-
231African Values, Human Rights and Group Rights: A Philosophical Foundation for the Banjul CharterIn Oche Onazi (ed.), African Legal Theory and Contemporary Problems: Critical Essays, Springer. pp. 131-51. 2014.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 th…Read more
-
223Justice and the LawIn Christopher Roederer & Darrel Moellendorf (eds.), Jurisprudence, Juta. pp. 382-411. 2004.This chapter discusses major theories of domestic justice in the context of South African Constitutional, statutory and case law. It begins by considering when it is permissible for legislators to restrict civil liberty. South Africa's Parliament has criminalised prostitution, liquor sales on Sundays and marijuana use, actions that few liberals would say should be illegal. However, South African law permits abortion, gambling and homosexual relationships, which many conservatives would criminali…Read more
-
222Making Sense of Survivor’s Guilt: How to Justify It with an African EthicIn George Hull (ed.), Debating African Philosophy: Perspectives on Identity, Decolonial Ethics and Comparative Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 149-163. 2018.The default position in Western ethics is that survivor’s guilt is either irrational or not rational, i.e., that while survivor’s guilt might be understandable, it is not justified in the sense of there being good reason for a person to exhibit it. From a widely held perspective, for example, one ought to feel guilty only for having done wrong, and in a culpable way, which, by hypothesis, a mere survivor has not done. Typical is the following: ‘Strictly speaking, survivor guilt is not rational g…Read more
-
222How 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
-
217An African Egalitarianism: Bringing Community to Bear on EqualityIn George Hull (ed.), The Equal Society: Essays on Equality in Theory and Practice, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 185-208. 2015.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…Read more
-
216Distributive 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
-
215Higher Education, Knowledge For Its Own Sake, and an African Moral TheoryStudies in Philosophy and Education 28 (6): 517-536. 2009.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 s…Read more
-
208خدا،روح و معنای زندگی (edited book)Negahehandisheh. 2021.Persian translation by Ashkan M. Roshan of _God, Soul and the Meaning of Life_.
-
207A 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
-
206The final ends of higher education in light of an african moral theoryJournal of Philosophy of Education 43 (2): 179-201. 2009.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 Afric…Read more
-
205Life Worth Living (rev. edn)In Filomena Maggino (ed.), Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research, 2nd edn, Springer. pp. 1-4. 2021.An updated version of this encyclopedia entry on the concept of what, if anything, makes life worthwhile.
-
204Virtue in African Ethics as Living HarmoniouslyIn Chenyang Li & Dascha Düring (eds.), The Virtue of Harmony, Oxford University Press. pp. 207-229. 2022.A large swathe of the indigenous African ethical tradition is frequently encapsulated in the maxim, “A person is a person through other persons.” This phrasing is an overly literal translation of some sayings that are prominent in the southern and central regions of Africa, but that resonate with most indigenous sub-Saharan cultures. This chapter articulates and motivates a philosophical interpretation of the maxim for an international readership interested in virtue. According to the initial fo…Read more
-
190Censure theory and intuitions about punishmentLaw and Philosophy 19 (4): 491-512. 2000.Many philosophers and laypeople have the following two intuitions about legal punishment: the state has a pro tanto moral reason to punish all those guilty of breaking a just law and to do so in proportion to their guilt. Accepting that there can be overriding considerations not to punish all the guilty in proportion to their guilt, many philosophers still consider it a strike against any theory if it does not imply that there is always a supportive moral reason to do so. In this paper, I demons…Read more
-
188God, Morality and the Meaning of LifeIn Samantha Vice & Nafsika Athanassoulis (eds.), The Moral Life: Essays in Honour of John Cottingham, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 201-227. 2008.In this chapter, I critically explore John Cottingham's most powerful argument for the thesis that the existence of God is necessary for meaning in life. This is the argument that life would be meaningless without an invariant morality, which could come only from God. After demonstrating that Cottingham's God-based ethic can avoid not only many traditional Euthyphro meta-ethical concerns, but also objections at the normative level, I consider whether it can entail the unique respect in which mor…Read more
-
185Beyond 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
-
184Jurisprudence in an African ContextOxford University Press. 2017.A textbook written mainly for final year law students taking Jurisprudence at an African university, but that would also be of use to those in a political philosophy course. It includes primary sources from both the Western and African philosophical traditions, and addresses these central questions: what is the nature of law?; how should judges interpret the law?; is it possible for judges to be objective when they adjudicate?; how could the law justly allocate liberty and property?; who is owed…Read more
-
181Para Uma Teoria Moral AfricanaFilosofia Africana. 2023.Portuguese translation by Igor Bessa dos Reis and Jordana Naves Ripoll Craveiro of ‘Toward an African Moral Theory’.
