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764Relational EthicsIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. pp. 1-10. 2013.An overview of relational approaches to ethics, which contrast with individualist and holist ones, particularly as they feature in the Confucian, African, and feminist/care traditions.
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194A Theory of National Reconciliation: Some Insights from AfricaIn Aleksandar Fatic & Klaus Bachmann (eds.), Transition without Justice (tentative title), Tba. pp. 119-35. 2015.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 dem…Read more
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441Critical Notice:Baier and Cottingham on the Meaning of LifeDisputatio 1 (19): 215-228. 2005.I examine two recent books by analytic philosophers that address the underexplored topic of whether the meaning of life depends on the existence of a supernatural realm including God and a soul. John Cottingham’s On the Meaning of Life defends a supernaturalist conception of life’s meaning, whereas Kurt Baier’s Problems of Life and Death defends the opposite, naturalist perspective. I show that their respective arguments are worth serious consideration, indicate some potential weaknesses in them…Read more
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51IntroductionPhilosophical Papers 34 (3): 311-329. 2005.This article introduces a special issue of Philosophical Papers devoted to the topic of meaning in life. In the paper, I engage with articles by Robert Audi, David Velleman, John Martin Fischer, Laurence Thomas, Berit Brogaard, Barry Smith and Larry James, laying out their central views, criticizing them, and suggesting ways they could be developed.
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199How to Ground Animal Rights on African Values: A Reply to HorsthemkeJournal of Animal Ethics 7 (2): 163-174. 2017.I seek to advance plausible replies to the several criticisms Kai Horsthemke makes of ‘African Modal Relationalism’, his label for my theory of animal rights with a sub-Saharan pedigree. Central to this view is the claim that, roughly, a being has a greater moral status, the more it is in principle capable of relating communally with characteristic human beings. Horsthemke maintains that this view is anthropocentric and speciesist, is poorly motivated relative to his egalitarian-individualist ap…Read more
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383The Reach of Amnesty for Political Crimes: Which Extra-Legal Burdens on the Guilty does National Reconciliation Permit?Constitutional Court Review 3 243-270. 2011.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 whethe…Read more
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823Two Conceptions of African EthicsQuest 25 141-61. 2013.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 …Read more
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46Accountability in Higher Education: A Comprehensive Analytical FrameworkTheory and Research in Education 9 (1): 41-58. 2011.Concomitant with the rise of rationalizing accountability in higher education has been an increase in theoretical reflection about the forms accountability has taken and the ones it should take. The literature is now peppered by a wide array of distinctions (e.g. internal/external, inward/ outward, vertical/horizontal, upward/downward, professional/public, political/economic, soft/ hard, positive/negative), to the point that when people speak of ‘accountability’ they risk speaking past one anoth…Read more
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63A Dilemma Regarding Academic Freedom and Public Accountability in Higher EducationJournal of Philosophy of Education 44 (4): 529-549. 2010.The aim of this article is to establish that current thought about the point of a publicly funded university faces a dilemma. On the one hand, influential and attractive ‘macro’-level principles about how state resources ought to be accountably used entail that academic freedom should be utilised solely for the sake of social justice or some other concrete public good. Standard theories of public morality entail that an academic’s responsibility is entirely to be ‘responsive’ or ‘relevant’ to he…Read more
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67Imperfection as sufficient for a meaningful life : How much is enough?In Yujin Nagasawa & Erik J. Wielenberg (eds.), New waves in philosophy of religion, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 192-214. 2008.Supernaturalism about meaning in life appears plausible insofar it is reasonable to think that a meaningful life can come only from a world in which there is a perfect value of some kind. Call the view that meaningfulness depends on perfection the ‘perfection thesis’. My aim in this chapter is to develop the contrasting ‘imperfection thesis’, the claim that a life that is significant on balance does not require any perfect value. I argue that principles that naturalists have offered (or suggeste…Read more
