This article defends a relational account of personhood. I argue that the structure of personhood consists of dyadic relations between persons who can wrong or be wronged by one another, even if some of them lack moral competence. I draw on recent work on directed duties to outline the structure of moral communities of persons. The upshot is that we can construct an inclusive theory of personhood that can accommodate nonhuman persons based on shared community membership. I argue that, once (...) we unpack the internal relation between directed duties, moral status, and flourishing, relations can ground personhood and include nonhuman animals. (shrink)

I apply African moral precepts to the topic of ‘superlongevity’. I make the case that African theories give rise to three specific sorts of moral concern about life extension that are distinct from similar objections in Western literature: first, superlongevity presents a challenge to identity; second, significantly longer lives face increased challenges to their meaningfulness; third, life extension may be socially divisive, undermining key tenets of sharing a way of life and communing harmoniously with others. Although these distinctive concerns are (...) significant, I claim that their strength as objections to superlongevity depends heavily on the distribution of life extension technologies. Moreover, since African theories typically hold that moral excellence correlates with increasing age, they provide a prudential and moral incentive to live longer to develop personhood. (shrink)