48 found
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  1. Traditional African Religion as a Neglected Form of Monotheism.Thaddeus Metz & Motsamai Molefe - 2021 - The Monist 104 (3):393–409.
    Our aims are to articulate some core philosophical positions characteristic of Traditional African Religion and to argue that they merit consideration as monotheist rivals to standard interpretations of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. In particular, we address the topics of how God’s nature is conceived, how God’s will is meant to bear on human decision making, where one continues to exist upon the death of one’s body, and how long one is able to exist without a body. For each of these topics, (...)
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  2.  27
    An African Philosophy of Personhood, Morality, and Politics.Motsamai Molefe - 2019 - New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
    This book explores the salient ethical idea of personhood in African philosophy. It is a philosophical exposition that pursues the ethical and political consequences of the normative idea of personhood as a robust or even foundational ethical category. Personhood refers to the moral achievements of the moral agent usually captured in terms of a virtuous character, which have consequences for both morality and politics. The aim is not to argue for the plausibility of the ethical and political consequences of the (...)
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  3. Personhood and a Meaningful Life in African Philosophy.Motsamai Molefe - 2020 - South African Journal of Philosophy 39 (2): 194-207.
    This article proffers a personhood-based conception of a meaningful life. I look into the ethical structure of the salient idea of personhood in African philosophy to develop an account of a meaningful life. In my view, the ethics of personhood is constituted by three components, namely (1) the fact of being human, which informs (2) a view of moral status qua the capacity for moral virtue, and (3) which specifies the final good of achieving or developing a morally virtuous character. (...)
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  4. African Metaphysics and Religious Ethics.Motsamai Molefe - 2018 - Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions 7 (3):19 - 37.
    Scholars of African moral thought reject the possibility of an African religious ethics by invoking at least three major reasons. The first objection to ‘ethical supernaturalism’ argues that it is part of those aspects of African culture that are ‘anachronistic’ insofar as they are superstitious rather than rational; as such, they should be jettisoned. The second objection points out that ethical supernaturalism is incompatible with the utilitarian approach to religion that typically characterises some African peoples’ orientation to it. The last (...)
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  5. Individualism in African Moral Cultures.Motsamai Molefe - 2017 - Cultura 14 (2):49-68.
    This article repudiates the dichotomy that African ethics is communitarian (relational) and Western ethics is individualistic. ‘Communitarianism’ is the view that morality is ultimately grounded on some relational properties like love or friendship; and, ‘individualism’ is the view that morality is ultimately a function of some individual property like a soul or welfare. Generally, this article departs from the intuition that all morality including African ethics, philosophically interpreted, is best understood in terms of individualism. But, in this article, I limit (...)
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  6. A critique of Thad Metz’s African theory of moral status.Motsamai Molefe - 2017 - South African Journal of Philosophy 36 (2):195-205.
  7.  17
    Partiality and Impartiality in African Philosophy.Motsamai Molefe - 2021 - Lanham: Lexington Books. Edited by Jörg Löschke.
    This book philosophically explores and works to resolve the tension between equality (impartiality) and favoritism (partiality) in light of intellectual resources in the African tradition of philosophy.
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  8.  18
    Towards an African Political Philosophy of Needs.Motsamai Molefe & Christopher Allsobrook (eds.) - 2021 - Springer Verlag.
    This book focuses on the domains of moral philosophy, political philosophy, and political theory within African philosophy. At the heart of the volume is a call to imagine African political philosophy as embodying a needs-based political vision. While discourses in African political philosophy have fixated on the normative framework of human rights law to articulate demands for social and global justice, this book charts a new frontier in African political thought by turning from ‘rights’ to ‘needs.’ The authors aim to (...)
  9.  36
    A Rejection of Humanism in the African Moral Tradition.Motsamai Molefe - 2015 - Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 62 (143).
