I consider what prima facie attractive communitarian ethical perspectives salient among indigenous African peoples entail for distributive justice within a state, and I argue that they support a form of economic egalitarianism that differs in several important ways from varieties common in contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy. In particular, the sort of economic egalitarianism I advance rivals not only luck-oriented variants from the likes of Ronald Dworkin, G. A. Cohen and theorists inspired by them such as Richard Arneson, Carl Knight and (...) Nir Eyal, but also more ‘social’ kinds advocated by Elizabeth Anderson, Samuel Scheffler and Jonathan Wolff. Although I do not argue that these broadly Kantian egalitarianisms are less plausible than the Afro-communitarian version, I do aim to establish that it should be taken as seriously as they, at this stage of the debate. (shrink)

_A Relational Moral Theory_ draws on neglected resources from the Global South and especially the African philosophical tradition to provide a new answer to a perennial philosophical question: what do all morally right actions have in common as distinct from wrong ones? Metz points out that the principles of utility and of respect for autonomy, the two rivals that have dominated Western moral theory for the last two centuries, share an individualist premise. Once that common assumption is replaced by a (...) relational perspective given prominence in African ethical thought, a different comprehensive principle, one focused on harmony or friendliness, emerges. Metz argues that this principle corrects the blind spots of the Western moral principles, and has implications for a wide array of controversies in applied ethics that an international audience of moral philosophers, professional ethicists, and similar thinkers will find compelling. (shrink)

A comprehensive account of justice grounded on salient Afro-communitarian values, the article attempts to unify views about the distribution of economic resources, the protection of human rights and the provision of social recognition as ultimately being about proper ways to value loving relationships.

Given a 21st century context of sophisticated market economies and other Western influences such as Christianity, what similarities and differences are there between characteristic indigenous values of sub-Saharan Africa and China, and how do they continue to influence everyday life in these societies? Establishing that central to both non-Western, indigenous value systems are ideals of harmonious relationships, I compare and contrast traditional African and Chinese conceptions of harmony and analyze a number of respects in which an appeal to this value (...) affects contemporary political, economic and social interaction. (shrink)

The belief that human rights are culturally relative has been reinforced by recent attempts to develop more plausible conceptions of human rights whose philosophical foundations are closely aligned with culture-specific ideas about human nature and/or dignity. This paper contests specifically the position that a conception of human rights is culturally relative by way of contesting the claim that there is an African case in point. That is, it contests the claim that there is a unique theory of rights. It analyses (...) three examples of what often passes as African conception of human rights arguing that they have little or nothing to do with human rights, are simply inadequate or are not African in the sense at issue in a cultural relativism. Along the way, it distinguishes between two meanings of the term African contending that to the extent that the practice of prizing the ‘community’ higher than any other value is definitive of African, the idea of African human rights remains suspect. (shrink)

In an article titled ‘The end of ubuntu’ recently published in this journal, Bernard Matolino and Wenceslaus Kwindingwi argue that contemporary conditions in (South) Africa are such that there is no justification for appealing to an ethic associated with talk of ‘ubuntu’. They argue that political elites who invoke ubuntu do so in ways that serve nefarious functions, such as unreasonably narrowing discourse about how best to live, while the moral ideals of ubuntu are appropriate only for a bygone, pre-modern (...) age. Since there is nothing ethically promising about ubuntu for today’s society, and since elite appeals to it serve undesirable purposes there, the authors conclude that ubuntu in academic and political circles ‘has reached its end’. In this article, I respond to Matolino and Kwindingwi, contending that, in fact, we should view scholarly enquiry into, and the political application of, ubuntu as projects that are only now properly getting started. (shrink)

The African philosophy of Ubuntu is typically characterised as a communitarian philosophy that emphasises virtues such as compassion, tolerance and harmony. In recent years there has been growing interest in this philosophy, and in how it can be applied to a variety of disciplines and issues. Several authors have provided useful introductions of Ubuntu in the field of business ethics and suggested theoretical ways in which it could be applied. The purpose of this paper is to extend this discussion by (...) providing a more critical analysis of Ubuntu and business ethics with the aim of clarifying the role that Ubuntu can play, and providing guidance for further research in this area. The analysis consists of three sections. In the first, certain problems are identified within the existing literature. This is followed by a consideration of alternative perspectives and interpretations of Ubuntu. The last section, following from the first two, identifies specific areas requiring further research, both empirical and non-empirical, as well as ways in which Ubuntu could be fruitfully applied. (shrink)

