1 Introduction

As the name suggests, Thaddeus Metz’s A Relational Moral TheoryFootnote 1 is a relational or modal account of obligations or moral relationships, which he takes to be preferable or more defensible or plausible alternative to most influential moral theories such as utilitarianism and Kantianism (Metz 2022: 21, 43, 226, 282). About the preferability of his modal moral account, he makes the following remarks in Chap. 12 (on Business Ethics) of the book, A Relational Moral Theory: “As with the other chapters, the aims here are to present relational accounts of these obligations and to suggest that they are preferable to, or at least plausible alternatives to, the implications of familiar kinds of utilitarianism and Kantianism” (Metz 2022: 326).

Broadly, Metz’s moral relational account lives up to its name both theoretically and practically. Theoretically, in terms of the theory itself, namely, anchoring moral obligations on or via modal or relata-inducing or sensitive properties or capacities. Practically, in the account’s applications to different ethical areas such as bioethics, research ethics, education, environmental ethics and business. As I understand it, the fourfold nub of Metz’s moral account is as follows. First, it captures and grounds duties or moral obligations on the capacity to relate or commune or for communing. Second, it connects the capacity for communing to human rights or shows how the notion of capacity accounts for human rights. Third, it demonstrates the various ways such capacity for communing could be considered beneficial (instrumentally and non-instrumentally) for entities involved in such relationship. Four, non-instrumentally, it takes communing as expressive of respect for the relational nature of the entities involved in the communal relationship. In a few places, Metz roughly captures these threefold points as follows:

A communal relationship or way of relating is one thing, while a being’s ability to relate in that way is another. I ground my moral theory on the capacity to relate, and not relating itself, since this approach does the best job of accounting for human rights…My view is not that communal relationship itself has a moral status or that only those who are in such a relationship have it, but rather that those who in principle could relate in that way have it (Metz 2022: 168).

Instead, the ethic supports the bolder claim that a certain way of relating is to be sought out for non-instrumental reasons, specifically as a way of expressing respect for the relational nature of people (and many animals) (Metz 2022: 229).

As Metz has done previously in his widely cited paper, Towards an African Moral Theory (2007), he spells out the communal relationship in terms of identity and solidarity and the capacity to commune in terms of an entity’s possibility in being part of communal relationship, which can either be as a subject or an object. An entity or being is an object in a communal relationship insofar as such entity is capable of thinking of themselves as a communing entity or part of a ‘we’, and an entity is a subject of such a relationship when the entity is capable of identifying with others and exhibiting solidarity with them.

In this article, my interest is not on how Metz develops his moral account or connects together the various parts of the theory. Instead, my interest is on the following twofold points. First, his application of the theory in the domain of business. And second, the plausibility of the account overall in the context of a distinction that I make, namely, that between a heterochthonous account of African ethics and an autochthonous account of African ethics. Briefly, an autochthonous account of African ethics is one that I take to be genuinely and indigenously African. That is, an account that is largely more representative of the moral proclivities and understandings of traditional Africans, hence the label autochthonous. And a heterochthonous account of African ethics is one that I take to be not genuinely and indigenously African. Rather, it is constructivist and seeks to create an African moral understanding but in ways that I claim deviates or moves away from the moral proclivities and understandings of traditional Africans. In making this distinction, my motivation is to show how and why Metz’s account falls into the latter category (heterochthonous account).

In his business ethics application of the A Relational Moral Theory (RMT), Metz considers a number of topics: the stakeholder model of business, managerialism, breaking contracts, violating oaths and argues broadly that RMT as a moral theory and in virtue of its relational accounts of obligations is a better account than utilitarianism and Kantianism. As we have seen, he claims that RMT is “preferable to, or at least [a plausible alternative] to…utilitarianism and Kantianism” (2022:326). Just immediately after saying this and in the context of the stakeholder account of business (and in application to managerialism, contracts, and oaths, etc.) he adds, “Most business ethicists in the West favour stakeholder theory—the idea that a company has a duty to go out of its way for not just its stockholders—but I maintain what the communal ethic entails in respect of what a company morally ought to achieve differs, and in a prima facie attractive way, from utilitarian and Kantian models” (2022:327).

I agree with Metz that RMT comes across as an important alternative to utilitarian and Kantian models and ethical worldviews, and under certain description, could be positioned as a viable competitor. One might even concede that, in general, it is a reasonable and defensible token-theory of a relational type-theory.Footnote 2 However, I claim in general and argue that although RMT may be said to compete favorably with utilitarianism and Kantianism, it is not clear that in certain theoretical aspects that implicates discussions of the stakeholders’ model of business, it fares better than utilitarianism, namely, provides solutions that utilitarianism is incapable of providing. Thus, my intervention in this article should be seen and construed as an attempt at examining the plausibility of RMT both as it applies to the claim that it is a better account than utilitarianism and with regard to its heterochthonous status or nature, namely, as an account that diverges significantly from the moral sensibilities of traditional Africans.

