Human Dignity in an African Context 3031373405, 9783031373404

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Human Dignity in an African Context Edited by Motsamai Molefe Christopher Allsobrook

Human Dignity in an African Context

Motsamai Molefe  •  Christopher Allsobrook Editors

Human Dignity in an African Context

Editors Motsamai Molefe University of Fort Hare East London, South Africa

Christopher Allsobrook University of Fort Hare East London, South Africa

ISBN 978-3-031-37340-4    ISBN 978-3-031-37341-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Contents

1 Introduction  to Human Dignity in African Thought  1 Motsamai Molefe and Christopher Allsobrook 2 Defending  a Communal Account of Human Dignity 23 Thaddeus Metz 3 An  African Communal Approach to Punishment with Moral Dignity 43 Polycarp Ikuenobe 4 African  Personhood, Metaphysical Capacities and Human Dignity 65 Motsamai Molefe 5 Human  Dignity, Ubuntu and Global Justice 87 Dennis Masaka 6 Moderate  Communitarianism and Human Dignity107 Ndivhoniswani Elphus Muade 7 An  African Communitarian Conception of Dignity in Mutual Recognition125 Christopher Allsobrook

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8 African  Conceptions of Human Dignity and Violence Against Women in South Africa155 Louise du Toit 9 Intrinsic  or Instrumental Value? African Philosophical Conceptions of Dignity187 John Sodiq Sanni 10 Un/Re-covering  the Concept of Dignity in an African Thought Scheme Through Igbo Proverbs on Greatness, Nobility and Honour205 Lawrence Ogbo Ugwuanyi 11 Conceptions  of Human Dignity in African and European Legal Systems: Consonance or Dissonance?227 Rinie Steinmann 12 Motho Ha Se Ntja Ha Lahloe: The Philosophy of Human Dignity in Sesotho Culture257 Christopher N. Mokolatsie 13 Wiredu  on the Humanistic Orientation of Akan Morality281 Ada Agada Index301

Notes on Contributors

Ada Agada  received his PhD from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He has taught African philosophy and intercultural philosophy classes in polytechnics and universities in Nigeria and Germany. He has published widely in reputable international journals in the fields of African philosophy, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and intercultural philosophy. His first book titled Existence and Consolation: Reinventing Ontology, Gnosis, and Values in African Philosophy has been praised by African and Western philosophers for its originality and was named a 2015 Outstanding Academic Title award winner by CHOICE, the magazine of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), the largest division of the American Library Association (ALA). Dr. Agada is a full-time lecturer with the Department of Philosophy, at the Federal University, Otuoke, and an associate researcher with the Centre for Leadership Ethics in Africa (CLEA), University of Fort Hare. Christopher  Allsobrook  is the Director of the Centre for Leadership Ethics in Africa (CLEA) at the University of Fort Hare, where he also leads the Research Niche Area in “Democracy, Heritage and Citizenship”. He is an editor of Theoria and South African Journal of Philosophy. His research, in African political theory and ethics, intellectual history, and critical theory, has examined contested ideas of rights, colonialism, land reform, critique, humour, and legitimation. He is the author, with Camilla Boisen, of “The Border of Trust at Kat River for Coloured Settlers, 1851–1853”, Decolonisation: Evolution and Revolution, eds. David Boucher and Ayesha Omar, (Wits University Press 2023), and, with vii

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Thozamile Mtyalela of “Freedom from Black Governmentality under Privatized Apartheid”, in a special issue of Philosophical Papers which he edited (2022). He is the editor, with Motsamai Molefe, of Towards an African Political Philosophy of Needs (Palgrave Macmillan 2021). Louise du Toit  is Professor of Philosophy, Chair of the Department and Head of the Unit for Environmental Ethics in the Department of Philosophy at Stellenbosch University. She is author of A Philosophical Investigation of Rape: The Making and Unmaking of the Feminine Self (Routledge 2009), co-editor of African Philosophy and the Epistemic Marginalization of Women (Routledge 2018), and co-editor of Nonviolence and Religion (MDPI 2023). She has held visiting positions at the University of Bristol Law School, the Center for Theological Inquiry in Princeton, and at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS). She has published extensively in the fields of political philosophy, feminist theory, feminist legal theory, and African philosophy. Polycarp Ikuenobe  is a Professor at Kent State University, Department of Philosophy, Kent, Ohio, USA.  His areas of research interest include African Philosophy, Philosophy of Law, Social and Political Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Race, Informal Logic, and Critical Thinking. He is an Associate Editor of the journal, Philosophia. Dennis Masaka  holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of South Africa and teaches philosophy at Great Zimbabwe University, Zimbabwe. He is a Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy and Classics at the University of the Free State. He has published in journals that include South African Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Papers, African Identities, Journal of Black Studies, Education as Change, African Study Monographs, Journal of Negro Education, Theoria, Alternation, Journal on African Philosophy, Social Epistemology, CODESRIA Bulletin, and Filosofia Theoretica. He has contributed a number of book chapters in edited volumes. He has also published an edited volume titled: Knowledge Production and the Liberation Agenda in Africa: Cham: Springer (2022). His areas of interest include philosophy of liberation and epistemic (in)justice. Thaddeus Metz  is known for drawing on the African philosophical tradition analytically to address a variety of contemporary moral/political/ legal controversies. Metz has had more than 300 works published, including recent articles on African philosophy in Mind, The Monist, and Religious Studies and A Relational Moral Theory: African Ethics in and

