QuestionsWho am I, really?A person is a person through other persons (ubuntu)
Who am I, really?A self to build

A person is a person through other persons (ubuntu)

Ubuntu; umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu; "I am because we are"

Desmond Tutu 1931 · 2021South African archbishop: through ubuntu, "a person is a person through other persons".
See profile
What it claims

One is not born fully a person nor fully oneself: one becomes it, through one's relations with others.

Why

No one comes into the world fully formed: we become a person through our relations with others, within the community.

The same idea through history
John S. Mbiti1969In African Religions and Philosophy, Mbiti describes African societies where the individual exists only through the group, and draws the formula "I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am".
Ifeanyi Menkiti1984Menkiti turns it into a thesis in the philosophy of the person: one is not born fully a person, one becomes one through incorporation into the community.
Desmond Tutu1999Tutu, who chaired South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, makes the idea famous worldwide through the phrase "a person is a person through other persons". The philosopher Mogobe Ramose gives an analysis of it the same year in African Philosophy through Ubuntu (1999).
In short

"A person is a person through other persons (ubuntu)" is an argument by Desmond Tutu (Mbiti 1969; Menkiti 1984; Tutu 1999 and 2004; Ramose 1999, 1999) on the question "Who am I, really?" (answer: a self to build). Its claim: One is not born fully a person nor fully oneself: one becomes it, through one's relations with others. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Mbiti 1969; Menkiti 1984; Tutu 1999 and 2004; Ramose 1999
Valid with an implicit premise

In several languages of southern Africa people say umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (Zulu, Xhosa), motho ke motho ka batho (Sotho): "a person is a person through other persons". This is the heart of ubuntu. The idea is that we become fully human only in relation with others: family, neighbours, community, ancestors. The Kenyan philosopher John Mbiti gives it form in 1969 ("I am because we are"), the Nigerian Ifeanyi Menkiti sees in it a thesis about the person (1984), and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, makes it known to the world. Here it answers the question "Who am I?": we are not born fully ourselves, we become ourselves. Wordings vary from language to language and author to author: we quote short passages from books in copyright, checked.

P1It is the community that defines the person, not an isolated, static quality such as reason, will or memory: one becomes fully a person only by being incorporated into the community.
P2The individual has awareness of himself, of duties and of rights only in relation to others: he can only say "I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am".
P3None of us comes into the world fully formed: a person's humanity depends on that of others, in the phrase "a person is a person through other persons".
P4 · implicit premiseIf we are not formed at birth, and what forms us is our relation to others, then being a person is a process that goes on through life, not a state given in advance.
Therefore one is not born fully a person nor fully oneself: one becomes it, through one's relations with others.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4 one can accept P1 to P3 and say the person exists fully from birth, the community only revealing what is already there. Incorporation would then be a recognition, not a becoming.
The argument is valid with the hidden premise P4. P1 says the community defines the person; P2 that the individual exists only in relation to others; P3 that no one is born fully formed; P4 concludes that the person is a becoming. The debates concern P1 (does the community define the person, or does individual consciousness count too?) and what "becoming" implies: is a person who has not been incorporated less of a person?
Analogy. A language is not learned alone: a child who never hears speech does not become a speaker. He is born with the capacity, but it is by speaking with others that he becomes someone who speaks. Ubuntu says becoming a person is like that.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

John Locke 1690 · attacks premise 1

For Locke, a person is a thinking, intelligent being that can consider itself the same at different times, and does so by consciousness alone, which is inseparable from thinking. Personal identity thus rests on each one's consciousness and memory, not on the place one holds in a community.

a defender replies
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1690, after the author's death (2021).
Ifeanyi Menkiti defender of the argument · 1984
Menkiti replies, about the Western conception of the person, that it is the community that defines the person as person, not some isolated static quality of rationality, will or memory.
The debate goes on (our summary) Menkiti writes nearly three centuries after Locke and does not name him in the passage cited: he targets a Western conception of the person centred on self-consciousness. Locke, for his part, speaks of personal identity, not of what makes an accomplished member of a community: the two may not be answering the same question.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Basic disagreement: does "person" mean a self-conscious being (Locke's sense) or a moral status acquired within a community (Menkiti's sense)? Each can accept the other's thesis by changing the meaning of the word (our summary).
K
Kwame Gyekye 1997 · attacks premise 1

Gyekye, a Ghanaian philosopher, defends a "moderate" communitarianism. The community matters a great deal, but the person has capacities of her own (reason, evaluation, choice) that let her judge her community's values and revise them. If the community entirely "defined" the person, no criticism of the community would be possible, and individual rights would be threatened.

a defender replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1997, after the author's death (2021).
Ifeanyi Menkiti defender of the argument · 2004
In a later essay, Menkiti specifies that "person" is a normative notion: one becomes a person by fulfilling one's duties to others, a moral achievement and not a mere biological fact. He maintains that the community has priority, and that this does not abolish the mature person's freedom.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Central debate in the African philosophy of the person: does the community come before the individual (Menkiti) or in balance with him (Gyekye)? Both positions are defended today, and several authors look for an intermediate path (our summary).
B
Bernard Matolino and Wenceslaus Kwindingwi 2013 · attacks the conclusion

In "The End of Ubuntu", Matolino and Kwindingwi argue that ubuntu, revived in South Africa since democracy, mostly serves as a discourse for political elites, who present it as a return to a harmonious past before colonisation. Its ideals fit the small communities of former times, not modern urban societies: as a theory of the person and as an ethic, it would have reached its end.

a defender replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 2013, after the author's death (2021).
T
Thaddeus Metz defender of the argument · 2014
Metz replies that their evidence is logically insufficient for their conclusion: an ideal being misused by politicians does not show it is false. The virtues of ubuntu, such as respect and hospitality towards strangers, remain compatible with large societies and city life. Scholarly study of ubuntu, he says, is only beginning.
B
Bernard Matolino 2015
Matolino replies in turn that Metz's answer does not threaten their original position.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Open point: is ubuntu an old African wisdom, a modern reconstruction, or both? The Matolino-Kwindingwi-Metz debate drew further responses, and specialists remain divided (our summary).