In pursuing my task of engaging with RMT, as a moral theory and in the context of business ethics, I will be discussing three theses. The first is that RMT is a better moral theory than the moral theory of utilitarianism; the second thesis is that a relational stakeholder account is a much more robust account than a non-stakeholder account; and finally, the thesis that RMT takes duties to be bounded or circumscribed by partiality. My discussion of and engagement with these theses are united by the fact that they question, on the one hand, the contributions to moral theorizing of RMT, and on the other hand, the theory’s plausibility. They do this because, in the first place and with regard to the notion of the stakeholder business model, they question whether RMT is a better moral account than utilitarianism, and furthermore, they highlight the sense in which the moral account diverges from the moral sensibilities of traditional Africans. Stated differently, my overall discussion and engagement in connection with the three theses is meant to demonstrate the extent and scope of the plausibility of RMT both generally and with regard to a heterochthonous account and an autochthonous account of African ethics, the latter which I claim captures better or comes closer to the moral sensibilities of indigenous people in and of Africa.

This is how I will proceed. First, I give a brief outline of RMT in the context of a moral account of obligations and business. I then examine each of the three theses, then followed by a critique or a set of critiques. Immediately after this, I gesture towards and discuss the idea of an autochthonous account of African ethics and Africanness.

2 RMT and the Relational Accounts of Obligations and Business

RMT is an attempt by Metz to generate an indigenous African moral theory by adopting or engaging in a philosophical reconstruction exercise or method. This exercise or method is consistent with the analytic approach or philosophy, whereby analysis particularly the logical analysis of concepts predominates. Metz’s reconstruction exercise in RMT, accordingly, can then be seen as a method of analysis that tries (by reconstructing indigenous African moral theory) to make African ethics plausible, on the one hand, and appealing or attractive, on the other hand.

As the name RMT indicates, relationship and communality are central to the moral theory. It is a moral theory that takes morality as a function of prizing communality or communal relationship, namely, a way that individuals can and ought to interact. RMT does not simply accept the importance of communal relationship but takes as salient the capacity to relate, rather than relating itself. In a nutshell then, RMT is not simply about communal relationship itself, or the view that entities in a communal relationship have moral status, or that by actually relating communally they are morally worthy. Rather, for RMT only those entities that, in principle, could relate communally have moral status or morally considerable. As Metz indicates, “On my account, roughly, the more a being is capable of relating communally, the greater its moral status, where only large differences of degrees count” (Metz 2022: 169). In several places in the book, Metz outlines what his aim(s) is/are in writing the book or developing a relational moral account:

This aim—which I do not take to be the only sensible one—is outward, by which I mean a matter of considering which characteristically African understandings of morality would be reasonable to believe by thinkers both indigenous to the continent and from a wide array of other philosophical backgrounds…. In the course of developing a recognizably African moral theory that could give moral theories from other (especially Western) philosophical traditions pause, I have sometimes had to trade off what some would consider Africanness for what could be received by non-Africans. For instance, ancestors—i.e., wise and influential members of a clan who have survived the deaths of their bodies and who continue to live on Earth and guide the clan—play no essential role in my favoured interpretation of African morality (Metz 2022: 9 & 10).

I now come to the three theses that I stated in the introduction, and which will be my focus for the rest of the article. In the first thesis: RMT is a better account than utilitarianism, my focus is on the sense in which RMT could, although be considered a plausible alternative or good competitor to utilitarianism is not better than utilitarianism in certain aspects of the stakeholder account of business. The second thesis states that a relational stakeholder account is a much more robust account than a non-stakeholder account. In examining this thesis, my motivation is to point out that Metz may be right that in general RMT does a better job in respect of certain aspects of business but with regard to some aspects of the stakeholder model of business its solution to some problems may not be different from those of utilitarianism. As for the third thesis: RMT takes duties to be bounded or circumscribed by partiality, the argument that I provide and defend is that partiality seems much more nuanced than Metz has discussed in RMT and that its plausibility may be questioned since it is needs and welfare that circumscribe moral relationship in African moral life and community (given what we know about the ethics of duty).

In my discussion and engagement with these theses, my approach is to lay out each one before adding a critique or sets of critique, which raise/raises some worries for the thesis that has been considered. I use my critiques of the theses to highlight a twofold consideration. The first is that within certain aspects of the purview of the stakeholder model of business, RMT may not be better than other prominent moral accounts like utilitarianism (which Metz has heralded as one of its positives). Second, that even if one assumes that RMT is a plausible and a better option to utilitarianism given that the relational view is a heterochthonous account of African ethics, one worries about its authentic nature or Africanness, namely, the extent to which it reflects the moral sensibilities of Africans.

