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112Meaning (Atheism)In Graham Oppy & Joseph W. Koterski (eds.), Theism and Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophy, 1st Edition, Gale. pp. 507-521. 2019.A critical exploration of the position that God is necessary for meaning in life for mainly undergraduate and postgraduate readers, with some defence of the view that He is not.
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Ancillary Care Obligations in Light of an African Bioethic: From Entrustment to Communion (repr.)In Augustine Frimpong-Mansoh & Caesar Atuire (eds.), Bioethics in the Context of Traditional African Beliefs and Practices (tentative title), Vernon Press. pp. 59-78. 2018.Reprint of an article that appeared in Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics (2017).
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166Beyond Legislative Post-Secularism in the West: Custom and Constitution in an African ContextIn Uchenna Benedict Okeja (ed.), Postsecularism in a Global Context: New Perspectives on the Role of Religion in Postsecular Societies (tentative title), Routledge. pp. 41-63. 2020.Much of the debate about post-secularism has presumed a background of Western countries and the sort of statutory law that legislatures should make, and how they should make it, in the light of residents’ religious attitudes and practices. In this chapter I address a fresh context, namely, that of South Africa and the way that courts have interpreted, and should interpret, law in the face of African traditional religions. Specifically, I explicate the fact that, by South Africa's famously progre…Read more
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51What Science Means for Postmodernist Epistemology and the Philosophy of EducationEducational Philosophy and Theory 50 (14). 2018.In my view, postmodernism, as a cluster of bold epistemological claims, foundered on the rocks of contemporary science. Many postmodern positions about knowledge have conflicted with views of science that are extraordinarily difficult to doubt, which in this short article (composed to honour Educational Philosophy and Theory's 50th anniversary), I point out and argue holds a lesson about how to undertake the philosophy of education.
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1279African Communitarianism and DifferenceIn Elvis Imafidon (ed.), Handbook of the African Philosophy of Difference, Springer. pp. 31-51. 2020.There has been the recurrent suspicion that community, harmony, cohesion, and similar relational goods as understood in the African ethical tradition threaten to occlude difference. Often, it has been Western defenders of liberty who have raised the concern that these characteristically sub-Saharan values fail to account adequately for individuality, although some contemporary African thinkers have expressed the same concern. In this chapter, I provide a certain understanding of the sub-Saharan …Read more
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345Communication Strategies in the Light of Indigenous African and Chinese Values: How to HarmonizePhilosophia Africana 19 (2): 176-194. 2020.Many values originating in Africa and in China, and ones that continue to influence much of everyday communication in those societies, are aptly placed under the common heading of 'harmony'. After first spelling out what harmony involves in substantially Confucian China, and then in Africa, this article notes respects in which the Confucian and African conceptions of harmony are similar, an awareness of which could facilitate smooth communication. The article then indicates respects in which the…Read more
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425What Is the Essence of an Essence? Comparing Afro-Relational and Western-Individualist OntologiesSynthesis Philosophica 65 (1): 209-224. 2018.The dominant view amongst contemporary Western philosophers about the essence of a natu ral object is that it is constituted by its intrinsic properties. The ontological approach salient in the African philosophical tradition, in contrast, accounts for a thing’s essence by appeal to its relational properties. The Afrorelational ontology is underdeveloped, with the primary aim of this article being to help rectify that weakness. Specifically, this article’s aims are: to articulate an African a…Read more
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654Humility and the African Ethic of UbuntuIn Mark Alfano, Michael Patrick Lynch & Alessandra Tanesini (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Humility, Routledge. pp. 257-267. 2021.This chapter explores prominent respects in which humility figures into ubuntu, the southern African (and specifically Nguni) term for humanness often used to capture moral philosophies and cultures indigenous to the sub-Saharan region. The chapter considers respects in which humility is prescribed by ubuntu, understood not just as a relational normative ethic, but also as a moral epistemology. Focusing specifically on philosophical ideas published in academic fora over the past 50 years or so, …Read more
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415Reconciliation as the Aim of a Criminal Trial: Ubuntu’s Implications for SentencingConstitutional Court Review 9 113-134. 2019.In this article, I seek to answer the following cluster of questions: What would a characteristically African, and specifically relational, conception of a criminal trial’s final end look like? What would the Afro-relational approach prescribe for sentencing? Would its implications for this matter forcefully rival the kinds of penalties that judges in South Africa and similar jurisdictions typically mete out? After pointing out how the southern African ethic of ubuntu is well understood as a rel…Read more
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282Advancing the Philosophy of Medicine: Towards New Topics and SourcesJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 43 (3): 281-288. 2018.The first part of a symposium devoted to Alex Broadbent's essay titled ‘Prediction, Understanding and Medicine’, this article notes the under-development of a variety of issues in the philosophy of medicine that transcend bioethics and the long-standing debates about the nature of health/illness and of evidence-based medicine. It also indicates the importance of drawing on non-Western, and particularly African, traditions in addressing these largely metaphysical and epistemological matters.
