African/Africana Philosophy

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.

In this discussion, I engage the politics of intention to explore how structural racism structures the production of meaning and the practice of reason. Building on María Lugones's analysis of intention formation as a form of practical reasoning, I explore the reasoning at work during the 2011 Stand Your Ground (SYG) hearing of black survivor of domestic violence, Marissa Alexander, to contend that structural racism—in this case, both intimate personal violence and intimate state violence against black women—enacts race/gender domination through (...) projecting constructed intentions onto black women as a strategy to rationalize punishing black women. I also discuss two key black feminist critiques of reason—Patricia Hill Collins’ discussion of “controlling images” (2000) and Michelle Cliff's concept of the “mythic mind” (1982)—to propose controlling intentions as a framework to theorize how structural racism produces fictive intentions used to rationalize the criminal punishment of survival and justify that outcome as common sense. (shrink)

African ethicists have so far not agreed on a single, precise, secular and comprehensive basic norm, an Afro-Grundnorm, which captures the core values of Ubuntu sub-Saharan African cosmopolitanism. This article constructs and proffers the ‘double-dignity’ Grundnorm that partly shares with Western stoic cosmopolitans the view that our common human ontological capacity for autonomy identifies us as members of the human species. This capacity grants our first dignity, inherent dignity. Inherent dignity only grants our universal basic (security and subsistence) rights. Our (...) duties to care of each other derive from the second dignity, acquired dignity. Acquired dignity itself derives from our second ontological capacity, our capacity for communion. Unlike inherent dignity, acquired dignity is neither universal nor automatically present in us. It is earned when we commune with others in fostering harmony as we earn ‘full personhood’. Since fostering harmony starts with nurturing communal identities and solidarities, Ubuntu entails efficiency-model moderate cosmopolitanism which permits prioritizing serving our immediate associates or compatriots not because of their special moral worthiness but because we more efficiently serve humanity at large when we do so. (shrink)

Portuguese translation by Igor Bessa dos Reis and Jordana Naves Ripoll Craveiro of ‘Toward an African Moral Theory’.

In late eighteenth-century West Africa, cycles of increasing violence and slave raiding sparked a desire for new modes of political organization. In the Sahel a.

This paper will reflect on the possibility of epistemic decolonization, particularly in terms of curriculum, as a transformative educational process in the context of the South African university, and with respect to my own positionality. The argument will centre around two difficult interdependent positions. On the one hand I will argue for the university’s task as transformational, even offering, via Cornel West, the ‘salvific’ possibility that knowledge offers those who seek it. To develop this claim, I will draw on and (...) develop the notion of paideia though the work of Plato and Heidegger.On the other hand, within the postcolonial African university, the question of decolonization in the tertiary space cannot be elided, particularly since the 2015 #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements. The university is a powerful colonial relic, and it can be used to reinforce and perpetuate epistemic violence through unreflective or unconscious pedagogical and curriculum decisions. Here I draw on decolonial thinkers such as Santos, Mignolo, Maldonado-Torres and Mbembe: I argue for a reckoning with the forces of coloniality, and advocate for epistemic justice and criticality, as part of the decolonizing project. In conclusion, working with ideas from Cornel West, I argue to reconcile paideia, as the ‘turning of the soul’, with the decolonizing African university. (shrink)

The topic of abortion was in the limelight again in Dobbs v Jackson, where the US Supreme Court overturned the decision of Roe v Wade, ‘which guaranteed women and pregnant people a constitutional right to abortion’. While not bound by the judgment, this gives us an opportunity to reflect on the current law in South Africa which regulates the termination of pregnancy. The primary piece of legislation which governs abortion is the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act. Section 2 of (...) the Act lists the grounds under which one may lawfully terminate a pregnancy. One of those grounds relates to the period of the 13th up until the 20th week of the gestation period, and states that if a medical practitioner, after consultation with the pregnant woman, is of the opinion that the continued pregnancy would significantly affect the social or economic circumstances of the woman, then the pregnancy may be lawfully terminated. The question is: What exactly is meant by ‘social grounds’? This article considers this aspect from a legal perspective and attempts to provide clarity on the issue, in the hope that this will be of assistance to medical practitioners who are concerned about the outcome of their actions, when assisting persons in this position. (shrink)

This book focuses on informed consent in African Traditional Medicine (ATM). ATM forms a large portion of the healthcare systems in Africa. WHO statistics show that as much as 80% of the population in Africa uses traditional medicine for primary health care. With such a large constituency, it follows that ATM and its practices should receive more attention in bioethics. By comparing the ethics of care approach with the ATM approach to Relational Autonomy In Consent (RAIC), the authors argue that (...) the ATM focus on consent based on consensus constitutes a legitimate informed consent. This book is distinctive insofar as it employs the ethics of care as a hermeneutic to interpret ATM. The analysis examines the ethics of care movement in Western bioethics to explore its relational approach to informed consent. Additionally, this is the first known study that discusses healthcare ethics committees in ATM. (shrink)