2.1 Thesis 1: RMT is a Better Moral Account than UtilitarianismFootnote 3

There are several ways in which RMT could be and is positioned as a viable competitor to utilitarianism. But it seems to me that a straightforward way that Metz takes the modal moral account to be preferable to utilitarianism is that first it supports a stakeholder model of business or the firm, which works at balancing the interests of consumers against those of workers, stockholders, etc. A second way, if I understand Metz’s move and thinking correctly, is that unlike utilitarianism, RMT saliently brings together into a community individuals (or consumers) involved in the communal (or business) relationship. How does it do this? It does this, according to Metz, simply in virtue of promoting the capacities of entities, that is entities that are capable of relating communally with respect to forming bonds of solidarity and identity. Using the example of a firm deciding whether or not to sell harmful stuff such as cigarettes, Metz says that the guiding principle of the firm has to be whether selling cigarettes treats the capacity of consumers to be objects of solidarity. He writes:

As with any stakeholder model, a firm needs to balance the interests of consumers against those of workers, stockholders, and the like, and so it does not necessarily follow that a firm would have all things considered [a] reason not to sell cigarettes. However, rightness as friendliness does entail that selling cigarettes fails to treat the capacity of consumers to be objects of solidarity with respect to some degree, such that there is some moral reason to avoid doing so. That judgement is reasonable, and is one that is not as easily made by preference utilitarianism or Kantianism (Metz 2022:330).

One reason that Metz thinks that may handicap utilitarianism from making the same judgment as RMT is that utilitarianism does not place as much moral weight on communal relationship as does RMT. Furthermore, utilitarianism is unable to endorse a robust account of the stakeholder model of business. Take the example of hedonic utilitarianism, which Metz discusses, and which he says may be invoked to address the case of selling cigarettes. While this is a fair move to make, Metz claims that it is problematic. It is problematic because it focuses on promoting subjective wellbeing, which would allow a firm not only to sell cigarettes but other things such as “titillating gadgets or pornographic images that keep people isolated from each other in lieu of games that would bring families closer together or sexual/couples counseling that would facilitate romance” (Metz 2022:330).

2.1.1 Critique 1

One question that could be asked here of Metz relates to his criticism of utilitarianism. One wonders whether his criticism of hedonic utilitarianism or classical/preference/welfare utilitarianism is not a tad too simplistic. As we know, classical utilitarianism is welfarist, consequentialist and aggregative (i.e., aggregative maximising approach). What this means is that for utilitarianism, the right action is that which produces a better state of affairs or best consequences., i.e., that which maximises the well-being or happiness or preferences of affected agents or simply all stakeholders. By this one implies that an action is right, for utilitarianism, when that action works to the benefits of everyone that is affected by the action. The everyone here could be taken to mean all stakeholders that are directly/indirectly connected to the action or affected by it. This is because anyone that is affected by an action has a stake or an interest in the action – he or she simpliciter is a stakeholder. This brings up two related points.

First, what this implies is that even though utilitarianism is not understood in terms of communal relationship it takes seriously the interests or “state” of everyone or stakeholders insofar as they are affected by an action, or their interests can be counted and ought to be taken into account as part of the maximised or aggregative wellbeing. Second, on this understanding that utilitarianism is interested in all stakeholders it is not clear why it cannot, on the one hand, forbid the selling of cigarettes or other titillating gadgets or pornographic images and, on the other hand, encourage a firm to sell stuff (i.e., games) that would bring families closer together since it is interested in acts or consequences that maximises the wellbeing of all affected agents or entities. One might say that selling cigarettes does enhance individual hedons or utils (i.e., brings happiness, or satisfaction, or benefits to various individuals, e.g., the firm, those who use the cigarettes, etc.) so is selling games which enhances individual hedons or utils (i.e., brings happiness, or satisfaction, or benefits to various individuals, e.g., the firm, those playing the games, etc.). However, compared to the former, the latter state of affairs is better simply because it creates additional hedons, and accordingly produces better or best consequences. This is so in view of the fact that, unlike the former state of affairs, the latter in addition to enhancing individual hedons or utils brings people closer, namely, produces more consequences or maximises preference or welfare and because it does this utilitarianism would endorse it as the morally right action.

2.2 Thesis 2: Relational Stakeholder Account is a much more Robust Account than a non-stakeholder Account

One concept that came up in my discussion of the first thesis is the idea of stakeholders. The suggestion is that RMT takes seriously the stakeholder model of business. However, there are two questions to ask here: who are the stakeholders of a firm and how should a business balance their interests? Metz himself reflects on these questions:

A firm cannot meet the needs of literally all in a society; it must rather attend to those of its stakeholders. But who counts as a stakeholder, that is, someone for whom a firm has moral reason to go out of its way, and how should it balance the interests of stakeholders? In the previous section I mentioned workers, consumers, animals, and future generations of persons as potential sites of communal relationship. Are there any stakeholders besides these? Ho should a firm prioritize amongst them when it cannot satisfy the interests of all? (Metz 2022: 331).