    In this article, I motivate for the view that the best account of the foundations of morality in the African tradition should be grounded on some relevant spiritual property - a view that I call ‘ethical supernaturalism’. In contrast to this position, the literature has been dominated by humanism as the best interpretation of African ethics, which typically is accompanied by a direct rejection of ‘ethical supernaturalism’ and a veiled rejection of non-naturalism . Here, primarily, I set out to challenge (...)
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  10.  33
    (1 other version)Relational Ethics and Partiality.Motsamai Molefe - 2017 - Theoria 64 (152):53-76.
    In this article, I question the plausibility of Metz’s African moral theory from an oft neglected moral topic of partiality. Metz defends an Afro-communitarian moral theory that posits that the rightness of actions is entirely definable by relationships of identity and solidarity. I offer two objections to this relational moral theory. First, I argue that justifying partiality strictly by invoking relationships ultimately fails to properly value the individual for her own sake – this is called the ‘focus problem’ in the (...)
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  11. Personhood and (Rectification) Justice in African Thought.Motsamai Molefe - 2018 - Politikon:1- 18.
    This article invokes the idea of personhood (which it takes to be at the heart of Afrocommunitarian morality) to give an account of corrective/rectification justice. The idea of rectification justice by Robert Nozick is used heuristically to reveal the moral-theoretical resources availed by the idea of personhood to think about historical injustices and what would constitute a meaningful remedy for them. This notion of personhood has three facets: (1) a theory of moral status/dignity, (2) an account of historical conditions and (...)
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  12. An African perspective on the partiality and impartiality debate: Insights from Kwasi Wiredu's moral philosophy.Motsamai Molefe - 2017 - South African Journal of Philosophy 36 (4):470-482.
    In this article, I attempt to bridge the gap between partiality and impartiality in moral philosophy from an oft-neglected African perspective. I draw a solution for this moral-theoretical impasse between partialists and impartialists from Kwasi Wiredu's, one of the most influential African philosophers, distinction between an ethic and ethics. I show how an ethic accommodates partiality and ethics impartiality. Wiredu's insight is that partialism is not concerned with strict moral issues. -/- .
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  13.  24
    A Critique of Kwasi Wiredu's Humanism and Impartiality.Motsamai Molefe - 2016 - Acta Academica 48:89 - 108.
    This article offers a critical reflection on Kwasi Wiredu’s moral theory. One the one hand, the article is concerned with the meta-ethical question regarding the nature of moral properties, specifically, whether they are physical (natural) or spiritual (supernatural). On the other, I reflect on one facet of Wiredu’s normative theory, namely, whether morality is best captured by partiality or impartiality in the African tradition. With regards to meta-ethics, I argue that the Wiredu’s rejection of a spiritual (supernaturalist) foundation of African (...)
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  14. African Ethics and Partiality.Motsamai Molefe - 2016
    This article explores the debate between partiality and impartiality from an African perspective. I take one influential instance of a defence of impartiality in the African tradition, ‘sympathetic impartiality’, by Kwasi Wiredu, as a foil to represent African ethics. I argue that impartiality fails to cohere with three centrally defining features of African moral thought: the high regard attributed to the family, the veneration of ancestors and the notion of personhood. I merely highlight the first two aspects of African thought; (...)
     
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  15.  18
    (1 other version)Critical Comments on Afro-communitarianism: Community versus the Individual.Motsamai Molefe - 2017 - Filosofia Theoretica 6 (1):1-22.
    This article draws our attention to the centrality of the normative idea of personhood in elucidating a robust Afro-communitarianism. To do so, it visits the debate between the so-called moderate and radical communitarians to argue that the assertion that a community takes priority over an individual is not an implausible position. It argues that this assertion, given a nuanced moral interpretation, can offer a promising African perspective on how to secure a life of dignity withoutnecessarily appealing to rights but to (...)
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  16.  60
    Revisiting the Menkiti-Gyekye Debate: Who Is a Radical Communitarian?Motsamai Molefe - 2016 - Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 63 (149).
  17.  52
    Solving the Conundrum of African Philosophy Through Personhood: The Individual or Community?Motsamai Molefe - 2020 - Journal of Value Inquiry 54 (1):41-57.
