Abstract
The introductory chapter gives the reader an overall sense of the book. The book focuses on human dignity in an African context. The chapter aims to convey a sense of the scope of African conceptions of human dignity, their contested nature, and their importance for the broader literature on human dignity. It also motivates and justifies our focus in the book on perspectives and voices from an African context in relation to the subject of human dignity. Finally, it gives the reader a sense of the contributions made by various theorists in this volume on African conceptions of human dignity.
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Notes
- 1.
We do not want to give the false impression that all the chapters in this book do engage the three major limitations in relation to the concept of human dignity: the general lack of reliance on African languages to analyse human dignity, lack of explicit definition of human dignity and avoidance of relying on Western conceptions (or theories of human dignity) to accounts for African political theory. The point is to give the reader a sense of status of the literature in African political thought in relation to concept of human dignity and the limitations in the literature in relation to it. The hope is that this book goes some way toward responding to these limitations, while inviting other scholars to contribute to understanding of the concept of human dignity in African political thought.
- 2.
It is not our view that for some idea to be African, it must be authored in Africa or have ideas that are salient in Africa. We do believe that the intersection of the two, writing from Africa and being influenced by ideas, values, traditions and/or experiences from it, represents the ideal condition for some view to count as Africa.
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Molefe, M., Allsobrook, C. (2023). Introduction to Human Dignity in African Thought. In: Molefe, M., Allsobrook, C. (eds) Human Dignity in an African Context. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1_1
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