers as well as influenced their
appreciation, or lack thereof, of African ontological categories. Even African philosophers, who have tried to redefine being
within the context of African experience (Kanu 392), beclouded by Aristotelian dogma on the question of substance and
accident (Ogbonnaya 108), have failed to share a common perspective on what constitutes Africa’s notion of “being”.
Given the foregoing, this paper sets out to posit that in spite of ingenious attempts by many African philosophers to define
“being” in the light of their respective ethnic cosmologies, Tempels’ oft-maligned rendition of the Bantu, nay African,
concept of “being” as “vital force” (Tempels, 1959), if appropriately interpreted outside the standpoints of colonial
discourse, may well serve as a genuine Africa-wide concept of being, albeit one that has diverse linguistic expressions in
different African countries.
Vital force, takenas the epicenter of Africa’s ontological scheme, is fundamental to a proper understanding of the
inter-related and sometimes fused nature of the concepts of personhood and community in traditional African societies.
Although the individual and the community act upon each other, the latter exacts a subsumable force on the former in
traditional and urbanized African environments.
To further strengthen its claim that vital force is a peculiar trait of African philosophy, this paper, towards the
end, will feature a comparative analysis of Western and African concepts of “being”, with emphasis on the ontological core
of the latter as vital force (Tempels, 1959).

2. Tempels’ Notion of “Being” in African Philosophy

Placide Tempels’ notion of “being” in African philosophy is contained in his epochal work, Bantu Philosophy. The
book, first published in Dutch and later translated into French (Rubbens, 1952) and English (1959), is widely regarded as
the first major book on African philosophy. It was written by a European missionary who worked among a group of Bantu-
speaking Africans during the colonial era. The book, in both content and title, shocked the average Westerner whose
prevailing mindset was aptly captured in the preface written by Prof. E. Possoz:
Up to the present, ethnographers have denied all abstract thought to tribal peoples. The civilized Christian
European was exalted, the savage and pagan primitive man was denigrated. Out of this concept a theory of colonization
was born which now threatens to fail everywhere. (Tempels, 1959)
With all its limitations, Tempels’ book, in general, ran contrary to this mindset. His Bantu Philosophy made him
the first philosopher to formulate a logically coherent African ontological system. Hismethodical research, conducted
among ordinary Bantu-speaking Luba people,resulted into a dynamic ontological structure which is theoretically different

