African Moral Theory.pptx

© 2015 MONASH SOUTH AFRICA
CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY
WEEK 4, AFRICAN MORAL THEORY
AZA1371, Semester 1, 2019

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INTRODUCTION: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WESTERN AND AFRICAN VIEWS OF ETHICS
• Recall that all ethical theories are trying to find a normative principle that could tell us what all
good actions have in common.
• Consequentialism says that principle is maximising the good for the majority of people
• Deontology says that principle is our sense of moral law.
• Virtue ethics says that principle is that all good actions have virtuous agents; therefore we need
to cultivate virtue.
• But in all of these theories something fundamental is missing
• A point that is at the heart of African moral theory or Ubuntu

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• A crucial distinction thus exists between the African view of man and the view of man found in
Western thought :
• In the African view it is the community which defines the person as a person, not some isolated
static quality of rationality, will, or memory.

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• In African thought persons become persons only after a process of incorporation .
• Without incorporation into this or that community, individuals are considered to be mere danglers
to whom the description 'person' does not fully apply .
• For personhood is something which has to be achieved, and is not given simply because one is
born of human seed .

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• In the African understanding, priority is given to the duties which individuals owe to the
collectivity,
• and their rights, whatever these may be, are seen as secondary to their exercise of their duties.
• By focusing on the notion of personhood as a process, they also emphasize that personhood is
a value that needs to be cultivated.
• Personhood, in other words, is not given.

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AFRICAN ETHICS: TOWARDS A NORMATIVE PRINCIPLE
• What do we mean by “African ethics”?
• Values associated with the largely black and Bantu-speaking peoples residing in the sub-
Saharan part of the continent.
─ “In the literature on African ethics, one finds relatively little that consists of normative
theorization with regard to right action, that is, the articulation and justification of a
comprehensive, basic norm that is intended to account for what all permissible acts have in
common as distinct from impermissible ones.”

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CAN WE COME UP WITH A THEORY OF AFRICAN ETHICS”
• Can ”we present an ethical principle that not only grows out of African soil and differs from what
is widespread in the west but also is specific and complete”?
• What do you think?

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ETHICS OF UBUNTU
• Literally means “a person is a person through other persons”
• This maxim has descriptive and prescriptive senses
─ Descriptive sense: One’s identity as a human being causally and even metaphysically depends
on a community.
─ Prescriptive sense: One ought to be a mensch. That is, one should support the community in a
certain way

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THE NORMATIVE SENSE OF UBUNTU IN DESMOND TUTU’S
WORDS
• “When we want to give high praise to someone we say, “Yu, u nobuntu”; “Hey, so-and-so has
ubuntu.” Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and
compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably
bound up in yours.”

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SOME MORAL INTUITIONS COMMON BETWEEN WESTERN AND AFRICAN
ETHICS: MORAL WRONGNESS OF
•A. killing innocent people for money.
•B. having sex with someone without her consent.
•C. Deceiving people, at least when not done in self- or other-defence.
•D. Stealing (that is, to take from their rightful owner) unnecessary goods.
•E. Violating trust, for example, break a promise, for marginal personal gain.
•F. discriminating on a racial basis when allocating opportunities.

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SOME MORAL INTUITIONS MORE PREDOMINANT IN THE
AFRICAN TRADITIONS: WRONGNESS OF
• 1) Making policy decisions in the face of dissent, as opposed to seeking consensus.
• “In many small-scale African communities, discussion continues until a compromise is found
and all in the discussion agree with the outcome.”

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SOME MORAL INTUITIONS MORE PREDOMINANT IN THE AFRICAN TRADITIONS: WEALTH
AND ITS RELATION TO THE COMMUNITY
• 2) Creating wealth largely on a competitive basis, as opposed to a cooperative one.
• one continues to find contemporary African thinkers railing against Western “brash
competitiveness,” “single-minded commercialism,” “unbridled individualism,” and “morally
blind, purely economic logic,” instead tending to favour certain kinds of cooperatives.

