Luís Cordeiro-Rodrigues

_In this article, I look at the African theory that the formation of personhood is relevant to the morality of war. I start by justifying the project of decolonizing the ethics of war. Then I proceed to clarify that some of the African theories that relate to personhood and war should not be taken at face value, but that the concept of personhood does play a role in the morality of war. I then provide examples of how this concept is relevant for jus ad bellum, jus in bello and jus post bellum._ _Keywords:_ African Ethics; Personhood; Just War Theory; _Jus ad Bellum; Jus in Bello; Jus Post Bellum_.

In a recent article in this journal, Uchena Okeja, inspired by sources in African philosophy and military ethics, argued that war by agreement is the only morally justified war. The present piece is a response to Okeja's contention that agreement is both necessary and sufficient for waging war. Contrasting with Okeja, I contend that agreement is neither necessary nor sufficient for initiating a war. Regarding necessity, I contend that there may be overriding values at risk in a conflict and protecting these values may require engaging in war without agreement. Further, I contend that in cases of self-defense, it is not necessary to have consensus for defending oneself from an attacker. With respect to sufficiency, I uphold that Okeja's perspective fails because his model does not provide just cause, conditions for meaningful consent, or the tools with which to avoid exclusion, elitism, and manipulation in deliberative settings. I conclude that Okeja's arguments are indeed valuable and provide inspirational ideas for how to avoid war, but overall, they do not hold up as a full-fledged theory.

Thaddeus Metz’s groundbreaking book A Relational Moral Theory provides a sophisticated moral theory hailing from the Global South. In this book, one of the theses he defends is that biotechnological enhancement is generally morally impermissible. This article, written for a book symposium on A Relational Moral Theory, primarily demonstrates how Metz’s criticisms presented in his book fail to convince. Furthermore, we explore some possible objections from Metzian deontology against enhancement and also show that these do not imply that enhancement is intrinsically wrong. Finally, we showed how Metzian ethics offers good reasons to support rather than oppose enhancement.

Current studies of anti/‐natalism have been carried out mainly in the context of western philosophy. In this article, we offer a pro‐natalist view based on Confucian and Afro‐communitarian philosophy (Sino‐African ethics). Grounded in this Sino‐African perspective, we uphold that there is, at least, one reason to believe that not only is it morally permissible to procreate, but also that on some occasions, procreating is what morality prescribes. Specifically, we contend that, from a Sino‐African perspective, procreating sometimes is the best way to fulfil duties of reciprocity and care towards our parents.

In Africa, homosexuality is routinely understood as a form of immoral behaviour. This has great implications for the physical and psychological well‐being of homosexuals in Africa. One of the reasons why homosexuals are sometimes understood to be behaving immorally is because it is believed that same‐sex relations are unnatural. I think that this conception of unnatural is grounded on the perverted faculty argument, although this is not often expressed in such terms. In this article, I will develop a concept of natural grounded on the concept of Ukama. I will show that despite Ukama implying a functional conception of nature, just like in the perverted faculty argument, it does not imply that homosexuality is immoral.

Although some have argued that COVID-19 vaccine patents are morally justified, a broader argument on the morality of breaching contracts is necessary. This article explores the ethics of breaching unfair contracts and argues that it is morally justified to breach contracts with pharmaceutical companies concerning vaccine patents. I offer two arguments to support this view. Firstly, contracts may be breachable in some situations. The ones I point out are that contracts can be broken when the costs of not violating vaccine patents are too high or when the process for agreement is not fair, or when an urgent ethical issue needs to be addressed and it is possible to compensate the other party for their loss. Secondly, I argue that because the contracts with the pharmaceutical companies do not treat people as ends in themselves, there is no moral obligation to respect them.

_Igwebuike_ is a traditional knowledge system undergirded by the metaphysical assumption that the world is a totality of interconnected and interrelated entities. 1–4 African scholars in West Africa often invoke _igwebuike_ to make sense of African ethical, social and political perspectives that are grounded in the theory of Afro-communitarianism. Afro-communitarianism is primarily a socioethical theory that is concerned with the articulation of the moral relationship between the individual and the community. The term _igwebuike_ is derived from the Igbo root words _igwe_ (number), _bu_ (is) and _ike_ (strength). Thus, the term _igwebuike_ translates as ‘number is strength’. 3 4 As an ethical theory, _igwebuike_ espouses the ontological relatedness of the variety of entities in the world and the moral relatedness of all humans by virtue of their common possession of life, with the accompanying human capacity for feeling and...

One of the key ethical and political issues in South Africa today is the decolonization of education. In 2015, a movement called Rhodes Must Fall was born in South Africa precisely with the purpose of engaging in activism to promote this decolonization. The Rhodes Must Fall movement to further this purpose engaged in some violent protests. The objective of this article is to assess whether South Africans are justified to believe that these protests can or cannot be morally justified from the perspective of Ubuntu. To explore this question, I assess the morality of the actions using a consequentialist interpretation of African values. I contend that the symbolic violent protests of the Rhodes Must Fall movement were morally justified, whereas its indiscriminate violent protests were not. Hence, I do not myself mean to defend the position they are morally justified; instead, I wish to show that it is a moral implication of African values.

