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243Just the Beginning for Ubuntu: Reply to Matolino and KwindingwiSouth 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
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13Review 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?
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450Contemporary Anti-Natalism, Featuring Benatar's Better Never to Have BeenSouth 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.
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4An african theory of bioethics: Reply to Macpherson and MacklinDeveloping 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
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62Assessing Lives, Giving Supernaturalism Its Due, and Capturing Naturalism: Reply to 13 Critics of Meaning in LifeJournal of Philosophy of Life 5 (3): 228-278. 2015.A lengthy reply to several critical discussions of _Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study_ appearing in the _Journal of Philosophy of Life_. The contributors are from a variety of philosophical traditions, including the Anglo-American, Continental and East Asian (especially Buddhist and Japanese) ones.
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44Accounting 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.
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9Love and emotional reactions to necessary evilsIn 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
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394Survivor's GuiltIn 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
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111A Bioethic of Communion: Beyond Care and the Four Principles with Regard to ReproductionIn Marta Soniewicka (ed.), The Ethics of Reproductive Genetics - Between Utility, Principles, and Virtues, Springer Verlag. pp. 49-66. 2018.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
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5Values in China as Compared to AfricaIn 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).
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231A Relational Moral Theory: African Ethics in and Beyond the ContinentOxford University Press. 2022._A Relational Moral Theory_ draws on neglected resources from the Global South and especially the African philosophical tradition to provide a new answer to a perennial philosophical question: what do all morally right actions have in common as distinct from wrong ones? Metz points out that the principles of utility and of respect for autonomy, the two rivals that have dominated Western moral theory for the last two centuries, share an individualist premise. Once that common assumption is replac…Read more
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7Good 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).
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109Managerialism as Anti-Social: Some Implications of Ubuntu for Knowledge ProductionIn Michael Cross & Amasa Ndofirepi (eds.), Knowledge and Change in the African University: Challenges and Opportunities, Sense Publishers. pp. 139-154. 2017.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
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10'The Meaning of Life Lies in the Search': Robert Kane's New Justification of Objective ValuesSocial Theory and Practice 39 (2): 313-27. 2013.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
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160Ubuntu as a Moral Theory and Human Rights in South AfricaAfrican Human Rights Law Journal 11 (2): 532-559. 2011.There are three major reasons that ideas associated with ubuntu are often deemed to be an inappropriate basis for a public morality. One is that they are too vague, a second is that they fail to acknowledge the value of individual freedom, and a third is that they a fit traditional, small-scale culture more than a modern, industrial society. In this article, I provide a philosophical interpretation of ubuntu that is not vulnerable to these three objections. Specifically, I construct a moral theo…Read more
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5Reasons of Meaning to Abhor the End of the Human RaceFaith and Philosophy 33 (3): 358-369. 2016.In this critical notice of Samuel Scheffler’s Death and the Afterlife, I focus on his intriguing suggestion that we reasonably care more about the fate of an unidentifiable, future humanity than of ourselves and our loved ones. Scheffler’s main rationale for this claim is that meaning in our lives crucially depends on contributing to the well-being of the human race down the road, with many commentators instead arguing that advancing the good of ourselves or existing loved ones would be sufficie…Read more
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4Fundamental Conditions of Human Existence as the Ground of Life’s Meaning: Reply to LandauReligious Studies 51 (1): 111-25. 2015.Taking the good (generosity), the true (enquiry), and the beautiful (creativity) as exemplars of what can make a life noticeably meaningful, elsewhere I have advanced a principle that entails and plausibly explains all three. Specifically, I have proffered the view that great meaning in life, at least insofar as it comes from this triad, is a matter of positively orienting one’s rational nature towards fundamental conditions of human existence, conditions of human life responsible for much else …Read more
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42Review of Ethics & AIDS in Africa (review)South African Journal of Philosophy 25 (4): 369-71. 2006.
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9Poderá o propósito de Deus ser a fonte do sentido da vida?In Desidério Murcho (ed.), Viver para Que? Ensaios Sobre o Sentido da Vida, Dinalivro. 2009.Portuguese translation by Desiderio Murcho of "Could God's Purpose Be the Source of Life's Meaning?" (Religious Studies 2000).
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18Emergent Issues in African Philosophy: A Dialogue with Kwasi WireduPhilosophia Africana 17 (2): 75-87. 2015.These are major excerpts from an interview that was conducted with Professor Kwasi Wiredu at Rhodes University during the 13th Annual Conference of The International Society for African Philosophy and Studies in 2007. He speaks on a wide range of issues such as political and personal identity, racism and tribalism, moral foundations, the Golden Rule, African communalism, human rights, personhood, consensus, meta-philosophy, amongst other critical themes.
