Motsamai Molefe

This is the first book to focus on the concept of human rights in African philosophy and the debates surrounding it. It provides its readers–from policymakers to scholars, from experts in human rights to experts in African philosophy–with a succinct, general guide on the key theorists, themes, and debates on human rights in African philosophy. This book thus offers the reader an alternative to the dominance of the Western perspective on human rights. It begins to make our conversations about human rights, social justice, and human dignity truly global and international.

Molefe revisits texts in African Philosophy that have influenced the discourse of personhood. The focus of the chapter is on three such texts. Firstly, Ifeanyi Menkiti’s thoughts on personhood in his article ‘Person and Community in Traditional African Thought’ are examined. Molefe proceeds to consider Kwame Gyekye’s reflections on personhood and his criticisms of Menkiti’s understanding thereof. Finally, Bernard Matolino’s critical reflections on personhood—in the light of Dedier Kaphagawani and Polycarp Ikuenobe contributions—are discussed. Molefe aims to achieve two things through discussing these texts: (1) to reveal how scholars in African philosophy have historically handled the idea of personhood clumsily; and (2) to clarify the sense in which the concept of personhood will be understood in this book.

The relationship between the idea of personhood and rights is explored by Molefe in this chapter. The aim of this exploration is to investigate whether rights will feature incidentally or significantly in a correct understanding of personhood. Molefe complicates our understanding of the implications of rights and argues that the idea of personhood imagines an alternative moral-political vision built on the primacy of duties. To do so, he draws on Menkiti’s distinction between the minimalist and maximalist conceptions of personhood, attempting to show the political consequences of these two distinct concepts. He concludes that rights hang on the minimalist approach and duties on the maximalist one.

What kind of work can the idea of personhood do in political theory? To answer this question, Molefe, engages with Ikuenobe’s novel approach to the idea of dignity; Ikuenobe defends a communal conception of dignity that grounds it on the normative idea of personhood. Ikuenobe’s aims in doing so are two-fold: Firstly, he seeks to situate the idea of dignity on a more plausible moral ground. He does this by repudiating alternatives that ground dignity solely on some ontological capacity considered outside of the use it is put to—the individualistic approaches. Secondly, Ikuenobe aims to demonstrate that situating the concept of dignity on the grounds of personhood can do valuable political work. However, Molefe argues that dignity cannot be grounded on personhood, for two reasons: (1) The idea of personhood is patently inegalitarian and the idea it seeks to explain—dignity—is egalitarian, at least under modern interpretations of the concept; dignity equalises moral patients and personhood does the opposite. (2) Furthermore, basing dignity on personhood threatens vulnerable groups exemplified by the young and marginal cases, and this should make us hesitant to accept such an approach.

In this chapter, Molefe elaborates the idea of personhood as a moral theory. He conducts this discussion in a three-fold manner: Molefe begins by clarifying the relationship between being human and being a person; three such relationships are discussed. Next, he considers the agent-centred (character-based) nature of this moral theory. Two implications are drawn from the character-based nature of the discourse of personhood: (1) the meta-ethical view of humanism and (2) moral individualism. Finally, Molefe considers the role of social relationships in the moral discourse on personhood. He concludes by interpreting personhood to be a deontological egoistic perfectionist moral theory.

In the introductory chapter, Molefe gives the reader an overview of the philosophical issues central to his book. His focus is the normative idea of personhood in African philosophy; his aim in this work is to draw out the implications of personhood for moral and political theory. The introduction is divided into three sections: In the first, Molefe discusses four concepts of personhood in African philosophy, singling out an agent-centred notion as central to his analysis. The second section examines recent debates regarding personhood in the philosophical literature. Molefe’s aim here is to bring to light under-explored facets of morality and politics. The moral discussion focuses on moral concepts such as options and the meta-ethical debate between partial and impartiality. The political enquiry focuses on the ideas of dignity, rights, and historical injustices. The chapter concludes with an overview of the book.

In this chapter, Molefe explores the way in which the issue of (supererogatory) options affects our understanding of personhood-as-morality. Options, on deontological approaches to morality, delimit morality: they provide room for non-moral pursuits beyond our strict moral duties. Molefe’s central question here is whether the idea of personhood takes morality to be unlimited (anti-supererogatory) or not (supererogatory). He argues that the idea of personhood should be understood as able to accommodate options.