In this article, we contest the idea that evil does not exist, or that it is a mistaken grasp of reality to contend that evil exists. We analyze two versions of this argument: the 'orchestra argument' and the 'mystical argument.' In common, these arguments contend that those who affirm the existence of evil in the world have a limited view of reality. We argue that these views are either over-abstract from reality or do not offer a plausible approach to the problem of evil. We then advance a decolonial perspective on evil. According to the perspective advanced here, evil is conceptualized as a phenomenon that diminishes life. We contend this view provides a better account of how to understand evil.

In the Western theist tradition, the conception of a person tends to be understood as an intrinsic property. Hence, the classification of someone as a person does not depend on relational aspects of that person. From this, Western theists often understand that their conception of God as a person does not clash with the idea of immutability. In this article, I challenge the idea that being a person and being immutable are compatible properties by using Afro-communitarian philosophy and, more specifically Afro-communitarian metaphysics of personhood. Afro-communitarian metaphysics is fundamentally relational, i.e. it understands that most properties of the world depend on the existence of other entities. More precisely, personhood is a property that depends on the existence of relatable beings. But if this is true, then it is not possible to hold that an entity that has the property of personhood also has the property of immutability. More specifically, an entity that is a person has to change due to the fact that personhood is a relational property. This is because it is a necessary condition for being a person that one relates to others, i.e. one only becomes a person when this relation occurs. Hence, the process of becoming a person requires a moment before the relation with another and one after; thereby, the feature of being a person requires the feature of change. With respect to the Christian conception of God, what this implies is that if theist philosophers wish to understand Him as a person, they have to also accept that God is not immutable. For if other beings besides Him are not eternal, then it is only possible that He can be a person when these other beings first started existing. This is the case because the kind of relationality needed to be a person is not simply to relate to something (like emptiness), but to do something that makes Him addressable (which requires that the thing He relates to has the capacity to address Him). This means there are two moments of existence where He has distinct properties and, therefore, is mutable.

The morality of war has been debated from a variety of perspectives. However, it has rarely been intertwined with the topic of the existence of God. Sometimes anti-theists argue that the existence of a Western Judeo-Christian God who is omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect is inconsistent with the existence of evils such as war. We will argue that there is no such logical inconsistency between the God of the African traditional religions and the evil of war. First, we contend that such a logical inconsistency does not exist because God in African traditional religions is not seen as omnipotent, omniscient or morally perfect, and therefore, it would not be logically inconsistent for such a God to co-exist with the evil of war. This is mainly because African moral realism entails that war is a legitimate means for an imperfect being in an imperfect world to pursue morally permissible goals. Second, even if God is omniscient, omnipotent and morally perfect, when considered from the African religious viewpoint, a God of harmony, like the one in African traditional religions, can permit some evils for a greater good such as “harmony”.

The production of vaccines for COVID-19 has been far from ideal in terms of meeting world demand, thereby mitigating the infections and deaths caused by the pandemic. Part of the reason production has been inefficient is that those pharmaceutical companies that own the vaccine do not have sufficient productive capacity to meet demand. Resultantly, many have advocated for waiving patent rights to the vaccine so it can be massively produced worldwide. Pharmaceutical companies and their advocates have opposed this waiving of patent rights. In this article, I respond to the arguments that oppose waiving patents and contend that there is a case for temporarily waiving them. Mainly, I present a negative argumentative strategy that upholds the view that patents ought to be waived. However, in light of my arguments, the absence of positive reasons to withhold the patents implies that there are positive views for temporarily waiving them.

This book focuses on multiculturalism, racism and the interests of nonhuman animals. Each are, in their own right, rapidly growing and controversial fields of enquiry, but how do multiculturalism and racism intersect with the debate concerning animals and their interests? This a deceptively simple question but on that is becoming ever more pressing as we examine our societal practices in a pluralistic world. Collating the work of a diverse group of academics from across the world, the book includes writing on a wide range of subjects and addressing contemporary issues in this critical arena. Subjects covered include multiculturalism, group rights and the limits of tolerance; ethnocentrism and animals; racism and discrimination and non-Western alternatives to animal rights and welfare. The book will be of interest to researchers, lecturers and advanced students as well as range of social justice organisations, government institutions, animal activist organisations and environmental groups.

There are concerns that participation in open science will lead to various forms of exploitation – of researchers and scholars in low-income countries and under-resourced institutions. This article defends a contrary thesis and demonstrates the exact ways the underexplored notions of communal relationships, human dignity and social justice – and the normative principles to which they give rise – grounded in African philosophy can usefully address critical concerns regarding exploitation in the sharing of research resources to facilitate open partnership/collaboration and reuse. Further research is required to study the specific roles different institutions can play in facilitating open practice and contribute towards establishing effective structures that can enhance equity and balance unfavourable power asymmetries.