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SOME MORAL INTUITIONS MORE PREDOMINANT IN THE AFRICAN TRADITIONS: ONE’S
DUTY TOWARD ONE’S COMMUNITY
• 3) ignoring others and violating communal norms as opposed to acknowledging others,
upholding tradition and partaking in rituals as
• Augustine Shutte in his study of ubuntu notes a survey that was taken of two groups of nuns at
a convent. After the obligatory chores and praying were done, the study found that the German
nuns often continued to work by knitting or sewing, while the African nuns did not and instead
spent time in conversation.
• The study noted that each group of sisters deemed the other morally lacking;

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ONE’S DUTY TOWARD COMMUNITY
• the Germans judged the Africans insufficiently diligent, while the Africans considered the
Germans to objectionably care more about practical matters than about people.
• More generally, it is common among Africans, and more so than among Westerners, to think that
one has some moral obligation to engage with one’s fellows and to support the community’s way
of life.
What are your thoughts?

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UBUNTU AS A MORAL THEORY
• Based on these intuitions, some of which shared between Westerners and Africans, and others
more dominant in African traditions, could we come up with an African moral theory based on the
ideal of ubuntu?
Thaddeus Metz thinks we can

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FIRST VERSION
• “An action is right just insofar as it respects a person’s dignity; an act is wrong to the extent that
it degrades humanity.”
─ But what is the difference between this principle and Kantian ethics?

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IN CLARIFYING WHAT HUMAN DIGNITY FROM AN AFRICAN
VIEW MEANS GODFREY ONAH WRITES:
• “At the centre of traditional African morality is human life. Africans have a sacred reverence for
life. . . . To protect and nurture their lives, all human beings are inserted within a given
community. . . .
• “The promotion of life is therefore the determinant principle of African traditional morality and this
promotion is guaranteed only in the community. Living harmoniously within a community is
therefore a moral obligation ordained by God for the promotion of life.”

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HOWEVER, THE PROBLEM WITH THIS PRINCIPLE IS THAT
• If respect means treating human life as the most important intrinsic value in the world, then it
cannot easily account for the wrongness of deceiving and breaking promises ,for such actions
need not eradicate, impair or degrade life.
• In addition, it is unclear how respect for life provides reason to seek consensus when
establishing policy or to cooperate rather than compete when generating wealth.

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VERSION 2 OF UBUNTU-BASED ETHICS
“An action is right just insofar as it promotes the well-being of others; an act is wrong to the extent
that it fails to enhance the welfare of one’s fellows.”
─ This principle sounds very utilitarians
─ “The problem facing this construal of ubuntu is the problem facing any utilitarianism: an
exclusively consequentialist focus on human well-being has notorious difficulties grounding
constraints, for example, against stealing or discriminating as means to the greater good.

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VERSION 3
• “An action is right just insofar as it promotes the well-being of others without violating their rights;
an act is wrong to the extent that it either violates rights or fails to enhance the welfare of one’s
fellows without violating rights.”
─ this theory has difficulty accounting for all the intuitions at stake. In particular, consensus,
cooperation, and tradition, which are pro tanto morally desirable from an African perspective,

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METZ’S SIXTH VERSION OF UBUNTU-BASED MORAL
THEORY
• “An action is right just insofar as it produces harmony and reduces discord; an act is wrong to
the extent that it fails to develop community.”

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TUTU EXPRESSES IT IN THE FOLLOWING CHARACTERIZATION
OF UBUNTU:
• “Harmony, friendliness, community are great goods. Social harmony is for us the summum
bonum—the greatest good.
• “Anything that subverts or undermines this sought-after good is to be avoided like the plague.”
• “Anger, resentment, lust for revenge, even success through aggressive competitiveness, are
corrosive of this good.”

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WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF
THIS APPROACH TO MORALITY?

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FOR FURTHER STUDIES
• Https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/african-ethics/
• https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2007.00280.x

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