Molefe explores the meta-ethical debate regarding partiality and impartiality in African philosophy, focusing on the implications that personhood has for it. ‘Partiality’ defines morality as essentially accommodating favouritism while ‘impartiality’ defines it as essentially concerned with equality. Molefe’s focus is on whether morality—understood as an achievement of personhood—is best construed in terms of partiality of impartiality. He concludes that personhood entails the former, and that partialism can be further analysed into agent-related and other-centred partialism. The content of these positions is explained, before two criticisms to the idea that personhood entails partiality are addressed.

This book analyses the concepts of moral status and human dignity in African philosophy and applies them to the moral problems associated with death. The book first challenges the criticism and rejection of moral status in African philosophy and then continues to consider how moral personhood is defined in African ethical theories, investigating which entities have full moral status or moral personhood, and are therefore worthy of full ethical consideration. It then applies this theory to the problems associated with death. In the medical context, will an African theory of moral status permit or forbid euthanasia? Do we have moral obligations towards dead human bodies? Overall, the book provides an important African axiological contribution to debates on global ethics and moral philosophy. Providing an important overview of the ethical problems associated with the biological fact of death, this book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of philosophy and African Studies.

This book provides a philosophical exposition of Ubuntu ethics, which is grounded in the understanding that 'a person is a person through other persons'. Written by one of the world's leading scholars of African philosophy, the book first argues that this focus on umuntu (or, a person) in Ubuntu ethics as intrinsically valuable, makes ethical humanism and human dignity vitally important. The book then goes on to consider the role of virtue ethics in driving an ideal of moral perfectionism. This, in turn, provides the basis for what a good society should be: a needs-based political theory. Providing an important guide through Ubuntu ethics as a moral system constructed in terms of moral perfectionism will be an important read for researchers of African philosophy, and of the philosophy of virtue ethics and moral perfectionism more generally.

The article highlights the potential that African and Black Philosophy can contribute towards the debates on human dignity. It facilitates a three-way philosophical conversation among the Western, African, and Black conceptions of human dignity. It is motivated by the skepticism in the African and Black approaches to ethics that reject the view that some ontological capacity can ground intrinsic value, or human dignity. The article distinguishes the merit-based (the African and Black Philosophy) from the capacity-based approaches (the Western philosophy) to human dignity. In light of the comparisons among the three theories of human dignity, the article identifies three important lessons for moral-political philosophy. First, the Western conception of human dignity needs to explain and justify grounding of value on a descriptive feature. Secondly, the Black conception of dignity is a version of virtue-based account of it, which places a prime on resistance and struggle against domination. Finally, the capacity-based approach seems to have moral-theoretic advantages in dealing with issues in bioethics, environmental ethics, and political philosophy, which the African and Black conceptions of human dignity seems not to have.

This chapter considers the status of metaphysical capacities in the debates on personhood and value theory in African philosophy. Specifically, it considers whether metaphysical capacities are morally neutral, instrumentally good or intrinsically good. The inquiry into the status of metaphysical capacities arises because it is important for the concept of human dignity in African thought. This question emerges because there are scholars that reject capacity-based theories of value and personhood (the minimalist view of personhood) for the performance/merit-based theories of value and personhood (the maximalist view of personhood), which debate has implications for the concept of human dignity in African philosophy. This chapter presents Ikuenobe’s personhood/merit-based theory of human dignity, and it further provides three reasons why we should prefer the metaphysical capacity-based theory of human dignity. The capacity-based theory of value has the theoretical advantages of being more useful in bioethical debates, animal ethics and political theory. The chapter argues that there are good moral-political reasons to attach intrinsic value to the metaphysical capacities of our nature, where intrinsic dignity (minimalist personhood) is primary and achievement dignity (maximalist personhood) is secondary in African moral thought.

The introductory chapter gives the reader an overall sense of the book. The book focuses on human dignity in an African context. The chapter aims to convey a sense of the scope of African conceptions of human dignity, their contested nature, and their importance for the broader literature on human dignity. It also motivates and justifies our focus in the book on perspectives and voices from an African context in relation to the subject of human dignity. Finally, it gives the reader a sense of the contributions made by various theorists in this volume on African conceptions of human dignity.

