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112Meaning (Atheism)In Graham Oppy & Joseph W. Koterski (eds.), Theism and Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophy, 1st Edition, Gale. pp. 507-521. 2019.A critical exploration of the position that God is necessary for meaning in life for mainly undergraduate and postgraduate readers, with some defence of the view that He is not.
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Ancillary Care Obligations in Light of an African Bioethic: From Entrustment to Communion (repr.)In Augustine Frimpong-Mansoh & Caesar Atuire (eds.), Bioethics in the Context of Traditional African Beliefs and Practices (tentative title), Vernon Press. pp. 59-78. 2018.Reprint of an article that appeared in Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics (2017).
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174Beyond 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
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57What Science Means for Postmodernist Epistemology and the Philosophy of EducationEducational Philosophy and Theory 50 (14). 2018.In my view, postmodernism, as a cluster of bold epistemological claims, foundered on the rocks of contemporary science. Many postmodern positions about knowledge have conflicted with views of science that are extraordinarily difficult to doubt, which in this short article (composed to honour Educational Philosophy and Theory's 50th anniversary), I point out and argue holds a lesson about how to undertake the philosophy of education.
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1304African Communitarianism and DifferenceIn Elvis Imafidon (ed.), Handbook of the African Philosophy of Difference, Springer. pp. 31-51. 2020.There has been the recurrent suspicion that community, harmony, cohesion, and similar relational goods as understood in the African ethical tradition threaten to occlude difference. Often, it has been Western defenders of liberty who have raised the concern that these characteristically sub-Saharan values fail to account adequately for individuality, although some contemporary African thinkers have expressed the same concern. In this chapter, I provide a certain understanding of the sub-Saharan …Read more
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352Communication Strategies in the Light of Indigenous African and Chinese Values: How to HarmonizePhilosophia Africana 19 (2): 176-194. 2020.Many values originating in Africa and in China, and ones that continue to influence much of everyday communication in those societies, are aptly placed under the common heading of 'harmony'. After first spelling out what harmony involves in substantially Confucian China, and then in Africa, this article notes respects in which the Confucian and African conceptions of harmony are similar, an awareness of which could facilitate smooth communication. The article then indicates respects in which the…Read more
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435What Is the Essence of an Essence? Comparing Afro-Relational and Western-Individualist OntologiesSynthesis Philosophica 65 (1): 209-224. 2018.The dominant view amongst contemporary Western philosophers about the essence of a natu ral object is that it is constituted by its intrinsic properties. The ontological approach salient in the African philosophical tradition, in contrast, accounts for a thing’s essence by appeal to its relational properties. The Afrorelational ontology is underdeveloped, with the primary aim of this article being to help rectify that weakness. Specifically, this article’s aims are: to articulate an African a…Read more
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667Humility and the African Ethic of UbuntuIn 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
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431Reconciliation as the Aim of a Criminal Trial: Ubuntu’s Implications for SentencingConstitutional Court Review 9 113-134. 2019.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
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294Advancing the Philosophy of Medicine: Towards New Topics and SourcesJournal 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.
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328Medicine without Cure?: A Cluster Analysis of the Nature of MedicineJournal 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
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3183Community VitalityIn 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.
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2893Good GovernanceIn 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.
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5880Definitions of TermsIn 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.
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41La Philosophie au-delà de nos frontières: le cas de l'éthique africaine (Philosophy beyond the Boundaries: The Case of African Ethics) (edited book)Harmattan. forthcoming.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.
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365Why Objective Truth Is the Ally of Social and Epistemic Justice: Reply to JencoJournal 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
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399Ubuntu, Christianity and Two Kinds of ReconciliationIn Girma Mohammed (ed.), Healing the Memories: An African Christian Response to Politically Induced Conflicts (tentative title), . pp. 137-157. 2018.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
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303Ends and Means of Transitional JusticeJournal 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
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150An 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)
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286Climate 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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40Exploring 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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1426The Motivation for “Toward an African Moral Theory”South African Journal of Philosophy 26 (26): 331-335. 2007.Here I introduce the symposium issue of the South African Journal of Philosophy that is devoted to critically analysing my article “Toward an AfricanMoral Theory.” In that article, I use the techniques of analytic moral philosophy to articulate and defend a moral theory that both is grounded on the values of peoples living in sub-Saharan Africa and differs from what is influential in contemporary Western ethics. Here, I not only present a précis of the article, but also provide a sketch of why I…Read more
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1318The 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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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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432Recent Work on the Meaning of LifeEthics 112 (4). 2002.A critical overview of mainly Anglo-American philosophical literature addressing the meaning of life up to 2002.
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526New 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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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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482Animal 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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The Meaning of Life |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
African Philosophy |
Philosophy of Law |
Applied Ethics |
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