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129The Politics of Doing Philosophy in Africa: A ConversationSouth African Journal of Philosophy 34 (4): 538-550. 2015.The background to the present discussion is the prevalence of political and personal criticisms in philosophical discussions about Africa. As philosophers in South Africa—both white and black—continue to philosophise seriously about Africa, responses to their work sometimes take the form of political and personal criticisms of, if not attacks on, the philosopher exploring and defending considerations about the African continent. One of us (TM) has been the target of such critiques in light of hi…Read more
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24Duties towards Animals versus Rights to Culture: An African Approach to the Conflict in Terms of CommunionIn Luis Rodrigues & Les Mitchell (eds.), Multiculturalism, Race and Animals – Contemporary Moral and Political Debates, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 269-294. 2017.Influential moral theories in the contemporary West face problems making sense of the conflict between the interests of animals and people’s interests in culture. They have trouble explaining either the existence of strong direct duties to animals or the importance of people’s right to culture (and frequently both). In this chapter I aim to advance a relational ethic, grounded on the African philosophical tradition, that offers a promising alternative. I contend that duties toward animals and ri…Read more
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427Human Dignity, Capital Punishment, and an African Moral Theory: Toward a New Philosophy of Human RightsJournal of Human Rights 9 (1): 81-99. 2010.In this article I spell out a conception of dignity grounded in African moral thinking that provides a plausible philosophical foundation for human rights, focusing on the particular human right not to be executed by the state. I first demonstrate that the South African Constitutional Court’s sub-Saharan explanations of why the death penalty is degrading all counterintuitively entail that using deadly force against aggressors is degrading as well. Then, I draw on one major strand of Afro-communi…Read more
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78Arbitrariness, Justice, and RespectSocial Theory and Practice 26 (1): 25-45. 2000.I examine John Rawls' objection to libertarianism that it permits economic shares to be distributed in a morally arbitrary way. This argument was dropped largely for two reasons. First, talk of "arbitrariness" has been vague and associated with implausible views about moral desert, collective assets, and noumenal selves. Second, several criticisms which Robert Nozick made 25 years ago have gone unanswered. In this essay, I reconstruct the arbitrariness argument, giving it a new, Kantian interpre…Read more
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718African Conceptions of Human Dignity: Vitality and Community as the Ground of Human RightsHuman Rights Review 13 (1): 19-37. 2012.I seek to advance enquiry into the philosophical question of in virtue of what human beings have a dignity of the sort that grounds human rights. I first draw on values salient in sub-Saharan African moral thought to construct two theoretically promising conceptions of human dignity, one grounded on vitality, or liveliness, and the other on our communal nature. I then argue that the vitality conception cannot account for several human rights that we intuitively have, while the community concepti…Read more
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32معنای زندگی (Persian: The Meaning of Life)Phoenix Publishing. 2015.Translation of 'The Meaning of Life' (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) into Persian by Abdulfazl Tavakoli Shandiz. Printed as a booklet.
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99Understanding the Question of Life’s MeaningIn Joshua Seachris (ed.), Exploring the Meaning of Life: An Anthology and Guide, Wiley. pp. 23-27. 2012.A critical overview of some central work on the meta-ethical question of what the question of life's meaning means, as appearing in Joshua Seachris, ed., Exploring the Meaning of Life: An Anthology and Guide. It discusses contributions from Paul Edwards, R. W. Hepburn, Robert Nozick, Garrett Thomson, Arjan Markus and Thaddeus Metz.
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41Exploring the Ethical Foundations of Nkrumah’s ConsciencismIn Martin Ajei (ed.), Consciencism, . pp. 213-227. 2017.In this chapter I critically discuss the meta-ethical and normative ethical foundations of Nkrumah’s philosophy as discussed in Consciencism. With respect to meta-ethics, I address Nkrumah’s characteristically African attempt to ground ethics on metaphysics, and, specifically, his claim that a basic egalitarian moral principle follows from a materialist ontology. Granting Nkrumah that reality is ultimately physical and that the physical is unitary, I argue that nothing logically follows about wh…Read more
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44Philosophy of Higher EducationIn Duncan Pritchard (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online: Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2013.A lengthy annotated bibliography of the most central work from the past 25 years on various aspects of the philosophy of higher education.
