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  1. (1 other version)Two Conceptions of African Ethics.Thaddeus Metz - 2013 - Quest 25:141-61.
    I focus on D A Masolo’s discussion of morality as characteristically understood by African philosophers. My goals are both historical and substantive, meaning that I use reflection on Masolo’s book as an occasion to shed light not only on the nature of recent debates about African ethics, but also on African ethics itself. With regard to history, I argue that Masolo’s discussion of sub-Saharan morality suggests at least two major ways that the field has construed it, depending on which value (...)
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  • Ethics in Aristotle and in Africa: Some Points of Contrast.Thaddeus Metz - 2012 - Phronimon 13 (2):99-117.
    In this article I compare and, especially, contrast Aristotle’s conception of virtue with one typical of sub-Saharan philosophers. I point out that the latter is strictly other-regarding, and specifically communitarian, and contend that the former, while including such elements, also includes some self-regarding or individualist virtues, such as temperance and knowledge. I also argue that Aristotle’s conception of human excellence is more attractive than the sub-Saharan view as a complete account of how to live, but that the African conception is (...)
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  • The Western Ethic of Care or an Afro-Communitarian Ethic?: Finding the Right Relational Morality.Thaddeus Metz - 2013 - Journal of Global Ethics 9 (1):77-92.
    In her essay ‘The Curious Coincidence of Feminine and African Moralities’ (1987), Sandra Harding was perhaps the first to note parallels between a typical Western feminist ethic and a characteristically African, i.e., indigenous sub-Saharan, approach to morality. Beyond Harding’s analysis, one now frequently encounters the suggestion, in a variety of discourses in both the Anglo-American and sub-Saharan traditions, that an ethic of care and an African ethic are more or less the same or share many commonalities. While the two ethical (...)
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  • (1 other version)African Values, Human Rights and Group Rights: A Philosophical Foundation for the Banjul Charter.Thaddeus Metz - 2013 - In Oche Onazi (ed.), African Legal Theory and Contemporary Problems: Critical Essays. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 131-51.
    A communitarian perspective, which is characteristic of African normative thought, accords some kind of primacy to society or a group, whereas human rights are by definition duties that others have to treat individuals in certain ways, even when not doing so would be better for others. Is there any place for human rights in an Afro-communitarian political and legal philosophy, and, if so, what is it? I seek to answer these questions, in part by critically exploring one of the most (...)
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  • An African Theory of Just Causes for War.Thaddeus Metz - 2020 - In Luís Cordeiro-Rodrigues & Danny Singh (eds.), Comparative Just War Theory. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 131-155.
    In this chapter, I add to the new body of philosophical literature that addresses African approaches to just war by reflecting on some topics that have yet to be considered and by advancing different perspectives. My approach is two-fold. First, I spell out a foundational African ethic, according to which one must treat people’s capacity to relate communally with respect. Second, I derive principles from it to govern the use of force and violence, and compare and contrast their implications for (...)
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  • How to Report on War in the Light of an African Ethic.Thaddeus Metz - 2022 - In Jonathan Chimakonam (ed.), Contemporary Issues in African Philosophy. pp. 145-162.
    While there is a budding literature on media ethics in the light of characteristic sub-Saharan moral values, there is virtually nothing on wartime reporting more specifically. Furthermore, the literature insofar as it has a bearing on wartime reporting suggests that embedded journalism and patriotic journalism are ethically justified during war. In this essay, I sketch a prima facie attractive African moral theory, grounded on a certain interpretation of the value of communal relationship, and bring out what it entails for the (...)
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  • 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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  • African Communitarianism and Difference.Thaddeus Metz - 2020 - In Elvis Imafidon (ed.), Handbook on African Philosophy of Difference. Springer. pp. 31-51.
    There has been the recurrent suspicion that community, harmony, cohesion, and similar relational goods as understood in the African ethical tradition threaten to occlude difference. Often, it has been Western defenders of liberty who have raised the concern that these characteristically sub-Saharan values fail to account adequately for individuality, although some contemporary African thinkers have expressed the same concern. In this chapter, I provide a certain understanding of the sub-Saharan value of communal relationship and demonstrate that it entails a substantial (...)
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  • Ends and Means of Transitional Justice.Thaddeus Metz - 2018 - Journal of Global Ethics 14 (2):158-169.
    With her new book, The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice, Colleen Murphy has advanced novel, comprehensive and sophisticated philosophical accounts of both what severely conflict-ridden societies should be aiming for and how they should pursue it. Ultimately grounded on a prizing of rational agency, Murphy maintains that these societies, roughly, ought to strive for a stable and legitimate democratic polity committed to not repeating gross historical injustice and do so in ways that do right by victims. In this article, I (...)
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  • An African Theory of Social Justice.Thaddeus Metz - 2016 - In Camilla Boisen & Matt Murray (eds.), Distributive Justice Debates in Political and Social Thought: Perspectives on Finding a Fair Share. Routledge. pp. 171-190.
    A comprehensive account of justice grounded on salient Afro-communitarian values, the article attempts to unify views about the distribution of economic resources, the protection of human rights and the provision of social recognition as ultimately being about proper ways to value loving relationships.
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  • Just the Beginning for Ubuntu: Reply to Matolino and Kwindingwi.Thaddeus Metz - 2014 - South African Journal of Philosophy 33 (1):65-72.
