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632An African Theory of Dignity and a Relational Conception of PovertyIn John de Gruchy (ed.), The Humanist Imperative in South Africa, African Sun Media. pp. 233-242. 2011.I have two major aims in this chapter, which is philosophical in nature. One is to draw upon values that are salient in the southern African region in order to construct a novel and attractive conception of human dignity. Specifically, I articulate the idea that human beings have a dignity in virtue of their communal nature, or their capacity for what I call ‘identity’ and ‘solidarity’, which contrasts the most influential conception in the West, according to which our dignity inheres in our rat…Read more
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8Vitality, Community and Human Dignity in AfricaIn Alex Michalos (ed.), Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research, Springer. pp. 6960-6966. 2014.Two values salient in the sub-Saharan tradition that are invoked to ground the superlative, equal worth of persons and the human rights to which they are entitled are, first, vitality or 'life-force' and, second, community or relationships of identity and solidarity. This entry, which draws heavily on an article appearing in Human Rights Review (2012), sketches these two conceptions of dignity and presents an overview of key strengths and weaknesses of them.
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772Engaging with the Philosophy of D A MasoloQuest 25 7-15. 2013.This is an introduction to the special issue of Quest devoted to D. A. Masolo’s latest book, Self and Community in a Changing World. It situates this book in relation to not only Masolo’s earlier research on African philosophy but also the field more generally, sketches the central positions of the contributions to the journal issue, and in light of them makes some critical recommendations for future reflection.
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265Harmonizing global ethics in the future: a proposal to add south and east to westJournal of Global Ethics 10 (2): 146-155. 2014.This article considers how global ethical matters might be approached differently in the English-speaking literature if values salient in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia were taken seriously. Specifically, after pointing out how indigenous values in both of these major parts of the world tend to prescribe honouring harmonious relationships, the article brings out what such an approach to morality entails for political power, foreign relations and criminal justice. For each major issue, it sugge…Read more
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636Questioning South Africa’s ‘Genetic Link’ Requirement for SurrogacySouth African Journal of Bioethics and Law 7 (1): 34-39. 2014.South African law currently forbids those seeking to arrange a surrogate motherhood agreement from creating a child that will not be genetically related to at least one of them. For a surrogacy contract to be legally valid, there must be a ‘genetic link’ between the child created through a surrogate and the parents who will raise it. Currently, this law is being challenged in the High Court of South Africa, and in this article I critically explore salient ethical facets of the dispute. I argue t…Read more
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73Review of Leonhard Praeg, A Report on Ubuntu, and of Leonhard Praeg and Siphokazi Magadla (eds), Ubuntu: Curating the Archive (review)Philosophical Papers 43 (3): 447-453. 2014.
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20Jus Interruptus Bellum: The Ethics of Truce-MakingJournal of Global Ethics 13 (1): 6-13. 2017.With his new book, A Theory of Truces, Nir Eisikovits has succeed in producing the most comprehensive and insightful book to exist on the nature and morality of truces during international military conflict. In it he plausibly argues that thought about such conflict should avoid binary terms such as long-lasting peace and all-out war, and instead must readily acknowledge conditions “in between” them, such as cease-fires and agreements to limit belligerence to certain times. In this critical noti…Read more
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237Confucian Harmony from an African PerspectiveAfrican and Asian Studies 15 (1): 1-22. 2016.Chenyang Li’s new book, The Philosophy of Confucian Harmony, has been heralded as the first book-length exposition of the concept of harmony in the approximately 3,000 year old Confucian tradition. It provides a systematic analysis of Confucian harmony and defence of its relevance for contemporary moral and political thought. In this philosophical discussion of Li’s book, I expound its central claims, contextualize them relative to other salient work in English-speaking Confucian thought, and cr…Read more
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436Eine Theorie nationaler Versöhnung: Einsichten aus AfrikaPolylog: Forum for Intercultural Philosophy 34 (Supp): 219-244. 2016.German translation by Andreas Rauhut of 'A Theory of National Reconciliation: Some Insights from Africa' (from _Theorizing Transitional Justice_ 2015).
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129Précis of Meaning in Life: An Analytic StudyJournal of Philosophy of Life 5 (3). 2015.Brief summary of _Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study_ and of how contributors to a special issue of the _Journal of Philosophy of Life_ question it.
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19Précis of Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study (repr.)European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 8 (2): 1--4. 2016.A brief summary of the main claims advanced in Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study, largely cribbed from the Journal of Philosophy of Life (2015).
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52Das Sinnvolle und das Lebenswerte: Zur Klärung ihrer Gemeinsamkeiten und UnterschiedeIn 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. 109-25. 2013.'The Meaningful and the Worthwhile' (Philosophical Forum 2012) translated into German by Markus Rüther.
