Ifeanyi Menkiti

Ifeanyi Anthony Menkiti (24 August 1940 – 17 June 2019)[1][2] was a Nigerian poet, philosopher, and professor,[3][4] as well as the owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[1] In 1961, he arrived in the United States to study at Pomona College, where he graduated in 1964.

[1] Menkiti sought to emphasise the social nature of personhood, expressed in the notion "I am, because we are".

According to Menkiti, "societies found in traditional Africa routinely accept this fact that personhood is the sort of thing which has to be attained".

[9] According to this view of personhood, the status of being a person has ethical connotations and is not something that one possesses automatically but must work towards through morally right action.