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314Medicine without Cure?: A Cluster Analysis of the Nature of MedicineJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 43 (3): 306-312. 2018.Part of a symposium devoted to ‘Prediction, Understanding, and Medicine’, in which Alex Broadbent argues that the nature of medicine is determined by its competences, i.e., which things it can do well. He argues that, although medicine cannot cure well, it can do a good job of enabling people not only to understand states of the human organism and of what has caused them, but also to predict future states of it. From this Broadbent concludes that medicine is (at least in part) essentially a prac…Read more
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3130Community VitalityIn Centre for Bhutan Studies (ed.), Happiness: Transforming the Development Landscape, Centre For Bhutan Studies and Gnh. pp. 347-378. 2017.An analysis of the value of community vitality as it figures into the Royal Government of Bhutan's policy of Gross National Happiness.
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2848Good GovernanceIn Centre for Bhutan Studies (ed.), Happiness: Transforming the Development Landscape, Centre For Bhutan Studies and Gnh. pp. 329-346. 2017.An analysis of the nature of good governance as it figures into the Royal Government of Bhutan's policy of Gross National Happiness.
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5795Definitions of TermsIn Centre for Bhutan Studies and G. N. H. (ed.), Happiness: Transforming the Development Landscape, Centre For Bhutan Studies and Gnh. pp. 21-38. 2017.Definitions of terms that are central to a theoretical understanding of the Royal Government of Bhutan's policy of Gross National Happiness.
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40La Philosophie au-delà de nos frontières: le cas de l'éthique africaine (Philosophy beyond the Boundaries: The Case of African Ethics) (edited book)Harmattan. forthcoming.A collection of several articles on African moral and political philosophy by Thaddeus Metz, translated into French by Emmanuel Fopa, and edited and introduced by Pius Mosima of the University of Bamenda, Cameroon.
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360Why Objective Truth Is the Ally of Social and Epistemic Justice: Reply to JencoJournal of World Philosophies 2 (2): 130-134. 2017.In “Are Certain Knowledge Frameworks More Congenial to the Aims of Cross-Cultural Philosophy? A Qualified Yes,” Leigh Jenco responds to an article in which I had argued for a similar conclusion. I had contended roughly that the positing of objective truth combined with a fallibilist epistemology best explains why a philosopher from one culture could learn something substantial from another culture. In her response, Jenco contends that this knowledge framework does not account adequately for the …Read more
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392Ubuntu, Christianity and Two Kinds of ReconciliationIn Girma Mohammed (ed.), Healing the Memories: An African Christian Response to Politically Induced Conflicts (tentative title), . pp. 137-157. 2018.I consider the implications of two globally influential love-centred value systems for how to respond to painful memories that are a consequence of large-scale social conflict. More specifically, I articulate a moral-philosophical interpretation of the sub-Saharan worldview of ubuntu, and consider what it entails for responding to such trauma. According to this ethic, one should strive to become a real person, which one can do insofar as one honours those capable of communal (or broadly loving) …Read more
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294Ends and Means of Transitional JusticeJournal of Global Ethics 14 (2): 158-169. 2018.With her new book, The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice, Colleen Murphy has advanced novel, comprehensive and sophisticated philosophical accounts of both what severely conflict-ridden societies should be aiming for and how they should pursue it. Ultimately grounded on a prizing of rational agency, Murphy maintains that these societies, roughly, ought to strive for a stable and legitimate democratic polity committed to not repeating gross historical injustice and do so in ways that…Read more
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141An African Theory of Moral Status: A Relational Alternative to Individualism and Holism (repr.)In Munamato Chemhuru (ed.), African Environmental Ethics: A Critical Reader, Springer Verlag. pp. 9-27. 2019.Reprint of an article that initially appeared in _Ethical Theory and Moral Practice_ (2012)
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485Ubuntu: The Good LifeIn Alex Michalos (ed.), Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-being Research, Springer. pp. 6761-65. 2014.An overview of a characteristically African approach to the human good.
