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45Review of Polycarp Ikuenobe, Philosophical Perspectives on Communalism and Morality in African Traditions (review)Journal of Contemporary African Studies 26 (2): 236-238. 2008.
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44The African Ethic of Ubuntu/Botho (repr.)In Sharlene Swarz & Monica Taylor (eds.), Moral Education in Sub-Saharan Africa, Routledge. pp. 7-24. 2011.In this chapter, a reprint of an article initially appearing in the Journal of Moral Education (2010), we provide a theoretical reconstruction of sub-Saharan ethics that we argue is a strong competitor to typical Western approaches to morality. According to our African moral theory, actions are right roughly insofar as they are a matter of living harmoniously with others or honouring communal relationships. After spelling out this ethic, we apply it to several issues in both normative and empiri…Read more
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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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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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42Poderá 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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42The Desirability of a Property Clause: Michelman's Defence of LiberalismStellenbosch Law Review 24 (2): 312-28. 2013.I address Frank Michelman’s recent attempts to dispel the notion that there are deep tensions between a liberal approach to constitution making and a resolute commitment to fighting poverty, i.e., to holding what he calls ‘social liberalism’. He focuses on the prima facie tension between anti-poverty struggle on the part of government and the existence of a property clause in a constitution, a tension that several commentators in South Africa have contended requires removing that clause from its…Read more
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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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41African Philosophy as a Multidisciplinary DiscourseIn Adeshina Afolayan & Toyin Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 795-812. 2017.Philosophy is often labelled the ‘Queen of the Sciences’, meaning that it not merely gave birth to most other disciplines, but also has continued to influence their course. This chapter proceeds on these assumptions as well as the idea that post-independence, academic African philosophy ought to shape the development of other disciplines. It addresses the clusters of Law/Politics, Business/Management, Economics/Development Studies, Sociology/Anthropology, Psychology/Medicine, Education, Religiou…Read more
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41Meaning in Life as the Right MetricSociety 53 (2): 294-296. 2016.In “Happiness Is the Wrong Metric,” Amitai Etzioni largely argues that human beings are motivated by more than just their own happiness, whether conceived in terms of pleasant experiences or fulfilled preferences, and that the state should attend to more than merely people’s happiness. He contends that people are often disposed to seek out, and that public policy ought to promote, what is morally right and good. While not disagreeing with this thrust of Etzioni’s position, I maintain in my contr…Read more
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41Love 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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41Exploring 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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37How to Ground Animal Rights on African Values: A Constructive ApproachIn Edwin E. Etieyibo (ed.), Method, Substance, and the Future of African Philosophy, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 275-290. 2018.Reprint of a mildly revised article that initially appeared in the Journal of Animal Ethics (2017).
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36The Ethics of Swearing: The Implications of Moral Theories for Oath-Breaking in Economic ContextsReview of Social Economy 71 (2): 228-248. 2013.Many readers will share the judgment that, having made an oath, there is something morally worse about consequently performing the immoral action, such as embezzling, that one swore not to do. Why would it be worse? To answer this question, I consider three moral-theoretic accounts of why it is “extra” wrong to violate oaths not to perform wrong actions, with special attention paid to those made in economic contexts. Specifically, I address what the moral theories of utilitarianism, Kantianism a…Read more
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36An African Theory of Good Leadership (Repr.)International Journal of Ethical Leadership 7 41-56. 2020.Shortened version of an article first appearing in the African Journal of Business Ethics (2018).
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32The Meaning of Life (Annotated Bibliography)In Duncan Pritchard (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online, Oxford University Press. 2010.A lengthy annotated bibliography of some of the key literature on analytical philosophical approaches to life's meaning as of 2010.
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32معنای زندگی (Persian: The Meaning of Life)Phoenix Publishing. 2015.Translation of 'The Meaning of Life' (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) into Persian by Abdulfazl Tavakoli Shandiz. Printed as a booklet.
