Thaddeus Metz

I aim to make headway towards understanding how to compensate properly for epistemic injustices committed during large-scale forms of intergroup domination, with my focus being European colonialism in much of Africa and apartheid in South Africa. I point out that there is a wide array of suggestions about how concretely to effect reparations for these injustices in the literature, and seek to discover which (if any) are justified by a plausible theory of compensatory justice. One potential theory is the principle that people done an injustice should be put into the position they would have been in had the injustice not occurred, while another is to give wrongfully harmed peoples control over what had been taken away from them. These principles have frequently been applied to major racial injustices pertaining to property and opportunity, but I present new reason to think that both have counterintuitive implications when applied to epistemic injustices. Drawing on values and practices salient in parts of South America and Africa as well as some Anglo-American thought about restorative justice, I advance a unique third account of compensatory justice in general that I show both avoids the criticisms facing rivals and has plausible implications for how to respond to the relevant epistemic injustices in particular.

In What Is a Person? Nancy Jecker and Caesar Atuire aim to resolve what they call the “conundrum of personhood,” the fact that many Western philosophers have the intuition that there is a superlative and equal moral worth for at least all living human beings, but that, with the decline of religious approaches positing a soul, Western philosophers have lacked the theoretical resources to account for it. Jecker and Atuire maintain that the intuition can plausibly be accounted for upon drawing on relational approaches to ethics suggested by the African philosophical tradition in a particular, novel manner. Granting the intuition for the sake of argument, in this article I cast doubt on the ability of Jecker and Atuire’s appeal to certain actual relationships between human beings to entail and explain it, concluding that a more promising strategy would appeal to our capacity to relate in such ways.

When thinking about life’s meaning as a highly desirable final value, a very large majority of contemporary work in English-speaking philosophy has focused on the life of an individual human person. When thinking about the meaningfulness of the life of such a person, it has been common to maintain that we have in mind a cluster of related properties such as making a difference, achieving a purpose higher than one’s own subjective well-being, making sense, doing something that merits pride or admiration, and authoring a compelling life-story. In addition, many philosophers hold that, in order to exhibit these properties, one would be wise to ensure that the parts of one’s life cohere over time. In this article I consider whether similar considerations apply at the group level. That is, I answer the questions of whether it is possible for a group such as a people, state, or lineage to exhibit the final value of meaning in its existence and, if so, whether coherence in the life of the group is likewise crucial for the realization of its meaning. I conclude that there are good reasons to think that groups can be bearers of meaning, which reasons have the implication that it is unlikely that the human race as a whole can be such a bearer, at least not in the same, robust ways.

In her essay, “Global Knowledge Frameworks and the Tasks of Cross-Cultural Philosophy,” Leigh Jenco proposes that certain knowledge frameworks may, in virtue of their accessibility to erstwhile outsiders, be more congenial to the aims of cross-cultural philosophy. Her co-symposiasts use Jenco’s essay to further the discussion on different aspects of this claim. Steve Fuller contests whether postcolonialism is the right lens through which cross-cultural encounters should be studied. David H. Kim suggests that an inclusive multifactorial account of frameworks relevant to cross-cultural philosophy may be more apt for the aims of this sub-discipline. Thaddeus Metz seeks to provide reason to doubt Jenco’s self-transformative conception, and also advance another, pluralist conception of knowledge. Miljana Milojevic reinterprets Jenco’s knowledge frameworks as different conceptualizations of knowledge used in attempts to justify the neglect of non-Western traditions.

When it comes to the question of how much the state ought to punish a given offender, the standard understanding of the desert theory for centuries has been that it should give him a penalty proportionate to his offense, that is, an amount of punishment that fits the severity of his crime. In this article, we maintain that a desert theorist is not conceptually or otherwise required to hold a proportionality requirement. We show that there is logical space for at least two other, non-proportionate ways of meting out deserved penalties, and we also argue that they have important advantages relative to the dominant, proportionality approach.

