Abstract

This project is a philosophical examination of inter-cultural discourse. It has three parts. The first first of the project establishes a method of approach appropriate for the study of human reality. Initially, I show that classical dualism, which has long dominated Western philosophy since the time of Desecartes, fails to give an adequate account of the reality of human life and experience. Instead, I adopt the phenomenological-existential philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty which I consider most apt in dealing with our problematic. With Merleau-Ponty, I present the living human person as a kind of being different from mere matter or pure mind . This reveals the human body as a "third" kind of being. ;The second part is an analysis of the Akan life-world as it is concretely experienced with a view to identifying the different categories of being that are recognized by Akans. The Akan people are the largest ethnic group in Ghana, West Africa. They are also found in Togo and the Cote d'Ivoire. The explication and elucidation of the Akan life world help to identify the various elements considered to be constitutive of the human person. I then argue that these elements constitute a structural whole or unity in the sense employed by Merleau-Ponty, that is, a Gestalt. ;In part three I suggest a possible reconstruction of the concepts of the human person and the self using Merleau-Ponty's philosophy as a methodological device. This part deals with the resolution of two dichotomies--dualism of the person in terms of spirit and matter or soul and body, and the dichotomous conception of the self as either individual or social. The argumentation is that, in human life and experience, there is a fundamental unity, a mutual constitution and interpenetration of sprit and matter, the social and the individual, a phenomenon which cannot be adequately accounted for in any dualistic or reductionistic method