-
178A Relational Theory of JusticeOxford University Press. forthcoming.The core idea of A Relational Theory of Justice is that normative political and legal philosophy should be grounded on people’s relational features, in particular their ability to commune with others and be communed with by them. Usually, philosophers of justice in the West have based their views on people’s intrinsic features, ones that make no essential reference to others, such as their autonomy, self-ownership, or well-being. In addition, often critics of basing politics and law on justice, …Read more
-
177آيا 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).
-
177Vitality, Community, and Human Dignity in Africa (rev. edn)In Filomena Maggino (ed.), Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research, 2nd edn, Springer. 2021.Mildly revised reprint of material extracted from an article appearing in Human Rights Review (2012).
-
170An 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)
-
166Review of Ethics & AIDS in Africa (review)South African Journal of Philosophy 25 (4): 369-71. 2006.
-
166Poverty 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
-
165Der junge Marx im Licht einer afrikanischen Ethik: Zwei Ansichten der SelbstverwirklichungPolylog: Zeitschrift Für Interkulturelles Philosophieren 47 69-93. 2022.German translation by Namita Herzl and Juri Wald of ‘The Young Marx and an African Ethic: Two Views of Self-realization’.
-
163African Ethics and Journalism Ethics: News and Opinion in Light of UbuntuJournal of Media Ethics 30 (2): 74-90. 2015.In this article, I address some central issues in journalism ethics from a fresh perspective, namely, one that is theoretical and informed by values salient in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on a foundational moral theory with an African pedigree, which is intended to rival Western theories such as Kantianism and utilitarianism, I provide a unified account of an array of duties of various agents with respect to the news/opinion media. I maintain that the ability of the African moral theory to plaus…Read more
-
158How the West Was One: The Western as Individualist, the African as Communitarian (repr.)In Peters Michael & Mika Carl (eds.), The Dilemma of Western Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 51-60. 2017.Reprint of an article initially appearing in Educational Philosophy and Theory (2015).
-
154與非洲相比在中國的價值In Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (ed.), 汉学与当代中国座谈会文集(2017), China Social Sciences Press. pp. 612-619. 2000.Chinese (character) translation of part of an article that appeared in Philosophy East and West (2017).
-
1486 Das Sinnvolle und das LebenswerteIn Matthias Hoesch, Sebastian Muders & Markus Rüther (eds.), Glück - Werte - Sinn: Metaethische, ethische und theologische Zugänge zur Frage nach dem guten Leben, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 109-126. 2013.Zur Klärung ihrer Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede
-
146The African Ethic of Ubuntu1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology. 2019.Online reprint of part of an encyclopedia entry (from the Encyclopaedia of Quality of Life and Well-being Research 2014).
-
139Understanding a Thing's Nature: Comparing Afro-Relational and Western-Individualist Ontologies (Repr.)In Peter Aloysius Ikhane & Isaac E. Ukpokolo (eds.), African Epistemology: Essays on Being and Knowledge, Routledge. pp. 63-78. 2023.Slightly modified reprint of an article first appearing in the journal _Synthesis Philosophica_ (2018)
APA Central Division
Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
Areas of Specialization
2 more
The Meaning of Life |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
African Philosophy |
Philosophy of Law |
Applied Ethics |
Value Theory |