This paper engages with Nigerian philosopher Ifeanyi Menkiti, who recently argued that the concept of the citizen has led to a juridification and hence an impoverishment in the concept of the person.
Form the perspective of Western political theory, this is a surprising claim, as the Western tradition tends to treat citizenship as an emancipatory achievement, and thus as to be welcomed. I ask whether citizenship is necessarily reductive of personhood in the ways in which Menkiti claims it to be, and my answer is a qualified 'yes'. I go on to ask whether, in the context of the statehood, personhood can be restored to the extent to which Menkiti deems desirable; my answer to this question is a qualified 'no'. I conclude with some considerations about the implications for personhood and citizenship for African and Western moral and political thinking respectively.
Katrin Flikschuh is Professor of Modern Political Theory at LSE. She works primarily on the political philosophy of Immanuel Kant. More recently she works on modern African philosophy. She is author of Kant and Modern Philosophy (CUP 2000, 2008), Freedom (Polity, 2007), and What is Orientation in Global Thinking? A Kantian Inquiry (CUP 2017).
Simon Glendinning is Head of the European Institute and Professor in European Philosophy.