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417An African Theory of Social JusticeIn Camilla Boisen & Matt Murray (eds.), A Fair Share, Routledge. pp. 171-190. 2016.A comprehensive account of justice grounded on salient Afro-communitarian values, the article attempts to unify views about the distribution of economic resources, the protection of human rights and the provision of social recognition as ultimately being about proper ways to value loving relationships.
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70How to Reconcile Liberal Politics with Retributive PunishmentOxford Journal of Legal Studies 27 (4): 683-705. 2007.There is a deep tension between liberalism and retributivism. On the face of it, one cannot coherently believe liberalism about the fundamental purpose of the state and retributivism about the basic end of legal punishment, given widely held and well-motivated or what I call ‘standard’ conceptions of these views. My aims in this article are to differentiate the types of conflict between liberalism and retributivism, to identify the strongest and most problematic type of conflict between th…Read more
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65Review of David Benatar, Life, Death, and Meaning (review)Philosophical Papers 34 (3): 459-463. 2005.
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315A 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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118Respect for persons and perfectionist politicsPhilosophy and Public Affairs 30 (4). 2001.Can a state seek to promote a thick conception of the good (such as fostering a kind of meaning or excellence in people's lives) without treating its citizens disrespectfully? The predominant answer among friends of the principle of respect for persons is "no." The most powerful Kantian objection to non-liberalism or perfectionism is the claim that citizens who do not share the state's conception of the good would be wronged in that the state would treat a certain way of life as more important …Read more
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582What Africa Can Bring to the WorldIn Tayeb Chenntouf (ed.), General History of Africa, Volume 9: Global Africa, Unesco. forthcoming.This chapter expounds relational values characteristic of indigenous Africa and considers how they might usefully be adopted when contemporary societies interact with each other. Specifically, it notes respects in which genuinely human or communal relationship has been missing in the two contexts of globalization and international relations, and suggests what a greater appreciation of this good by the rest of the world would mean for them.
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81Gross National Happiness: A Philosophical AppraisalEthics and Social Welfare 8 (3): 218-232. 2014.For more than 40 years, the Kingdom of Bhutan has eschewed evaluating its socio-economic status in terms of Gross Domestic Product and has instead done so under the heading of ‘Gross National Happiness’. As part of the upswing in international interest in well-being as the proper final end of development, it would be apt to critically explore the approach that has been in use for several decades. In this article I expound the central elements of Gross National Happiness and discuss their strengt…Read more
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859For the Sake of the Friendship: Relationality and Relationship as Grounds of BeneficenceTheoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 57 (125): 54-76. 2010.I contend that there are important moral reasons for individuals, organisations and states to aid others that have gone largely unrecognised in the literature. Most of the acknowledged reasons for acting beneficently in the absence of a promise to do so are either impartial and intrinsic, on the one hand, being grounded in properties internal to and universal among individuals, such as their pleasure or autonomy, or partial and extrinsic, on the other, being grounded in non-universal properties …Read more
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65Questioning African Attempts to Ground Ethics on MetaphysicsIn Elvis Imafidon & John Ayotunde Isola Bewaji (eds.), Ontologized Ethics: New Essays in African Meta-Ethics, Lexington Books. pp. 189-204. 2013.In the literature on African moral philosophy, it is common to find normative conclusions about the way we ought to act directly drawn from purported metaphysical facts about the nature of ourselves and the world. For example, Kwame Gyekye, the most influential sub-Saharan political philosopher, attempts to defend moderate communitarianism, roughly the view that agents have strong duties to support others in ways that do not violate human rights, by contending that it follows from the dual natur…Read more
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93Emergent 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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518Confucianism and African PhilosophyIn Stu Woolman (ed.), Constitutional Law of South Africa, 2nd Edition, Juta. pp. 207-222. 2017.A reprint in English of 'Confucianism and African Conceptions of Value, Reality and Knowledge' (International Social Science Journal, Chinese Edition, 2016).
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423Cultural Pluralism and Its Implications for Media EthicsIn Patrick Plaisance (ed.), Ethics in Communication, De Gruyter. pp. 53-73. 2018.In the face of differences between the ethical religio-philosophies believed across the globe, how should a media ethicist theorize or make recommendations in the light of theory? One approach is relativist, taking each distinct moral worldview to be true only for its own people. A second approach is universalist, seeking to discover a handful of basic ethical principles that are already shared by all the world's peoples. After providing reasons to doubt both of these approaches to doing media e…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 |