• African Values and Capital Punishment (Repr.)
    In Mark Timmons (ed.), Disputed Moral Issues: A Reader, 5th ed, Oxford University Press. 2019.
    Reprint of a chapter initially published in G. Walmsley (ed.) African Philosophy and the Future of Africa (2011).
  •  311
    Shortened and mildly revised version of an essay that initially appeared in Murove (ed.) African Ethics (2009). This chapter is a work of applied ethics that aims to provide a convincing comprehensive account of how a government official in a post-independence sub-Saharan country should make decisions about how to allocate goods such as civil service jobs and contracts with private firms. Should such a person refrain from considering any particulars about potential recipients, or might it be app…Read more
  •  470
    Harmony as a basic value is neglected in internationally influential philosophical discussions about rights, power, and other facets of public policy; it is not prominent in articles that appear in widely read journals or in books published by presses with a global reach. Of particular interest, political philosophers and policy makers remain ignorant of the similarities and differences between various harmony-oriented approaches to institutional choice from around the world. In this chapter, I …Read more
  • Medicine and Meaning in Life
    In Alex Broadbent (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Medicine, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    Insofar as value theory is relevant to the philosophy of medicine, two goods have dominated reflection: well-being and morality. This essay casts doubt on whether those values are sufficient to resolve an array of important debates about medical practice, maintaining that the value of what makes a life meaningful should play a much larger role. After first indicating how meaningfulness differs from happiness and rightness, the essay argues that meaningfulness cannot reasonably be ignored when th…Read more
  •  534
    Exactly Why Are Slurs Wrong?
    Daimon: Revista Internacional de Filosofía 84 13-29. 2021.
    This article, part of a special issue on 'Expressing Hatred', seeks to provide a comprehensive and fundamental account of why racial epithets and similar slurs are immoral, whenever they are. It considers three major theories, roughly according to which they are immoral because they are harmful (welfarism), because they undermine autonomy (Kantianism), or because they are unfriendly (an under-considered, relational approach informed by ideas from the Global South). This article presents new obje…Read more
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    On the rise over the past 20 years has been ‘moderate supernaturalism’, the view that while a meaningful life is possible in a world without God or a soul, a much greater meaning would be possible only in a world with them. William Lane Craig can be read as providing an important argument for a version of this view, according to which only with God and a soul could our lives have an eternal, as opposed to temporally limited, significance, by virtue of our moral choices then making an ultimate di…Read more
  •  130
    A Relational Theory of Justice
    Oxford 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
  •  336
    Recent Work in African Political and Legal Philosophy
    Philosophy Compass 16 (9): 1-10. 2021.
    In this article I critically survey non-edited books on political and legal philosophy that have been composed by those working in the sub-Saharan African tradition and have appeared in print since 2016. These monographs principally address political, distributive, and criminal justice at the domestic level, with this article recounting the essentials of these texts as well as noting prima facie weaknesses in their positions and gaps in current research agendas. My aims are to enable readers to …Read more
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    An updated version of this encyclopedia entry on the concept of what, if anything, makes life worthwhile.
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    Karl Popper is famous for favoring an open society, one in which the individual is treated as an end in himself and social arrangements are subjected to critical evaluation, which he defends largely by appeal to a Kantian ethic of respecting the dignity of rational beings. In this essay, I consider for the first time what the implications of a characteristically African ethic, instead prescribing respect for our capacity to relate communally, are for how the state should operate in an open socie…Read more
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    Shortened and mildly revised reprint of an article first appearing in Ethical Perspectives (2020).
  •  190
    خدا،روح و معنای زندگی (edited book)
    Negahehandisheh. 2021.
    Persian translation by Ashkan M. Roshan of _God, Soul and the Meaning of Life_.
  •  529
    What does an African ethic of social cohesion entail for social distancing?
    Developing World Bioethics 21 (1): 7-16. 2021.
    The most prominent strand of moral thought in the African philosophical tradition is relational and cohesive, roughly demanding that we enter into community with each other. Familiar is the view that being a real person means sharing a way of life with others, perhaps even in their fate. What does such a communal ethic prescribe for the coronavirus pandemic? Might it forbid one from social distancing, at least away from intimates? Or would it entail that social distancing is wrong to some degree…Read more
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    The COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant challenges to healthcare systems worldwide, and in Africa, given the lack of resources, they are likely to be even more acute. The usefulness of Traditional African Healers in helping to mitigate the effects of pandemic has been neglected. We argue from an ethical perspective that these healers can and should have an important role in informing and guiding local communities in Africa on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Particularly, we argue no…Read more
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    The Meaning of Life (Second Revised Edition)
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2021.