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153The Meaningful and the Worthwhile: Clarifying the RelationshipsPhilosophical Forum 43 (4): 435-448. 2012.The question I seek to answer is what the relationship is between judgments of people’s lives as meaningful, on the one hand, and as worth living, on the other. Several in the analytic and Continental literature, including the likes of Albert Camus and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and more recently, Robert Solomon and Julian Baggini, have maintained that the two words mean the same thing, in that they have the same referents or even the same sense. My primary aim is to refute such a position, and instea…Read more
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An Ubuntu-Based Evaluation of the South African State's Responses to Marikana: Where's the Reconciliation?In Rodny-Gumede Ylva & Swart Mia (eds.), Marikana: Five Years on (tentative title), Juta. forthcoming.Reprint of an article first appearing in the journal _Politikon_ in 2017.
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113Is Life’s Meaning Ultimately Unthinkable?: Guy Bennett-Hunter on the IneffablePhilosophia 44 (4): 1247-1256. 2016.In this critical notice of Guy Bennett-Hunter’s book _Ineffability and Religious Experience_, I focus on claims he makes about what makes a life meaningful. According to Bennett-Hunter, for human life to be meaningful it must obtain its meaning from what is beyond the human and is ineffable, which constitutes an ultimate kind of meaning. I spell out Bennett-Hunter’s rationale for making this claim, raise some objections to it, and in their wake articulate an alternative conception of ultimate me…Read more
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107The Nature of Poverty as an Inhuman ConditionRes Publica 22 (3): 327-342. 2016.In this article, part of a symposium devoted to Hennie Lötter’s Poverty, Ethics and Justice, my aims are threefold. First, I present a careful reading of Lötter’s original and compelling central conception of the nature of poverty as the inability to ‘obtain adequate economic resources….to maintain physical health and engage in social activities distinctive of human beings in their respective societies’. After motivating this view, particularly in comparison to other salient accounts of poverty,…Read more
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61Making Sense of Survivor’s Guilt: How to Justify It with an African EthicIn George Hull (ed.), Debating African Philosophy: Perspectives on Identity, Decolonial Ethics and Comparative Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 149-163. 2018.The default position in Western ethics is that survivor’s guilt is either irrational or not rational, i.e., that while survivor’s guilt might be understandable, it is not justified in the sense of there being good reason for a person to exhibit it. From a widely held perspective, for example, one ought to feel guilty only for having done wrong, and in a culpable way, which, by hypothesis, a mere survivor has not done. Typical is the following: ‘Strictly speaking, survivor guilt is not rational g…Read more
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1The Concept of a Meaningful Life (repr.)In Joshua W. Seachris (ed.), Exploring the Meaning of Life: An Anthology and Guide, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 79-94. 2012.Reprint of an article that initially appeared in the American Philosophical Quarterly (2001).
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149Are Lives Worth Creating?Philosophical Papers 40 (2): 233-255. 2011.In his book Better Never to Have Been, David Benatar argues that it is generally all things considered wrong to procreate, such that if everyone acted in a morally ideal way, humanity would elect to extinguish the species. I aim to carefully question the premises and inferences that lead Benatar to draw this anti-natalist conclusion, indicating several places where one could sensibly elect to disembark from the train of argument heading toward such a radical view.
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17African Ethics, Revised EditionIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.An updated version of this 4000 word overview of the meta-, normative and applied ethical dimensions of contemporary sub-Saharan moral philosophy.
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90The Ethics of Routine HIV Testing: A Respect-Based AnalysisSouth African Journal on Human Rights 21 (3): 370-405. 2005.Routine testing is a practice whereby medical professionals ask all patients whether they would like an HIV test, regardless of whether there is anything unique to a given patient that suggests the presence of HIV. In three respects I aim to offer a fresh perspective on the debate about whether a developing country with a high rate of HIV infection morally ought to adopt routine testing. First, I present a neat framework that organises the moral issues at stake, bringing out the basic principles…Read more
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187How the West Was One: The Western as Individualist, the African as CommunitarianEducational Philosophy and Theory 47 (11): 1175-1184. 2015.There is a kernel of truth in the claim that Western, and especially Anglo-American-Australasian, normative philosophy, including that relating to the philosophy of education, is individualistic; it tends to prize properties that are internal to a human being such as her autonomy, rationality, pleasure, desires, self-esteem, self-realization and virtues relating to, say, her intellect. One notable exception is the idea that students ought to be educated in order to be citizens, participants in a…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 |