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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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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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761The 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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465Critical 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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2003Meaning 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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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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4An Ubuntu-Based Evaluation of the South African State's Responses to Marikana (repr.)In Mia Swart (ed.), Marikana––Some Years on (tentative title), University of Cape Town Press. pp. 141-160. 2019.Reprint of an article first appearing in Politikon (2017).
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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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287How 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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412The 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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860Two 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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531Assessing Lives, Giving Supernaturalism Its Due, and Capturing Naturalism: Reply to 13 Critics of Meaning in Life (repr.)In Masahiro Morioka (ed.), Reconsidering Meaning in Life: A Philosophical Dialogue with Thaddeus Metz, Journal of Philosophy of Life, Waseda University. pp. 228-278. 2015.A lengthy reply to 13 critical discussions of _Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study_ collected in an e-book and reprinted from 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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1366Confucianism and ubuntu: Reflections on a dialogue between chinese and african traditionsJournal of Chinese Philosophy 38 (s1): 78-95. 2011.In this article we focus on three key precepts shared by Confucianism and the African ethic of Ubuntu: the central value of community, the desirability of ethical partiality, and the idea that we tend to become morally better as we grow older. For each of these broad similarities, there are key differences underlying them, and we discuss those as well as speculate about the reasons for them. Our aim is not to take sides, but we do suggest ways that Ubuntu and Confucianism might have something to…Read more
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59’Giving the World a More Human Face’: Human Suffering in African Thought and PhilosophyIn Jeff Malpas & Norelle Lickiss (eds.), Perspectives on Human Suffering, Springer. pp. 49-62. 2012.I present ideas about human suffering that are salient among the black peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, reconstruct them in order to make them relevant to an international audience with philosophical interests, and urge that audience to give them consideration as alternatives or correctives to some dominant Western approaches. I first recount views commonly held by sub-Saharans about the nature, causes and cures of suffering, and then draw on them to articulate an account of it qua enervation, whi…Read more
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68Imperfection as sufficient for a meaningful life : How much is enough?In Yujin Nagasawa & Erik J. Wielenberg (eds.), New waves in philosophy of religion, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 192-214. 2008.Supernaturalism about meaning in life appears plausible insofar it is reasonable to think that a meaningful life can come only from a world in which there is a perfect value of some kind. Call the view that meaningfulness depends on perfection the ‘perfection thesis’. My aim in this chapter is to develop the contrasting ‘imperfection thesis’, the claim that a life that is significant on balance does not require any perfect value. I argue that principles that naturalists have offered (or suggeste…Read more
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405Recent Philosophies of Social Protection: From Capability to UbuntuGlobal Social Policy 16 (2): 132-150. 2016.In the past decade or two, philosophies of social protection have shifted away from a nearly exclusive focus on the subjective and the individual (e.g., autonomous choices, utility) and towards values that are more objective and relational. The latter approaches, typified by the well established Capabilities Approach and the up and coming ethic of ubuntu, have been substantially inspired by engagements with the Global South, particularly India and Africa. In this article, part of a special issue…Read more
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809Auf dem Weg zu einer afrikanischen MoraltheorieIn Franziska Dübgen & Stefan Skupien (eds.), Afrikanische politische Philosophie - Postkoloniale Positionen, Suhrkamp. pp. 295-329. 2015.German translation by Andreas Rauhut of a mildly revised version of 'Toward an African Moral Theory' (Journal of Political Philosophy 2007).
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243Higher Education, Knowledge For Its Own Sake, and an African Moral TheoryStudies in Philosophy and Education 28 (6): 517-536. 2009.I seek to answer the question of whether publicly funded higher education ought to aim intrinsically to promote certain kinds of ‘‘blue-sky’’ knowledge, knowledge that is unlikely to result in ‘‘tangible’’ or ‘‘concrete’’ social benefits such as health, wealth and liberty. I approach this question in light of an African moral theory, which contrasts with dominant Western philosophies and has not yet been applied to pedagogical issues. According to this communitarian theory, grounded on salient s…Read more
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446Ubuntu Como uma Teoria Moral e os Direitos Humanos na África do SulRevista Culturas Jurídicas 3 (5): 1-33. 2016.Portuguese translation by Jean-Bosco Kakozi and Karina Macedo Fernandes of 'Ubuntu as a Moral Theory and Human Rights in South Africa', which first appeared in the African Human Rights Law Journal (2011).
