African Personhood and Applied Ethics

Motsamai Molefe

Description

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 robust moral-political view. African Personhood and Applied Ethics offers a philosophical explication of the ethics of personhood to give reasons why we should take it seriously as an African moral perspective that can contribute to global moral-political issues. The book points to the two facets that constitute the ethics of personhood � an account of (1) moral perfection and (2) dignity. It then draws on the under-explored view of dignity qua the capacity for sympathy inherent in the moral idea of personhood to offer a unified account of selected themes in applied ethics, specifically women, animal and development.

Informations

• Publié par: NISC (Pty) Ltd
• Date de parution: 03 février 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781920033712
• Langue: English

Extrait

AFRICAN PERSONHOOD AND APPLIED ETHICS
MOTSAMAI MOLEFE
Published in South Africa on behalf of the African Humanities Program
by NISC (Pty) Ltd, PO Box 377, Makhanda, 6140, South Africa
www.nisc.co.za
First edition, first impression 2020
Publication © African Humanities Program 2020
Text © Motsamai Molefe 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-920033-69-9 (print)
ISBN: 978-1-920033-70-5 (PDF)
ISBN: 978-1-920033-71-2 (ePub)
Project manager: Peter Lague
Indexer: Sanet le Roux
Cover design: Advanced Design Group
Cover photographs: © Andrey Tsvetkov / Dreamstime.com (front),
© imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo (back)
e-book conversion: Wouter Reinders
The author and the publisher have made every effort to obtain permission for and acknowledge the use of copyright material. Should an inadvertent infringement of copyright have occurred, please contact the publisher and we will rectify omissions or errors in any subsequent reprint or edition.
Dedication
I dedicate this book to these future stars — Motsamai, Tumelo, Molefe, Thato, Makgotso.
About the Series
The African Humanities Series is a partnership between the African Humanities Program (AHP) of the American Council of Learned Societies and academic publishers NISC (Pty) Ltd. The Series covers topics in African histories, languages, literatures, philosophies, politics and cultures. Submissions are solicited from Fellows of the AHP, which is administered by the American Council of Learned Societies and financially supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The purpose of the AHP is to encourage and enable the production of new knowledge by Africans in the five countries designated by the Carnegie Corporation: Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. AHP fellowships support one year’s work free from teaching and other responsibilities to allow the Fellow to complete the project proposed. Eligibility for the fellowship in the five countries is by domicile, not nationality.
Book proposals are submitted to the AHP editorial board which manages the peer review process and selects manuscripts for publication by NISC. In some cases, the AHP board will commission a manuscript mentor to undertake substantive editing and to work with the author on refining the final manuscript.
The African Humanities Series aims to publish works of the highest quality that will foreground the best research being done by emerging scholars in the five Carnegie designated countries. The rigorous selection process before the fellowship award, as well as AHP editorial vetting of manuscripts, assures attention to quality. Books in the series are intended to speak to scholars in Africa as well as in other areas of the world.
The AHP is also committed to providing a copy of each publication in the series to university libraries in Africa.
AHP Editorial Board Members as at January 2020
AHP Series Editors:
Professor Adigun Agbaje, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
Professor Emeritus Fred Hendricks, Rhodes University, South Africa
Consultant:
Professor Emeritus Sandra Barnes, University of Pennsylvania, USA (Anthropology)
Board Members:
1 Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Institute of African Studies, Ghana (Gender Studies & Advocacy) (Vice President, African Studies Association of Africa)
2 Professor Kofi Anyidoho, University of Ghana, Ghana (African Studies & Literature) (Director, Codesria African Humanities Institute Program)
3 Professor Ibrahim Bello-Kano, Bayero University, Nigeria (Dept of English and French Studies)
4 Professor Sati Fwatshak, University of Jos, Nigeria (Dept of History & International Studies)
5 Professor Patricia Hayes, University of the Western Cape, South Africa (African History, Gender Studies and Visuality) (SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory)
6 Associate Professor Wilfred Lajul, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, Makerere University, Uganda (Dept of Philosophy)
7 Professor Yusufu Lawi, University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania (Dept of History)
8 Professor Bertram Mapunda, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (Dept of Archaeology & Heritage Studies)