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2374The Proper Aim of Therapy: Subjective Well-Being, Objective Goodness, or a Meaningful Life?In Pninit Russo-Netzer, Stefan Schulenberg & Alexander Batthyany (eds.), Clinical Perspectives on Meaning: Positive and Existential Psychotherapy, Springer. pp. 17-35. 2016.Therapists and related theorists and practitioners of mental health tend to hold one of two broad views about how to help patients. On the one hand, some maintain that, or at least act as though, the basic point of therapy is to help patients become clear about what they want deep down and to enable them to achieve it by overcoming mental blockages. On the other hand, there are those who contend that the aim of therapy should instead be to psychologically enable patients to live objectively desi…Read more
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1333The South African Student/Worker Uprisings in Light of Just War TheoryIn Susan Booysen (ed.), Fees Must Fall: Student Revolt, Decolonisation and Governance in South Africa, Wits University Press. pp. 292-308. 2016.I critically examine the South African university student and worker protests of 2015/2016 in light of moral principles governing the use of force that are largely uncontested in both the contemporary Western and African philosophies of just war, violence and threats. Amongst these principles are: “discrimination”, according to which force should be directed not towards innocent bystanders but instead should target those particularly responsible for injustice; “likely success”, meaning that, ins…Read more
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297Climate Change in Africa and the Middle East in Light of Health, Ubuntu and Islam (repr.)South African Journal of Bioethics and Law 9 (2): 88-92. 2016.Reprint of a chapter initially published in _Bioethical Insights into Values and Policy: Climate Change and Health_ (2016).
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22Could God's Purpose Be the Source of Life's Meaning? (repr.)In Joshua Seachris (ed.), Exploring the Meaning of Life: An Anthology and Guide, Wiley. pp. 200-218. 2012.Reprint of an article that initially appeared in Religious Studies (2000).
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135Life Worth LivingIn Alex Michalos (ed.), Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-being Research, Springer. pp. 3602-05. 2014.In this encyclopedia entry, I seek to distinguish the concept of a worthwhile life from related ones such as a happy or meaningful life, to draw key distinctions that arise in discussion of worthwhileness (e.g., between life worth starting and life worth continuing), and to discuss some of the contemporary debates among ethicists about when a life is indeed worth living and when it's not.
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550New developments in the meaning of lifePhilosophy Compass 2 (2). 2007.In this article I survey philosophical literature on the topic of what, if anything, makes a person’s life meaningful, focusing on systematic texts that are written in English and that have appeared in the last five years (2002-2007). My aims are to present overviews of the most important, fresh, Anglo-American positions on meaning in life and to raise critical questions about them worth answering in future work.
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132Meaning in LifeIn Benjamin Matheson & Yujin Nagasawa (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook on the Afterlife, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 353-370. 2017.This chapter critically explores contemporary philosophical understandings of whether meaning in life might depend on the presence or absence of an afterlife. After distinguishing various kinds of afterlife, it focuses most on the potential relevance of an eternal one, and considers at length the extreme but common views amongst philosophers that an eternal afterlife would be either necessary for a meaningful life or, conversely, sufficient for a meaningless one. It concludes by considering the …Read more
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30The Immortality Requirement for Life's Meaning (repr.)In Joshua Seachris (ed.), Exploring the Meaning of Life: An Anthology and Guide, Wiley. pp. 416-427. 2012.Reprint of an article that initially appeared in Ratio (2003).