There are concerns that participation in open science will lead to various forms of exploitation – of researchers and scholars in low-income countries and under-resourced institutions. This article defends a contrary thesis and demonstrates the exact ways the underexplored notions of communal relationships, human dignity and social justice – and the normative principles to which they give rise – grounded in African philosophy can usefully address critical concerns regarding exploitation in the sharing of research resources to facilitate open partnership/collaboration and reuse. Further research is required to study the specific roles different institutions can play in facilitating open practice and contribute towards establishing effective structures that can enhance equity and balance unfavourable power asymmetries.

Animal, Basta and PAN are the main advocates of animal rights in Portugal. These groups have prioritised abolishing bullfighting over other causes. It is the purpose of this article to challenge the reasons why this prioritisation was made and argue that pro-vegan campaigns should be prioritised. I argue that this prioritisation ought not to be made for a variety of reasons. Namely animal farming is the main cause of suffering; the educational argument provided is disproved by theory and empirical evidence; and it does not follow from the fact that anti-bullfighting campaigns are more likely to succeed and that pro-vegan and anti-animal farming campaigns are utopian, that the latter form of campaigning should be allocated a secondary role. My argument, therefore, is that pro-vegan campaigns are to be prioritised not only because the arguments to prioritise the abolition of bullfighting fail, but also due to the fact that there are positive reasons to support pro-vegan campaigning.

This piece replies to a recently published article in the European Journal for Philosophy of Religion by J. L. Schellenberg and Paul Draper. They contend that the field of African philosophy of religion needs renewal, and they make several recommendations on how to achieve this. I agree with their recommendations, but I argue they have omitted a crucial problem and solution to renew the field; namely, a fundamental problem of the field is that it systemically excludes non-Western philosophies and scholars and, therefore, the field needs to be decolonised.

With the current pandemic, many scholars have contended that clinical criteria offer the best way to implement triage. Further, they dismiss the criteria of social value as a good one for triage. In this paper, I respond to refute this perspective. In particular, I present two sets of arguments. Firstly, I argue that the objections to the social value criteria they present apply to the clinical criteria they favor. Secondly, they exaggerate the negative aspects of the social value criteria, while I suggest it is reasonable to use this. I end the article by recommending how operative public values can be a good way to make triaging decisions.

In recent years, different places in the world have witnessed demands for the decolonization of education. Nevertheless, it is not completely clear how this ought to be carried out. There are various factors that influence what such decolonization may entail, including the geographical place for decolonization and the discipline being decolonized. This requires a specific analysis of each context. In this article, I wish to make a proposal for how to carry out the decolonization of philosophy teaching at the university level in the African context, with a special focus on South Africa. I propose that more African philosophy be included in the curricula, as well as the integration of teaching and assessing methods that reflect African culture. Further, I argue that those seeking for decolonization ought to try to pursue it incrementally, given that it is the best strategy to achieve decolonization.

Philosophers have been intrigued by the problem of evil for centuries: How can God and evil coexist? This article tries to answer this question by using Kongolese religious thought from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I contend that the Kongolese view gleaned from historical sources and complemented by contemporary African philosophical scholarship contains sufficient resources to reply to this problem coherently. Particularly, I argue that, from the Kongolese viewpoint, evil in the world can be explained as follows. God and other morally good entities are not morally perfect and may commit moral errors. Moreover, God does not have unlimited power over morally bad entities who may commit moral wrongs. This view, I contend, deserves consideration since, unlike the mainstream Western perspective, it does not imply the unacceptable view that horrendous evils are morally justified.

This paper analyzes two main pro-vengeance Confucian arguments in light of Desmond Tutu's thinking. In the absence of just authority, Confucianism argues that carrying out blood vengeance is fulfillment of filial piety and fulfillment of moral duty for deterring crime and reforming the wrongdoer's character. Confucianism does not propose a systematic theory of blood vengeance after laws have been installed to prohibit act of revenge. As Confucian ethics focuses on virtue cultivation and advocates moral learning over punishment, it may find the Tutuist approach of addressing wrongdoing compatible and complementary. In line with Tutuism, we argue that revenge is not justified because engaging in vengeance fuels negative and obsessive emotions, which undermine virtue and may lead to undesirable results, such as escalation of violence and harming of the innocent. Moreover, we defend that more conditions need to be met than the ones enunciated by the pro-vengeance standpoint to justify an act of revenge.

In this article, we will make the case for an intercultural philosophy of religion with a special focus on interculturality between Chinese and African philosophies. We will provide an overview of the kind of intercultural philosophy that has already been undertaken between the East and the South and point out that a philosophy of religion has been left out. We will then make the case for a global philosophy of religion approach and why Chinese and African philosophies of religion should engage in philosophical interchanges. We will then highlight some directions for carrying out such a philosophy and explain why the problem of evil may be better addressed from an intercultural perspective.