With regard to RMT, Metz cashes out his answers to the questions of who counts as stakeholders and how to balance their interests in terms of three moral reasons to aid. The first two, which one typically finds in Western ethical tradition describes the duty to aid that arises from the general duty of beneficence and the duty to aid that arises from the special obligation to aid such as a promise made to help someone. The third, which Metz says attaches specifically or exclusively to his relational moral account is the duty to aid that arises from communing or one occupying a close relationship with others such as those that one is intimate with or closely associated with. How will the third reason to aid play out regarding the question of who the stakeholders are and how a firm should balance their interests? Metz provides the answer in the following passage:

In addition to these two moral reasons to aid others, the relational moral theory grounds a third: one has already related communally with others, at least to some substantial extent or intensity. For a few examples, recall that I have argued that having lived with and met the needs of children for many years is what gives parents a duty to continue to support them relative to other people’s children (7.3.3), that having had a patient for a long [will] provides extra moral reason for a doctor to treat her instead of a new patient (9.4), and that having done a longitudinal study with a participant gives a medical researcher a pro tanto obligation to help her with substantial health related needs that were not brought on by the study (10.4). Similarly, I maintain that where a firm has been party to a communal relationship with others intensely or for a long time, and especially both, then it has a duty of some weight to commune with these intimates as opposed to strangers, even if the strangers are somewhat worse off and one did not promise to do so (Metz 2022: 331–332).

Here Metz harkens back to the dimension and notion of partiality in African ethics that he has been known to advocate and gesture towards. He notes that perhaps an appropriate term would be ‘relationholders’ (rather than stakeholder) since the former accepts that they could be moral reasons to aid particular individuals that fall outside or go beyond contractual obligations. What this gives us, according to Metz, is a relational moral theory that fares better than utilitarianism (and Kantianism) and that takes us through a finer way of thinking of a firm’s operation, its relationships to various stakeholders or ‘relationholders,’ and how to balance the various interests of all those affected by the firm’s operation. As Metz says in a long passage, which I will abbreviate here:

Such a rationale entails that, in addition to suppliers, workers, and consumers, a firm can owe support and aid to its society—again, even if this society is not amongst those in the world who would benefit the most from resources, the firm did not promise to provide resources to it, and so on. For many, it is intuitive that a corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme should focus on those who reside where the firm operates (e.g., Mofuoa 2014: 233–4), such that, for instance, wealthy tech companies in Silicon Valley ought to be assisting those who cannot easily afford housing there…. the communal grounding of special obligations explains why the positive duty obtains: a firm has normally cooperated with and helped the society in which it is based, as has the society in respect of the firm, and, supposing its profits are substantial, it therefore has some moral reason to go out of its way for that society (Metz 2022: 333).

2.2.1 Critique 2

Metz’s answer/comments in the long passage seem a bit curious particularly when one considers what he said earlier, namely, about selling cigarettes. On page 328, he says:

When it comes to customers, harmony or communality would normally mean selling goods and services that are expected to help them live objectively well…. a firm has strong moral reason to avoid selling what would cause harm, occasion weakness, foster moral vice, or perhaps reduce meaning. Hence, for example, a firm would probably avoid selling cigarettes as these are well known to inflict serious bodily harm, cause addiction, and, as a consequence, disrupt the ability of someone to look after his family and friends.

Suppose that the choice before a particular firm is between selling cigarettes and not operating the business Metz’s reasoning above will require that they not operate or shutdown. However, if one follows the line that “where a firm has been party to a communal relationship with others intensely or for a long time, and especially both, then it has a duty of some weight to commune with these intimates as opposed to strangers, even if the strangers are somewhat worse off and one did not promise to do so,” then one may conclude that the firm should go ahead and sell cigarettes. The rationale for this can be made along the following lines and related points. The first is that one (going along with Metz here) has more duty to the community (those that one is more intimately connected to) than “strangers.”Footnote 4 The second is that cigarettes or other harmful things provide much profit or substantial revenue for the business and much of which goes or will go into workers’ welfare (salaries, healthcare, education funds and other social services) and to developing the community. The third is that given the benefits to the workers and community, it does seem okay or preferable to produce the cigarettes or other harmful things. The last point is that it seems preferable insofar as the cigarettes or other harmful things are consumed by “strangers” and not the “locals” (those in the community) afterall, it is Metz’s (or RMT’s) claim that we owe more duty to “locals” than “strangers.”

The point is that on the question of who the stakeholders are, how a firm should balance their interests and selling things like cigarettes or other dangerous things, Metz seems to give an answer that, one is not sure is completely endorsed by RMT — an answer that equally may not be different from those given by a non-stakeholder account of business. First, if one delimits the community (in terms of partiality, as Metz wants to do and actually does) such that those one is in a relationship with locally, or the “locals” have stronger pull than others (the “distant” others or “stranger,” as Metz calls them), then it is not clear why a firm that operates in a community cannot sell cigarettes if those cigarettes will only be sold to and consumed by the “distant” others and especially if the substantial revenue or proceeds go to the firm and community, and these are used not only to develop the community but also to massively uplift the wellbeing of those in the community. Second, it is also not clear why then this warrants a conclusion that a stakeholder moral account (of business) is better than a non-stakeholder moral account (of business) since the latter is, in my view, indeed capable of making the same moral judgment (as the former) if it supplements its theoretical framework with relevant broader considerations. One of such consideration will be for the firm to refuse to sell cigarettes to folks in the community where it operates or to so and so persons or group of people given that or insofar as the so and so is part of its relevant stakeholder’s calculations or simply to agree to produce and sell cigarettes to only certain people. This broader consideration can be massaged by other considerations such as whether the firm’s reputation is affected by what people think of it, its production and sale of cigarettes, what it is actively doing in the community, and as long as what it is doing has relevance to not just the profitability of its business but also its long-term operational goals and interests.