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  18. A Defence of Moderate Communitarianism: A Place of Rights in African Moral-Political Thought.Motsamai Molefe - 2018 - Phronimon 18:181 - 203.
    This article attempts to defend Kwame Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism (MC) from the trenchant criticism that it is as defective as radical communitarianism (RC) since they both fail to take rights seriously. As part of my response, I raise two critical questions. Firstly, I question the supposition in the literature that there is such a thing as radical communitarianism. I point out that talk of radical communitarianism is tantamount to attacking a “straw-man.” Secondly, I question the efficacy of the criticism that (...)
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  19. Ubuntu and Development: An African Conception of Development.Motsamai Molefe - 2019 - Africa Today 66:97 - 115.
    This article articulates an African conception of development. I call such an account African insofar as it is based on the moral worldview of ubuntu, which is salient largely among the Bantu peoples. To articulate a conception of development, I rely on the paradigm of development ethics, which construes development as an ethical or philosophical enterprise constituted by three questions: what is a good life? what is a just society? and what duties do we owe to the environment? Answers to (...)
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  20.  18
    African Ethics and Agent-Centred Duties.Motsamai Molefe - 2021 - In Jonathan O. Chimakonam, Edwin Etieyibo & Ike Odimegwu (eds.), Essays on Contemporary Issues in African Philosophy. Springer Verlag. pp. 107-124.
    This chapter explores the place of agent-centred duties in African philosophy. To do so, I investigate influential moral theories in the literature, namely: Kwasi Wiredu’s ‘sympathetic impartiality’, Kwame Gyekye’s ‘moderate communitarianism’ and Thad Metz’s ‘friendship’ principle. This chapter ultimately demonstrates that these moral theories fail to imagine a place for agent-centred duties in their moral frame. The problem, I suggest, is the tendency to construe morality entirely in other-regarding terms, which is not surprising in a moral culture that tends to (...)
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  21.  32
    The “Normative” Concept of Personhood in Wiredu’s Moral Philosophy.Motsamai Molefe - 2021 - Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions 10 (1):119-144.
    The article explores the place and status of the normative concept of personhood in Kwasi Wiredu’s moral philosophy. It begins by distinguishing an ethic from an ethics, where one involves cultural values and the other strict moral values. It proceeds to argue, by a careful exposition of Wiredu’s moral philosophy, that he locates personhood as an essential aspect of communalism [an ethic], and it specifies culture-specific standards of excellence among traditional African societies. I conclude the article by considering one implication (...)
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  22.  51
    An African Ethics of Personhood and Bioethics: A Reflection on Abortion and Euthanasia.Motsamai Molefe - 2020 - New York, NY, USA: Palgrave Macmillan.
    This book articulates an African conception of dignity in light of the salient axiological category of personhood in African cultures. The idea of personhood embodies a moral system for evaluating human lives exuding with virtue or ones that are morally excellent. This book argues that this idea of personhood embodies an under-explored conception of dignity, which accounts for it in terms of our capacity for the virtue of sympathy. It then proceeds to apply this personhood-based conception of dignity to bioethical (...)
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  23.  44
    Looking Back and Forward: Relational African Bioethics and Why Personhood is Not Dead.Motsamai Molefe & Luís Cordeiro-Rodrigues - 2024 - American Journal of Bioethics 24 (1):62-64.
    In her new article in the American Journal of Bioethics, Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby (2024) provides at least three reasons that support her argument that the concept of personhood must be abandoned...
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  24.  18
    A Relational Moral Theory, by Thaddeus Metz.Motsamai Molefe - forthcoming - Mind.
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  25. Critical Reflections on Gyekye's Humanism: Defending Supernaturalism.Motsamai Molefe (ed.) - 2013 - Lexington Books.
    This chapter evaluates Kwame Gyekye's argument for rejecting ethical supernaturalism in the African moral tradition (Gyekye, 2010). In this chapter, I reject Gyekye's argument for two major reasons. Firstly, I observe that Gyekye's argument is incompatible with much of African thought which is holistic, where the spiritual and physical are part of the same reality. Secondly, I criticise Gyekye for rejecting an African spiritual meta-ethics. I observe that his treatment of African meta-ethics leans heavily on Western moral theory of the (...)
