Human Dignity In African Philosophy

Author : Motsamai Molefe,Christopher Allsobrook
Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2023-12-07
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 3031373405

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Human Dignity in an African Context by Motsamai Molefe,Christopher Allsobrook Pdf

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 bringing together chapters that offer philosophical exposition, defense (or even rejection) and application of the concept of human dignity in light of intellectual resources in African cultures, such as ubuntu, personhood, and serithi.

Author : Motsamai Molefe
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 85 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2022-03-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783030932176

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Human Dignity in African Philosophy by Motsamai Molefe Pdf

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 of these African theories, but to familiarize the global audience of philosophy, ethics and related disciplines (legal studies, sociology, bioethics and so on) with a neglected African perspective on this vital concept. The books is aimed at scholars of philosophy interested in non-European and specifically African perspective.

Author : Motsamai Molefe
Publisher : Springer
Page : 179 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2019-04-02
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783030155612

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An African Philosophy of Personhood, Morality, and Politics by Motsamai Molefe Pdf

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 idea of personhood. Rather, the book showcases some of the moral-political content and consequences of the account it presents.

Author : Michael Kamau Mburu
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 159 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2022-06-21
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781793650030

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Odera Oruka and the Right to a Human Minimum by Michael Kamau Mburu Pdf

Odera Oruka and the Human Minimum: An African Philosopher's Defence of Human Dignity and Environment considers the work of Odera Oruka (1944–1995)—arguably one of the finest philosophers in Africa—by analyzing his major practical contribution to philosophy from the practical point of view. Odera Oruka is well known for his sage philosophy, but his "practical philosophy" has received less attention. This book situates Oruka within philosophical discourses around issues of justice, human rights, ethical duty, ecology, humanism, and politics. A thread that ties these questions together is Oruka's argument for the right to a human minimum, defined by three basic human needs: physical security, subsistence, and health care. Michael Kamau Mburu explores how these three taken together constitute the most basic and necessary (though not sufficient) right, and establishing this right is a means to ensuring human dignity, a condition for global justice. The book also expounds and applies some ethical values and philosophies from Africa—such as "ubuntu" or humanness—to clarify, defend, and promote human dignity without jeopardizing the environment.

Author : Molefe, Motsamai
Publisher : NISC (Pty) Ltd
Page : 150 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2020-02-16
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781920033699

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African Personhood and Applied Ethics by Molefe, Motsamai Pdf

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.

Author : Brett G. Scharffs,M. Christian Green,Simeon O. Ilesanmi
Publisher : African Sun Media
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2024-06-15
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781991260253

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African Conceptions of Human Dignity by Brett G. Scharffs,M. Christian Green,Simeon O. Ilesanmi Pdf

Contributors join together in this tenth ACLARS volume to propose a framing of human rights in terms of African conceptions of human dignity. Following on the signing of the Punta del Este and Botswana Declarations of Human Dignity for Everyone Everywhere in 2018 and 2023, contributors discuss human dignity as an African and indigenous concept grounded in relationship, community, and an overarching ethic of Ubuntu. Chapters further explore human dignity’s many meanings and relation to other rights in the African context, as well as human dignity’s connection to basic human needs, state obligations, religion and theology, gender and age, and the environment.

Author : Motsamai Molefe,Elphus Muade
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 113 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2023-12-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781003835592

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African Ethics and Death by Motsamai Molefe,Elphus Muade Pdf

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 theory to the problems associated with death. In the medical context, will an African theory of moral status permit or forbid euthanasia? Do we have moral obligations towards dead human bodies? Overall, the book provides an important African axiological contribution to debates on global ethics and moral philosophy. Providing an important overview of the ethical problems associated with the biological fact of death, this book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of philosophy and African studies.

Author : Elvis Imafidon,Mpho Tshivhase,Björn Freter
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 639 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2023-09-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783031251498

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Handbook of African Philosophy by Elvis Imafidon,Mpho Tshivhase,Björn Freter Pdf

This Handbook provides in one volume rich, comprehensive and rigorous coverage of specific subject areas and thematic concerns in the ever-evolving academic discipline of African philosophy. This Handbook is unique in its focus on central and emerging areas within African philosophy such as Afro-communitarian philosophy, ethics, epistemology, social and political philosophy, existentialism, philosophy of religion, gender philosophy, philosophy of education, phenomenology, transhumanism, African philosophy futures, and philosophy of the non-human. The thirty-two chapters in this Handbook explore the rich textual and non-textual forms of philosophical knowledge in Africa and adequately represent the broad and diverse scope of African philosophy, showing the richness and depth of the philosophical tradition. This reference work is indispensable to students and researchers in African philosophy, comparative philosophy and world philosophies.