9 Professor Innocent Pikirayi, University of Pretoria, South Africa (Chair & Head, Dept of Anthropology & Archaeology)
10 Professor Josephat Rugemalira, University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania (Dept of Foreign Languages & Linguistics)
11 Professor Idayat Bola Udegbe, University of Ibadan, Nigeria (Dept of Psychology)
Published in this series
Dominica Dipio, Gender terrains in African cinema , 2014
Ayo Adeduntan, What the forest told me: Yoruba hunter, culture and narrative performance, 2014
Sule E. Egya, Nation, power and dissidence in third-generation Nigerian poetry in English , 2014
Irikidzayi Manase, White narratives: The depiction of post-2000 land invasions in Zimbabwe , 2016
Pascah Mungwini, Indigenous Shona philosophy: Reconstructive insights , 2017
Sylvia Bruinders, Parading respectability: The cultural and moral aesthetics of the Christmas Bands Movement in the Western Cape, South Africa , 2017
Michael Andindilile, The Anglophone literary-linguistic continuum: English and indigenous languages in African literary discourse , 2018
Jeremiah Arowosegbe, Claude E Ake: the making of an organic intellectual , 2018
Romanus Aboh, Language and the construction of multiple identities in the Nigerian novel , 2018
Bernard Matolino, Consensus as democracy in Africa , 2018
Babajide Ololajulo, Unshared Identity: Posthumous paternity in a contemporary Yoruba community , 2018
De-Valera NYM Botchway, Boxing is no cakewalk! Azumah ‘Ring Professor’ Nelson in the social history of Ghanaian boxing, 2019
Dina Ligaga, Women, visibility and morality in Kenyan popular media, 2020.
Okaka Opio Dokotum, Hollywood and Africa: Recycling the ‘Dark Continent’ myth,1908–2020, 2020
Acknowledgements
The success of this work was made possible because of the assistance and support of a large number of people and organisations to whom I am eternally grateful. Space does not permit me to express my gratitude to all of them, but I am cognisant of and acknowledge each one.
The manuscript for this publication was prepared with the support of the African Humanities Fellowship Program established by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) with a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. My sincere thanks go to the African Humanities Program (AHP) Series Editors, Prof. Emeritus Fred Hendricks, Rhodes University, South Africa and Prof. Adigun Agbaje, University of Ibadan, Nigeria for their support and to Barbara van der Merwe of the AHP Secretariat for her professionalism, patience, and encouraging motivation.
Thanks are also due to the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript. Their comments, criticisms and insights were instructive and helpful.
My gratitude also goes to the Govan Mbeki Centre and Development Centre at the University of Fort Hare which provided generous financial support that contributed to making publication of this book possible. Prof. Pumla Gqola deserves a special mention for her leadership and for supporting my research in African philosophy.
My sincere thanks to Thaddeus Metz, Bernard Matolino, and Shepherd Mpofu, for all the support, mentoring and conversations about my career and our work as academics. I will always appreciate their influence and support. My gratitude would be incomplete without my heartfelt thanks to my partner and friend Asithandile Zibaya for all the support and love in my journey as a scholar and writer. Thank you for believing in me and being my number one supporter.
I acknowledge and appreciate John Irvine for editing the manuscript. I am also grateful for all the administrative, financial and collegial support I received from my colleagues — Chris Allsobrook and Sakhathina Mnonopi, at the Centre of Leadership Ethics in Africa (CLEA) at Fort Hare. It is truly a blessing to work with you colleagues. I am grateful to the Department of Philosophy at Fort Hare for organising a writing retreat where I worked on the revisions of the book.
I thank you all!
Preface
I was motivated to write this book by the swelling criticisms against the idea of personhood in the literature. Scholars of African moral thought, like Anthony Oyowe, Mpho Tshivhase, and Kai Horsthemke, among others, have raised what they regard as devastating objections against the moral idea of personhood. The thrust of these objections is that the idea of personhood is implausible, and we should explore other indigenous axiological resources to articulate a sound moral-political system. Three of these criticisms of personhood stood out for me.
The first criticism is that it fails to embody a just social order, where both men and women are equal and are owed equal moral duties. The suggestion inherent in this criticism is that the idea of personhood is intrinsically patriarchal and imagines and reproduces gender-based social inequalities that advantage and prioritise men at the expense of women. The second criticism focuses on the question of animals, anthropocentrism and speciesism. The point of this criticism is that the idea of personhood cannot embody a sound animal ethics since it is essentially speceistic. The third criticism suggests that the idea of personhood fails to embody the fea