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171How the West Was One: The Western as Individualist, the African as Communitarian (repr.)In Peters Michael & Mika Carl (eds.), The Dilemma of Western Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 51-60. 2017.Reprint of an article initially appearing in Educational Philosophy and Theory (2015).
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59The Justice of Crime PreventionTheoria 51 (105): 104-128. 2004.In this essay, I critically evaluate the new South African state's approach to crime prevention in light of the Kantian principle of respect of persons. I show that the five most common explanations of why the state must fight crime are unconvincing; provide a novel, respect-based account of why justice requires the state to prevent crime; and specify which crime fighting techniques the state must adopt in order to meet this requirement. Reviewing the South African state's criminal justice polic…Read more
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106Review of Todd May, A Significant Life (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 8 (19): 0. 2015.Approx. 2000 word review of Todd May's _A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe_ (University of Chicago Press)
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583Ancillary Care Obligations in Light of an African Bioethic: From Entrustment to CommunionTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 38 (2). 2017.Henry Richardson has recently published the first book ever devoted to ancillary care obligations, which roughly concern what medical researchers are morally required to provide to participants beyond what safety requires. In it Richardson notes that he has presented the ‘only fully elaborated view out there’ on this topic, which he calls the ‘partial-entrustment model’. In this article, I provide a new theory of ancillary care obligations, one that is grounded on ideals of communion salient in …Read more
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633What Can the Capabilities Approach Learn from an Ubuntu Ethic? A Relational Approach to Development TheoryWorld Development 97 (September). 2017.Over the last two decades, the capabilities approach has become an increasingly influential theory of development. It conceptualises human wellbeing in terms of an individual's ability to achieve functionings we have reason to value. In contrast, the African ethic of ubuntu views human flourishing as the propensity to pursue relations of fellowship with others, such that relationships have fundamental value. These two theoretical perspectives seem to be in tension with each other; while the capa…Read more
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268Developing African Political Philosophy: Moral-Theoretic StrategiesPhilosophia Africana 14 (1): 61-83. 2012.If contemporary African political philosophy is going to develop substantially in fresh directions, it probably will not be enough, say, to rehash the old personhood debate between Kwame Gyekye and Ifeanyi Menkiti, or to nit-pick at Gyekye’s system, as much of the literature in the field has done. Instead, major advances are likely to emerge on the basis of new, principled interpretations of sub-Saharan moral thought. In recent work, I have fleshed out two types of moral theories that have a cle…Read more
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190God, Morality and the Meaning of LifeIn Samantha Vice & Nafsika Athanassoulis (eds.), The Moral Life: Essays in Honour of John Cottingham, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 201-227. 2008.In this chapter, I critically explore John Cottingham's most powerful argument for the thesis that the existence of God is necessary for meaning in life. This is the argument that life would be meaningless without an invariant morality, which could come only from God. After demonstrating that Cottingham's God-based ethic can avoid not only many traditional Euthyphro meta-ethical concerns, but also objections at the normative level, I consider whether it can entail the unique respect in which mor…Read more
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357Assessing 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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490Realism and the Censure Theory of PunishmentIn Patricia Smith & Paolo Comanducci (eds.), Legal Philosophy: General Aspects, Franz Steiner Verlag. pp. 117-29. 2002.I focus on the metaphysical underpinnings of the censure theory of punishment, according to which punishment is justified if and because it expresses disapproval of injustice. Specifically, I seek to answer the question of what makes claims about proportionate censure true or false. In virtue of what is it the case that one form of censure is stronger than another, or that punishment is the censure fitting injustice? Are these propositions true merely because of social conventions, as per the do…Read more
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359آثار جدید درباره معناى زندگى (Persian: 'Recent Work on the Meaning of Life’)Naqd Va Nazar: Quarterly Journal of Philosophy and Theology 8 (29-30): 266-313. 2003.Persian translation by Mohsen Javadi of 'Recent Work on the Meaning of Life' (first published in Ethics 2002).
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26Ubuntu 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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85Censure theory still best accounts for punishment of the guilty: Reply to MontaguePhilosophia 37 (1): 113-23. 2009.In an article previously published in this journal, Phillip Montague critically surveys and rejects a handful of contemporary attempts to explain why state punishment is morally justified. Among those targeted is one of my defences of the censure theory of punishment, according to which state punishment is justified because the political community has a duty to express disapproval of those guilty of injustice. My defence of censure theory supposes, per argumentum, that there is always some defea…Read more
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797A 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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24PunishmentIn Deen Chatterjee (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Justice, Springer. pp. 915-17. 2012.A large majority of theoretical debate with regard to criminal justice at the global level has been concerned to identify which kinds of punishment of international agents are morally sound. Three key issues have been: (1) international sentencing, which concerns the rightness of international tribunals to prosecute what might be called ‘large-scale’ or ‘humanitarian’ crimes; (2) extraterritorial punishment, most topically regarding the appropriateness of a state punishing a foreign national for…Read more
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47The Meaning of Life, Revised EditionIn Ed Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2012.An updated version of the initial, 2007 entry, adding in discussion of key works that have appeared since then.