     
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  26.  11
    African, Black, and Western Conceptions of Human Dignity.Motsamai Molefe - 2024 - The Monist 107 (3):237-250.
    The article highlights the potential that African and Black Philosophy can contribute towards the debates on human dignity. It facilitates a three-way philosophical conversation among the Western, African, and Black conceptions of human dignity. It is motivated by the skepticism in the African and Black approaches to ethics that reject the view that some ontological capacity can ground intrinsic value, or human dignity. The article distinguishes the merit-based (the African and Black Philosophy) from the capacity-based approaches (the Western philosophy) to (...)
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  27.  35
    An Appraisal of “African Perspectives of Moral Status: A Framework for Evaluating Global Bioethical Issues”.Motsamai Molefe & Elphus Muade - 2023 - Arụmarụka 3 (1):25-50.
    This paper evaluates Caesar Alimsinya Atuire’s essay “African Perspectives of Moral Status: A Framework for Evaluating Global Bioethical Issues”. Atuire’s essay aims to contribute to global ethical discourse by articulating a systematic account of an African ethical perspective, specifically focusing on the themes of personhood, moral status and the legal question of abortion. We make three objections against Atuire’s essay. Firstly, we argue that a plausible approach to African personhood must consider both its individualistic and relational features, rather than merely (...)
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  28. African Philosophy of Religion and Western Monotheism.Kirk Lougheed, Motsamai Molefe & Thaddeus Metz - 2024 - Cambridge University Press. Edited by Motsamai Molefe & Thaddeus Metz.
    The Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are typically recognized as the world’s major monotheistic religions. However, African Traditional Religion is, despite often including lesser spirits and gods, a monotheistic religion with numerous adherents in sub-Saharan Africa; it includes the idea of a single most powerful God responsible for the creation and sustenance of everything else. This Element focuses on drawing attention to this major world religion that has been much neglected by scholars around the globe, particularly those working (...)
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  29.  22
    African Personhood, Metaphysical Capacities and Human Dignity.Motsamai Molefe - 2023 - In Motsamai Molefe & Christopher Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context. Springer Verlag. pp. 65-85.
    This chapter considers the status of metaphysical capacities in the debates on personhood and value theory in African philosophy. Specifically, it considers whether metaphysical capacities are morally neutral, instrumentally good or intrinsically good. The inquiry into the status of metaphysical capacities arises because it is important for the concept of human dignity in African thought. This question emerges because there are scholars that reject capacity-based theories of value and personhood (the minimalist view of personhood) for the performance/merit-based theories of value (...)
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  30. An African Religious Ethics and the Euthyphro Problem.Motsamai Molefe - 2017 - Acta Academica 49 (1):22-38.
    Supposing that an African metaphysics grounded on the notion and/or value of vitality is true, can it do a better job in terms of informing an African religious ethics than its Western counterparts, specifically, the Divine Command theory (DCT)? By ‘religious ethics’, in this article, I have in a mind a meta-ethical theory i.e., an account of moral properties whether they are best understood in spiritual rather than physical terms. In this article, I articulate an under-explored African meta-ethical theory grounded (...)
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  31.  15
    Doing Moral Philosophy Through Personhood.Motsamai Molefe - 2023 - In Björn Freter, Elvis Imafidon & Mpho Tshivhase (eds.), Handbook of African Philosophy. Dordrecht, New York: Springer Verlag. pp. 121-138.
    The chapter provides the reader with one way to approach and understand African moral philosophy. It pivots African moral philosophy on the concepts of personhood. It identifies these concepts of personhood in the salient axiological concept of Ubuntu, which is typically explained in terms of the saying “a person is a person through other persons.” In relation to the first two instances of the concepts of personhood in the saying, it identifies three crucial themes of African moral philosophy. First, it (...)