This book is a contribution to African philosophy, by philosophers focusing specifically on the concept of human dignity in ethical theory. The concept of ‘human dignity’ denotes the intrinsic and superlative worth associated with human beings in virtue of which we owe them utmost moral regard. Although dignity is a foundational concept for African philosophy, there remains scant literature in African philosophy dedicated to critical and systematic reflection on the concept of human dignity. This volume responds to this lacuna by bringing together chapters that offer philosophical exposition, defense (or even rejection) and application of the concept of human dignity in light of intellectual resources in African cultures, such as ubuntu, personhood, and serithi.

The chapter provides the reader with one way to approach and understand African moral philosophy. It pivots African moral philosophy on the concepts of personhood. It identifies these concepts of personhood in the salient axiological concept of Ubuntu, which is typically explained in terms of the saying “a person is a person through other persons.” In relation to the first two instances of the concepts of personhood in the saying, it identifies three crucial themes of African moral philosophy. First, it identifies foundational issues relating the source and the nature of moral value as secular and construes morality to be derived from human nature. In relation to foundations, it further clarifies that African ethics is a dignity-based ethics. Second, it identifies and elucidates the final good to revolve around the pursuit and acquisition of virtue or excellence. Finally, it considers the robustness of African moral philosophy by considering how it can account for right action, the debate on partiality and impartiality and the status and place of animals in African moral philosophy.

This paper evaluates Caesar Alimsinya Atuire’s essay “African Perspectives of Moral Status: A Framework for Evaluating Global Bioethical Issues”. Atuire’s essay aims to contribute to global ethical discourse by articulating a systematic account of an African ethical perspective, specifically focusing on the themes of personhood, moral status and the legal question of abortion. We make three objections against Atuire’s essay. Firstly, we argue that a plausible approach to African personhood must consider both its individualistic and relational features, rather than merely emphasize the relational component. The second objection focuses on the theory of moral status, and it has two parts: (a) we insist that a correct understanding of the concept of moral status must construe it as a moral patiency rather than a moral agency term. We believe that Atuire’s view errs in regarding it as the latter. (b) we argue that contrary to Atuire’s assertions, Thaddeus Metz’s friendliness theory of moral status does a better job than Atuire’s object moral status (OMS) and subject moral status (SMS) views of moral status. The final objection is that maybe before we reflect on the legal status of abortion, as ethicists, we should begin by considering the ethical status of abortion in light of African axiological resources. In the final analysis, the paper appreciates Atuire’s contribution to African ethical theory, but it argues that much work still needs to be done before it can be suitable to provide a global framework for evaluating global bioethical issues.

The Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are typically recognized as the world’s major monotheistic religions. However, African Traditional Religion is, despite often including lesser spirits and gods, a monotheistic religion with numerous adherents in sub-Saharan Africa; it includes the idea of a single most powerful God responsible for the creation and sustenance of everything else. This Element focuses on drawing attention to this major world religion that has been much neglected by scholars around the globe, particularly those working in the West or Northern Hemisphere. It accomplishes this primarily by bringing it into conversation with topics in the Anglo-American philosophy of religion.

This paper reflects on Bernard Matolino’s contribution to philosophy. For heuristic purposes, I stipulate a distinction between what we may call the negative and positive projects when considering a philosopher’s body of work. The ‘negative project’ of a philosopher’s work involves his critical engagement with the extant literature in his discipline. There will be leading thinkers, theories or even schools of thought at any given time and in any discipline. One of the ways the voice and perspectives of a thinker emerges is through critical interaction with these thinkers, theories and schools of thought. I describe this part of the researcher’s work as ‘negative’ largely because it involves criticism, revision or even outright rejection of certain ideas/views/arguments in the literature. The positive project of the philosopher’s work focuses on his own distinctive and novel contribution to the field. Beyond criticism, revisions and repudiation of others’ ideas/views, a philosopher might also want to posit their own ideas or theories in the discipline. A careful reading of Matolino’s work will reveal both dimensions, the negative and positive projects. The aim of this paper is to throw a spotlight on Matolino’s work by focusing on the negative project as his contribution to African philosophy (without suggesting that there is no positive project in his corpus in philosophy).