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from Western philosophy’s static concept of “being”, challenged racist misgivings about the philosophical acumen of the
African, and led to global awareness of African philosophy. Tempels’ book proved that the African’s“philosophical
categories can be identified through language, culture and metaphysical attributes of their lives” (Nkulu-N’Sengha, 2017).
Tempels made the following basic observations about the philosophy of the Bantu people:
The transcendental and universal notions of being and of its force, of action, and of the relationships and
reciprocal influences of beings make up Bantu philosophy. This domain is accessible to the ordinary intelligence of every
normal "muntu"…The subjective point of view of the Bantu founds the general principle and notion of being on the
argument of authority and on their own observation of the constitution of the universe… The general conception of being
which one may hold and the knowledge of the particular qualities of each individual being are two distinct things (51).
Tempels’ book is in 7 chapters, namely, in chronological order, “In search of a Bantu philosophy”, “Bantu ontology”, “Bantu
wisdom or criteriology”, “The theory of the “Muntu” or Bantu psychology”, “Bantu ethics”, “Restitution” and “Bantu
philosophy and our mission to civilize”. The last chapter, a repudiation of Western colonial attitudes, began with these
sentences:
If we are justified in the hope that we have plumbed the depths of the primitive soul in this treatment of Bantu
philosophy, we shall be obliged to revise our fundamental ideas on thesubject of "non-civilized" peoples: to correct our
attitude in respect of them. This "discovery" of Bantu philosophy is so disconcerting a revelation that we are tempted at
first sight to believe that we are looking at a mirage. In fact, the universally accepted pictureof primitive man, of the
savage, of the proto-man living before the full blossoming ofintelligence, vanishes beyond hope of recovery before this
testimony (Tempels109).
This positive tone, notwithstanding, a number of African philosophers have expressed reservations about some
aspects of Tempels’ findings while others have endorsed his main conclusions about Africa’s notion of being. We will
review some of the objections raised against Tempels’ work later but let us discuss first his key conclusions about African
ontology.
African ontology, according to Tempels, is the foundation of African philosophy. The African’s notion of “being” or
reality shapes his thought and behaviour, and this notion, asserts Tempels, is “centred in a single value: vital force” (29):
Certain words are constantly being used by Africans. They are those which express their supreme values; and they recur
like variations upon a leitmotif present in their language, their thought, and in all their acts and deeds. This supreme value
is life, force, to live strongly, or vital force.
…Force, the potent life, vital energy are the object of prayers and invocations to God, to the spirits and to the dead… In
every Bantu language it is easy to recognize the words or phrases denoting a force, which is not used in an exclusively
bodily sense, but in the sense of the integrity of our whole being.
He says this vital force or “vital energy”, to the African, is the focus of “prayers and invocations to God, to the
spirits and to the dead” and that this notion of “being” is not just limited to the Luba linguistic group but that “In every
Bantu language it is easy to recognize the words or phrases denoting a force, which is not used in an exclusively bodily
sense, but in the sense of the integrity of our whole being” (31).
Before we go further, we need to note the significance of the phrase, “In every Bantu language”. Although
Tempels’ research was primarily centred on the Luba, he corresponded with missionaries in other Bantu-speaking parts
of Africa, and evidence of some of such correspondences on the topic of “vital force” are preserved in his footnotes.
Perhaps, this was what led to his use of this phrase. “In every Bantu language” indicates a plurality of languages under this
vast language group. As Bendor-Samuel (2017) explains:
Bantu languages, a group of some 500 languages belonging to the Bantoid subgroup of the Benue-Congo branch of the
Niger-Congo language family. The Bantu languages are spoken in a very large area, including most of Africa from southern
Cameroon eastward to Kenya and southward to the southernmost tip of the continent. Twelve Bantu languages are
spoken by more than five million people, including Rundi, Rwanda, Shona, Xhosa, and Zulu. Swahili, which is spoken by
five million people as a mother tongue and some 30 million as a second language, is a Bantu lingua franca important in
both commerce and literature.
As will be noted later in this paper, Tempels’ fortuitous use of a Bantu language group has both philosophical and
linguistic significance.
Meanwhile, let us see what nature of beings possess the aforesaid vital force: “In the minds of Bantu, all beings in
the universe possess vital force of their own: human, animal, vegetable, or inanimate” (31) and this vital force springs
from God – “the Bantu speak of God himself as ‘the Strong One’, he who possesses Force in himself. He is also the source of
the Force of every creature.”(31) Tempels’ Bantu (African) hierarchy of beings emanates from his belief that “the key to
Bantu thought is the idea of vital force, of which the source is God… The fundamental notion under which being is
conceived lies within the category of forces.” (32) This “category of forces” can be represented as follows:

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Being Category of Forces

1 God “the great Force…
who is stronger
than all other” (31)
2 Spirit of the “the founders of the
first ancestors human race and
propagators of the
divine inheritance of
vital human
strength” (31)
3 The other dead “esteemed only to
the extent to which
they increase and
perpetuate their vital
force in their progeny”
(31)
4 Human being “the strongest being
of all creation” (32)

