Abstract
In the literature on African ethics, one finds relatively little that consists of normative theorization with regard to right action, that is, the articulation and justification of a comprehensive, basic norm that is intended to account for what all permissible acts have in common as distinct from impermissible ones. By “African ethics” I mean values associated with the largely black and Bantu-speaking peoples residing in the sub-Saharan part of the continent, thereby excluding Islamic Arabs in North Africa and white Afrikaners in South Africa, among others. The field lacks a well-defended general principle grounding particular duties that is informed by such values and that could be compared to dominant Western theories, such as Hobbesian egoism or Kantian respect for persons. In this article, I aim to help develop such a principle.
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Notes
- 1.
One more often finds something closer to moral anthropology or cultural studies, that is, discussion recounting the ethical practices or norms of a certain African people. For representative examples, see Anthony Kirk-Greene, “Mutumin Kirki: the concept of the good man in Hausa,” reprinted in African Philosophy: An Anthology, ed. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), ch. 14; and John Ayotunde Isola Bewaji, “Ethics and morality in Yoruba culture,” A Companion to African Philosophy, ed. Kwasi Wiredu (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 396–403. I do not mean to disparage these discussions; I aim merely to distinguish them from this one.
- 2.
I focus exclusively on right action and set aside issues of good character (e.g., motives, virtues), saving them for another occasion.
- 3.
Others reject this essay’s aim outright, maintaining either that there is nothing about African morality that significantly differs from Western morality, or that, while there are important differences, African morality cannot be codified and is to be known merely on a “know it when I see it” basis. For the former criticism, see Mamphela Ramphele cited in Penny Enslin and Kai Horsthemke, “Can ubuntu provide a model for citizenship education in African democracies?” Comparative Education, 40 (2004), 548. For the latter, see Yvonne Mokgoro, “Ubuntu and the law in South Africa,” Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal, 1 (1998), 16. My chapter as a whole, if successful, refutes both objections.
- 4.
There are cognate terms and associated ideas associated in at least all the other Bantu languages of sub-Saharan Africa, such as Hunhu in Shona (Zimbabwe) and Utu in Swahili (Kenya), on which see Johann Broodryk, Ubuntu: Life Lessons from Africa (Pretoria: Ubuntu School of Philosophy, 2002), p. 14.
- 5.
For discussion of the etymology of ubuntu, see Mogobe Ramose, African Philosophy Through Ubuntu (Harare: Mond Books, 1999), pp. 49–53, and “The ethics of ubuntu,” Philosophy from Africa, 2nd edn, ed. P. H. Coetzee and A. P. J. Roux (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 324–28.
- 6.
Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 31.
- 7.
For an anthropological overview of traditional African politics and the role of consensus in it, see the classic text, Meyer Fortes and Edward Evans-Pritchard, eds, African Political Systems (London: Kegan Paul, 1994).
- 8.
See Kwasi Wiredu, Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), pt. 4. See also Ramose, African Philosophy Through Ubuntu, pp. 135–53.
- 9.
“Law…directs how individuals and communities should behave towards each other. Its whole object is to maintain an equilibrium, and the penalties of African law are directed, not against specific infractions, but to the restoration of this equilibrium”, J. H. Driberg, “The African conception of law,” Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law 16 (1934): 231. For a concrete example among the Akan in Ghana, see Kwasi Wiredu, “Moral foundations of an African culture,” Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies, ed. Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye (Washington, D.C.: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1992), p. 204. For another example among the Tiv in Nigeria, see Richard Miller, Moral Differences (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 21–8.
- 10.
On which see Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness.
- 11.
Constitutional Court of South Africa, The State vs T Makwanyane and M Mchunu Case CCT 3/94 (1995).
- 12.
See, e.g., Leo Marquard and T. G. Standing, The Southern Bantu (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), esp. pp. 20–32; Stanlake Samkange and Tommie Marie Samkange, Hunhuism or Ubuntuism: A Zimbabwean Indigenous Political Philosophy (Harare: Graham Publishing Company, 1980), esp. pp. 80–7; and Segun Gbadegesin, “Yoruba philosophy: individuality, community, and moral order,” African Philosophy, ed. Eze, pp. 132–3.
- 13.
Broodryk, Ubuntu, p. 54; cf. pp. 66–7.
- 14.
Wiredu, “Moral foundations of an African culture,” p. 202.
- 15.
N. K. Dzobo, “Values in a changing society: man, ancestors and God,” Person and Community, ed. Wiredu and Gyekye, p. 226.
- 16.
Godfrey Tangwa, “The HIV/AIDS pandemic, African traditional values and the search for a vaccine in Africa,” reprinted in Ethics & AIDS in Africa, ed. Anton van Niekerk and Loretta Kopelman (Claremont: David Philip Publishers, 2005), p. 181.