This introductory chapter explains the rationale for the publication of this collected volume and provides an overview of the general philosophical problems which these contributions confront. We characterise two distinct approaches to political philosophy which distinguish different chapters. While the first set of authors may be said to take an objective view of needs, most often grounded, in necessary features of personhood, the second set of accounts leave needs politically contested. We argue that these two distinct approaches are, if not consistent, certainly complementary, while outlining and situating the major themes of the distinctively African political theories in this volume.

This chapter, contrary to moderate, radical and limited communitarians’ attempts to include and defend human rights in African political thought, shifts our attention to the primacy of needs in African political thought. It does so by appeal primarily to the ethical concept of personhood in African philosophy. It offers an interpretation of the relationship between ethics and politics inherent in the normative concept of personhood, which has tended to be construed to entail the politics of human rights. To unfold a novel interpretation of politics in relation to the ethical notion of personhood, it relies on Menkiti’s philosophical writings that points us to the politics of duties. It proceeds to explain the importance of duties in the political thought associated with Afro-communitarianism in terms of the primacy of needs. The basic insight that emerges in this chapter is that the provision of basic needs is indispensable for the kind of agency required for the achievement of personhood.

This chapter explores the place of agent-centred duties in African philosophy. To do so, I investigate influential moral theories in the literature, namely: Kwasi Wiredu’s ‘sympathetic impartiality’, Kwame Gyekye’s ‘moderate communitarianism’ and Thad Metz’s ‘friendship’ principle. This chapter ultimately demonstrates that these moral theories fail to imagine a place for agent-centred duties in their moral frame. The problem, I suggest, is the tendency to construe morality entirely in other-regarding terms, which is not surprising in a moral culture that tends to prize the community over the individual. This chapter is one way to challenge the literature to re-think the importance of collective goods in light of imagining some place for agent-centred duties.

This book focuses on the domains of moral philosophy, political philosophy, and political theory within African philosophy. At the heart of the volume is a call to imagine African political philosophy as embodying a needs-based political vision. While discourses in African political philosophy have fixated on the normative framework of human rights law to articulate demands for social and global justice, this book charts a new frontier in African political thought by turning from ‘rights’ to ‘needs.’ The authors aim to re-orient discourses in African philosophy beyond the impasse of rights-based confrontations to shift the conversation toward needs as a cornerstone of African political theory.

The article explores the place and status of the normative concept of personhood in Kwasi Wiredu’s moral philosophy. It begins by distinguishing an ethic from an ethics, where one involves cultural values and the other strict moral values. It proceeds to argue, by a careful exposition of Wiredu’s moral philosophy, that he locates personhood as an essential aspect of communalism [an ethic], and it specifies culture-specific standards of excellence among traditional African societies. I conclude the article by considering one implication of the conclusion, which is that personhood embodies cultural values of excellence concerning the place and status of partiality in Wiredu’s moral philosophy. Keywords: Afro-communitarianism, agent-centred personhood, Ethic, Ethics, Kwasi Wiredu, Partiality Personhood.

Our aims are to articulate some core philosophical positions characteristic of Traditional African Religion and to argue that they merit consideration as monotheist rivals to standard interpretations of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. In particular, we address the topics of how God’s nature is conceived, how God’s will is meant to bear on human decision making, where one continues to exist upon the death of one’s body, and how long one is able to exist without a body. For each of these topics, we note how Traditional African Religion posits claims that clash with mainstream Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and that, being prima facie plausible, indicate the need for systematic cross-cultural philosophical debate.

This article is a response to Bernard Matolino’s criticisms against Ifeanyi Menkiti’s elucidations on the normative notion of personhood in African philosophy. This article argues that Menkiti’s article is best understood to be ultimately focused on articulating the normative notion of personhood; so understood, Menkiti’s analysis eschews many of the objections made against it by Matolino. We show that the confusion lies in a general failure in African philosophy to distinguish three distinct senses of the notion of a person. We further show how the referent ‘it’ as used to pick out infants by Menkiti, contrary to Matolino’s analysis that suggests that it is an instance of ‘mal-function’ may be charitably construed to be capturing the idea that infants have moral status and/or that they are morally neutral. A defense of Menkiti’s idea of personhood is crucial in a search for a robust African perfectionist ethics.