  The distinctive qualities of this concept of persons (as interpreted by Wiredu) are brought out when contrasted to the analysis of another leading African philosopher, Kwame Gyekye, who takes issue with this graduated conception of person. Gyekye specifically objects to the role that social status plays in Wiredu's view of personhood, arguing that that is inconsistent with the natural or innate moral equality of persons derived from their common humanity. That is, we are human persons before we are anything else and it is the human person that matters from the moral point of view. Not surprisingly, Gyekye quotes Kant's categorical imperative approvingly when arguing that human persons are, as members of the ‘kingdom of ends,’ equal independent of their empirical or accidental characteristics (be they social or even genetic qualities.