Author : Motsamai Molefe
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 145 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2020-05-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783030465193

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An African Ethics of Personhood and Bioethics by Motsamai Molefe Pdf

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 questions, specifically, those of abortion and euthanasia. Regarding abortion, it concludes that it is impermissible since foetuses possess partial moral status. Regarding euthanasia, it argues that it is permissible for reasons revolving around avoiding the reversing of personhood. It also, though, minimally, touches on the questions regarding the mentally disabled and animals, to which it assigns lower moral status.

Author : Motsamai Molefe,Christopher Allsobrook
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2021-02-16
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783030644963

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Towards an African Political Philosophy of Needs by Motsamai Molefe,Christopher Allsobrook Pdf

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 re-orient discourses in African philosophy beyond the impasse of rights-based confrontations to shift the conversation toward needs as a cornerstone of African political theory.

Author : M. Molefe
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 181 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2021-11-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781498599443

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Partiality and Impartiality in African Philosophy by M. Molefe Pdf

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 limited in others, Molefe turns to the second strategy in which he invokes the salient normative concept of personhood in African cultures. Molefe argues that the concept of personhood adjoins theories of human dignity and moral perfection (virtue). The major insight that emerges is a robust ethical theory qua personhood that accommodates both partiality and impartiality. He grounds requirements of impartiality on human dignity, which operates largely as a macro-ethical concept that normatively informs the character of our social institutions (politics). Politics is characterized by fairness, equality, and impartiality. Partiality (the agent-and-other-centred forms of it) is directly connected with the agent’s chief moral duty to achieve her own virtue (moral perfection), which operates as a micro-ethical concept. These two kinds of moral partialism, self-favoritism and close ties such as family, are justified by appeal to the project's view, instead of the individuals-and-relationships view typically invoked to justify moral partiality in the literature.

Author : Richard H. Bell
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0415939364

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Understanding African Philosophy by Richard H. Bell Pdf

This volume is a comprehensive collection of critical essays on The Taming of the Shrew, and includes extensive discussions of the play's various printed versions and its theatrical productions. Aspinall has included only those essays that offer the most influential and controversial arguments surrounding the play. The issues discussed include gender, authority, female autonomy and unruliness, courtship and marriage, language and speech, and performance and theatricality.

Author : Pablo Gilabert
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2019-01-22
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780198827221

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Human Dignity and Human Rights by Pablo Gilabert Pdf

Human dignity: social movements invoke it, several national constitutions enshrine it, and it features prominently in international human rights documents. But what is human dignity, why is it important, and what is its relationship to human rights? This book offers a sophisticated and comprehensive defence of the view that human dignity is the moral heart of human rights. First, it clarifies the network of concepts associated with dignity. Paramount within this network is a core notion of human dignity as an inherent, non-instrumental, egalitarian, and high-priority normative status of human persons. People have this status in virtue of their valuable human capacities rather than as a result of their national origin and other conventional features. Second, it shows how human dignity gives rise to an inspiring ideal of solidaristic empowerment, which calls us to support people's pursuit of a flourishing life by affirming both negative duties not to block or destroy, and positive duties to protect and facilitate, the development and exercise of the valuable capacities at the basis of their dignity. The most urgent of these duties are correlative to human rights. Third, this book illustrates how the proposed dignitarian approach allows us to articulate the content, justification, and feasible implementation of specific human rights, including contested ones, such as the rights to democratic political participation and to decent labour conditions. Finally, this book's dignitarian approach helps illuminate the arc of humanist justice, identifying both the difference and the continuity between the basic requirements of human rights and more expansive requirements of social justice such as those defended by liberal egalitarians and democratic socialists. Human dignity is indeed the moral heart of human rights. Understanding it enables us to defend human rights as the urgent ethical and political project that puts humanity first.

Author : Chinedu Paul Ezenwa
Publisher : Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2020-11-10
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783832551995

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The Value of Human Dignity. A Socio-cultural Approach to Value Crisis among Igbo People of Nigeria by Chinedu Paul Ezenwa Pdf

Where today is a specific, original and stable basis for a Political order to be found? What does the human dignity mean in the midst of the general crises of values? In the face of the ambivalent achievements of modernity and enlightenment, do the values of Christianity which until now have been regarded as the objective norm fail in its contact with the primal culture and the culture of the African communities? Where in this classes are the weakening and strengthening and specific challenges of this African People? This field of conflict must not only be described, but above all to ask about new opportunities to get out of the crisis of the value of human dignity in the Igbo society of Southeastern Nigeria. Ezenwas work seeks and aids understanding, using the facility of examining the subject of dignity in Igbo culture to throw light that casts much farther than the subject matter, begging for further inquiry into other complementary aspects of the culture. In other to achieve this, interdisciplinary research was needed.

Author : Kwasi Wiredu
Publisher : CRVP
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1565180054

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Person and Community by Kwasi Wiredu Pdf