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  32.  12
    Introduction to Human Dignity in African Thought.Motsamai Molefe & Christopher Allsobrook - 2023 - In Motsamai Molefe & Christopher Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context. Springer Verlag. pp. 1-22.
    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 (...)
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  33.  15
    Editor’s introduction.Motsamai Molefe - 2022 - South African Journal of Philosophy 41 (4):321-324.
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  34.  29
    Personhood, Dignity, Duties and Needs in African Philosophy.Motsamai Molefe - 2021 - In Motsamai Molefe & Christopher Allsobrook (eds.), Towards an African Political Philosophy of Needs. Springer Verlag. pp. 57-86.
    This chapter, contrary to moderate, radical and limited communitarians’ attempts to include and defend human rights in African political thought, shifts our attention to the primacy of needs in African political thought. It does so by appeal primarily to the ethical concept of personhood in African philosophy. It offers an interpretation of the relationship between ethics and politics inherent in the normative concept of personhood, which has tended to be construed to entail the politics of human rights. To unfold a (...)
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  35. African ethics and death: moral status and human dignity in ubuntu thinking.Motsamai Molefe - 2024 - New York, NY: Routledge. Edited by Elphus Muade.
    This book analyses the concepts of moral status and human dignity in African philosophy and applies them to the moral problems associated with death. The book first challenges the criticism and rejection of moral status in African philosophy and then continues to consider how moral personhood is defined in African ethical theories, investigating which entities have full moral status or moral personhood, and are therefore worthy of full ethical consideration. It then applies this theory to the problems associated with death. (...)
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  36.  39
    African Personhood and Applied Ethics.Motsamai Molefe - 2020 - Grahamstown, South Africa: NISC.
    Recently, the salient idea of personhood in the tradition of African philosophy has been objected to on various grounds. Two such objections stand out – the book deals with a lot more. The first criticism is that the idea of personhood is patriarchal insofar as it elevates the status of men and marginalises women in society. The second criticism observes that the idea of personhood is characterised by speciesism. The essence of these concerns is that personhood fails to embody a (...)
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  37. Human Dignity in African Thought.Motsamai Molefe & Christopher Allsobrook (eds.) - 2023 - Palgrave Macmillan.
  38.  19
    Human Dignity in an African Context.Motsamai Molefe & Christopher Allsobrook (eds.) - 2023 - Springer Verlag.
    This book is a contribution to African philosophy, by philosophers focusing specifically on the concept of human dignity in ethical theory. The concept of ‘human dignity’ denotes the intrinsic and superlative worth associated with human beings in virtue of which we owe them utmost moral regard. Although dignity is a foundational concept for African philosophy, there remains scant literature in African philosophy dedicated to critical and systematic reflection on the concept of human dignity. This volume responds to this lacuna by (...)
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  39.  12
    Introduction to African Political Theory of Needs.Motsamai Molefe & Christopher Allsobrook - 2021 - In Motsamai Molefe & Christopher Allsobrook (eds.), Towards an African Political Philosophy of Needs. Springer Verlag. pp. 1-19.
    This introductory chapter explains the rationale for the publication of this collected volume and provides an overview of the general philosophical problems which these contributions confront. We characterise two distinct approaches to political philosophy which distinguish different chapters. While the first set of authors may be said to take an objective view of needs, most often grounded, in necessary features of personhood, the second set of accounts leave needs politically contested. We argue that these two distinct approaches are, if not (...)
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  40.  13
    Reflections on Bernard Matolino’s Contribution to Philosophy in Africa.Motsamai Molefe - 2022 - Arụmarụka 2 (2):77-85.
    This paper reflects on Bernard Matolino’s contribution to philosophy. For heuristic purposes, I stipulate a distinction between what we may call the negative and positive projects when considering a philosopher’s body of work. The ‘negative project’ of a philosopher’s work involves his critical engagement with the extant literature in his discipline. There will be leading thinkers, theories or even schools of thought at any given time and in any discipline. One of the ways the voice and perspectives of a thinker (...)
