The Making of Ancestral Persons
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25365/jso-2022-6856Keywords:
personhood, ancestors, social ontology, theoretical justification, mind-independence, realismAbstract
In this paper, I address a range of arguments put forward by Katrin Flikschuh (2016) casting doubts on a theoretical account ofancestral persons in the work of Ifeanyi Menkiti. She argues both that their ontological status is uncertain and that they areontologically redundant. I argue that she does not succeed in convincing us to settle for a practical justification of ancestors. Ithen supplement Menkiti’s life-history account of post-mortem persistence with Searle’s account of social ontology with a viewto theoretically justify belief in the existence of ancestral persons.
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