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ABSTRACT
African ethicists have so far not agreed on a single, precise, secular and comprehensive basic norm, an Afro-Grundnorm, which captures the core values of Ubuntu sub-Saharan African cosmopolitanism. This article constructs and proffers the ‘double-dignity’ Grundnorm that partly shares with Western stoic cosmopolitans the view that our common human ontological capacity for autonomy identifies us as members of the human species. This capacity grants our first dignity, inherent dignity. Inherent dignity only grants our universal basic (security and subsistence) rights. Our duties to care of each other derive from the second dignity, acquired dignity. Acquired dignity itself derives from our second ontological capacity, our capacity for communion. Unlike inherent dignity, acquired dignity is neither universal nor automatically present in us. It is earned when we commune with others in fostering harmony as we earn ‘full personhood’. Since fostering harmony starts with nurturing communal identities and solidarities, Ubuntu entails efficiency-model moderate cosmopolitanism which permits prioritizing serving our immediate associates or compatriots not because of their special moral worthiness but because we more efficiently serve humanity at large when we do so.
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Notes
1 Ramose (Citation2007) refers to Metz’s (Citation2007a) African ‘basic norm’ as a Grundnorm’. Although Metz does not use this German term, he also did not object to Ramose’s attributing it to his norm. So, I also apply it to my basic norm and those of other African ethicists.
2 ‘African ethicists’ here refers to thinkers, African or not, publishing ethical ideas traceable to pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa.
3 ‘Status as a person’ is explained as ‘personhood’ in Section 2.3.2.
4 Unlike their African counterparts, Western communitarians like Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, Alasdair Maclntyre and Michael Sandel are not very influential in their regions.
5 Note that moderate communitarianism at local community level mirrors the moderate cosmopolitanism at global level that I proffer. The distinction between moderate and strict cosmopolitanism is explained in Etieyibo (Citation2017, 144–145).
6 Metz’s universal intuitions are against killing innocents (A), forced sex, (B), deception, (C), stealing (D), violating trust (E) and racial discrimination (F).
7 Of course, this book is fiction. But Achebe’s autobiography (Citation2000) displays similar Igbo beliefs, about which he claims be an authority. So, justifiably, Ikuenobe (Citation2006) depicts Achebe’s fiction as representing not merely Igbo but most African ethical values. Menkiti (Citation2004) also generalizes to African metaphysics the Igbo concept of ogbanje, which he calls abiku in Yoruba. See Ifeanyi Menkiti’s ‘Physical and Metaphysical Understanding: Nature, Agency and Causation in African Thought’. In: Brown. L. ed. African Philosophy: New and Traditional Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
8 Was it both, or only one, of the twins viewed as evil? Achebe is does not clarify. But my argument still holds.
9 ‘Predominantly’ because Metz says they are ‘more common among Africans than Westerners’, for a long time space of time from ‘traditional societies to contemporary’ Africans [but] they are mere ‘tendencies, not essences’.
10 Metz is citing Bujo’s book, Ethical Dimension of Community. Pauline’s Publications, Nairobi.
11 At least Africa doesn’t use the word harmony in the sense of Plato’s harmonious functioning of the individual’s spirited, appetitive and the rational elements of the soul.
12 Rationality is a mere capacity to reason. Reason is the process in the activity of actual thinking (See B. Janz’s ‘Reason and Rationality’ South African Journal of Philosophy, 27(4) 2008, 269). Autonomy is the freedom granted to rational beings to make their own reasoned choices.
13 Rawls might not have used the word ‘reward’. But he seemingly implies it. Some individuals within the state may not be industrious or productive. But still, they claim a moral right to a reward in the form of subsistence needs from the collective national success, which outsiders are denied.
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Austin Moonga Mbozi
Austin Moonga Mbozi is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Applied Ethics at the University of Zambia. This article is the part of his PhD thesis on the African input on global justice which he did as a student at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.