The moral experience is a reality in every social and cultural life, with variations being in the interpretations given to experience. A people’s value system defines their identity. Consequently, this paper interrogates an example of an African theory of moral value against a moral developmental model, using the philosophical, expositional, analytical and comparative methods. The reflections in this paper focus on the Yoruba cultural context in Nigeria. The paper posits a relationship between a moral value system and development. It argues (...) that the inability of the Nigerian state to attain enviable developmental status can be attributed to moral decadence, apart from inept leadership, ethnicity, antagonism, endless vendetta, political jingoism and cultural sub-nationalism. Since the goal of morality is peaceful co-existence, harmonious interaction, social cohesion and character development, the paper argues that Omoluabi traits can be appropriated to tackle moral problems and questions in contemporary Nigerian society. It concludes that the cultural heritage of Omoluabi can serve as a corpus of raw material for contemporary moral life, and contribute to tackling existential, moral and developmental challenges. (shrink)

As tentativas de desenvolver uma cristologia a partir de uma perspectiva exclusivamente africana podem ser consideradas uma das expressões contextuais do empreendimento teológico cristão. É claro que, no contexto do Cristianismo mundial, toda teologia é contextual. Este artigo, explora criticamente as ideias cristológicas de um dos principais teólogos africanos, Bénézet Bujo, situa as muitas reflexões sobre Cristo no contexto africano. O artigo argumenta consistentemente a favor da necessidade da cristologia africana e de uma compreensão aprofundada do argumento de Bujo, para (...) tornar a pessoa de Cristo inteligível na África, empregando a categoria tradicional africana de ancestral. O ancestral como paradigma cristológico permanece controverso, pois levanta muitas questões quanto à sua adequação na compreensão de Cristo para os cristãos africanos. No entanto, a avaliação do paradigma deve ir além da busca de uma interpretação lógica que o vincule às formulações cristológicas predominantes do Ocidente, para buscar o significado da revelação dentro da cosmovisão africana. Este artigo, portanto, avalia as percepções de Bujo e destaca as deficiências de seus argumentos, ao mesmo tempo, chama mais atenção para seu alcance ético e catequético. (shrink)

I aim to establish in this article why Aribiah Attoe, like other determinists before him, got it wrong in arguing for the possibility of predeterminism in a materially evolving universe. I will do this by proving two things: I will first establish the inconsistency of the idea of predeterminism in an evolving universe. Then, I argue that the adirectionality presupposed by an evolutionary universe gives room for free will and negates the argument for a predeterministic universe. I aim to achieve (...) the above by exposing why the view which upholds the universe and all existents within it as lacking free will – or the possibility of adirectionality – stems from a category error on the part of the determinists. Lastly, I defend the position that for predeterminism to stand a chance against the free will of animate things-in-the-world, it must deny the possibility of an evolving/expanding universe that is adirectional and suggestive of boundlessness, and the possibility that some events are not fundamentally necessary reactions to previous states of affairs. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the cause of morally self-defeating acts at the collective level is greed and, at the individual level, an unrestrained impulse for pleasure beyond Innocent Asouzu’s primordial instinct for self-preservation and ignorance. In investigating why humans act in self-defeating ways, Asouzu came up with two possible factors responsible for self-defeating acts: The primordial instinct for selfpreservation and ignorance. Besides Asouzu’s explanation, I here argue that the problem of self-defeating acts goes beyond the primordial instinct for (...) selfpreservation and ignorance to reveal a flaw characteristic of the human condition. At the collective level, the flaw responsible for self-defeating acts is greed and the unrestrained impulse for pleasure at the individual level. I employ the conversational method to interrogate the different views on self-defeating acts from Socrates to Asouzu and show why my explanation offers a better understanding of the problem. (shrink)

Ada Agada is one of the most vocal voices of the Conversational School of Philosophy (CSP). In Consolationism and Comparative African Philosophy: Beyond Universalism and Particularism, Agada aims to provide clarity on the philosophical tenets of Consolationism, his project on system building that is central to the future direction and development of African philosophy. The book is divided into three parts: The first part focuses on the universalism-particularism conundrum in African philosophy, the second part is concerned with explicating the basic (...) preoccupations of Consolation philosophy, and the third part focuses on cross-cultural and comparative philosophy which is one of the central themes of conversational philosophy. (shrink)