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562Confucianism and African Conceptions of Value, Reality and Knowledge (儒家思想与非洲的价值观、现实 观与知识观)International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition 国际社会科学杂志) 33 (4): 159-170. 2016.This article, translated into Chinese by Tian Kaifang, summarizes and critically reflects on the current state of the literature that has recently begun to put Chinese Confucianism into dialogue with characteristically African conceptions of what is good, what fundamentally exists, and how to obtain knowledge. As most of this literature has addressed value theory, this article focuses largely on it, too. It first illustrates how similar the foundational values are between the two cultural tradit…Read more
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352Values in China as Compared to Africa: Two Conceptions of HarmonyPhilosophy East and West 67 (2): 441-465. 2017.Given a 21st century context of sophisticated market economies and other Western influences such as Christianity, what similarities and differences are there between characteristic indigenous values of sub-Saharan Africa and China, and how do they continue to influence everyday life in these societies? Establishing that central to both non-Western, indigenous value systems are ideals of harmonious relationships, I compare and contrast traditional African and Chinese conceptions of harmony and an…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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54Review of Heidi Hurd, Moral Combat (review)Philosophical Review 110 (3): 434-436. 2001.It appears that it would almost always be wrong to punish a person for having performed a morally justified action. The axiom of “weak retributivism” maintains that the state must not routinely punish those who have not broken a just law. However, it seems that respect for the rule of law and for majority rule requires government officials to punish individuals for breaking laws that may be somewhat unjust. An impartial and democratic state could not function if individuals flouted institutional…Read more
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167Review of Ethics & AIDS in Africa (review)South African Journal of Philosophy 25 (4): 369-71. 2006.
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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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42African 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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313How God Could Assign Us a Purpose without Disrespect: Reply to SallesQuadranti - Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia Contemporanea 1 (1): 99-112. 2013.In one of the most widely read texts on what makes a life meaningful, composed more than 50 years ago, Kurt Baier presents an intriguing argument against the view that meaning in life would come by fulfilling a purpose God has assigned us. Baier contends that God could not avoid degrading us were He to assign us a purpose, which would mean that God, as a morally ideal being by definition, would not do so. Defenders of God-centred accounts of meaning in life, and even many of its detractors such …Read more
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302Judging Because Understanding: A Defence of Retributive CensureIn Pedro Tabensky (ed.), Judging and Understanding: Essays on Free Will, Narrative, Meaning and the Ethical Limits of Condemnation, Ashgate. pp. 221-40. 2006.Thaddeus Metz defends the retributive theory of punishment against challenges mounted by some of the contributors to this collection. People, he thinks, ought to be censured in a way that is proportional to what they have done and for which they are responsible. Understanding does not conflict with judging. On the contrary, according to him, the more we understand, the better we are able to censure appropriately. Metz’s argument is Kantian insofar as he argues that ‘respect for persons [victims,…Read more
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314The 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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54South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Light of Ubuntu: A Comprehensive AppraisalIn Mia Swart & Karin van Marle (eds.), Unfinished Business: The TRC at 20, Brill. pp. 221-252. 2017.I critically evaluate South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in light of a philosophical interpretation of the southern African ethic of ubuntu. Roughly, according to this moral philosophy, an act or policy is right insofar as it honours communal relationships, ones of identifying with others and exhibiting solidarity with them. After spelling out this ethical principle and the specific kind of national reconciliation it prescribes, I show that there is a powerful justification…Read more
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176African Ethics and Journalism Ethics: News and Opinion in Light of UbuntuJournal of Media Ethics 30 (2): 74-90. 2015.In this article, I address some central issues in journalism ethics from a fresh perspective, namely, one that is theoretical and informed by values salient in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on a foundational moral theory with an African pedigree, which is intended to rival Western theories such as Kantianism and utilitarianism, I provide a unified account of an array of duties of various agents with respect to the news/opinion media. I maintain that the ability of the African moral theory to plaus…Read more
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272An African Egalitarianism: Bringing Community to Bear on EqualityIn George Hull (ed.), The Equal Society: Essays on Equality in Theory and Practice, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 185-208. 2015.I consider what prima facie attractive communitarian ethical perspectives salient among indigenous African peoples entail for distributive justice within a state, and I argue that they support a form of economic egalitarianism that differs in several important ways from varieties common in contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy. In particular, the sort of economic egalitarianism I advance rivals not only luck-oriented variants from the likes of Ronald Dworkin, G. A. Cohen and theorists…Read more
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786Engaging with the Philosophy of D A MasoloQuest 25 7-15. 2013.This is an introduction to the special issue of Quest devoted to D. A. Masolo’s latest book, Self and Community in a Changing World. It situates this book in relation to not only Masolo’s earlier research on African philosophy but also the field more generally, sketches the central positions of the contributions to the journal issue, and in light of them makes some critical recommendations for future reflection.
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304Harmonizing global ethics in the future: a proposal to add south and east to westJournal of Global Ethics 10 (2): 146-155. 2014.This article considers how global ethical matters might be approached differently in the English-speaking literature if values salient in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia were taken seriously. Specifically, after pointing out how indigenous values in both of these major parts of the world tend to prescribe honouring harmonious relationships, the article brings out what such an approach to morality entails for political power, foreign relations and criminal justice. For each major issue, it sugge…Read more
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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 |