THE IDEALITY OF MORALITY AND INDIVIDUAL MORAL RIGHT IN AFRICAN/IGBO COMMUNAL BASED MORAL SYSTEM- A PSYCHO-ANTHROPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

Igbo people and Africans at large practice community controlled moral system. They believe that life of an individual has implications in the community hence the need for individuals to be subjected to some degree of compulsion such that they cannot always do exactly as they like.  This brings about non-cohesive relationship between community demands and individual right hence the fear that the individual right and freedom may be jeopardized. For some scholars, such fear is unfounded. It is but improper interpretation and understanding, of the said individual right. Different scholars have approached this problem differently; some see it as the problem of Individuality and Social cohesion while others prefer individualism and communalism; individuality understood as metaphysical freedom. This paper sets to approach it Psycho-anthropologically. It situates the problem within the socio- psychological feelings and wishes of human beings base on human nature. Findings show that every individual belongs to the human species, such that what is true of individual A is true of every other individual, such that when individual “A” wishes that his/her subjective desires be made a universal maxim; or that every other law give way to his/her individual wishes; or wishes for alone existence, such wishes are true of every other individual. If this is the case, then, it implies that within an individual, there is cohesion and conflict simultaneously between his/her wishes and the human nature. It is therefore against the self-realization of human species both as an individual and as a community to make individual right, wishes and an absolute.