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  41. Towards an African Political Philosophy of Needs.Motsamai Molefe & Chris Allsobrook (eds.) - 2021 - Palgrave Macmillan.
    This book focuses on the domains of moral philosophy, political philosophy, and political theory within African philosophy. At the heart of the volume is a call to imagine African political philosophy as embodying a needs-based political vision. While discourses in African political philosophy have fixated on the normative framework of human rights law to articulate demands for social and global justice, this book charts a new frontier in African political thought by turning from ‘rights’ to ‘needs.’ The authors aim to (...)
     
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  42.  18
    The Criticism of Secular Humanism in African Philosophy.Motsamai Molefe - 2019 - In Munamato Chemhuru (ed.), African Environmental Ethics: A Critical Reader. Springer Verlag. pp. 59-76.
    In this article, I motivate for the view that the best account of the foundations of morality in the African tradition should be grounded on some relevant spiritual property—a view that I call ‘ethical supernaturalism’. In contrast to this position, the literature has been dominated by humanism as the best interpretation of African ethics, which typically is accompanied by a direct rejection of ‘ethical supernaturalism’ and a veiled rejection of non-naturalism. Here primarily, by appeal to methods of analytic philosophy, which (...)
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  43.  3
    Ubuntu ethics: human dignity, moral perfectionism, and needs.Motsamai Molefe - 2024 - New York, NY: Routledge.
    This book provides a philosophical exposition of Ubuntu ethics, which is grounded in the understanding that 'a person is a person through other persons'. Written by one of the world's leading scholars of African philosophy, the book first argues that this focus on umuntu (or, a person) in Ubuntu ethics as intrinsically valuable, makes ethical humanism and human dignity vitally important. The book then goes on to consider the role of virtue ethics in driving an ideal of moral perfectionism. This, (...)
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  44. An African Religious Moral Theory and Abortion.Motsamai Molefe (ed.) - 2014 - Insititute of Philosophy at UWM.
    Presuming the truth of a dominant conception of an African ontological system, this chapter offers some understanding of African moral theory and its recommendations for abortion. I argue that an African moral theory, all things equal, forbids abortion.
     
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  45. An African Religious Moral Theory.Motsamai Molefe - manuscript
    Abstract This article reconstructs an under-explored conception of African religious ethics qua vitality – a spiritual energy emanating and maximally inhering in God. Much of the literature in African morality takes a historical or anthropological approach to morality. By use analytic philosophy, I advocate, note, not defend, an African religious ethics. By ‘religious ethics’, I mean, firstly, a meta-ethical theory, an account about the nature of moral properties that they are spiritual. ‘Rightness’ is definable as an instance of positive relation (...)
     
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  46. A Critique of Kwasi Wiredu's Moral Theory.Motsamai Molefe - manuscript
    This article critically engages with Kwasi Wiredu’s moral theory. I observe that major criticisms of this moral theory have not sufficiently addressed two aspects of it. Firstly, they have not exhaustively problematized Wiredu’s ‘welfarism’ – the claim that morality is definable purely in terms of welfare. In this regard, it is not clear what Wiredu and much of the African literature might mean by ‘welfare’, I give some account of this. Secondly, Wiredu’s ethical principle of sympathetic impartiality (golden rule) appears (...)
     
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  47. Editorial: African philosophy and Rights.Motsamai Molefe & Christopher John Allsobrook - 2018 - Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 65.
     
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  48. Reflections on 'A Report on Ubuntu'. [REVIEW]Motsamai Molefe - 2014 - Acta Academica 46:157 - 164.
    Leonhard Praeg’s book 'A report on Ubuntu' treats the question of “What is Ubuntu?” in a unique and illuminating fashion. The book begins with an approach that repositions Ubuntu by drawing a crucial distinction between what we mean when we ask the question “What is Ubuntu?”, and what we are doing when we ask this question. Praeg shifts his focus to the latter question. This crucial distinction escapes the gaze of many scholars of Ubuntu, and this book makes this gaze (...)
     
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