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302Recent Philosophies of Social Protection: From Capability to UbuntuGlobal Social Policy 16 (2): 132-150. 2016.In the past decade or two, philosophies of social protection have shifted away from a nearly exclusive focus on the subjective and the individual (e.g., autonomous choices, utility) and towards values that are more objective and relational. The latter approaches, typified by the well established Capabilities Approach and the up and coming ethic of ubuntu, have been substantially inspired by engagements with the Global South, particularly India and Africa. In this article, part of a special issue…Read more
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439A Dilemma about the Final Ends of Higher Education -- and a ResolutionKagisano (The Higher Education Discussion Series) 9 23-41. 2013.In this article, written for the generally educated reader, I summarize my latest thinking about a dilemma that I believe current theoretical reflection faces about the proper ultimate aims of a public university. Specifically, I make the following three major points: (1) On the one hand, all dominant theories of how properly to spend public resources entail that academics should not pursue knowledge for its own sake and should rather devote their energies toward promoting some concrete public g…Read more
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1200Confucianism and ubuntu: Reflections on a dialogue between chinese and african traditionsJournal of Chinese Philosophy 38 (s1): 78-95. 2011.In this article we focus on three key precepts shared by Confucianism and the African ethic of Ubuntu: the central value of community, the desirability of ethical partiality, and the idea that we tend to become morally better as we grow older. For each of these broad similarities, there are key differences underlying them, and we discuss those as well as speculate about the reasons for them. Our aim is not to take sides, but we do suggest ways that Ubuntu and Confucianism might have something to…Read more
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640The Nature of Reactive Practices: Exploring Strawson’s ExpressivismSouth African Journal of Philosophy 27 (3): 49-63. 2008.I aim to answer the questions of whether reactive practices such as gratitude and punishment are inherently expressive, and, if so, in what respect. I distinguish seven ways in which one might plausibly characterize reactive practices as essentially expressive in nature, and organise them so that they progress in a dialectical order, from weakest to strongest. I then critically discuss objections that apply to the strongest conception, questioning whether it coheres with standard retributive und…Read more
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58’Giving the World a More Human Face’: Human Suffering in African Thought and PhilosophyIn Jeff Malpas & Norelle Lickiss (eds.), Perspectives on Human Suffering, Springer. pp. 49-62. 2012.I present ideas about human suffering that are salient among the black peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, reconstruct them in order to make them relevant to an international audience with philosophical interests, and urge that audience to give them consideration as alternatives or correctives to some dominant Western approaches. I first recount views commonly held by sub-Saharans about the nature, causes and cures of suffering, and then draw on them to articulate an account of it qua enervation, whi…Read more
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136God's purpose as irrelevant to life's meaning: Reply to affolterReligious Studies 43 (4): 457-464. 2007.Elsewhere I have contended that if a God-centred account of meaning in life were true, it would not be because meaning comes from fulfilling God’s purpose for us. Specifically, I have argued that this ‘purpose theory’ of life’s meaning cannot be the correct God-based view since God would have to be atemporal, immutable, and simple for meaning to logically depend on His existence, and since such a being lacking extension could not be purposive. Jacob Affolter has developed a fresh account of the …Read more
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208Koheleth and the Meaning of LifeIn Stephen Leach & James Tartaglia (eds.), The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers, Routledge. pp. 73-78. 2018.This chapter critically discusses the most salient positions about life’s meaning advanced by Koheleth, the presumed author of Ecclesiastes, a book from the Hebrew Bible. Koheleth famously argues that ‘life is futility’ (or ‘vanity’) for a variety of reasons, with this chapter focusing on the three that are most recurrent in the text and have been particularly influential in the Western tradition of philosophy. These are considerations about: the mortality of humankind, the undeserved allocation…Read more
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651نیاز جاودانگی برای معنای زندگی (Persian: 'The Immortality Requirement for Life's Meaning')Falsafeh 6 (72): 81-90. 2013.Persian translation by Seyyed Mostafa Mousavi A’zam of 'The Immortality Requirement for Life's Meaning' (Ratio 2003).