Bioethics has now become a burgeoning interdisciplinary field of scholarly investigation which has in the past decades migrated from bedside consultations to public policy debates and wider cultural and social consultations that privilege all discourse about everyday life issues. It has made exponential progress in addressing moral issues in science, technology and medicine in the world. In spite of this progress, core bioethics issues, approaches and values are still exclusively Western dominated and largely foreign to most African societies. Although medical (...) ethics has existed since the time of Hippocrates, in Africa, there is a noted sluggish growth and low prestige of ethics education as bioethics is not taught in most higher educational systems of learning, low understanding of its processes as researchers manifest a general lack of appreciation for bioethics and general ignorance characterize those involved in research about ethical practices. This is unfortunate, considering that various research that aim at finding solutions to the multiple problems affecting African societies and the need to address and assess these problems in ethical terms are of crucial importance to Africans. In this work, I argue that Africa lacks human, institutional, infrastructural capacities and a real African authenticity in bioethics. Additionally, African views on bioethics are neither sufficiently developed nor heard. Africans need to confront these current challenges of bioethics to their lives and communities and to develop African conceptions to incorporate African specificities and approaches. (shrink)

I focus on D A Masolo’s discussion of morality as characteristically understood by African philosophers. My goals are both historical and substantive, meaning that I use reflection on Masolo’s book as an occasion to shed light not only on the nature of recent debates about African ethics, but also on African ethics itself. With regard to history, I argue that Masolo’s discussion of sub-Saharan morality suggests at least two major ways that the field has construed it, depending on which value (...) is taken to be basic and which ones are deemed derivative. According to one perspective, the ultimate aim of a moral agent should be to improve people’s quality of life, which she can reliably do by supporting community in certain ways, while the other view is that community should instead be valued for its own sake, with the enhancement of welfare being morally relevant only insofar as it is part of that. I claim that Masolo does not indicate a clear awareness of how these two perspectives differ and is not explicit about how they relate to one another. After pointing out that Masolo is not alone in these respects, I draw what is meant to be a definitive, clear distinction between the two major ethical philosophies. Then, I provide what I deem to be conclusive reason to prefer the community- based conception of sub-Saharan ethics to the welfare-based one. (shrink)

In this article I compare and, especially, contrast Aristotle’s conception of virtue with one typical of sub-Saharan philosophers. I point out that the latter is strictly other-regarding, and specifically communitarian, and contend that the former, while including such elements, also includes some self-regarding or individualist virtues, such as temperance and knowledge. I also argue that Aristotle’s conception of human excellence is more attractive than the sub-Saharan view as a complete account of how to live, but that the African conception is (...) a strong contender for a limited group of the most important virtues related to morality qua rightness. (shrink)

In her essay ‘The Curious Coincidence of Feminine and African Moralities’ (1987), Sandra Harding was perhaps the first to note parallels between a typical Western feminist ethic and a characteristically African, i.e., indigenous sub-Saharan, approach to morality. Beyond Harding’s analysis, one now frequently encounters the suggestion, in a variety of discourses in both the Anglo-American and sub-Saharan traditions, that an ethic of care and an African ethic are more or less the same or share many commonalities. While the two ethical (...) perspectives are indeed sisters, in this article I argue, first, that they are not identical twins, and, more strongly, that the family resemblance between the two is significantly less than has been recognized. I highlight key differences between representative forms of an ethic of care and a sub-Saharan communitarian morality, after which I argue, second, that the latter better captures some central feminist concerns and moral considerations generally. That is, I maintain that an African ideal of community, when understood in a philosophically refined way, provides an important, relational corrective to the ethic of care. (shrink)

Given the importance of being able to account for moral obligations towards future generations, especially in the light of the problem of global climate change, I argue that there are under-appreciated notions in African thought that are able to significantly contribute to the on-going discourse with respect to inter-generational moral obligations. I identify two related African notions, both springing from the prominent belief that ancestors who have died ? but continue to have a presence ? are entitled to respect, which (...) upon secular refinement are promising in terms of grounding a claim that we do have moral obligations to future generations. These conceptions are that the environment is a communal resource, shared across generations, and that the present generation should express gratitude to its predecessors for preserving the environment on its behalf, by emulating its predecessors and preserving the environment for future generations. I argue that these two conceptions present plausible grounds for thinking that we have moral obligations to posterity, partly because they go some way towards overcoming some of the theoretical concerns generally associated with the notion of moral obligations towards unidentifiable, contingent future persons. (shrink)

A communitarian perspective, which is characteristic of African normative thought, accords some kind of primacy to society or a group, whereas human rights are by definition duties that others have to treat individuals in certain ways, even when not doing so would be better for others. Is there any place for human rights in an Afro-communitarian political and legal philosophy, and, if so, what is it? I seek to answer these questions, in part by critically exploring one of the most (...) influential theoretical works on human rights in a sub-Saharan setting, namely, Claude Ake’s ‘The African Context of Human Rights’. Ake famously maintains that a typically Western approach to rights is inappropriate in the sub-Saharan region, in two major respects. First, Ake contends that although a human rights legal framework might be suitable for an ‘individualistic’ society, it is not for one of the sort common among traditional black peoples, for whom group rights are alone apt. Second, Ake maintains that, insofar as rights are relevant, rights to socio-economic goods are of much more importance in an African context than rights to civil liberties, due process and the like. Using Ake’s article as a foil, I draw on values salient in sub-Saharan moral worldviews to construct a unified philosophy of rights that not only provides reason to doubt his two claims, but also offers a promising way to reconcile a communitarian framework with a robust prizing of human rights alongside ones that are more collectively oriented. In short, I aim to provide a principled foundation for the core elements of the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights. (shrink)

A reprint in English of 'Confucianism and African Conceptions of Value, Reality and Knowledge' (International Social Science Journal, Chinese Edition, 2016).