5 Animate being
“possess vital force of
6 Vegetative being their own” (31)
7 Inanimate being
Table 1

All these beings exact force on each other with God disposing the highest influence of all. Next to God in influence
is the human being: “Each being has been endowed by God with certain force, capable of strengthening the vital energy of
the strongest being of all creation: man.” (32) So, Tempels’ scheme of forces is essentially anthropocentric: “Vital force is
the reality which, though invisible, is supreme in man. Man can renew his vital force by tapping the strength of other
creatures.” (32)
Tempels then made an interesting comparison between Western and African concept of “being”, describing the
former as “static” and the latter as “dynamic”. He said that the West, borrowing from Greek philosophy, defines “being” as
“what is” or “anything that exists” and wrongfully presumes that this “static conception of being” is universally applicable.
Herein is to be seen the fundamental difference between Western thought and that of the Bantu…We can conceive the
transcendental notion of "being" by separating it from its attribute, "Force", but the Bantu cannot. "Force" in his thought is
a necessary element in "being" and the concept "force" is inseparable from the definition of "being".
He described the Bantu as having “a double concept concerning being” and warns that describing Bantu notion of being as
“being is that which possesses force” would be inaccurate:
“Force is not for them an adventitious, accidental reality. Force is even more than a necessary attribute of
beings: Force is the nature of being, force is being, being is force…in contradistinction to our definition of being as "that
which is" or "the thing insofar as it is", the Bantu definition reads, "that which is force", or "the thing insofar as it is force",
or "an existent force” (34).
The foregoing are the key aspects of Bantu notion of “being” as analyzed by Tempels. Some African philosophers
have objected to some of Tempels’ conclusions while others have not only done so but have also offered alternative
ontological viewpoints they consider more authentically African.

3. African Philosophers’ Counter Notions of “Being”

The three main non-theological objections to Tempels’ conclusions regarding Africa’s notion of “being” can be
itemized as follows:
 Tempels makes the African notion of “being” an accident (force) rather than an essence thereby leaning it towards
magic and denying it of all abstract value.
 If the African notion of “being” is dynamic, as Tempels posits, in denoting this notion as “force’ he has contradictorily
made it a fixed entity.
 Tempels modeled his ontology after Western (Aristotelian) system of thought.
We will consider each of these objections as they arise in our highlight of alternative notions of “being” projected
by some African philosophers. Below are the views of representative African philosophers who have written about this
issue from different parts of Africa. We will begin with Alexis Kagame, whose view of Africa’s notion of “being” is closest to
Tempels’.
In 1956, Kagame published his PhD thesis, La Philosophie Bantu-Rwandaisedel’ Etre. That notable work of ethno-
philosophy became his major contribution to African philosophy. His views are not, strictly speaking, a critique of
Tempels’ but rather a variation of the latter’s theory. Kagame, based on his study of the Bantu people of Rwanda,
categorized African philosophy into four principal forces: Muntu (human being), Kintu (thing), Hantu (place and time),
and Kuntu (modality). What this means, in Kagame’s ontological scheme, according to Janheinz Jahn, is that “Everything