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2974Ubuntu as a Moral Theory: Reply to Four CriticsSouth African Journal of Philosophy 26 (4): 369-87. 2007.In this article, I respond to questions about, and criticisms of, my article “Towardan African Moral Theory” that have been put forth by Allen Wood, Mogobe Ramose, Douglas Farland and Jason van Niekerk. The major topicsI address include: what bearing the objectivity of moral value should have on cross-cultural moral differences between Africans and Westerners; whether a harmonious relationship is a good candidate for having final moral value; whether consequentialism exhausts the proper way to r…Read more
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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
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457Critical Notice:Baier and Cottingham on the Meaning of LifeDisputatio 1 (19): 215-228. 2005.I examine two recent books by analytic philosophers that address the underexplored topic of whether the meaning of life depends on the existence of a supernatural realm including God and a soul. John Cottingham’s On the Meaning of Life defends a supernaturalist conception of life’s meaning, whereas Kurt Baier’s Problems of Life and Death defends the opposite, naturalist perspective. I show that their respective arguments are worth serious consideration, indicate some potential weaknesses in them…Read more
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1959Meaning in Life: An Analytic StudyOxford University Press. 2013.What makes a person's life meaningful? Thaddeus Metz offers a new answer to an ancient question which has recently returned to the philosophical agenda. He proceeds by examining what, if anything, all the conditions that make a life meaningful have in common. The outcome of this process is a philosophical theory of meaning in life. He starts by evaluating existing theories in terms of the classic triad of the good, the true, and the beautiful. He considers whether meaning in life might be about …Read more
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30Open Perfectionism and Global JusticeTheoria 51 (104): 96-127. 2004.In his book Cosmopolitan Justice, Darrel Moellendorf argues that respect for persons has the following rough implications (among others): requires states to enact liberal legislation; permits them to interfere with religious or otherwise perfectionist regimes; forbids them from restricting immigration for perfectionist ends; and requires them to permit secession. In this article, I do not question Moellendorf's Kantian foundation; what I do here is question the inferences from this principle to …Read more
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846Two Conceptions of African EthicsQuest 25 141-61. 2013.I focus on D A Masolo’s discussion of morality as characteristically understood by African philosophers. My goals are both historical and substantive, meaning that I use reflection on Masolo’s book as an occasion to shed light not only on the nature of recent debates about African ethics, but also on African ethics itself. With regard to history, I argue that Masolo’s discussion of sub-Saharan morality suggests at least two major ways that the field has construed it, depending on which value is …Read more
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59The Justice of Crime PreventionTheoria 51 (105): 104-128. 2004.In this essay, I critically evaluate the new South African state's approach to crime prevention in light of the Kantian principle of respect of persons. I show that the five most common explanations of why the state must fight crime are unconvincing; provide a novel, respect-based account of why justice requires the state to prevent crime; and specify which crime fighting techniques the state must adopt in order to meet this requirement. Reviewing the South African state's criminal justice polic…Read more
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46Accountability in Higher Education: A Comprehensive Analytical FrameworkTheory and Research in Education 9 (1): 41-58. 2011.Concomitant with the rise of rationalizing accountability in higher education has been an increase in theoretical reflection about the forms accountability has taken and the ones it should take. The literature is now peppered by a wide array of distinctions (e.g. internal/external, inward/ outward, vertical/horizontal, upward/downward, professional/public, political/economic, soft/ hard, positive/negative), to the point that when people speak of ‘accountability’ they risk speaking past one anoth…Read more
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63A Dilemma Regarding Academic Freedom and Public Accountability in Higher EducationJournal of Philosophy of Education 44 (4): 529-549. 2010.The aim of this article is to establish that current thought about the point of a publicly funded university faces a dilemma. On the one hand, influential and attractive ‘macro’-level principles about how state resources ought to be accountably used entail that academic freedom should be utilised solely for the sake of social justice or some other concrete public good. Standard theories of public morality entail that an academic’s responsibility is entirely to be ‘responsive’ or ‘relevant’ to he…Read more
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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
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398The Reach of Amnesty for Political Crimes: Which Extra-Legal Burdens on the Guilty does National Reconciliation Permit?Constitutional Court Review 3 243-270. 2011.Suppose that it can be right to grant amnesty from criminal and civil liability to those guilty of political crimes in exchange for full disclosure about them. There remains this important question to ask about the proper form that amnesty should take: Which additional burdens, if any, should the state lift from wrongdoers in the wake of according them freedom from judicial liability? I answer this question in the context of a recent South African Constitutional Court case that considered whethe…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 |