In African society today, ubuntu as a notion of African humanism has been, and still is, subject to critical discussion. In African literature, philosophy, ethics, anthropology and theology, ubuntu plays a vast role and scholars in Africa and globally find the notion highly debated. The concept of identity development on the African continent has been written about broadly. This article unpacks the ubuntu philosophies of Augustine Shutte, Kwame Gyekye and John Mbiti. The views of these scholars will be contrasted to (...) critically engage the conceivable commonalities for identity development through cultures. The question addressed herein is: What are the similarities and dissimilarities of ubuntu as a cornerstone for identity development in modern Africa? This article also examines the divergent definition and historical development of ubuntu culture, ubuntu philosophy of identity development, environmental development and various thinkers’ understanding of this African worldview in current Africa and further afield. Contribution: This research contributes to African theological ethics of the new landscape identity and explores the ubuntu worldviews as a developmental process of identities across cultures. Since identity development across cultures is highly dynamic, the hermeneutical interpretation of the principles of ubuntu is crucial. (shrink)

In our multicultural, globalised and increasingly postmodern world, people live within competing and contradicting philosophies, and the question of ethics becomes extremely pertinent. It is within this context that this article sheds light on ethics by comparing ubuntu, as part of the African philosophical tradition, and transimmanence, as part of the Western deconstructionist philosophical tradition. As divergent as these traditions may be, ethics are a key feature in both and a crucial point of overlap. Notions of identity, personhood, the community (...) and sense (meaning), for example, play a pivotal role in ubuntu and transimmanence. A reading of these two contrasting philosophical traditions (ubuntu and transimmanence), each through the lens of the other, helps one to develop a better understanding of each of these traditions with regard to their respective ethics and eventually to develop a better understanding of ethics per se. (shrink)

This paper discusses one particular way we may put the idea of sharing in ubuntu philosophy into practice: moderate selflessness. Moderate selflessness is an important tool that might help us pursue other‐regarding behaviour alongside the agent's genuine well‐being interests to help disrupt the antagonistic gap between humanity and nonhumanity. I suggest that, properly understood, moderate selflessness may provide conceptual resources to avoid antagonistic environmental practices, including the concerns of poverty and biodiversity loss.

In this paper, I address human-induced environmental ills we face using an ubuntu-inspired ethical lens. I follow ubuntu scholars to stress the significance for moral agents to embody virtues. Virtue development is essential to carry out obligations and address human impacts on the environment. Thaddeus Metz, in particular, has drawn attention to how embodying ubuntu virtues of humility and friendliness can prompt moral agents to be other-regarding. The view I developed in this paper differs from his ubuntu-inspired account in at (...) least two significant ways. First, humans cannot be in harmonious relationships with some species such as Black Mambas, Hyenas and sea urchins even if they can interact. Second, we must acknowledge the consequentialist dimension of ubuntu ethics and prioritise the different aspects of ubuntu ‘mixed’ ethics, ranking them to offer possibilities for a more realistic recommendation to change our moral life. This paper demonstrates that the three dimensions of ubuntu ‘mixed’ ethics are fundamental because we need to think about moral consequences, right action and our virtue in accounting for our actions. (shrink)

Faced with the ongoing tragedy of poverty, ethicists call for effective measures of global justice to set up just institutional structures. Their arguments for a transnational obligation to help however remain contested, one of the main reasons for that being the lack of motivational support for trans-national visions of global justice. This articles suggests that the debate will gain new and helpful insights if it studies the motivational mechanisms at work in the dominant religious and cultural traditions, asking: How do (...) these particular traditions conceive of social justice; how do they motivate their adherents to extend solidarity? And how can the similarities surfacing in their motivational strategies be informative for the quest to devise a motivationally saturated account of global justice? The article demonstrates the potential of such an concrete-universal discourse in an exemplary manner by staging a dialogue between public Christian Social Ethics and African Ubuntu Ethics. (shrink)

At present, the debate on global justice, a debate which is at the core of global ethics, is largely being conducted by European and American scholars from different disciplines without taking into account views and concepts from other regions of the world, particularly, from the Global South. The lack of a truly intercultural, interreligious, and international exchange of ideas provokes doubts whether the concepts of global justice introduced so far are able to transcend regional and cultural horizons. The article introduces (...) concepts of justice from African scholars, whose voices have remained marginal until now, like the Kenyan philosopher Henry Odera Oruka, the Ethiopian philosopher Teodros Kiros, and the debate on ubuntu, one of the most controversial concepts in southern Africa today. These concepts focus on issues that are seldom considered in the debate on global justice, such as the importance of bodily needs as a prerequisite for human beings to act as moral beings and the importance of human rel.. (shrink)