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416Ubuntu Como uma Teoria Moral e os Direitos Humanos na África do SulRevista Culturas Jurídicas 3 (5): 1-33. 2016.Portuguese translation by Jean-Bosco Kakozi and Karina Macedo Fernandes of 'Ubuntu as a Moral Theory and Human Rights in South Africa', which first appeared in the African Human Rights Law Journal (2011).
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1741Toward an african moral theoryJournal of Political Philosophy 15 (3). 2007.In this article I articulate and defend an African moral theory, i.e., a basic and general principle grounding all particular duties that is informed by sub-Saharan values commonly associated with talk of "ubuntu" and cognate terms that signify personhood or humanness. The favoured interpretation of ubuntu (as of 2007) is the principle that an action is right insofar as it respects harmonious relationships, ones in which people identify with, and exhibit solidarity toward, one another. I maintai…Read more
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83Dignity in the Ubuntu TraditionIn Marcus Düwell (ed.), Cambridge Handbook on Human Dignity, Cambridge University Press. pp. 310-18. 2014.I draw on ideas commonly advocated by adherents to ubuntu, the term often used to capture sub-Saharan morality, in order to spell out, and sometimes construct, understandings of human dignity that are worth taking seriously by professional ethicists, moral philosophers, jurisprudential scholars and Constitutional Courts anywhere in the world. In particular, I seek to articulate a theory of dignity grounded in African values that could serve as a genuine rival to the influential Kantian conceptio…Read more
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10Christopher W. Morris, An Essay on the Modern State (review)Philosophy in Review 19 (2): 132-134. 1999.
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159Poverty as Inhuman: Plausible but Illiberal?International Journal of Applied Philosophy 30 (1): 1-14. 2016.In this article, part of a special issue devoted to Hennie Lötter’s Poverty, Ethics and Justice, I draw out an interesting implication of Hennie Lötter’s original and compelling conception of the nature of poverty as essentially inhuman. After motivating this view, I argue that it, like the capabilities approach and other views that invoke a conception of good and bad lives, is inconsistent with a standard understanding of a liberal account of the state’s role, one that is independently supporte…Read more
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53Tim Mulgan, Purpose in the Universe: The Moral and Metaphysical Case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism (review)Ethics 127 (4): 944-949. 2017.
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72Review of Leonhard Praeg, A Report on Ubuntu, and of Leonhard Praeg and Siphokazi Magadla (eds), Ubuntu: Curating the Archive (review)Philosophical Papers 43 (3): 447-453. 2014.
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394Contemporary African PhilosophyIn Duncan Pritchard (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online, . 2011.A lengthy, annotated bibliography of much of the most important work in post-war African professional philosophy as of 2011.
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1757Just the Beginning for Ubuntu: Reply to Matolino and KwindingwiSouth African Journal of Philosophy 33 (1): 65-72. 2014.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 bygon…Read more
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113Review of Liam Murphy, Moral Demands in Nonideal Theory (review)Philosophical Review 110 (4): 614-617. 2001.How much must a given individual benefit others, apart from any obligation to do so because of prior acts, special relationships, or self-regard? In short, to what extent is a person morally required to promote the well-being of strangers?
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360The Good, the True and the Beautiful: Toward a Unified Account of Great Meaning in LifeReligious Studies 47 (4): 389-409. 2011.Three of the great sources of meaning in life are the good, the true, and the beautiful, and I aim to make headway on the grand Enlightenment project of ascertaining what, if anything, they have in common. Concretely, if we take a (stereotypical) Mother Teresa, Mandela, Darwin, Einstein, Dostoyevsky, and Picasso, what might they share that makes it apt to deem their lives to have truly mattered? I provide reason to doubt two influential answers, noting a common flaw that supernaturalism and cons…Read more
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19Précis of Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study (repr.)European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 8 (2): 1--4. 2016.A brief summary of the main claims advanced in Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study, largely cribbed from the Journal of Philosophy of Life (2015).
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The Meaning of Life |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
African Philosophy |
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