Abstract:
In this paper, I aim to progress towards the philosophical goal of ascertaining what, if
anything, all mental illnesses have in common, attempting to unify a large sub-set of those
with a relational or interpersonal dimension. One major claim is that, if we want a promising
theory of mental illness, we must go beyond the dominant western accounts of mental
illness/health, which focus on traits intrinsic to a person such as pain/pleasure, lethargy/
liveliness, fragmentation/integration, and falsehood/authenticity. A second major claim is
that the relational facets of mental illness are plausibly understood theoretically in terms of
a person’s inability to identify with others or exhibit solidarity with them, relational values
salient in the African philosophical tradition. I show that these two extrinsic properties
explain several intuitive instances of mental illness well, including, amongst several others,
being abusive, psychopathic, narcissistic, histrionic, paranoid, and phobic.
