Ifeanyi Menkiti

Ifeanyi Anthony Menkiti (24 August 1940 – 17 June 2019) was a Nigerian poet, philosopher, and professor, as well as the owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Life and career

Menkiti was born in Onitsha, Nigeria in 1940. His dissertation was "a study of collective responsibility". According to this view of personhood, the status of being a person has ethical connotations and is not something that one possesses automatically but must work towards through morally right action.

In addition to his academic work, Menkiti was a poet. Commenting on the relationship between philosophy and poetry, he said "poetry deals with the meaning of life, the meaning of meaning, just like philosophy".