    In an article titled ‘The end of ubuntu’ recently published in this journal, Bernard Matolino and Wenceslaus Kwindingwi argue that contemporary conditions in (South) Africa are such that there is no justification for appealing to an ethic associated with talk of ‘ubuntu’. They argue that political elites who invoke ubuntu do so in ways that serve nefarious functions, such as unreasonably narrowing discourse about how best to live, while the moral ideals of ubuntu are appropriate only for a bygone, pre-modern (...)
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  • Revisiting the Menkiti-Gyekye Debate: Who Is a Radical Communitarian?Motsamai Molefe - 2016 - Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 63 (149).
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  • An African Conception of Human Rights? Comments on the Challenges of Relativism.Oritsegbubemi Anthony Oyowe - 2014 - Human Rights Review 15 (3):329-347.
    The belief that human rights are culturally relative has been reinforced by recent attempts to develop more plausible conceptions of human rights whose philosophical foundations are closely aligned with culture-specific ideas about human nature and/or dignity. This paper contests specifically the position that a conception of human rights is culturally relative by way of contesting the claim that there is an African case in point. That is, it contests the claim that there is a unique theory of rights. It analyses (...)
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  • Doing African political philosophy from a universalist perspective.Ẹniọlá Ànúolúwapọ́ Ṣóyẹmí - 2022 - Philosophical Forum 53 (3):187-194.
    There has been a strong impetus to set the definitional parameters of study in African political philosophy and theory. Many scholars advance the idea of a discipline intended to provide lessons that stem from “original” African moral, ideological, and political traditions. Often, these traditions and their ideas are presented as holding categorical moral substance in so far as they are seen to be specific to a culturally essentialist understanding of “Africa.” In turn, an influential part of the literature estimates the (...)
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  • The Ethics and Politics of the Brain Drain: A Communal Alternative to Liberal Perspectives.Thaddeus Metz - 2017 - South African Journal of Philosophy 36 (1):101-114.
    In Debating Brain Drain, Gillian Brock and Michael Blake both draw on a liberal moral- political foundation to address the issue, but they come to different conclusions about it. Despite the common ground of free and equal persons having a dignity that grounds human rights, Brock concludes that many medical professionals who leave a developing country soon after having received training there are wrong to do so and that the state may place some limits on their ability to exit, whereas (...)
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  • Popper’s Politics and Law in the Light of African Values.Thaddeus Metz - 2020 - Jus Cogens 2:185-204.
    Karl Popper is famous for favoring an open society, one in which the individual is treated as an end in himself and social arrangements are subjected to critical evaluation, which he defends largely by appeal to a Kantian ethic of respecting the dignity of rational beings. In this essay, I consider for the first time what the implications of a characteristically African ethic, instead prescribing respect for our capacity to relate communally, are for how the state should operate in an (...)
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  • Promoting stability and peace in multi-ethnic African countries by reducing the marginalisation of ethnic minorities.Kibujjo M. Kalumba - 2021 - South African Journal of Philosophy 40 (1):93-98.
    I address four major objections that have been advanced against the system of multiparty majority democracy that I proposed as an alternative to Wiredu’s non-party consensual democracy. First, that the system is not durable since it is structured around ill-defined ethnic groups; second, that since it envisions each ethnic group as a semi-autonomous entity, the system undermines the integrative process of nation-building; third, that, as a type of federalism, the system has no precedents on African soil, and consequently, that it (...)
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  • A Defense of Kwame Gyekye’s Moderate Communitarianism.Kibujjo M. Kalumba - 2020 - Philosophical Papers 49 (1):137-158.
    An avowed communitarian, Gyekye follows the lead of such African communitarians as Menkiti who believe that the community is ontologically prior to the individual. However, unlike Menkiti and other...
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  • African Ethics, Respect for Persons, and Moral Dissent.Nancy S. Jecker - 2022 - Theoria 88 (3):666-678.
    Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 3, Page 666-678, June 2022.
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  • Is and Ought? How the (Social) Ontological Circumscribes the Normative.Dorothea Gädeke - 2020 - The Journal of Ethics 24 (4):509-525.
    Is normative theory grounded in ontology and if so, how? Taking a debate between Kwame Gyekye and Thaddeus Metz as my point of departure, my aim in this article is to show that something normative does indeed follow from ontological views: The social ontological, I maintain, circumscribes the normative without, however, fully determining its content. My argument proceeds in two steps: First, I argue that our social ontological position constrains what kind of normative theory we may plausibly defend. A relational (...)
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  • Digitality and Political Theory.Claudia Favarato - 2023 - Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 70 (176):34-64.
    Digitality is increasingly central to individuals’ existence, which has political implications. The article maps the political implications of digitalisation, focusing on African political thought. The latter is marked by Afro-communitarianism ideas, which foster solidarity, relationality, and communalism as foundational values of the polity. However, African communitarianism has granted little attention to contemporary phenomena such as digitalisation. Also, political theory discussions on digitality have looked mainly at (neo)liberal contexts. How the digital age is reshaping the tenets of communitarian political theories represents (...)
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  • Human rights in a moderate communitarian political framework.Martin Odei Ajei - 2015 - South African Journal of Philosophy 34 (4):491-503.
    The International Bill of Human Rights (IBHR) enjoys universal acclaim as the source of the best standards and definition of human rights. This paper argues that the IBHR is inspired by liberalism and harbours ambiguities that open the door to a neoliberal seizure of the rights agenda; and that this effectively destabilises the focus on the IBHR on socio-economic and community rights, and therefore its stated ideal of the equal value of all human rights. I argue that Kwame Gyekye's moderate (...)
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