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193Distributive Justice as a Matter of Love: A Relational Approach to Liberty and PropertyIn Ingolf Dalferth (ed.), Love and Justice (Claremont Studies in Philosophy of Religion), . pp. 339-352. 2019.Usually a relational approach, such as one appealing to care or love, is contrasted with an account of justice. In this chapter, however, I argue that distributive justice is well conceived as itself a matter of honouring people in virtue of their capacity to love and to be loved. After spelling out a familiar conception of love, I explain how treating people with respect in light of this capacity provides a plausible basis for human rights, one that rivals influential individualist foundations …Read more
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1026Happiness and Meaningfulness: Some Key DifferencesIn Lisa Bortolotti (ed.), Philosophy and Happiness, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 3-20. 2009.In this chapter, I highlight the differences between the two goods of happiness and meaningfulness. Specifically, I contrast happiness and meaning with respect to six value-theoretic factors, among them: what the bearers of these values are, how luck can play a role in their realization, which attitudes are appropriate in response to them, and when they are to be preferred in a life. I aim not only to show that there are several respects in which happiness and meaning differ as categories of val…Read more
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754The Concept of a Meaningful LifeAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 38 (2): 137-153. 2001.This paper aims to clarify what we are asking when posing the question of what (if anything) makes a life meaningful. People associate many different ideas with talk of "meaning in life," so that one must search for an account of the question that is primary in some way. Therefore, after briefly sketching the major conceptions of life's meaning in 20th century philosophical literature, the remainder of the paper systematically seeks a satisfactory analysis the concept of a meaningful life that t…Read more
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164آيا هدف خداوند مى تواند سرچشمه معناى زندگى باشد؟* (Persian: Could God's Purpose Be the Source of Life's Meaning?)Naqd Va Nazar: Quarterly Journal of Philosophy and Theology 8 (29-30): 149-183. 2003.Persian translation by Mohammad Saeedi of 'Could God's Purpose Be the Source of Life's Meaning?' (first published in Religious Studies 2000).
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21Climate Change in Africa and the Middle East in Light of Health and Salient Regional ValuesIn Cheryl Macpherson (ed.), Climate Change and Health: Bioethical Insights into Values and Policy, Springer. pp. 115-125. 2016.A discussion of respects in which climate change is likely to affect health in Africa and the Middle East with some reference to moral values, such as ubuntu and Islam, salient in the respective regions.
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5677Ethics in Aristotle and in Africa: Some Points of ContrastPhronimon 13 (2): 99-117. 2012.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 accoun…Read more
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299The Western Ethic of Care or an Afro-Communitarian Ethic?: Finding the Right Relational MoralityJournal of Global Ethics 9 (1): 77-92. 2013.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 man…Read more
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42The Desirability of a Property Clause: Michelman's Defence of LiberalismStellenbosch Law Review 24 (2): 312-28. 2013.I address Frank Michelman’s recent attempts to dispel the notion that there are deep tensions between a liberal approach to constitution making and a resolute commitment to fighting poverty, i.e., to holding what he calls ‘social liberalism’. He focuses on the prima facie tension between anti-poverty struggle on the part of government and the existence of a property clause in a constitution, a tension that several commentators in South Africa have contended requires removing that clause from its…Read more
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18The Politics of Doing Philosophy in Africa: A Conversation (repr.)In Mogobe B. Ramose (ed.), Contrasts and Contests About Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 148-160. 2016.Reprint of an article first appearing in the South African Journal of Philosophy (2015).
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56Animal Rights and the Interpretation of the South African ConstitutionSouthern African Public Law 25 (2): 301-311. 2010.I argue that, even supposing substantive principles of distributive justice entail that animals warrant constitutional protection, there are other, potentially weightier forms of injustice that would probably be done by interpreting a Bill of Rights as implicitly applying to animals, namely, formal injustice and compensatory injustice. Formal injustice would result from such a reading of the Constitution in that the state would fail to speak with one voice upon newly according legal rights to an…Read more
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The Meaning of Life |
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African Philosophy |
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