    A 10,000+ word critical overview of analytic philosophy devoted to life's meaning, with some focus on books and more recent works.
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    Supernaturalist analytic existentialism: Critical notice of Clifford Williams’ Religion and the meaning of life
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 89 (2): 189-198. 2021.
    In this critical notice of Clifford Williams’ Religion and the meaning of life, I focus on his argumentation in favour of the moderate supernaturalist position that, while a meaningful life would be possible in a purely physical world, a much greater meaning would be possible only in a world with God and an eternal afterlife spent close to God. I begin by expounding and evaluating Williams’ views of the physical sources of meaning, providing reason to doubt both that he has captured all the cent…Read more
  •  751
    Our aims are to articulate some core philosophical positions characteristic of Traditional African Religion and to argue that they merit consideration as monotheist rivals to standard interpretations of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. In particular, we address the topics of how God’s nature is conceived, how God’s will is meant to bear on human decision making, where one continues to exist upon the death of one’s body, and how long one is able to exist without a body. For each of these to…Read more
  •  253
    Judaism’s Distinct Perspectives on the Meaning of Life
    Journal of Jewish Ethics 7 (1-2): 13-38. 2021.
    In contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, there has been substantial debate between religious and secular theorists about what would make life meaningful, with a large majority of the religious philosophers having drawn on Christianity. In this article, in contrast, I draw on Judaism, with the aims of articulating characteristically Jewish approaches to life's meaning, which is a kind of intellectual history, and of providing some support for them relative to familiar Christian and Islamic appr…Read more
  • Arabic translation by Ahmed Al-Ansari of 'Happiness and Meaningfulness' (a chapter first published in 2009).
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    Does the Lack of Cosmic Meaning Make Our Lives Bad?
    Journal of Value Inquiry 56 (1): 37-50. 2022.
    This article is part of a special issue devoted to David Benatar’s anti-natalism. There are places in his oeuvre where he contends that, while our lives might be able to exhibit some terrestrial or human meaning, that is not enough to make them worth creating, which would require a cosmic meaning that is unavailable to us. There are those who maintain, in reply to Benatar, that some of our lives do have a cosmic meaning, but I argue that Benatar is correct that none of our lives does. I instead …Read more
  •  1006
    Insofar as artificial intelligence is to be used to guide automated systems in their interactions with humans, the dominant view is probably that it would be appropriate to programme them to maximize (expected) utility. According to utilitarianism, which is a characteristically western conception of moral reason, machines should be programmed to do whatever they could in a given circumstance to produce in the long run the highest net balance of what is good for human beings minus what is bad for…Read more
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    In this article I critically discuss some recent English language books in African philosophy. Specifically, I expound and evaluate key claims from books published by sub-Saharan thinkers since 2017 that address epistemology, metaphysics, and value theory and that do so in ways of interest to an audience of at least Anglo-American-Australasian analytic philosophers. My aim is not to establish a definitive conclusion about these claims, but rather to facilitate cross-cultural engagement by highli…Read more
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    Partial reprint of an article first appearing in the Journal of Philosophy of Education (2009).
  •  354
    The Need for Others in Public Policy: An African Approach
    In Motsamai Molefe & Chris Allsobrook (eds.), Towards an African Political Philosophy of Needs, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 21-37. 2021.
    When reflecting on human need as a moral-political category, it is natural to include some intersubjective conditions. Surely, children need to be socialized, adults need to be recognized, and the poor need to be given certain resources. I point out that there are two different respects in which such intersubjective factors could be considered needs. On the one hand, they might be needed roughly for their own sake, that is, for exemplifying relational values such as caring for others and sharing…Read more
  •  2
    I critically discuss respects in which conceptions of community have featured in African moral-political philosophy over the past 40 years or so. Some of the discussion is in the vein of intellectual history, recounting key theoretical moves for those unfamiliar with the field. However, my discussion is also opinionated, noting prima facie weaknesses with certain positions and presenting others as more promising, particularly relative to prominent Western competitors. There are a variety of form…Read more
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    Contributions Toward a Naturalist Theory of Life's Meaning
    Dialogue and Universalism 8 (11): 25-32. 1998.
    A brief attempt to sketch an account of what constitutes meaning in life that does not rely on God or a soul. The account focuses on connecting with final value, but posits counterexamples pertaining to certain states of awareness.
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    Values in China as Compared to Africa: Two Conceptions of Harmony (Repr.)
    In The Collected Works at the Symposium on Chinese Studies 2017, China Social Sciences Press. pp. 620-631. 2018.
    English reprint of part of an article first appearing in Philosophy East and West (2017).
  •  126
    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. 2018.
    Chinese (character) translation of part of an article that appeared in Philosophy East and West (2017).