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493Animal Rights and the Interpretation of the South African Constitution (repr.)In David Bilchitz & Stu Woolman (eds.), Is This Seat Taken? Conversations at the Bar, the Bench and the Academy, Pretoria University Law Press. pp. 209-219. 2012.In this chapter, a reprinted article from Southern African Public Law (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 st…Read more
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315African and western moral theories in a bioethical contextDeveloping World Bioethics 10 (1): 49-58. 2009.The field of bioethics is replete with applications of moral theories such as utilitarianism and Kantianism. For a given dilemma, even if it is not clear how one of these western philosophical principles of right (and wrong) action would resolve it, one can identify many of the considerations that each would conclude is relevant. The field is, in contrast, largely unaware of an African account of what all right (and wrong) actions have in common and of the sorts of factors that for it are german…Read more
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268How to Deal with Neglected Tropical Diseases in the Light of an African EthicDeveloping World Bioethics 18 (3): 233-240. 2018.Many countries in Africa, and more generally those in the Global South with tropical areas, are plagued by illnesses that the wealthier parts of the world (mainly ‘the West’) neither suffer from nor put systematic effort into preventing, treating or curing. What does an ethic with a recognizably African pedigree entail for the ways various agents ought to respond to such diseases? As many readers will know, a characteristically African ethic prescribes weighty duties to aid on the part of those …Read more
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251Legal PunishmentIn Christopher Roederer & Darrel Moellendorf (eds.), Jurisprudence, Juta. pp. 555-87. 2004.We seek to outline philosophical answers to the questions of why punish, whom to punish and how much to punish, with illustrations from the South African legal system. We begin by examining the differences between forward- and backward-looking moral theories of legal punishment, their strengths and also their weaknesses. Then, we ascertain to which theory, if any, contemporary South Africa largely conforms. Finally, we discuss several matters of controversy in South Africa in the context of forw…Read more
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45Samuel Fleischacker, A Third Concept of Liberty: Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam Smith Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 20 (4): 249-252. 2000.
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46The African Ethic of Ubuntu/Botho (repr.)In Sharlene Swarz & Monica Taylor (eds.), Moral Education in Sub-Saharan Africa, Routledge. pp. 7-24. 2011.In this chapter, a reprint of an article initially appearing in the Journal of Moral Education (2010), we provide a theoretical reconstruction of sub-Saharan ethics that we argue is a strong competitor to typical Western approaches to morality. According to our African moral theory, actions are right roughly insofar as they are a matter of living harmoniously with others or honouring communal relationships. After spelling out this ethic, we apply it to several issues in both normative and empiri…Read more
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55Africanising Institutional Culture: What Is Possible and Plausible (repr.)In Michael Cross & Amasa Ndofirepi (eds.), Knowledge and Change in the African University: Challenges and Opportunities, Sense Publishers. pp. 19-41. 2017.Reprint of a chapter that initially appeared in _Being at Home_ (2015).
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728God’s Role in a Meaningful Life: New Reflections from Tim MawsonEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 10 (3): 171-191. 2018.Characteristic of the contemporary field of life's meaning has been the combination of monism in method and naturalism in substance. That is, much of the field has sought to reduce enquiry into life's meaning to one question and to offer a single principle as an answer to it, with this principle typically focusing on ways of living in the physical world as best known by the scientific method. T. J. Mawson's new book, God and the Meanings of Life, provides fresh reason to doubt both this form and…Read more
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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).
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53Respect for persons permits prioritizing treatment for HIV/AIDSDeveloping World Bioethics 8 (2): 89-103. 2007.I defend a certain claim about rationing in the context of HIV/AIDS, namely, the 'priority thesis' that the state of a developing country with a high rate of HIV should provide highly active anti-retroviral treatment (HAART) to those who would die without it, even if doing so would require not treating most other life-threatening diseases. More specifically, I defend the priority thesis in a negative way, by refuting two influential and important arguments against it inspired by the Kantian prin…Read more
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106Review of Todd May, A Significant Life (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 8 (19): 0. 2015.Approx. 2000 word review of Todd May's _A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe_ (University of Chicago Press)
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575Ancillary Care Obligations in Light of an African Bioethic: From Entrustment to CommunionTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 38 (2). 2017.Henry Richardson has recently published the first book ever devoted to ancillary care obligations, which roughly concern what medical researchers are morally required to provide to participants beyond what safety requires. In it Richardson notes that he has presented the ‘only fully elaborated view out there’ on this topic, which he calls the ‘partial-entrustment model’. In this article, I provide a new theory of ancillary care obligations, one that is grounded on ideals of communion salient in …Read more
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615What Can the Capabilities Approach Learn from an Ubuntu Ethic? A Relational Approach to Development TheoryWorld Development 97 (September). 2017.Over the last two decades, the capabilities approach has become an increasingly influential theory of development. It conceptualises human wellbeing in terms of an individual's ability to achieve functionings we have reason to value. In contrast, the African ethic of ubuntu views human flourishing as the propensity to pursue relations of fellowship with others, such that relationships have fundamental value. These two theoretical perspectives seem to be in tension with each other; while the capa…Read more
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The Meaning of Life |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
African Philosophy |
Philosophy of Law |
Applied Ethics |
Value Theory |