•  740
    Humility and the African Ethic of Ubuntu
    In 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
  •  454
    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
  •  340
    Advancing the Philosophy of Medicine: Towards New Topics and Sources
    Journal 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.
  •  359
    Medicine without Cure?: A Cluster Analysis of the Nature of Medicine
    Journal 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
  •  3492
    Community Vitality
    with Ilona Boniwell and Rowan Conway
    In 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.
  •  2966
    Good Governance
    with Johannes Hirata, Ritu Verma, and Eric Zencey
    In 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.
  •  6293
    Definitions of Terms
    with Alejandro Adler, Ilona Boniwell, Evelyn Gibson, Martin Seligman, Yukiko Uchida, and Zhanjun Xing
    In 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.
  •  41
    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.
  •  423
    Why Objective Truth Is the Ally of Social and Epistemic Justice: Reply to Jenco
    Journal 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
  •  432
    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
  •  404
    Ends and Means of Transitional Justice
    Journal 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
  •  191
    Reprint of an article that initially appeared in _Ethical Theory and Moral Practice_ (2012)
  •  57
    Animal Rights and the Interpretation of the South African Constitution
    Southern 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
  •  308
    African Values and Human Rights as Two Sides of the Same Coin: Reply to Oyowe
    African Human Rights Law Journal 14 (2): 306-21. 2014.
    In an article previously published in this Journal, Anthony Oyowe critically engages with my attempt to demonstrate how the human rights characteristic of South Africa’s Constitution can be grounded on a certain interpretation of Afro-communitarian values that are often associated with talk of ‘ubuntu’. Drawing on recurrent themes of human dignity and communal relationships in the sub-Saharan tradition, I have advanced a moral-philosophical principle that I argue entails and plausibly explains a…Read more
  •  1901
    Just the Beginning for Ubuntu: Reply to Matolino and Kwindingwi
    South 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
  •  116
    Review 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?
  •  80
    Arbitrariness, Justice, and Respect
    Social 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
  •  411
    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
  •  7137
    Contemporary Anti-Natalism, Featuring Benatar's Better Never to Have Been
    South African Journal of Philosophy 31 (1): 1-9. 2012.
    A critical overview of the latest discussion of anti-natalism, with particular reference to David Benatar's work and three additional rationales for anti-natalism that differ from Benatar's.
  •  2419
    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
  •  64
    An african theory of bioethics: Reply to Macpherson and Macklin
    Developing World Bioethics 10 (3): 158-163. 2010.
    In a prior issue of Developing World Bioethics, Cheryl Macpherson and Ruth Macklin critically engaged with an article of mine, where I articulated a moral theory grounded on indigenous values salient in the sub-Saharan region, and then applied it to four major issues in bioethics, comparing and contrasting its implications with those of the dominant Western moral theories, utilitarianism and Kantianism. In response to my essay, Macpherson and Macklin have posed questions about: whether philosoph…Read more
  •  44
    Accounting for Similarities and Differences in Moral Belief (Atheism)
    In Graham Oppy & Joseph W. Koterski (eds.), Theism and Atheism: Opposing Viewpoints in Philosophy, Macmillan Reference. pp. 472-477. 2019.
    A chapter composed largely for undergraduate and postgraduate students that considers whether general facts about morality and our ability to make moral judgements count in favor of either theism or atheism.
  •  43
    Love and emotional reactions to necessary evils
    In Pedro Alexis Tabensky (ed.), The positive function of evil, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 28-44. 2009.
    This chapter supposes that certain bads are necessary for substantial goods, and poses the question of how one ought to react emotionally to such bads. In recent work, Robert Adams is naturally read as contending that one ought to exhibit positive emotions such as gladness towards certain ‘necessary evils’. A rationale he suggests for this view is that love for a person, which involves viewing the beloved as good, requires being glad about what is necessary for her to exist, even if it is someth…Read more
  •  1382
    Survivor's Guilt
    In Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. pp. 1-8. 2013.
    This essay first analyzes the concept of survivor’s guilt, distinguishing various manifestations of it and considering whether any truly counts as a form of guilt. Then, it addresses arguments for thinking that survivor’s guilt is unreasonable to exhibit, after which it takes up arguments for thinking that it is reasonable. The aim is not to come to some firm conclusion about these conceptual and evaluative matters, but instead to acquaint the reader with the debates about them among contemporar…Read more
  •  32
    Values in China as Compared to Africa
    In Hester du Plessis (ed.), The Philosophy of Chinese Civilization, Real African Publishers. pp. 75-116. 2015.
    Expanded version of article appearing in Philosophy East and West (2017).
  •  31
    Good Governance: How Can Politics Promote Wellbeing?
    Drak Journal: A Journal of Thought and Ideas 1 (2): 90-99. 2015.
    A shortened and mildly revised reprint of a chapter initially composed as part of International Expert Working Group's report on Bhutan's project of Gross National Happiness, but published in full in Happiness: Transforming the Development Landscape (2017).
  •  440
    Given the myriad ways in which managerialism in higher education, and especially research undertaken there, is undesirable, is there a moral theory that plausibly explains why they all are and prescribes some realistic alternatives? In this contribution, I answer ‘yes’ to this overarching question. Specifically, I argue that the various respects in which managerialism is unjustified, particularly with regard to knowledge production, are well captured by an ethical philosophy grounded on salient …Read more
  •  73
    Part of Robert Kane’s response to the contemporary cultural condition of pluralism is to attempt to ground morality in the _search_ for wisdom about how to live. With regard to the right, Kane argues, roughly, that a new principle capturing what all morally permissible actions have in common warrants belief on the part of all inquirers, even in the face of reasonable uncertainty, because it is justified as an essential means to ascertaining wisdom. Upon embarking for wisdom, one quickly discover…Read more
  •  315
    English-speaking research on morally right decisions in a healthcare context over the past three decades has been dominated by two major perspectives, namely, the Four Principles, of which the principle of respect for autonomy has been most salient, and the ethic of care, often presented as a rival to not only a focus on autonomy but also a reliance on principles more generally. In my contribution, I present a novel ethic applicable to bioethics, particularly as it concerns human procreation, th…Read more
  •  133
    Meaning in Life
    In Benjamin Matheson & Yujin Nagasawa (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of 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