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there is must necessarily belong to one of these four categories and must be conceived of not as substance but as force.”
(Negedu, 2014) Common to and qualifying these four forces is not the prefix of each word but, rather, the determinative,
“Ntu”.
Each of Kagame’s four forces represents more than their bracketed meanings indicate on the surface. For
example, “though all human beings are Muntu,not all Muntu(Bantu) are human beings, as Muntuincludes the living, the
dead and spirits” (Negedu, 2014). However, all muntu possess human intelligence; this makes the other categories
mentioned above to be dependent on muntu. As for Kintu, what it represents includes animals, plants and all inanimate
objects. All of these are energized by “Ntu”:
Hence, in the opinion of Kagame, the underlying category of being is Ntu. Ntu is the ultimate cosmic principle that
permeates every nature…Ntu, therefore, is a force that manifests itself in individual beings orthings. It does not exist
alone. This is why it is seen attached to categories such as Mu, Ki, Ha and Ku. (Ogbonnaya 111)
Ogbonnaya rightly regards “Ntu” as “the spiritual dimension ofbeing or reality while the four categories of being
are the physical dimensions ofbeing or reality.” (112) However, in reflecting some of the aforesaid objections to Tempels’
ontology (Kagame’s primary inspirational root),he erroneously asserts that:
(Ntu) is like the Tempels’ vital force or force. But it goes beyond Tempels’ force as he (Kagame) notes that it is not
just a physical force. Kagame gives this force an ontological meaning rather than a physical meaning.
This is a widespread but incorrect view. Tempels never created the impression that his force was “just a physical
force”. Rather, he said that the Bantu have “a double concept concerning being”, which leads to the understanding that
although the Bantu force is physical, embedded in their “force is being, being is force” notion is a potential forphilosophical
abstraction. That is why Tempels says that “Force is not for them an adventitious, accidental reality. Force is even more
than a necessary attribute of beings: Force is the nature of being, force is being, being is force”. In other words, adapting
the context of the Aristotelian principle, “being” is “what is” and “force” is equally “what is”; so, for the Bantu, “what is” is
ontologically “being” and epistemologically “force”. The dynamic unity of this Bantuan wedlock of substance and accident
is often lost to Tempels’ critics who refuse to accept that there are other concepts of being other than Aristotle’s. Although
Aristotle posits that substance can exist independent of accident, in Bantu concept of being, as documented by Tempels,
substance and accident co-exist as two sides of the same coin.
The obvious difficulty we experience here in interpreting the Bantu concept of “being” indicates that nobody can replicate
the Bantu concept of existence using Western ontological categories. However, the Bantu notion of “being”as it pertains to
human beings (“the strongest being of all creation”) can be better understood via Heidegger’s expression, “Dasein” (1962,
27). This is a German compound word whose components are “da” (there) and “sein” (being).Together they mean “being
there”; to exist is being there. But in Bantu cosmology, muntu (Bantu word for human being) cannot be “da” (there)
without being inseparably an “existent force”. Therefore, for the Bantu, being there (dasein) is being an existent force. This
being-force fusion is particularly appropriate for muntu who, like Heidegger’s being, is a practical being of the world
(Collins and Selina 61).
Apart from Kagame, other African philosophers who tried to interpret Africa’s notion of “being” ended up,
basically, giving us their ethnic group’s translation or extension of the word, “being” (Edeh, 1985 andIroegbu, 1995) or
some ethno-philosophic attribute(s) of “being” (Ramosa, 2002 andAsouzu, 2011).
Edeh in his book, Towards an Igbo Metaphysics, essentially conducted a linguistic analysis centred around his “onye”
(person) and “ife” (thing) hypothesis that ultimately led to the Igbo word, “ifedi” (“ihedi”) which literally means “what is”,
an everyday Igbo expression, not one coined by Edeh. This is rather curious when it is noted that Edeh began his enquiry
by claiming that “the Igbo has no word that exactly translates the English word ‘being’” (1985, 93).Apart from translating
being as “ifedi”, Edeh failed to tell us what Being (“ifedi”) means in Igbo cosmology. He did say that within that context the
“notion of being could be derived from our concept of man” (1985, 100) but never told us what that notion is.
Iroegbu (1995), sharing the same cultural roots with Edeh, disagrees with the latter’s approximation of “being” as
“ifedi”; he prefers another Igbo word, “uwa”, which literally means “world”. Iroegbu invests the term, uwa, with
ontological meaning, pointing out that:
The entirety of existence, from God the highest being to inanimate beings of our cosmos can be summarized in the
englobing concept of the Igbo term Uwa. Uwais all-inclusive. It mirrors being, existence, entity,all reality…animate and
inanimate, visible and invisible. It is comprehensive, universal…It has transcendent and immanent scope as well as
explicative and progressive elasticity.(1994, 144)
According to Iroegbu, uwa has 15 connotations but in time-space context it has six zones, five of which are
located in spiritual realms and only one of which is earthly. In Iroegbu’sopinion, uwa is “being”, any form of being, and
none of his beings are supposedly bifurcated since they are all enclosed in his ontological globe. The fact is that Iroegbu’s
book is an interesting piece on the metaphysical connotations of the Igbo word, “uwa”, but he certainly did not succeed in
turning that word into an acceptable definition of “being”.
The next African philosopher who tried to redefine “being” is the South African philosopher, Mogobe Ramosa. His
views reflect his pan-Africanist inclinations. His book, African Philosophy through Ubuntu (2002), positions “ubuntu” as the
foundation of African philosophy. In spite of sharing the same stem, “ntu”, with the four words representing Kagame’s four
forces of African philosophy, Ramosa’s “ubuntu” concept is clearly different from Kagame’s notion of being as “force”. In
Kagame’s, the fundamental category of being is Ntu” (force) while Ramosa’s “ubu” is the essence of being. It should be
noted, however, that Ramosa’s “ubu” cannot manifest in concrete form except through “ntu” (the epistemological being).
Both are bound together and none can exist independent of the other, just as Kagame’s “ntu” can only manifest as a
concrete being only when bound to Mu, Ki, Ha and Ku. This two-in-one reality makes Ramosa to conclude that:

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ubu-ntu is the fundamental ontological and epistemological category in the African thought of the Bantu–speaking people.
It is the indivisible one-ness and wholeness of ontology and epistemology. (2002, 41)
One should add that Ramosa’s “ubuntu” concept makes sense only when narrowed to a specific being – the human being
(“umuntu”) – for the word, “ubuntu” literally means “humanity”. Since not all beings are human beings, this cannot be an
all-inclusive meaning of “being”.
Innocent Asouzu’s notion of “being” is an all-embracing one. Using the Igbo aphorism, “ibuanyidanda” (“nothing is
too heavy for Danda, the ant”), he conceptualizes an elastic ontology that stretches its scope, in the spirit of cooperation
and complementariness, to accommodation all forms of existence within a non-bifurcated, unified whole. As he puts it:
If now a philosophy of essence polarizes reality, ibuanyidanda philosophy explores a method and principles for
coalescing the real and the ideal, the essential and accidental into a system of mutual complementing units. It is a
challenge to show how philosophy can be relevant to all units constituting a whole, such that the essential and accidental,
the necessary and contingent, the universal and the particular, the absolute and relative…the transcendental and world-
immanent, can more easily be between being and its negation. This is why within this context the negation of being is
nothingness. (Asouzu 101-102)
Asouzu sees every being as an agent performing a role that fills a vacuum in the theatre of reality and, from this
standpoint, opines that beings essentially exist to perform functions that close gaps in reality’s interconnected chains:
In Ibuanyidanda philosophy, I see it otherwise. Hence, I dare define the idea of being; here I claim that being is
that on account of which anything that exists serves a missing link of reality. In other words, within an Ibuanyidanda
context reality presents itself to us as missing links of reality within whose framework the idea of being reveals itself and
is defined.
Asouzu (2007) is known to have criticized Temples’ categorization of beings as forces, and this could be one of the
reasons he articulated his own vision of being in African philosophy. In making his own notion of being non-bifurcated, he
cleverly guided it away from the strong pull of Aristotle’s substance-accident concept. But “ibuanyidanda” definitely is not
being, although it could be said to be an extended attribute of being.

4. Vital Force and Africa’s Concept of Community, Personhood and Human Rights
We will explain here how Tempels’ vital force thesis is reflected fundamentally in Africa’s concept of personhood,
community, and human rights. Africa’s “dynamic” notion of “being” as vital force determines the nature of its social
organization. How expansive is this dynamic concept of being? Tempels expatiates:
African peoples…still preserve their essentially dynamic concepts of being, of growth and diminution of being, of
the interdependence and interaction of beings, of vital ranks and of the ontological hierarchy. Their ontology remains over
attached to their ancient and indestructible faith that all life proceeds from God or from our own conformity with the laws
of the natural order of things. (Tempels 115)
Below, we will look at how this conformity with natural vital forces is expressed with regard to the way the
community is organized, the way the individual is conceived, and the way human rights are understood and administered
in the African traditional setting.

