A Theory of National Reconciliation: Some Insights from Africa

In Aleksandar Fatic, Klaus Bachmann & Igor Lyubashenko (eds.), Transitional Justice in Troubled Societies. Rowman & Littlefield International. pp. 119-35 (2018)
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Abstract

In this chapter I articulate and defend a basic principle capturing the underlying structure of an attractive sort of national reconciliation that accounts for a wide array of disparate judgments about the subject. There are extant theories of national reconciliation in the literature, most of which are informed by Kantian, liberal-democratic and similar perspectives. In contrast to these, I spell out a theory grounded on a comparatively underexplored sub-Saharan ethic. My foremost aim is to demonstrate how African ideals about communal relationship, still largely unfamiliar to an international audience, do a promising job of providing a unified foundation for the roles of truth-telling, apology, forgiveness, compensation, amnesty and related practices often associated with national reconciliation.

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Thaddeus Metz
Cornell University (PhD)

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