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Agwa Oma N’Echiche Ndi Afrikana Nkowa Nke (An Account of African Moral Thought) (edited book)Timeless Publishers. 2018.A collection of several articles on African ethics by Thaddeus Metz translated into Igbo by M. B. Mbah, and edited by Prof Lawrence Ogbo Ugwuanyi of the University of Abuja, Nigeria.
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The Foundations of Social Contract TheoryDissertation, Cornell University. 1997.Hypothetical social contract theory is the predominant framework that political philosophers use to argue for conceptions of social justice. A hypothetical social contract theory consists of an initial situation, in which parties are imagined to make a rational agreement about the way to design their politico-economic institutions, and a conception of justice to which these parties would agree. My goals in the dissertation are to determine the most warranted initial situation and the conception …Read more
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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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181Beyond 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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58What 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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1331African 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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364Communication 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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446What 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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683Humility 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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442Reconciliation 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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304Advancing 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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341Medicine 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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3253Community 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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2934Good 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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5990Definitions 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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369Why 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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406Ubuntu, 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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306Ends 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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158An 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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2358The Proper Aim of Therapy: Subjective Well-Being, Objective Goodness, or a Meaningful Life?In Pninit Russo-Netzer, Stefan Schulenberg & Alexander Batthyany (eds.), Clinical Perspectives on Meaning: Positive and Existential Psychotherapy, Springer. pp. 17-35. 2016.Therapists and related theorists and practitioners of mental health tend to hold one of two broad views about how to help patients. On the one hand, some maintain that, or at least act as though, the basic point of therapy is to help patients become clear about what they want deep down and to enable them to achieve it by overcoming mental blockages. On the other hand, there are those who contend that the aim of therapy should instead be to psychologically enable patients to live objectively desi…Read more
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479God, Soul and the Meaning of LifeCambridge University Press. 2019.Part of the Elements Philosophy of Religion series, this short book focuses on the spiritual dimensions of life’s meaning as they have been discussed in the recent English and mainly analytic philosophical literature. The overarching philosophical question that this literature has addressed is about the extent to which, and respects in which, spiritual realities such as God or a soul would confer meaning on our lives. There have been four broad answers to the question, namely: God or a soul is n…Read more
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226African Values, Human Rights and Group Rights: A Philosophical Foundation for the Banjul CharterIn Oche Onazi (ed.), African Legal Theory and Contemporary Problems: Critical Essays, Springer. pp. 131-51. 2014.A communitarian perspective, which is characteristic of African normative thought, accords some kind of primacy to society or a group, whereas human rights are by definition duties that others have to treat individuals in certain ways, even when not doing so would be better for others. Is there any place for human rights in an Afro-communitarian political and legal philosophy, and, if so, what is it? I seek to answer these questions, in part by critically exploring one of the most influential th…Read more
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187Censure theory and intuitions about punishmentLaw and Philosophy 19 (4): 491-512. 2000.Many philosophers and laypeople have the following two intuitions about legal punishment: the state has a pro tanto moral reason to punish all those guilty of breaking a just law and to do so in proportion to their guilt. Accepting that there can be overriding considerations not to punish all the guilty in proportion to their guilt, many philosophers still consider it a strike against any theory if it does not imply that there is always a supportive moral reason to do so. In this paper, I demons…Read more
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673Odnajdowanie sensu w jego poszukiwaniuFilozofuj! 2 9-11. 2015.Polish translation of mildly revised versions of the introductory and closing pages of _Meaning in Life_.
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84The Ethics and Politics of the Brain Drain: A Communal Alternative to Liberal PerspectivesSouth African Journal of Philosophy 36 (1): 101-114. 2017.In Debating Brain Drain, Gillian Brock and Michael Blake both draw on a liberal moral- political foundation to address the issue, but they come to different conclusions about it. Despite the common ground of free and equal persons having a dignity that grounds human rights, Brock concludes that many medical professionals who leave a developing country soon after having received training there are wrong to do so and that the state may place some limits on their ability to exit, whereas Blake infe…Read more
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375Are 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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551The Virtues of African EthicsIn S. van Hooft, N. Athanassoulis, J. Kawall, J. Oakley & L. van Zyl (eds.), The handbook of virtue ethics, Acumen Publishing. 2014.Since its inception as a professional field in the 1960s or so, African ethics has been neglected not only by virtue ethicists, but also by international scholars in moral philosophy generally. This is unfortunate, since sub-Saharan normative perspectives are characteristically virtue-centred, and, furthermore, are both different from traditional Western forms and just as worth taking seriously as they are. In my contribution, I spell out the two major respects in which virtue is a salient theme…Read more
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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.
APA Central Division
Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
Areas of Specialization
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The Meaning of Life |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
African Philosophy |
Philosophy of Law |
Applied Ethics |
Value Theory |