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85Dignity in the Ubuntu TraditionIn Marcus Düwell (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Cambridge University Press. pp. 310-18. 2014.I draw on ideas commonly advocated by adherents to ubuntu, the term often used to capture sub-Saharan morality, in order to spell out, and sometimes construct, understandings of human dignity that are worth taking seriously by professional ethicists, moral philosophers, jurisprudential scholars and Constitutional Courts anywhere in the world. In particular, I seek to articulate a theory of dignity grounded in African values that could serve as a genuine rival to the influential Kantian conceptio…Read more
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789Utilitarianism and the Meaning of LifeUtilitas 15 (1): 50-70. 2003.This article addresses the utilitarian theory of life's meaning according to which a person's existence is significant just in so far as she makes those in the world better off. One aim is to explore the extent to which the utilitarian theory has counter-intuitive implications about which lives count as meaningful. A second aim is to develop a new, broadly Kantian theory of what makes a life meaningful, a theory that retains much of what makes the utilitarian view attractive, while avoiding the …Read more
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139God's purpose as irrelevant to life's meaning: Reply to affolterReligious Studies 43 (4): 457-464. 2007.Elsewhere I have contended that if a God-centred account of meaning in life were true, it would not be because meaning comes from fulfilling God’s purpose for us. Specifically, I have argued that this ‘purpose theory’ of life’s meaning cannot be the correct God-based view since God would have to be atemporal, immutable, and simple for meaning to logically depend on His existence, and since such a being lacking extension could not be purposive. Jacob Affolter has developed a fresh account of the …Read more
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259Koheleth and the Meaning of LifeIn Stephen D. Leach & James Tartaglia (eds.), The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers, Routledge. pp. 73-78. 2018.This chapter critically discusses the most salient positions about life’s meaning advanced by Koheleth, the presumed author of Ecclesiastes, a book from the Hebrew Bible. Koheleth famously argues that ‘life is futility’ (or ‘vanity’) for a variety of reasons, with this chapter focusing on the three that are most recurrent in the text and have been particularly influential in the Western tradition of philosophy. These are considerations about: the mortality of humankind, the undeserved allocation…Read more
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188آيا هدف خداوند مى تواند سرچشمه معناى زندگى باشد؟* (Persian: Could God's Purpose Be the Source of Life's Meaning?)Naqd Va Nazar: Quarterly Journal of Philosophy and Theology 8 (29-30): 149-183. 2003.Persian translation by Mohammad Saeedi of 'Could God's Purpose Be the Source of Life's Meaning?' (first published in Religious Studies 2000).
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449Contemporary African PhilosophyIn Duncan Pritchard (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online: Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2010.A lengthy, annotated bibliography of much of the most important work in post-war African professional philosophy as of 2011.
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1456The Motivation for “Toward an African Moral Theory”South African Journal of Philosophy 26 (26): 331-335. 2007.Here I introduce the symposium issue of the South African Journal of Philosophy that is devoted to critically analysing my article “Toward an AfricanMoral Theory.” In that article, I use the techniques of analytic moral philosophy to articulate and defend a moral theory that both is grounded on the values of peoples living in sub-Saharan Africa and differs from what is influential in contemporary Western ethics. Here, I not only present a précis of the article, but also provide a sketch of why I…Read more
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9Christopher W. Morris, An Essay on the Modern State (review)Philosophy in Review 19 (2): 132-134. 1999.
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184Poverty as Inhuman: Plausible but Illiberal?International Journal of Applied Philosophy 30 (1): 1-14. 2016.In this article, part of a special issue devoted to Hennie Lötter’s Poverty, Ethics and Justice, I draw out an interesting implication of Hennie Lötter’s original and compelling conception of the nature of poverty as essentially inhuman. After motivating this view, I argue that it, like the capabilities approach and other views that invoke a conception of good and bad lives, is inconsistent with a standard understanding of a liberal account of the state’s role, one that is independently supporte…Read more
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58Tim Mulgan, Purpose in the Universe: The Moral and Metaphysical Case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism (review)Ethics 127 (4): 944-949. 2017.
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57Animal Rights and the Interpretation of the South African ConstitutionSouthern African Public Law 25 (2): 301-311. 2010.I argue that, even supposing substantive principles of distributive justice entail that animals warrant constitutional protection, there are other, potentially weightier forms of injustice that would probably be done by interpreting a Bill of Rights as implicitly applying to animals, namely, formal injustice and compensatory injustice. Formal injustice would result from such a reading of the Constitution in that the state would fail to speak with one voice upon newly according legal rights to an…Read more
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