- 17.
For discussion, see Wiredu, “Moral foundations of an African culture,” pp. 198–202; Kwame Gyekye, “Person and community in African thought,” Person and Community, ed. Wiredu and Gyekye, pp. 113–21; Ramose, African Philosophy Through Ubuntu, pp. 150–1; and D. A. Masolo, “Western and African communitarianism: a comparison,” A Companion to African Philosophy, ed. Wiredu, esp. pp. 488–96.
- 18.
Walter Sisulu, quoted in Broodryk, Ubuntu, pp. vii; see also pp. 1, 36–39.
- 19.
Tangwa, “The HIV/AIDS pandemic, African traditional values and the search for a vaccine in Africa,” p. 180; and Heidi Verhoef and Claudine Michel, “Studying morality within the African context,” Journal of Moral Education, 26 (1997), 399. Note that such taking would not count as “stealing” since the person in possession of the item is presumably not its rightful owner in light of the other’s need for it.
- 20.
Augustine Shutte, Ubuntu: An Ethic for the New South Africa (Cape Town: Cluster Publications, 2001), pp. 27–8.
- 21.
John Mbiti, the influential scholar of African thought, makes this point and is approvingly cited in Dzobo, “Values in a changing society,” p. 229.
- 22.
The standard objection to African ethics is that it is overly restrictive of individual liberty, sometimes called the “dark side” of ubuntu. For discussion, see Dirk Louw, “Ubuntu and the challenges of multiculturalism in post-apartheid South Africa,” Quest, 15 (2001), esp. pp. 19–26.
- 23.
Dzobo, “Values in a changing society,” pp. 227, 233; Wiredu, “Moral foundations of an African Culture,” p. 205; Godfrey Tangwa, “Bioethics: an African perspective,” Bioethics, 10 (1996), 194–5; Bénézet Bujo, Foundations of an African Ethic: Beyond the Universal Claims of Western Morality, trans. Brian McNeil (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2001), pp. 6–7, 34–54.
- 24.
Ramose, “The ethics of ubuntu,” p. 329.
- 25.
Some key texts include J. N. Kudadjie, “Does religion determine morality in African societies?” Religion in a Pluralistic Society, ed. J. S. Pobee (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976), pp. 60–77; Wiredu, “Moral foundations of an African culture”; Kwame Gyekye, An Essay on African Philosophical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); M. Akin Makinde, “African culture and moral systems,” Second Order, 1 (1988), 1-27; Gbadegesin, “Yoruba philosophy”; and Peter Kasenene, Religious Ethics in Africa (Kampala: Fountain Publishers, 1998).
- 26.
Justice Yvonne Mokgoro of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, The State versus T Makwanyane and M Mchunu, para. 309. See also the remarks of Justice Langa in the same case, para. 225.
- 27.
She says that “life and dignity are like two sides of the same coin. The concept of ubuntu embodies them both” (Ibid., para. 311).
- 28.
Godfrey Onah, “The meaning of peace in African traditional religion and culture” [http://www.afrikaworld.net/afrel/goddionah.htm]. See also Bujo, Foundations of an African Ethic, esp. pp. 2, 52, 62, 66, 88; and Francis Deng, “Human rights in the African context,” A Companion to African Philosophy, ed. Wiredu, pp. 499–508.
- 29.
Cf. Bujo, Foundations of an African Ethic, p. 88.
- 30.
Kwasi Wiredu, “Custom and morality: a comparative analysis of some African and western conceptions of morals,” Cultural Universals and Particulars, p. 65; Gyekye, “Person and community in African thought,” p. 109. For other largely welfarist interpretations of African morality, see Tangwa, “Bioethics,” esp. pp. 189, 192; Polycarp Ikuenobe, “Moral education and moral reasoning in traditional African cultures,” The Journal of Value Inquiry, 32 (1998), 25–42; and Bewaji, “Ethics and morality in Yoruba culture.”
- 31.
Gyekye, “Person and community in African thought,” p. 121.
- 32.
In addition to quotations in the text from Shutte and Ramose, see Gyekye, An Essay on African Philosophical Thought, pp. 156-57; Mokgoro, “Ubuntu and the law in South Africa,” p. 3; Drucilla Cornell and Karin van Marle, “Exploring ubuntu: tentative reflections,” African Human Rights Law Journal, 5 (2005), 206; and perhaps Bujo, Foundations of an African Ethic, pp. 87–94.
- 33.
Shutte, Ubuntu, p. 30.
- 34.
Ramose, African Philosophy Through Ubuntu, p. 52.