2.3 Thesis 3: RMT Takes Duties to be Bounded or Circumscribed by Partiality

Above, I touched on the word, partiality. And one of the interesting issues that Metz examines in RMT in general is the scope, extent or boundary of duties. The issue of boundary is connected to the idea of partiality and for Metz, duties are circumscribed by the notion of partiality, which brings up the idea of the priority of duties, according to which certain duties are more important than others in virtue of certain features. Metz’s discussion of duties and partiality implicates him in what I will call a heterochthonous account of African ethics. As I mentioned in the introduction, a heterochthonous account of African ethics is different from an autochthonous account of African ethics, where the latter is largely more representative of the moral proclivities and understandings of traditional Africans, and the former less so. Given my claim that an autochthonous account of African ethics captures better the moral sensibilities of indigenous Africans, my argument is that it has a different take on certain issues in business and conceptualizes the nature of the business relationship in terms of welfare and the needs of all.

As I noted above, the dimension and notion of partiality is one that Metz has been known to advocate in several of his writings in African ethics. Here are a couple of examples to highlight this:

Note, however, that most friends of a sub-Saharan ethic do not conceive of it strictly in terms of impartially, in the way that a Christian might of agape. Instead, one’s actual friendly relationships have a moral priority over relationships one could have in the future and over those of which one neither is nor would be a part. ‘Family first’ and ‘charity begins at home’ are recurrent maxims of African moral thinking, where, at a fundamental level, the agent’s own, existing communal relationships are given precedence over others (Metz and Gaie, 2010: 276).

[A correct] “understanding of the moral value of community is partial, at least to some degree. That is, prizing community implies caring for the well-being of one’s own family and society more than that of others (‘family first’, ‘charity begins at home’) (Metz 2013: 149).

So, it is not unexpected that the notion of partiality does feature prominently in RMT. In his discussion of the obligation of a firm to help others and the sense in which it could be seen as stronger than the obligation of family members to help others, he gestures towards some sense of partiality, a sense of partiality that one may call hard partiality:

Very roughly, can implies ought; the greater one’s ability to support others’ ends and improve their quality of life without imposing real burdens on oneself or on those even more intimately connected to one, the more one should do for others. So, a firm that is making more than 1 billion US dollars in profit in a given year owes its stakeholders millions, something family members are not typically obligated to provide. (Metz 2022: 332).

2.3.1 Critique 3

We have already seen one way that Metz discusses the notion of partiality in RMT where he discussed relationholder or stakeholder and how special obligations may generate positive duties and why a firm will normally be required to have more pressing duties to help members of the community where it is based compared to others. This is because, according to Metz, “special obligations often take precedence over general ones, for my duties to my sons surely come before my duties to other people’s sons, even if the latter are somewhat worse off than the former” (Metz 2022: 334). Because special obligations often take precedence over general ones, Metz claims that in the context of a firm’s operation or business “normally contracts that have been made should not be violated, and long and strong ties that have been established should not be cut” (Metz 2022: 334).

Broadly, Metz may be right that commonly, or in general when we speak of moral reasoning that may be indexed to Western thinking or worldview special obligations are often taken to have precedence over general obligations, but I am not sure that this correctly describes African moral proclivities and understanding which are tendencies that I believe form a fulcrum of Metz’s RMT, and if they don’t or are robustly reflected in the moral account ought to. I think the moral understanding of Africans or at least Africans in traditional societies, duties are demarcated by needs (or put differently, the needs of those who are in the community) and not particularly by some prior relationships or necessarily by how intimate one is with the others who one is supposed to owe some duty to. In saying this I should not be understood as suggesting that relationship or the extent or depth of the relationship one is in a local community and beyond local community is not significant or does not matter. The type or nature of the relationship does matter. Rather, the point I am making is that although relationship is morally significant and plays a valuable role, it (relationship) matters only because one is required to pay attention to the welfare and needs of those in the community or in the relationship. The relationship per se is not what is doing the work but the needs of those in the relationship insofar as they are part and parcel of the relationship. The point then is that being sensitive to the needs of others and duties are important considerations or markers when it comes to figuring out how these relationships are salient and how they ought to be prioritized in context of where one cannot fulfil all of one’s duties at the same time. To understand this let us shift focus to the idea of the “ethics of duty,” which I take to be the make and model of African ethics.

First, Ifeanyi Menkiti tells us that duties and not rights are the place to go to when thinking of the organising ground norm in African societies:

[I]t becomes quite clear why African societies tend to be organized around the requirements of duty while Western societies tend to be organized around the postulation of individual rights. 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. In the West, on the other hand, we find a construal of things in which certain specified rights of individuals are seen as antecedent to the organization of society; with the function of government viewed, consequently, as being the protection and defense of these individual rights (Menkiti 1984:180).