I aim to make headway towards understanding how to compensate properly for epistemic injustices committed during large-scale forms of intergroup domination, with my focus being European colonialism in much of Africa and apartheid in South Africa. I point out that there is a wide array of suggestions about how concretely to effect reparations for these injustices in the literature, and seek to discover which (if any) are justified by a plausible theory of compensatory justice. One potential theory is the principle that people done an injustice should be put into the position they would have been in had the injustice not occurred, while another is to give wrongfully harmed peoples control over what had been taken away from them. These principles have frequently been applied to major racial injustices pertaining to property and opportunity, but I present new reason to think that both have counterintuitive implications when applied to epistemic injustices. Drawing on values and practices salient in parts of South America and Africa as well as some Anglo-American thought about restorative justice, I advance a unique third account of compensatory justice in general that I show both avoids the criticisms facing rivals and has plausible implications for how to respond to the relevant epistemic injustices in particular.

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, and suggest some other argumentative strategies that those interested in this fascinating topic might pursue elsewhere in more depth.

In a recent article in this journal, Peter Mwipikeni argues that Thaddeus Metz’s appeal to an African relational ethic to suggest reforms that would promote global economic justice is misguided. According to Mwipikeni, the problem is that Metz’s ideas are offered within the context of a “racialised world order” that is fundamentally and structurally unjust. Without first tearing the current system down, there can be no true economic justice on the African continent, while those benefiting from the racism would not accept Metz's prescriptions. We counter that Mwipikeni’s critique mistakenly evaluates Metz’s proposed reforms based on the likelihood that they would be adopted, instead of on whether they would promote justice in principle, where such a critique in fact plagues Mwipikeni’s own, more radical proposals to a much greater degree. We also argue that incorporating more aspects of Metz’s communal ethic into the discussion demonstrates that it would in fact reject any racist system, including by forbidding such a system in the first place and subsequently prescribing compensation for its victims if it did arise.

In this article we provide a theoretical reconstruction of sub‐Saharan ethics that we argue is a strong competitor to typical Western approaches to morality. According to our African moral theory, actions are right roughly insofar as they are a matter of living harmoniously with others or honouring communal relationships. After spelling out this ethic, we apply it to several issues in both normative and empirical research into morality. With regard to normative research, we compare and contrast this African moral theory with utilitarianism and Kantianism in the context of several practical issues. With regard to empirical research, we compare and contrast our sub‐Saharan ethic with several of Lawrence Kohlberg’s views on the nature of morality. Our aim is to highlight respects in which the African approach provides a unitary foundation for a variety of normative and empirical conclusions that are serious alternatives to dominant Western views.

In this article, I draw on the neglected tradition of African political and legal philosophy to address the sort of representative democracy suitable for twenty-first century urban societies. In particular, I present and evaluate for a global audience consensualism about democracy, the view that some kind of unanimous agreement amongst elected legislators should normally be a necessary condition for a statute to count as valid law. After expounding this view, which is more or less the default in the African philosophical tradition, I present a new argument for it by drawing on a plausible communal ethic, contend that this argument is a better explanation of why consensualism might be justified than extant moral rationales, draw on the ethic to explain why consensualism might not be unconditionally justified and might be unjust in certain circumstances, and finally defend consensualism from major objections that have recently been made and remain as yet unanswered.

For the more than a decade, I have advanced an account of what makes persons, animals, and other beings entitled to moral treatment for their own sake that is informed by characteristically African ideas about dignity, a great chain of being, and community. Roughly according to this account, a being has a greater moral status, the more it is capable of communing (as a subject) or of us communing with it (as an object). I have mainly argued that this characteristically African and relational approach to moral status is a better account than salient Western approaches, especially individualist views associated with utilitarianism and Kantianism. Over the years, several commentators have raised criticisms of my approach, including that it objectionably: entails that we may rightly dominate mentally incapacitated human beings; prioritizes mentally incapacitated human beings over animals with similar cognitive abilities without sufficient justification; entails that intelligent aliens lack moral status; cannot make sense of our duties towards the dead; and is unable to account for the standing of species as distinct from their members. In this chapter I provide a comprehensive response to these and related objections, defending the initial account as an attractive way to understand what makes a being matter morally for non-instrumental reasons.

In the literature on African moral philosophy, it is common to find normative conclusions about the way we ought to act directly drawn from purported metaphysical facts about the nature of ourselves and the world. For example, Kwame Gyekye, the most influential sub-Saharan political philosopher, attempts to defend moderate communitarianism, roughly the view that agents have strong duties to support others in ways that do not violate human rights, by contending that it follows from the dual nature of the self as both social and individual. In this article, I critically analyze this sort of rationale, and contend that it is unsound. I propose several reconstructions, but conclude that they cannot plausibly bridge the ‘is-ought gap’, and that similar arguments found in the field of African ethics, such as the frequent claim we must treat nature with respect since everything in the universe is interdependent, also fail to do so.