The article defends ubuntu against the assault by Enslin and Horsthemke (Comp Educ 40(4):545–558, 2004 ). It challenges claims that the Africanist/Afrocentrist project, in which the philosophy of ubuntu is central, faces numerous problems, involves substantial political, moral, epistemological and educational errors, and should therefore not be the basis for education for democratic citizenship in the South African context. The article finds coincidence between some of the values implicit in ubuntu and some of the values that are enshrined in the (...) constitution of South Africa and that on that basis argues that ubuntu has the potential to serve as a moral theory and a public policy. The educational upshot of this article’s argument is that South Africa’s educational policy framework not only places a high premium on ubuntu, which it conceives as human dignity, but it also requires the schooling system to promote ubuntu-oriented attributes and dispositions among the learners. The article finds similarities between ubuntu and bildung, whose key advocates, among others was German scholar and intellectual Wilhelm von Humboldt. It argues that it would be ethnocentric, and indeed silly to suggest that the ubuntu ethic of caring and sharing is uniquely African when some of the values which it seeks to promote can also be traced in various Eurasian philosophies. (shrink)

I seek to advance enquiry into the philosophical question of in virtue of what human beings have a dignity of the sort that grounds human rights. I first draw on values salient in sub-Saharan African moral thought to construct two theoretically promising conceptions of human dignity, one grounded on vitality, or liveliness, and the other on our communal nature. I then argue that the vitality conception cannot account for several human rights that we intuitively have, while the community conception can (...) do so. I conclude that, of plausible theories of human dignity with an African pedigree, the field ought to favour a community-based view and critically compare it in future work with the Kantian, autonomy-based view that dominates Western thinking about dignity. (shrink)

The dominant conceptions of moral status in the English-speaking literature are either holist or individualist, neither of which accounts well for widespread judgments that: animals and humans both have moral status that is of the same kind but different in degree; even a severely mentally incapacitated human being has a greater moral status than an animal with identical internal properties; and a newborn infant has a greater moral status than a mid-to-late stage foetus. Holists accord no moral status to any (...) of these beings, assigning it only to groups to which they belong, while individualists such as welfarists grant an equal moral status to humans and many animals, and Kantians accord no moral status either to animals or severely mentally incapacitated humans. I argue that an underexplored, modal-relational perspective does a better job of accounting for degrees of moral status. According to modal-relationalism, something has moral status insofar as it capable of having a certain causal or intensional connection with another being. I articulate a novel instance of modal-relationalism grounded in salient sub-Saharan moral views, roughly according to which the greater a being's capacity to be part of a communal relationship with us, the greater its moral status. I then demonstrate that this new, African-based theory entails and plausibly explains the above judgments, among others, in a unified way. (shrink)

Suppose that it can be right to grant amnesty from criminal and civil liability to those guilty of political crimes in exchange for full disclosure about them. There remains this important question to ask about the proper form that amnesty should take: Which additional burdens, if any, should the state lift from wrongdoers in the wake of according them freedom from judicial liability? I answer this question in the context of a recent South African Constitutional Court case that considered whether (...) an officer having been granted amnesty for apartheid-era killings should be held to mean that the police force may not discharge him on the ground of having been convicted of a serious offence. The Court ruled that, despite amnesty having been granted to the guilty officer, the police force was permitted to discharge him. I distinguish the major ethical reasons the Court gives for its conclusion, which ultimately appeal to the value of national reconciliation, and I argue not only that the reconciliation-based rationales rest on empirical contingencies for which there is little evidence, but also that their logic in fact provides some reason to reject the Court’s conclusion. Then, I sketch an attractive new theory of right action, grounded on salient sub-Saharan values often associated with talk of ‘ubuntu’, that I maintain provides a stronger, unitary foundation for the Court’s key pronouncements. I conclude by discussing some of the broader implications of the moral theory for related matters, such as the rights of victims in the processes leading up to presidential pardons of those who have committed atrocities and the duties of newspapers with regard to the reputations of the latter. (shrink)