And adding to this, Kwame Gyekye notes that in African communalism there is no obsession with rights but obsession with duties. A communitarian moral framework or one who is a communitarian, he notes, is expected to “give priority to duties rather than rights” (Gyekye 2003:362), “would not have a fetishistic attitude to individual rights” (Gyekye 2003: 362), and will join in elevating “the notion of duties to a priority status in the whole enterprise of communitarian life” (Gyekye 2003:364). Comparing the African communitarian moral framework qua ethics of duty and the Western individualistic moral framework qua the ethics of right, he says:

All these considerations elevate the notion of duties to a status similar to that given to the notion of rights in Western ethics. African ethics does not give short-shrift to rights as such; nevertheless, it does not give obsessional or blinkered emphasis on rights. In this morality duties trump rights, not the other way around, as it is in the moral systems of Western societies. The attitude to, or performance of, duties is induced by a consciousness of needs rather than of rights. In other words, people fulfill—and ought to fulfill—duties to others not because of the rights of these others, but because of their needs and welfare (Gyekye 2010).

Here, both Menkiti and Gyekye point clearly to the place and importance of duties not just in understanding African societies but also in thinking about African ethics or moral life. To think of duties in a system of an “ethics of duty” is to contrast it with rights in a system of an “ethics of right,” which is foundational to Western societies and ethical worldviews and systems.

Let me come back to the last point that Gyekye makes in the above quote. This point connects to what I want to say, which is that the discharge of one’s duties is induced by a consciousness of needs rather than of rights. Or simply that needs and welfare are the boundaries of duties or ground of duties. Metz doesn’t seem to be unaware of the place of needs in understanding obligations as he says: “A firm cannot meet the needs of literally all in a society; it must rather attend to those of its Stakeholders” (Metz 2022:331). Here, Metz recognises the nature of needs in business activities, the importance of satisfying them and the difficulty of doing so in the context of many and conflicting needs. But if needs are important and if they circumscribed duties, then the question we should ask is whose needs are we talking about? Should it be the needs of those that one has special relationship with or those that one is intimate with or the needs of everyone as members of the largely human community? As we saw above in his discussion of special obligations taking precedence over general ones, Metz seems to take the needs of those one is in a special relationship with (or “locals”) as more important than those of others (the “distant” or non-locals). But I don’t think this is justified if one thinks that what is important for traditional African societies and for African communalism is the wellbeing of the community and its members circumscribed by needs (I think that the community here is not necessarily that of a local community but a community of humans). In which case, it is permissible to allow the needs of the “distant” or those arising from those of general obligations to take precedence over those of the “locals” or those arising from special obligations. This makes it the case then that one may have a stronger duty to the guest or visitor (what Metz calls “stranger”) than one’s child or a fellow employee if it is the case that the needs of that other person are greater or more pressing. Equally, a medical doctor will have a duty to treat a patient even if she is a new patient rather than a patient that the doctor has known for a long time if the new patient has more pressing needs than the “old” patients.

The point is that for indigenous Africans our duties to others are very extensive and may come first before any duties to our family (children, whether daughter or sons, parents, uncles and aunts, etc.) if the needs of these ones are pressing or more pressing. So, one might have a duty to buy someone else item X (say a textbook, a farming implement, or clothes) than buying our son item Y (say a toy, some new shoes, or a bicycle) if item X is consequential, that is of more consequence than item Y, namely, X satisfies a greater and more pressing need than Y. And we can think of many ways in which the former items or needs may be more pressing or significant than the latter items or needs.

I think that the above points suggest that in African ethics, duties are understood as more complex and nuanced — complex and nuanced in terms of primary or basic needs and trivial or peripheral needs and would require increased understanding, sensitivity, and application. Let us for now call this the Sensitivity Principle, which states as follows. Sensitivity Principle (i) As much as possible and ceteris paribus, the primary needs of A should not override the primary needs of B, and vice versa; Sensitivity Principle (ii) As much as possible and ceteris paribus, the trivial needs of A should not override the trivial needs of B, and vice versa; Sensitivity Principle (iii) ceteris paribus, the primary needs of A may override the trivial needs of B, and the primary need of B may override the trivial need of A. Let me zero in on Sensitivity Principle (i).

On Sensitivity Principle (i), and as it applies to the example of a “local” or one’s son and a ‘distant” other we may conclude that if the needs of a “local” or one’s son are primary and those of a “distant” or others are primary, then our satisfying the duty of needs of the “local” or our son rather than the needs of the “distant others” have to take into account the Sensitivity principle. In contrast to the primary needs of the “distant others,” the primary needs of the “local” or our son may come first, but not always necessarily.Footnote 5 If will do discharge the duty to the “local” or our son first, then we do so partly because of some additional considerations, which may or may not speak directly to the relationship in question. And if we are led to preferring the satisfaction of the needs of the “local” or our son’s primary needs to the primary needs of the “distant others” say because of some additional line of relationship that exists between us and the “local” or our son this will have to be justified. That an additional line of relationship exists does not, I think, provide a overarching moral reason, or ground, or justification for favouritism or partiality towards the object of such relationship. And clearly, in the case of the trivial needs of the “local” or our son, say like that of item Y and the primary need of the “distant other,” say like that of item X, satisfying the latter item seems more justified, as suggested by Sensitivity Principle (iii). For surely, a primary item like a farming implement which is required for subsistence or a textbook (which is critical to education) are more important and pressing than items such as a toy or new shoes.

