Partiality and Impartiality in African Philosophy fills the lacuna in African philosophy literature on the inherent tension between requirements of partiality (favoritism) and impartiality (equality). Motsamai Molefe deploys two strategies to philosophically resolve the tension between partiality and impartiality. The first strategy involves applying the moral theories of Kwasi Wiredu, Thaddeus Metz, and Kwame Gyekye to the problem. Finding their views useful in some ways and seriously lim...

Recently, the salient idea of personhood in the tradition of African philosophy has been objected to on various grounds. Two such objections stand out ñ 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 robust mor...

This book analyzes 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 theo...

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 politic...

Life has been a journey of mystery and self-discovery for Brenda Nomusa Molefe as she learns to balance love, trust, and relationships. Along the way, she has been "blessed" with lessons that often came through heartache.In this book, Brenda shares her encounters with the many strings that shaped her path: fraud, trauma, cheating, lies, betrayal, and more. Each chapter opens up about the struggles she faced in friendships, relationships, and life, offering an honest reflection of h...

This book considers how the African philosophy of Ubuntu can contribute to the study of the youth in Africa.Reports from the United Nations indicate that by 2050, more than a third of young people in the world will be in or from Africa. However, most existing youth studies remain framed by Global North paradigms, creating a risk of generalising or globally universalizing the stage of life between childhood and adulthood. This book challenges this imbalance by proposing an approach ...

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 ...

Ontologized Ethics: New Essays in African Meta-Ethics examines an often neglected meta-ethical issue in African philosophical discourse: the extent to which one’s orientation of being, or idea of what-is – as an individual or as a group of persons – does, or should, determine one’s concept of the good. To what extent is ethics, or our idea of what is permissible or impermissible, grounded on ideas of what fundamentally exists or what it means to be? The aim of this collection of essays, wi...

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...

This book throws a spotlight on the under-explored African perspective on the mercurial concept of human dignity. To do so, it employs two strategies. In the first instance, it considers African theories of human dignity: (1) vitality; (2) community; (3) Personhood. Secondly, it explores the plausibility of these theories by applying them to select applied ethics themes, specifically: animal ethics, disability ethics and euthanasia. The aim of this book is not to argue for the plausibility...

This book provides a philosophical exposition of Ubuntu ethics, which it does by explaining the saying ‘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 the 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 perfectionis...

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’ ...