I consider a certain ethical quandary that arises upon loving another person in order to reduce one’s loneliness. Specifically, I suppose that there is something right about the Frankfurt School psychologist and social philosopher Erich Fromm’s powerful dictum that an infantile love takes the form of ‘I love you because I need you’, whereas a mature love is typified by ‘I need you because I love you’. On the face of it, it seems that loving another person to reduce one’s loneliness would unavoidably be an instance of the infantile form. However, after spelling out this challenge, I advance three responses to it, that is, three ways one could love to reduce one’s loneliness while successfully avoiding an infantile form. One strategy involves drawing a distinction between treating another merely as a means and treating another as a means, a second between reducing loneliness as an end of love and as a constraint on it, and a third between reducing loneliness as a final end and as an intermediate end towards the benefit of the beloved.

Drawing on ideas principally from contemporary Anglo-American and Continental philosophers, I strive to help readers understand which kinds of lives can exhibit meaning, how meaning relates to other human values, and which major ways there are to produce meaning or, conversely, reduce it. I begin by analyzing the concept of life’s meaning, discussing issues such as how meaning differs from modern construals of happiness and morality, how choiceworthy meaning is relative to other values, and what reasons of meaning entail for which decisions to make and emotions to feel. Next, I work to clarify how the life of an individual person could acquire or miss out on meaning, and do so by familiarizing the reader with salient philosophical distinctions such as subjective/objective and naturalist/supernaturalist. After that I address whether, and, if so, how humanity as a group might be or become meaningful. Although it might be thought that only a God-oriented perspective would make sense of how the human race could have a purpose, I point out that there are non-theist accounts on offer. I conclude the essay by considering how the meaning of the species and that of the individual might relate to each other, and I suggest that, if there were a meaning for the human race as a whole, an individual person’s meaning is unlikely reducible to what would help to realize it.

In the course of expounding his ideal of a decent society, Avishai Margalit provides an account of what justifies respect or, relatedly, forbids humiliation, and he thoughtfully specifies revealing instances of humiliation in a variety of institutions that render a society indecent. About his position, I make two claims. One is that there are logical gaps between Margalit’s account of what it is about human beings that warrants respect and of why it is wrong to humiliate them, on the one hand, and many of his examples of humiliation, on the other. The latter ought to be informed by the former, but I argue that it often appears that what it is that entitles us to non-humiliation on Margalit’s view––centrally our capacity to repent––cannot ground what intuitively counts as humiliation for both him and many readers. My second claim is that an alternative conception of what it is about human nature that warrants non-humiliating treatment can close this gap. Drawing on underappreciated relational values salient in the Global South, I advance the view that human dignity inheres in the capacity to be party to harmonious relationships, and show that it is plausibly this capacity that is degraded by the forms of humiliation that Margalit revealingly addresses.

The chapter initially provides a brief overview of African epistemology, partly to acquaint the reader with the field and partly to show that introspection as a distinct source of knowledge has yet to receive sustained consideration in it. The rest of the essay expounds and motivates as prima facie plausible the characteristically African view that one’s personal identity is essentially (even if not exhaustively) relational in some way, and it argues that, if one’s self were indeed relational, then introspection would be of little use in learning particularities about a person, such as who she is as essentially distinct from others and even whether she continues to exist. The essay concludes that there has been unacknowledged good reason for the African tradition not to have highlighted introspection as a distinct source of knowledge, at least when it comes to knowledge of the self.

I consider whether a vitalist axiology, widely accepted in the African philosophical tradition, especially among religionists, can make adequate sense of evil, understood as what is bad in itself. I provide an important reason for thinking that it cannot, which African philosophers of religion and ethicists have yet to address. The reason is that a vitalist approach must construe evil as the reduction or other lack of vitality, while some evil conditions, such as cancer or torture, cannot be adequately understood in those terms. Some bad states consist of the presence of an undesirable condition and not merely the absence of a desirable condition such as vitality. After replying to some responses on behalf of vitalism, I conclude that it cannot fully account for why evil might be a problem for God’s existence or for how to understand the quality of human life, and I also sketch some other avenues African philosophers might take that are more promising.