2.4 Autochthonous account of African ethics and Africanness

My discussion so far has highlighted that RMT is an heterochthonous account of African ethics. This discussion is meant as a critique of the relational moral account to the extent that we understand that only an autochthonous account (and not an heterochthonous account) of African ethics largely represents the moral proclivities and understandings of traditional Africans. Here, I want to present an outline of an autochthonous account of African ethics in the context of the notion of Africanness or what is genuinely African. Unlike RMT’s constructivist approach, an autochthonous account of African ethics is not constructivist. A constructivist project such as RMT runs the danger or risk of over and under reconstructionism, namely, a reconstruction that completely misses the road in either one of the following directions: (a) gives us less of what is present in the indigenous knowledge system or (b) gives us more of what is present in the indigenous knowledge system. In both (a) and (b), one may worry whether reconstructionism or the reconstruction exercise is not an overreach or mistaken. RMT does seem to suffer from either of these considerations.Footnote 6

However, with an autochthonous account of morality, one gets a moral account that does not seek to make or construct or reconstruct the moral life and experiences of Africans in ways that make the moral account less African. Rather, it presents the moral life and experiences in very “authentic” or original ways (even if that makes them unappealing or implausible to some people, i.e., non-Africans and their ways of life). Metz himself has told us that he does not seek to present an “authentic” or autochthonous account of African ethics. He states that he is writing for a wider audience and for that he has developed an African moral theory by sometimes engaging in some “trade off [of] what some would consider Africanness for what could be received by non-Africans” (Metz 2022: 9 & 10). And when discussing the Self/Other in Sect. 7.3.5 of the book, Metz engages with the question of duties to oneself and to others and presents clearly this issue of the Africanness of his moral account. He says:

The question of whether there are duties to oneself is closely related to the question of whether one is morally permitted to do less than all one could to support others’ ends and foster their good. Although it might make my theory even ‘less African’ than it already isFootnote 7 (for not essentially including imperceptible agents, and perhaps for its theoretical structure), I am at this stage inclined to accept a category of duties to oneself (Metz 2022, 189)

As the emphases in the quote show, Metz himself concedes that his moral account is less African than it already is. One then may asks: if RMT is less African than it already is how much of it then that is left is truly and genuinely African? (10%, 20%, 35%, 43%, 55%, 60% or what %?). I do not believe that a people’s indigenous knowledge system (in this case African ethics as representing African autonomous moral system) should be reduced to % points or what part of it is African, not African, less African, and more African, etc. I don’t believe that such ethics is respected and respected well enough if one tries to bend it over many times and to make it to respond to certain states of affairs or predispose ideal of what a moral outlook should look like or ought to look like (mostly for the sake of making it appealing to some other people). Simply put, we are trading in the language of cultural imperialism when we try to make African morality “less African,” or less African than it already is, namely, more heterochthonous and less autochthonous, or simply sensitive to some other ways of life, which hitherto always have been heralded or hailed as “superior.”Footnote 8 That to me is not even in the spirit of global or intercultural philosophical perspective or intercultural philosophy, where intercultural philosophy goes beyond some mere comparative juxtaposition but (1) seriously engages with the socio-economic, ethical, political, and historical differences of different groups, peoples and cultures, (2) recognizes the equality of theoretical contributions from different peoples, regions and traditions of the world, and (3) seeks to integrate these different theoretical contributions into an open discourse on various theoretical issues, problems and solutions.

3 Conclusion

I think Metz is right that the moral proclivities of Africans viz-a-viz a properly calibrated African ethical worldview such as RMT is one that takes seriously relationships in business or a firm’s corporate operation, and this may be sensitive to some overall and well caliberated stakeholder model of business. Having said that it is important to be nuanced about the stakeholder model of business and not just jump into it without seriously interrogating it, particularly without looking at whether such a stance is through and through consistent with African moral proclivities. It is for this reason that I qualified stakeholder with the phrase well caliberated. This point about the scope of extending a stakeholder theory of business to an African moral worldview is one that could be made in many different directions. Let us call this the extension thesis, i.e., interpreting or extending African ethics to a stakeholder model of business. As I have argued elsewhere, for although “the shareholder’s model is promising and one that African moral theory” (Etieyibo 2020: 174) will, with some qualification, endorse, an interpretation and understanding that African ethics is welded and committed to the stakeholder model have to be a bit more circumspect. This is because insofar as the stakeholder’s model still treats moral agents or individuals in terms of their individual (stakeholder’s) interests and worth that may or not collapse or coalesce with the interests and worth of other individual stakeholders and the community of humans at large African moral theory will disagree with it. On the African moral theory, the focus should not be on individual stakeholders but rather on the community, i.e. the common good of humans. According to African moral theory therefore, it is not simply a case that the duties of corporations and businesses are to shareholders like employees, customers, suppliers, communities where it operates but to the community of humans as a whole (Etieyibo 2020: 174).