4.1. Vital Force, Community and Personhoodin African Philosophy

For Tempels, as earlier noted, the key to the African’s thought and behavior is “the idea of vital force” and “the
fundamental notion under which being is conceived lies within the category of forces.” Of the seven forces that make up
Temples’ hierarchy of forces, of which the first is God, three are essentially human. These three are: spirit of the first
ancestors, the other dead, and living human beings. Beneath these three human forces are three non-human forces,
namely, animate being, vegetative being, and inanimate being. These three non-human forces “possess vital force of their
own” but are under the control of the human forces.
The anthropocentrism inherent in this hierarchy of forces is very glaring but there is an underlying framework that
ensures that human beings’ governance of the human and non-human forces, under God, is spiritually and socially
streamlined. That framework is founded on the communal understanding that all beings are spiritually interrelated forces
that exact consequential influence on all individuals within a given spiritual, ethical and social order. According to
Encyclopedia.com:
Spirits may be divided into human spirits and nature spirits. Each has a life force devoid of physical form.
Individuals who have died, usually ancestors in particular lineages, are the human spirits. These spirits play a role in
community affairs and ensure a link between each clan and the spirit world. Natural objects, such as rivers, mountains,
trees, and the Sun (as well as forces such as wind and rain), represent the nature spirits. Africans integrate this religious
worldview into every aspect of life. (2019)
Community life in traditional African society is governed via a customary hierarchy of forces. This force-driven
order is defined, sustained, administered and enforced by the community through folkloric practices that involve verbal,
material and customary artefacts employed to institutionalize the people’s traditional ways of worship and social system.
The individual cannot exalt himself above his community’s religious and social practices because of the hierarchy of
forces that ensure communal control over the behaviour of persons and groups. So, as Odozor (2019) has observed,
Tempels’ hierarchy of forces is more than an abstract spiritual reality:
This hierarchy is also evident in human society, where there are chiefs, clan heads, family heads, older siblings,
and so on. Second, Africans believe in a moral order given by God, stipulated by the ancestors in the past. Observing this
moral order ensures harmony and peace within the community.

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What instruments are used to maintain this moral hierarchy. As in every other society, laws basically are used,
but these are laws, notes Odozor, that derive their power more from tradition than from coded rules:
The moral and religious order in the universe is articulated and expressed in a variety of taboos and customs that
prohibit specific actions contravening such order. Taboos and customs cover all aspects of human life: words, foods, dress,
relations among people, marriage, burial, work, and so forth…
This brings us to the question of personhood in African societies. Whereas in the Western world every individual
is assumed to be a person by the mere fact of being an individual human being, in Africa personhood is defined within the
context of societal expectations and the significant fulfillment of those expectations by the individual. In the West,
personhood is attributed to anyone by the mere fact of their being a human being; in Africa, personhood is invested on
deserving individuals by the community. John Mbiti (141) has famously framed it this way: “I am because weare, and since
we are, therefore I am.” This means that, in Africa, the individual is not defined apart from his or her society. Rather, it is
the society that informally invests him or her with personhood upon their performance of certain social-cum-personal
obligations (such as rites of passage, marriage, participation in communal functions, etc) and/or demonstration of
competence in the acquisition/awareness of critical lore (such as the community’s oral history and customs). Everyone
who qualifies to be regarded as a person, in a cultural sense, is seen and known to have done so through their general
conduct and quality of interaction with other members of the community.
The mere fact of being an adult does not automatically confer personhood on an individual; often one hears the
community referring to an adult who does not play any responsible role in the society as “onye a akaro bulu mmadu”. What
this means is that “This being (in spite of his or her vital force) is not yet a person”. (Brackets mine) So, the vital force of
the individual only elevates him or her to the level of personhood when the` overarching force of the communal
authorities deems them to have qualified for such honour.
In the traditional African setting, a person is a subset of a community in an ontological and epistemic sense
whereas in the West a person, in both senses, is not regarded as a subset of the community. In Western societies, every
individual is a person whether they conduct themselves in line with or against the norms of their community. Using set
theory, we can represent African and Western notions of personhood as follows:

Personhood (AfricanOntology) Personhood (Western Ontology)

Community Person
Community

Person

Table 2

In Africa, personhood is conferred on the individual by the community based on his attainment of a prescribed
level of social force, and not based on “some isolated static quality of rationality, will, or memory” (Menkiti 1984). We
conclude this segment of our discussion with Menkiti’s reference to the incisive distinctions made by Tempels’ Luba
people:
This is perhaps the burden of the distinction which Placide Tempels' native informants saw fit to emphasize to
him--i.e. the distinction between amuntumutupu (a man of middling importance) andmuntu mukulumpe(apowerful man, a
man with a great deal of force)…the word "muntu" includes an idea of excellence, of plenitude of force at
maturation…Thus, it is not enough to have before us the biological organism…We must also conceive of this organism as
going through a long process of social and ritual transformation until it attains the full complement of excellencies seen as
truly definitive of man. And during this long process of attainment, the community plays a vital role as catalyst and as
prescriber. (Menkiti 1984)

4.2. Vital Force and the Concept of Human Rights in African Philosophy
The superiority of communal force over the individual’s force, as epitomized by the power of the community to
act as the prescriber of personhood criteria, also places the community over the individual in matters of human rights. In
the traditional African setting, the rights of the community incorporate, and sometimes supersede, that of the individual.
The individual’s rights are governed within the context of communal rights, duties and obligations, as enshrined in the
community’s customs and traditions, and in recent communal decisions.
In African traditional environment, rights are conceived to preserve and sustain communal living, thereby ensuring that
the wellbeing of the majority of communal dwellers is protected against the excesses of any individual. Laws are aimed at
preserving the common good over and above the unbridled ambition, exploits and deviant lifestyle of the individual. As a
guiding principle, communalism is elevated over individualism. This is in sharp contrast with what obtains in the West
where the rights of the individual are deemed as the fundamental natural rights, with negative implications for the quest
to build a more egalitarian social order:

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Human rights ideas in international for a have historically been derived from a Western natural rights
perspective.The perspective indeed denies the existence of the needy’s right to economic sustenance and society’s
obligation to satisfy this right. The African sense of community obligation that goes beyond charity is just what is needed
to foster economic rights and push the idea of economic rights beyond the demands of human rights activists and human
rights textbooks. We need to take such non-Western conceptions seriously. Western social scientists are increasingly
questioning the sanctity of the liberal individualist paradigm in their search for answers to contemporary Western
problems. (Cobbah 311)
It should be noted that the supremacy of the communal rights over the individual’s rights does not necessarily
approximate to oppression or suppression of any individual. Fairplay, fair hearing and due process are integral aspects of
the traditional rule of law. The Ghanaian scholar, Asante, who conducted a research on this topic, refreshes our memory in
Bennet (1993):
The notion of due process of law permeated indigenous law; deprivation of personal liberty or property was rare;
security of the person was assured, and customary legal process was characterized not by unpredictable and harsh
encroachments upon the individual by the sovereign, but by meticulous, if cumbersome, procedures for decision-making.
The African conception of human rights was an essential aspect of African humanism sustained by religious doctrine and
the principle of accountability to the ancestral shades (73-4).

5. Conclusion
We have shown, as observed by Tempels, that African ontology is the foundation of African philosophy and that
the concept of vital force, governs personal and social lifestyles and organization in traditional African societies. While a
number of African philosophers have propounded their own versions of the African concept of being, none of them has
come up with a notion of being definite, authentic and widespread enough to uproot the belief that vital force encapsulates
Africa’s notion of being.
Indeed, vital force is what sets African ontology apart from Western notion of existence. We have also tried to
demonstrate this through our comparative analyses of African and Western notions of personhood, community and
human rights. In the light of all this, “We might say that in African conception the capacity for doing is identified with being
and therefore with act or perfection…” (Rush in Ogbonnaya 2014). To sum up, we have argued, and hopefully also
demonstrated, that in Africa a being is essentially what it is, and what it is also amounts to what it can do.

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