- 35.
See especially the infrequently read fragment “On James Mill,” Karl Marx: Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 114–22.
- 36.
Consider Tangwa’s remark about his people from Cameroon: “Every Nso’ person would prefer his/her own death to that of his/her child” (Tangwa, “Bioethics,” p. 194).
- 37.
Assuming, as I do, a naturalist interpretation of the self-realization theory, something neither Shutte nor Ramose does.
- 38.
This is the way that Aristotle deals with the problem, according to Erik Wielenberg, “Egoism and eudaimonia-maximization in the Nicomachean Ethics,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 26 (2004), 277–95.
- 39.
The closest one gets is the ethic of care and certain strains of communitarianism, far from dominant views these days. See the next section for a brief contrast between the favoured conception of ubuntu as a moral theory and these Western views.
- 40.
Lovemore Mbigi and Jenny Maree, Ubuntu: The Spirit of African Transformation Management (Randburg: Knowledge Resources, 1995), pp. 1, 58.
- 41.
Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness, p. 35.
- 42.
Verhoef and Michel, referring to the work of John Mbiti, in “Studying morality within the African context,” p. 397. Commenting on the practices of the G/wi people of Botswana, George Silberbauer says, “[T]here was another value being pursued, namely the establishing and maintaining of harmonious relationships. Again and again in discussion and in general conversation this stood out as a desired and enjoyed end in itself, often as the ultimate rationale for action.” See his “Ethics in Small-Scale Societies,” A Companion to Ethics, ed. Peter Singer (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1991), ch. 2.
- 43.
This interpretation of harmony is inspired by some of Gyekye’s remarks about what counts as a community in “Person and community in African thought,” p. 320.
- 44.
Are competitive sports teams also divided? Teams are usually part of an umbrella association (e.g., FIFA), and they coordinate their activity to realize the common ends of entertaining the public or demonstrating skill, which would arguably put them on the “shared identity” side of things. Even so, I accept that the present account of harmony and discord is open to more tightening.
- 45.
This understanding of community comes to mind from Wiredu’s discussion of the “empathetic harmonization of human interests” (“Custom and Morality,” p. 64).
- 46.
Mokgoro, “Ubuntu and the law in South Africa,” p. 3.
- 47.
Gbadegesin, “Yoruba philosophy,” p. 131.
- 48.
See, for example, Michael Sandel’s notion of “encumbered selves” in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
- 49.
For instance, Nel Noddings once thought that there is “no command to love” and hence no duty to aid strangers since one lacks any caring relationship with them. See Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
- 50.
As does Tutu, or one of his intellectual biographers. See Michael Battle, Reconciliation: The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1997), p. 52.
- 51.
I have undertaken this work in several papers published since this article first appeared. See, for example, Thaddeus Metz, “African Values and Human Rights as Two Sides of the Same Coin”, African Human Rights Law Journal, 14 (2014), 306–21.
- 52.
As Wiredu argues in Cultural Universals and Particulars, pt. 4.
- 53.
According to John Mbiti’s classic study of African worldviews, “It is not the act in itself which would be ‘wrong’ as such, but the relationships involved in the act: if relationships are not hurt or damaged, and if there is no discovery of the break of custom or regulation, then the act is not ‘evil’ or ‘wicked’ or ‘bad.’” See his African Religions and Philosophy, 2nd edn (Oxford: Heinemann Educational Books, 1989), p. 208.
- 54.
As Tutu clearly thinks is warranted in No Future Without Forgiveness, pp. 212–13.
- 55.
A close relative of this essay first appeared in the Journal of Political Philosophy, 15 (2007), 321–41. For written comments on an earlier draft, I thank Robert Goodin, Stephen Kershnar, Dirk Louw, David Martens, Thomas Pogge, Augustine Shutte, Raymond Suttner and three anonymous referees for The Journal of Political Philosophy. In addition, for oral comments, I am grateful to participants at the Conference on African Philosophy in the 21st Century held at the University of South Africa; the Annual Conference of the Philosophical Society of Southern Africa held at Rhodes University; the Ethics and Africa Conference held at the University of Cape Town; and a colloquium sponsored by the University of KwaZulu-Natal Philosophy Department. I am also indebted to students in ethics classes that I have instructed in the philosophy departments of the University of Johannesburg and the University of the Witwatersrand. Finally, I am appreciative that some of this work was supported by a Research Promotion Grant from the University of the Witwatersrand Faculty of Humanities Research Committee.
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Metz, T. (2017). Toward an African Moral Theory (Revised Edition). In: Ukpokolo, I. (eds) Themes, Issues and Problems in African Philosophy . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40796-8_7
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