In this article I spell out a conception of dignity grounded in African moral thinking that provides a plausible philosophical foundation for human rights, focusing on the particular human right not to be executed by the state. I first demonstrate that the South African Constitutional Court’s sub-Saharan explanations of why the death penalty is degrading all counterintuitively entail that using deadly force against aggressors is degrading as well. Then, I draw on one major strand of Afro-communitarian thought to develop a (...) novel conception of dignity as the view that what is special and inviolable about human nature is our capacity for harmonious relationships. I argue that a principle of respect for the dignity of such a capacity entails that the death penalty is an indignity but that deadly force in self- or other-defense need not be, and I contend that this African- inspired principle promises to do no worse than the more Western, Kantian principle of respect for autonomy at accounting for a broad range of human rights. (shrink)

I seek to answer the question of whether publicly funded higher education ought to aim intrinsically to promote certain kinds of ‘‘blue-sky’’ knowledge, knowledge that is unlikely to result in ‘‘tangible’’ or ‘‘concrete’’ social benefits such as health, wealth and liberty. I approach this question in light of an African moral theory, which contrasts with dominant Western philosophies and has not yet been applied to pedagogical issues. According to this communitarian theory, grounded on salient sub-Saharan beliefs and practices, actions are (...) right insofar as they respect relationships in which people both share a way of life, or identify with one another, and care for others’ quality of life, or are in solidarity with each other. I argue that while considerations of identity and solidarity each provide some reason for a state university to pursue blue-sky knowledge as a final end, they do not provide conclusive reason for it to do so. I abstain from drawing any further conclusion about whether this provides reason to reject the Afro-communitarian moral theory or the intuition that blue-sky knowledge is a proper final end of public higher education. I do point out, however, that the dominant Western moral theories on the face of it do no better than the African one at accounting for this intuition. (shrink)

This essay describes and critically evaluates a co-operative educational program to train Ugandan health care workers in bioethics. It describes one bottom-up effort, a week-long intensive workshop in bioethics provided by the authors to health care professionals in a developing country—Uganda. We will describe the background and circumstances that led to the organization of the workshop, and review its planning, design, curriculum, and outcome. We will focus especially on measures taken to make the workshop relevant for the audience of Ugandan (...) professionals, and describe lessons learned after two presentations of the workshop. Finally, we will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of such a format, and its potential value in raising bioethical expertise in developing countries. (shrink)

Here I introduce the symposium issue of the South African Journal of Philosophy that is devoted to critically analysing my article “Toward an AfricanMoral Theory.” In that article, I use the techniques of analytic moral philosophy to articulate and defend a moral theory that both is grounded on the values of peoples living in sub-Saharan Africa and differs from what is influential in contemporary Western ethics. Here, I not only present a précis of the article, but also provide a sketch (...) of why I have undertaken the sort of project begun there, what I hope it will help to achieve, and how the contributors to the symposium principally question it. (shrink)

In this article, I respond to questions about, and criticisms of, my article “Towardan African Moral Theory” that have been put forth by Allen Wood, Mogobe Ramose, Douglas Farland and Jason van Niekerk. The major topicsI address include: what bearing the objectivity of moral value should have on cross-cultural moral differences between Africans and Westerners; whether a harmonious relationship is a good candidate for having final moral value; whether consequentialism exhausts the proper way to respond to the value of a (...) harmonious relationship; what makes a moral theory count as “African”; how the existing literature on African ethics relates to the aim of analytically developing and defending a single foundational moral principle; whether the intuitions I appeal to ground an African moral theory are pro tanto rightmakers or general moral truths; whether the moral theory I defend can capture pro tanto rightness; and whether the best interpretation of African ethics is self-regarding (deeming the only basic moral reason for action to be that it would develop one's own valuable human nature) or other-regarding (holding that a certain kind of harmonious relationship between individuals could ground a basic moral reason for action) . (shrink)

From the perspective of an African ethic, analytically interpreted as a philosophical principle of right action, what are the proper final ends of a publicly funded university and how should they be ranked? To answer this question, I first provide a brief but inclusive review of the literature on Africanising higher education from the past 50 years, and contend that the prominent final ends suggested in it can be reduced to five major categories. Then, I spell out an intuitively attractive (...) African moral theory and apply it to these five final ends, arguing that three of them are appropriate but that two of them are not. After that, I maintain that the African moral theory prescribes two additional final ends for a public university that are not salient in the literature. Next, I argue that employing the African moral theory as I do enables one to rebut several criticisms of Africanising higher education that have recently been made from a liberal perspective. I conclude by posing questions suitable for future research. (shrink)