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32African and East Asian Perspectives on AgeingIn Christopher Wareham (ed.), Cambridge Handbook of the Ethics of Ageing, Cambridge University Press. pp. 118-132. 2022.After expounding the conceptions of harmony that are central to Confucianism and the sub-Saharan ethic of ubuntu, I apply them to three major topics pertaining to age, namely, virtue, the value of life, and care. Roughly speaking, indigenous East Asian and African values of harmony both entail that only the elderly can be truly virtuous, that the elderly have a strong claim to life-saving resources, and that they are entitled to care from their children, views that I show are not characteristic …Read more
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31Contemporary Anti-Natalism, Featuring Benatar’s Better Never to Have Been (Repr.)In Contemporary Anti-Natalism, Routledge. pp. 1-9. 2023.Mildly revised reprint of a 2012 overview of recent work on anti-natalism reprinted in a collection devoted to the topic.
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31Introduction and Concluding RecommendationsIn Hester du Plessis (ed.), The Rise and Decline and Rise of China: Searching for an Organising Philosophy, Real African Publishers. 2015.Reflections on recent Chinese socio-economic development, insofar as it has been influenced by values, especially Confucianism, and what lessons there are to be learned for understanding sub-Saharan African values and how best to develop in that context.
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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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30Values 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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30Good 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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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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29Are Lives Worth Creating? (Repr.)In Contemporary Anti-Natalism, Routledge. pp. 20-33. 2023.Reprint of a 2011 article about David Benatar's approach to anti-natalism in a collection of essays devoted to his and other forms of anti-natalism.
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28Must Land Reform Benefit the Victims of Colonialism? (repr.)In Erasmus Masitera (ed.), Philosophical Approaches to Land Reform in Africa, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 145-160. 2020.Reprint of an article that first appeared in the journal Philosophia Africana (2020).
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28An Ubuntu-Based Evaluation of the South African State's Responses to Marikana: Where's the Reconciliation?Politikon 44 (2): 287-303. 2017.In this work of normative political philosophy, I consider the ethical status of the South African government's responses to the Marikana massacre, where police shot and killed more than 30 striking miners, in light of a moral principle grounded on values associated with ubuntu. I argue that there are several respects in which the government's reactions have been unethical from an ubuntu-oriented perspective, and also make positive suggestions about what it instead should have been doing. Much o…Read more
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28African Values and Capital Punishment (repr.)In David R. Morrow (ed.), Moral Reasoning: A Text and Reader on Ethics and Contemporary Moral Issues, Oxford University Press. pp. 372-377. 2018.Reprint of a chapter first published in _African Philosophy and the Future of Africa_ (2011).
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27What Is the Essence of an Essence? Comparing Afro-Relational and Western-Individualist Ontologies (repr.)In Jonathan O. Chimakonam & Monique Whitaker (eds.), Contemporary Language, Logic, and Metaphysics: African and Western Approaches (tentative title), . 2024.Reprint of an article that first appeared in Synthesis Philosophica (2018).
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27African Political PhilosophyIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. pp. 1-9. 2013.I critically discuss contemporary work in African, i.e., sub-Saharan, political philosophy that has been written in English. I begin by providing an overview of the profession and discussing the aptness of focusing on African political philosophy as a distinct topic. Next, I highlight discussions that should be of interest to a political philosopher working anywhere in the world, focusing on ideas characteristic of the sub-Saharan region that are under-appreciated not merely for the purpose of c…Read more
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25Ubuntu and the Value of Self-Expression in the Mass MediaCommunicatio 41 (3): 388-403. 2015.In this article I consider what the implications of ubuntu, interpreted as an African moral philosophy, are for self-expression as a value that the media could help to promote. In contrast to the natural hunches that self-expression is merely a kind of narcissism or makes sense for only individualist cultures to prize, I argue that an attractive construal of ubuntu entails that self-expression can play an important communitarian role. The mass media can be obligated to enable people to express t…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 |