The living-dead relationship parallels cells within a whole organism
Evidence
The relationship between the living and the dead is comparable to that between cells and the organism to which they belong. Relationships between the individual and the community in African societies are thus considered, as are those between “I” and “us”, the parts and the whole, the Creator and His creatures. All African realities should be read under this aspect. It is not a mixture of roles or the loss of one’s personality and identity, and neither is it a loss of order inside a developing society, as it might seem at first sight. In a society thus made up, there is certainly no place for heroes. Imperialism is not African. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 333
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Analogizes the individual-community relation to cells and organism, arguing this preserves identity rather than dissolving it.
Related
- African community-individual relations are organic like cells to organism (similarity 0.91)
- In African Vitalogy life and death are different modes of living (similarity 0.80)
- African vitalogy holds that no one truly dies; only change occurs (similarity 0.79)
- In African thought the collective community precedes and grounds individual identity (similarity 0.79)
- African thought is the reflected science of lived life grounded in culture (similarity 0.79)
- The doctrine of Vital Force unites Western Being and African Life (similarity 0.79)
- Life, not abstract Being, grounds African philosophical first principles. (similarity 0.78)
- African thought defines the human person as a relation to others, world, and God. (similarity 0.78)
- African philosophy reduces to the relation between man, world and God (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Every communication medium pairs its symbols with a symbiotic mechanism anchored in organic existence
#expands(0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 701