This article engages in a dialogue between the African philosophy of Ubuntu (humanity bound up in the other) and the Korean philosophy of Samae (love bound up in the other) to advocate for the emergence of a philosophy of agapeic humanism. Some structures (laws, standards, conventions, protocol and institutions), ideologies, ethics and socio‐cultural practices of indigenous African communities have particularistic, exclusive, egocentric and discriminatory strains that are in contradiction to communalism and its principles upon which the traditional African world‐view is (...) claimed to be founded. For instance, in indigenous Igbo communities in Africa, double standards are applied in their treatment of in‐groups and out‐groups, and their religious and moral codes cannot be invoked for an offence committed by an in‐group member against an outsider (an out‐group member), thus making such ethics and practices trans‐communally/racially inapplicable and therefore non‐universalisable. The article employs analytical, critical and comparative fusion methods to approach particularism in traditional Africa communities. While the analytical method facilitates the theorisation of Ubuntu and Samae, the critical approach critiques prevailing, narrowly defined conceptions of humanism prevalent among the Igbo people of Nigeria. Through the method of comparative fusion, the article integrates elements of Ubuntu and Samae to propose the concept of agapeic humanism. It concludes that the interchange between African and Asian philosophies holds the promise of transcending particularistic limitations within the current humanistic paradigm, thereby fostering new perspectives on shared humanity rooted in practical agape love. (shrink)

Due to its enormous potential, artificial intelligence (AI) can transform healthcare on a seemingly infinite scale. However, as we continue to explore the immense potential of AI, it is vital to consider the ethical concerns associated with its development and deployment. One specific concern that has been flagged in the literature is the responsibility gap (RG) due to the introduction of AI in healthcare. When the use of an AI algorithm or system results in a negative outcome for a patient(s), (...) to whom can or should responsibility for that outcome be assigned? Although the concept of the RG was introduced in Anglo-American and European philosophy, this paper aims to broaden the debate by providing an Ubuntu-inspired perspective on the RG. Ubuntu, deeply rooted in African philosophy, calls for collective responsibility, and offers a uniquely forward-looking approach to address the alleged RG caused by AI in healthcare. An Ubuntu-inspired perspective can serve as a valuable guide and tool when addressing the alleged RG. Incorporating Ubuntu into the AI ethics discourse can contribute to a more ethical and responsible integration of AI in healthcare. (shrink)

In this article, I interrogate whether the deployment and development of the Metaverse should take into account African values and modes of knowing to foster the uptake of this hyped technology in Africa. Specifically, I draw on the moral norms arising from the components of communal interactions and humanness in Afro-communitarianism to contend that the deployment of the Metaverse and its development ought to reflect core African moral values to foster its uptake in the region. To adequately align the Metaverse (...) with African core values and thus foster its uptake among Africans, significant technological advancement that makes simulating genuine human experiences possible must occur. Additionally, it would be necessary for the developers and deployers to ensure that higher forms of spiritual activities can be had in the Metaverse to foster its uptake in Africa. Finally, I justify why the preceding points do not necessarily imply that the Metaverse will have a higher moral status than real life on the moral scale that can be grounded in Afro-communitarianism. (shrink)

Jeanne-Marie Jackson’s The African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing provides an analytic framework for understanding the novel as a form of philosophical expression in African intellectual history. More specifically, she uses individualism as a tool for tracking the expression of abstract “philosophical thinking” in a selection of African novels. For Jackson, it is the fictional individual in the novel who is the primary bearer of philosophical thought. Jackson situates this interpretative heuristic vis-à-vis the (...) debates about ethnophilosophy which dominated African philosophy in third quarter of the twentieth century. Like Paulin Hountondji, perhaps the most well-known critic of ethnophilosophy, Jackson emphasizes that philosophical practice, at a bare minimum, requires a second-order reflexivity toward conventional hegemonic beliefs in a given society, and this second order discourse takes the form of an argumentative stance toward those beliefs. Her general suggestion is that the best place to look for philosophical thought in the aforementioned sense is to examine individual thinkers, whether real or fictional. (shrink)

In this article, I draw attention to the value of community in John Mbiti’s philosophy using his famous axiom by reconciling the tension between the individual and community his philosophy envisages. To do this, I offer a reconstruction of Mbiti’s communitarian axiom: “I am because we are; and since we are, therefore I am.” Mbiti is considered one of the forerunners of the communitarian debate in African philosophy. His axiom, which describes his idea of Afro-communitarianism, accounts for the importance of (...) individual and community in thinking about social existence in African thought. However, Mbiti’s argument for the direct influence of the community in the formation of the individual is taken to mean the supremacy of the community over the individual. Mbiti’s concept of community has implications for the idea of personhood in that it raises the question of individual agency. This has affected the reception of Mbiti’s contribution to the idea of community in African political thought. While Mbiti’s contributions to Afro-communitarianism transcend the discourse of personhood, I argue that maximising the potential of his idea requires reconstruction and a critical analysis of his axiom. In doing that, I demonstrate that a possible relationship exists between the “I” and “we” in his axiom that represents a harmony between the community and individual and does not suggest a primacy of either but the significance of community. This analysis will enable fair engagement with Mbiti’s conception of community. (shrink)