The point is that if we understand corporations and businesses to part and parcel of the community the same way that individuals or persons are part and parcel of the community, then “since corporations and businesses (like persons) are the ‘I’ in the ‘we’ the rightness and wrongness of their actions are evaluated by how well they exist within the ‘we’, namely, their contribution [or capacities to advance] the common good (Etieyibo 2020: 174). This is one way that one can engage with the extension thesis. Let me point to some other ways.Footnote 9

One other way that one can engage with the extension thesis is that given the fact that the concept we are trading with, shareholder model of business and stakeholder model of business comes from the dominant (Western) ethical framework for business ethics one could be said to have already lost the plot by not questioning these concepts, categories or assumptions. The thought here is that as long as some pre-defined philosophical concepts, categories or assumptions are at work and insofar as one has failed to questioned these one may be said not to have truly began an authentic reconstruction of an African moral theory (this may be a case of where reconstructionism has run under (under reconstructionism)). This is because these concepts, categories or assumptions underline what one does afterwards with the shareholder model of business, particularly the very fact that it is already taken as given that a business model of this sort is morally suitable and preferable to other possible models.

Another way that one does engage in the extension thesis — and this is related to the point above — is when a commitment to the stakeholder model of business does undercut the common good. The origin of the stakeholder theory of business is not only important but the starting point of this model is one that carries with it some assumptions that go against the priority of relationships and proper functioning of the common good. In economic terms, Western and dominate global thinking, the central goal (and the modus operandi) of business or the operation of a firm is competitive success and following from this is the satisfaction of competing and conflicting interests, which largely therefore by its very nature dis-promotes or undermine the relative success of other parties (even when efforts are made to account for these other parties). This seems to suggest that business ethics and the stakeholder theory of business looks to moderate how these interests can be considered “fair.” However, given what I have said about the “ethics of duty” as foundational to African moral thinking one wonders whether “fairness” is prioritized in African traditional thinking the way that RMT wants to suggest. One rather wants to say that “fairness” in African traditional thinking is secondary and largely plays a role within a worldview that promotes the “ethics of right,” and if it does play a role in a worldview of “ethics of duty” it does so minimally and only within the context of affirming relationship and communality.

Highlighting and framing the issues the way that I am doing within my discussion of the extension thesis (and in terms of the the point about its misdirection or misguidedness) allows one then to say that given the “ethics of duty” and the values common to our human nature, an indigenous or autochthonous African ethics, in general, and business ethics, in particular, would not condone the practice of profiteering (as the aim of business) as well as condemn the thinking that is done through the prism of a business interest that is only accidentally wedded to those of the community. Rather, an indigenous or autochthonous African ethics and business ethics would want us to see the operation of a firm or the activities of business as not all about profit making and as a part and parcel of the “we.” Simply put, the firm or corporation that thinks it is a separate entity from the community or communal relationship for which it is part of (such that making profit is its major calling or objective), or a doctor or lawyer who thinks primarily in terms of monetary gain, or any business concern that thinks its primary business is to prioritize interests rather that robustly attend to values that are common to our common human nature (for which the satisfaction of all kinds of needs is primordial) has not only missed the point of business or misplaced its priorities but has deviated from African traditional thinking with regard to communal ideals, and is by and large not a truly and genuinely communalistic African moral worldview.

In fairness to Metz, prominent moral theories such as utilitarianism (as well as Kantian ethics) do not seem to point us to all the elements of the stakeholder theory of business. In this sense, one would say that RMT is an important addition to the ethics literature and good competitor to these ethical worldviews just in case we accept the claim that the stakeholder model of business accounts for important human values for which some of the other models of business have been found wanting or deficient. If we do indeed make such evaluation and accept the stakeholder theory of business one can then say that RMT in the context of business as a relational model of stakeholder theory does a good (if not better) job than the other moral theories in accounting for the intrinsic values and interests of business and everyone that is in a “business” relationship. In this way one would say that the comparison that Metz has drawn between utilitarianism and Kantianism in certain aspects and in reference to the firm and business activities is sensible.

Although it seems to me an appropriate and important comparison to make, the comparison is one that needs to be tempered and put into context given its tendencies to overreach and given its constructivist tenor, which, as I have indicated in my reference to a heterochthonous account of African ethics, and an autochthonous account of African ethics may be misplaced. Given this reservation, one has to asks: Has Metz provided a moral account that appeals intellectually to the West (if indeed it is the case that the comparison between RMT and utilitarianism and Kantianism yields the conclusion that RMT is a better moral theory) but in so doing sacrifices important moral intuitions in a heterochthonous account of African ethics? If the conclusion is made, as I desire to make (and I think I have made in this article) that a heterochthonous account of African ethics more accurately reflects the moral sensibilities of indigenous Africans than an autochthonous account of African ethics, then the response to this question is one that has to be made in the affirmative.