As a site of colonial conquest, sub-Saharan Africa has experienced colonialism’s historic and continuing harms. One of the aspects of this harm is epistemic. In the analytic philosophical tradition, this harm can partly be theorised in line with the literature on epistemic injustice, although it does not fit squarely. I show this by arguing for what can be understood as a colonial state’s specific manifestation of epistemic injustice. This manifestation takes into account the historical context of colonisation and the continuing (...) coloniality of sub-Saharan African countries. From this, I argue for an approach to remediating this epistemic injustice that relies on the fair-minded pursuit of knowledge. This approach, I briefly argue, gains valuable insights from African epistemological traditions and can be beneficial to other epistemic injustice instances that result specifically from historical cases of oppression. (shrink)

In this paper, I address human-induced environmental ills we face using an ubuntu-inspired ethical lens. I follow ubuntu scholars to stress the significance for moral agents to embody virtues. Virtue development is essential to carry out obligations and address human impacts on the environment. Thaddeus Metz, in particular, has drawn attention to how embodying ubuntu virtues of humility and friendliness can prompt moral agents to be other-regarding. The view I developed in this paper differs from his ubuntu-inspired account in at (...) least two significant ways. First, humans cannot be in harmonious relationships with some species such as Black Mambas, Hyenas and sea urchins even if they can interact. Second, we must acknowledge the consequentialist dimension of ubuntu ethics and prioritise the different aspects of ubuntu ‘mixed’ ethics, ranking them to offer possibilities for a more realistic recommendation to change our moral life. This paper demonstrates that the three dimensions of ubuntu ‘mixed’ ethics are fundamental because we need to think about moral consequences, right action and our virtue in accounting for our actions. (shrink)

Instances of epistemic injustice elicit resistance, anger, despair, frustration or cognate emotional responses from their victims. This sort of response to the epistemic injustices that accompanied historical systems of oppression such as colonialism, for example, is normal. However, if their victims have internalised these oppressive situations, we could get the counterintuitive response of appreciation. In this paper, I argue for the phenomenon of appreciative silencing to make sense of instances like this. This is a form of epistemic silencing that happens (...) when the accepted hegemonic intuitions of the oppressed are formed/influenced by the ideologies of the oppressors over time. Here, we have a resilient, oppressive and hegemonic epistemic system. Put together, it creates a variant of epistemic injustice and silencing that is obscure since its victims are neither resistant nor aware of the injustice they face but are appreciative. (shrink)

Some communitarians about personhood hold that human communities are metaphysically antecedent to individual persons, and that personhood comes in degrees, and that one becomes a person through ethical maturation within a community. I offer a new communitarianism that also endorses those claims. It is based partly on certain African accounts of the person—primarily Menkiti’s account—and partly on Mark Johnston’s extraordinary argument that extremely good persons are literally at one with the human community itself. The theory’s concept of the person is (...) a novel understanding of the social self. I argue that the account helps to solve three puzzles to do with communitarian conceptions of personhood. One puzzle is about understanding the individual person as an individual. Another relates to the alleged metaphysical priority of communities over persons. And a third is a problem for the view that personhood is graded. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The current COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have a strong negative impact on African countries. This is due to the fact that poverty has reduced the ability of these countries to implement health measures that are necessary to address the pandemic. In this article, I contend that colonialism has a role to play in this reduced ability to respond to the current crisis. Hence I argue that Ubuntu ethics imposes responsibility on European governments to aid Africans during this period.

This essay is a lengthy response to six contributors to a special issue edited by Adeshina Afolayan and devoted to critical discussions of _A Relational Moral Theory: African Ethics in and Beyond the Continent_. Key topics include: the proper role of metaphysics when doing moral philosophy; the appropriate aims of moral philosophy in the light of relational values and properties; the ir/relevance of imperceptible agents for an African ethic; the un/attractiveness of the principle that one morally should promote the common (...) good; the nature of virtue (vice) and its relation to rightness (wrongness); and how to capture self-regarding virtues and duties to oneself theoretically. (shrink)

Forgiveness has enjoyed intense scholarly interest since the 1980s. I provide a historical overview, then identify themes in the literature, with an emphasis on those relevant to the moral psychology of forgiveness in the twenty-first century. I conclude with some attention to dual-process theories of moral reasoning in order to suggest that key debates in forgiveness are not at odds so much as they may be aligned with the different moral aims of moral and mental processes that differ in kind. (...) I argue for the view that the moral aims of forgiveness are multiple, following scholars who maintain a multidimensional account of forgiveness with a focus on the functions of forgiveness in relationships and the importance of forgiveness to its practitioners rather than a unified definition or justification that applies to all moral occasions. (shrink)

The Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are typically recognized as the world’s major monotheistic religions. However, African Traditional Religion is, despite often including lesser spirits and gods, a monotheistic religion with numerous adherents in sub-Saharan Africa; it includes the idea of a single most powerful God responsible for the creation and sustenance of everything else. This Element focuses on drawing attention to this major world religion that has been much neglected by scholars around the globe, particularly those working (...) in the West or Northern Hemisphere. It accomplishes this primarily by bringing it into conversation with topics in the Anglo-American philosophy of religion. (shrink)

African perspectives on personhood and personal identity and their relation to those of the West have become far more central in mainstream Western discussion than they once were. Not only are African traditional views with their emphasis on the importance of community and social relations more widely discussed, but that emphasis has also received much wider acceptance and gained more influence among Western philosophers. Despite this convergence, there is at least one striking way in which the discussions remain apart and (...) that is on a point of method. The Western discussion makes widespread use of thought experiments. In the African discussion, they are almost entirely absent. In this article, we put forward a possible explanation for the method of thought experiment being avoided that is based on considerations stemming from John Mbiti’s account of the traditional African view of time. These considerations find an echo in criticism offered of the method in the Western debate. We consider whether a response to both trains of thought can be found that can further bring the Western and African philosophical traditions into fruitful dialogue. (shrink)

Ubuntu originated in small-scale societies in precolonial Africa. It stresses metaphysical and moral interconnectedness of humans, and newer Africapitalist approaches absorb ubuntu ideology, with the aims of promoting community wellbeing and restoring a love of local place that global free trade has eroded. Ecological degradation violates these goals, which ought to translate into care for the nonhuman world, in addition to which some sub-Saharan thought systems promote environmental concern as a value in its own right. The foregoing story is reinforced (...) by field research on African hunting operations that appear—counterintuitively—to reconcile conservation with business imperatives and local community interests. Though acknowledging shortcomings, I maintain these hunting enterprises do, by and large, adopt Africapitalist and ubuntu attitudes to enhance community wellbeing, environmental sustainability, and long-term economic viability. I also examine how well-intentioned Western conservation agendas are neocolonial impositions that impede local control while exacerbating environmental destruction and socioeconomic hardship. Ubuntu offers a conciliatory epistemology, which Africapitalism incorporates, and I conclude by considering how standard moral theories and political divisions become less antagonistic within these sub-Saharan frameworks, so even opponents can find common cause. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant challenges to healthcare systems worldwide, and in Africa, given the lack of resources, they are likely to be even more acute. The usefulness of Traditional African Healers in helping to mitigate the effects of pandemic has been neglected. We argue from an ethical perspective that these healers can and should have an important role in informing and guiding local communities in Africa on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Particularly, we argue not only (...) that much of the philosophy underlying Traditional African Medicine is adequate and compatible with preventive measures for COVID-19, but also that Traditional African Healers have some unique cultural capital for influencing and enforcing such preventive measures. The paper therefore suggests that not only given the cultural context of Africa where Traditional African Healers have a special role, but also because of the normative strength of the Afro-communitarian philosophy that informs it, there are good ethical reasons to endorse policies that involve Traditional Healers in the fight against COVID-19. We also maintain that concerns about Traditional African Healers objectionably violating patient confidentiality or being paternalistic are much weaker in the face of COVID-19. (shrink)

Although many bioethicists have given attention to the special health issues of Africa and to the ethics of research on the continent, only a handful have considered these issues through the lens of African moral thought. The question has been for the most part neglected as to what a distinctively African moral perspective would be for the analysis and teaching of bioethics issues. To address the oversight, the authors of this paper describe embarking on a project aimed at incorporating African (...) moral perspective, values and philosophy into a teaching curriculum. The authors clarify the rationale for the project and discuss the strategies employed in Africanizing the bioethics curriculum. (shrink)

This article introduces readers to the special issue on Selected Issues in the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. In this paper, I make a case for a wider outlook on the ethics of AI. So far, much of the engagements with the subject have come from Euro-American scholars with obvious influences from Western epistemic traditions. I demonstrate that socio-cultural features influence our conceptions of ethics and in this case the ethics of AI. The goal of this special issue is to entertain (...) more diverse views, particularly those from Africa; it brings together six articles addressing pertinent issues in the ethics of AI. These articles address topics around artificial moral agency, patiency, personhood, social robotics, and the principle of explicability. These works offer unique contributions for and from an African perspective. I contend that a wider engagement with the ethics of AI is worthwhile as we anticipate a global deployment of artificial intelligence systems. (shrink)

This article is a critique of Thaddeus Metz’s modal relational approach to moral status in African ethics. According to moral relationalism, a being has moral status if it exhibits the capacity for communal relationship as either a subject or an object. While Metz defends a prima facie plausibility of MR as an African account of moral status, this article provides a fresh perspective to the debate on moral status in environmental and ethical discourse. It raises two objections against MR: the (...) capability criterion inherent in MR is not only exogenous to African thought but also undermines the viability of MR; and MR cannot account for the standing of species populations. Both objections have severe implications for biodiversity conservation efforts in Africa and beyond. (shrink)

This paper looks at philosophical questions that arise in the context of AI alignment. It defends three propositions. First, normative and technical aspects of the AI alignment problem are interrelated, creating space for productive engagement between people working in both domains. Second, it is important to be clear about the goal of alignment. There are significant differences between AI that aligns with instructions, intentions, revealed preferences, ideal preferences, interests and values. A principle-based approach to AI alignment, which combines these elements (...) in a systematic way, has considerable advantages in this context. Third, the central challenge for theorists is not to identify ‘true’ moral principles for AI; rather, it is to identify fair principles for alignment that receive reflective endorsement despite widespread variation in people’s moral beliefs. The final part of the paper explores three ways in which fair principles for AI alignment could potentially be identified. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the relationship between love and social justice activism, focusing in particular on ways in which activists rely on either the union account of love (to argue that when one person is oppressed everyone is oppressed), the sentimentalist account of love (to argue that overcoming injustice is fundamentally about how we feel about one another), or love as fate (to argue that it is in love’s nature to triumph over hatred and injustice). All three accounts, while understandable and (...) attractive, are seriously problematic, as they tend either to obscure important differences in the ways that various groups are socially situated or to enable inaction by trusting that justice is inevitable. Alternative, deeper interpretations of each account (and their relationships to activism) are explored. (shrink)

This article discusses two complementary themes that play an important role in contemporary South African political philosophy: (1) the racist tradition in Western philosophy; and (2) the role of ubuntu in regaining an authentic African identity, which was systematically suppressed during the colonial past and apartheid. These are also leading themes in Mogobe Ramose’s African Philosophy Through Ubuntu. The first part concentrates on John Locke. It discusses the thesis that the reprehensible racism of many founders of liberal political philosophy has (...) lethally infected liberal theory. This view neglects the distinction between genesis and justification. Political liberalism has since cleansed itself of the prejudices of its spiritual ancestors. Liberal human rights exclude racism as a matter of principle. The second part discusses the claim that the ubuntu philosophy provides a better basis for a constitution in a modern society than political liberalism. A major problem is that ubuntu is an essentially contested concept. Some philosophers consider ubuntu to be a moribund notion (Matolino); others see it as a vital concept par excellence. In the latter case, it is elaborated from sundry incompatible political views, ranging from African nationalism (Ramose) via humanist communitarianism (Metz) to liberalism (Mboti). Conclusion: as an essentially contested ideological concept, ubuntu should not be a decisive constitutional standard for the application of state force. In contrast, the constitutional model of political liberalism provides a reasonable alternative, as it is designed precisely to solve the problem of social plurality and ideological contest. (shrink)

This article proffers a personhood-based conception of a meaningful life. I look into the ethical structure of the salient idea of personhood in African philosophy to develop an account of a meaningful life. In my view, the ethics of personhood is constituted by three components, namely (1) the fact of being human, which informs (2) a view of moral status qua the capacity for moral virtue, and (3) which specifies the final good of achieving or developing a morally virtuous character. (...) In light of the ethics of personhood, I will propose the view that a meaningful life is a function of achieving moral excellence or perfection. The moral perfection proposed here, to embody a meaningful life, is of a deontological and satisficing kind. The achievement of satisfactory levels of moral excellence, within sociopolitical and moral limits, captures the essence of a meaningful life. I conclude the article by considering objections against the view proposed here. (shrink)

In its ideal conception, the post-apartheid education landscape is regarded as a site of transformation that promotes democratic ideals such as citizenship, freedom, and critical thought. The role of the educator is pivotal in realising this transformation in the learners she teaches, but this realisation extends beyond merely teaching the curriculum to the educator herself, as the site where these democratic ideals are embodied and enacted. The teacher is thus centrally placed as a moral agent whose behaviour, in the classroom (...) space particularly, should, ideally, represent and communicate the values we aspire to cultivate in post-apartheid South African society generally. Thus, this notion of what teaching encompasses fits broadly into the conception of a “practice” in the sense developed by Alasdair MacIntyre, in that it is a transformative activity the enactment of which not only benefits the practitioner, but also extends to and benefits the broader community as well. Furthermore, practices are grounded in features of social or moral life we hold to be significant and, importantly, it is only through their active cultivation that they can be made tangible and further developed. MacIntyre’s theory of virtue is based on a three-fold interrelationship between practices, how they meaningfully narrate and shape an individual life, and how, in turn, this builds and sustains our moral and social traditions. Using these ideas to analyse post-apartheid South Africa, and the structural transformation paradox it is in, reveals the difficult and complex nature of a society that is in this transitional space. The claim is that attentiveness to practices in the educational space, and to the way they shape and inform moral and social traditions, is necessary to more fully understand and guide this societal transformation. (shrink)