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Beyond the Continent, a book that appeared with Oxford University Press in 2022. Metz is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Christopher N. Mokolatsie  is an independent scholar who completed his PhD in Theology at the University of South Africa (UNISA) in 2019 on virtue ethics and the spirituality of Botho, in the moral thought and practice of the Basotho. His research is in African Philosophy, Ubuntu, Ethics, and Theology. Motsamai Molefe  is a senior researcher at the Centre for Leadership in Ethics [CLEA] at the University of Fort Hare. He has published articles in reputable journals of philosophy and politics like Journal of Value Inquiry, Cultura, The Monist, Politikon, among others. He has published five monographs in local South African and international presses. He is a fellow of the prestigious Ubuntu Dialogues Exchange Fellowship Programme (2021) hosted by Stellenbosch University and Michigan University. He is the editor-in-chief of the South African Journal of Philosophy. Ndivhoniswani  Elphus  Muade holds a degree in Dental Therapy (BDT), a Master’s degree in Philosophy (MPhil), Master of Science degree in Medicine (MSc MED), and a Doctoral degree in Philosophy (PhD). His interests are in Moral Philosophy, African Philosophy, Applied Ethics, Bioethics, and Medical Law. John  Sodiq  Sanni  is a lecturer in the Philosophy Department at the University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa. He received his PhD from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. His research interests include, but are not limited to, social and political philosophy, continental philosophy (phenomenology), political theory, colonial and decolonial studies, African philosophy, religion and philosophy, and migration studies. Some of his works include his recently published co-­ authored book titled Migration from Nigeria and the Future of Global Security. He was a postdoctoral research fellow in the NRF/British Bilateral Research Academy Chair in Political Theory (Political Studies Department) at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is part of the editorial team of the South African Journal of Philosophy (SAJP). Rinie  Steinmann  Attorney at Steinmann Attorneys, Meyerton, South Africa, for the past 25 years, specialising in personal injury law and commercial law.  Her doctoral thesis at the University of Potchefstroom in

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2016 focused on ‘The Legal Significance of Human Dignity’. Steinmann has written on ‘The Core Meaning of Human Dignity’ in the Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal, 19 (1), 2016, and ‘Law and Human Dignity at Odds over Assisted Suicide’ in De Rebus, 2015 (258). Lawrence  Ogbo  Ugwuanyi  is a Professor of African Philosophy and Thought (since 2011) and founder of the Centre for Critical Thinking and Resourceful Research in Africa (www.cectraafrica.org). He holds a PhD (Ibadan) 2003; has served as Visiting Scholar-UNISA (2005); Visiting Associate Professor, Great Zimbabwe University (2014); is Fellow, IASH, University of Edinburgh (2021); Visiting Scholar, Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge (2023); member-PENN Program, University of Pennsylvania, USA and University Edinburgh (2022—2024); and has published in West African Review, South African Journal of Philosophy, Theoria, Southern Journal of Philosophy, African and Asian Studies, and Revista de Estudios Africanos. His research seeks to illustrate the autonomy of African thought scheme.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction to Human Dignity in African Thought Motsamai Molefe and Christopher Allsobrook

Introduction This edited volume on human dignity in the African context contributes to political theory, that is, to moral, legal, and normative considerations of government, the state, and relations of power. Of the state, one may ask two related questions, of foundational “moral principles (that) should govern the way it treats its citizens” and of the “kind of social order it should seek to create” (Swift 2009, 5). Political theory considers “the nature and value of justice, … equality, political obligation, moral perfectionism”, as well as secondary concepts of rights, power, freedom, etc. (Pojman 2002, xi). We consider two related foundational questions. First, how should the state treat its citizens on the basis of human dignity? Second, what is the central goal of politics for a social order that shows suitable respect for human dignity?

M. Molefe (*) • C. Allsobrook Centre for Leadership Ethics in Africa, University of Fort Hare, Alice, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Molefe, C. Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1_1

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Historical recognition of the human dignity of African people has been hard won. Given well-known challenges in re-establishing normative orders on the African continent, our focus on African political theories of dignity offers an exposition of shared moral principles to reconstruct just social order in Africa. Our contribution to the political theory of human dignity, with a basis in African social contexts and African ethical principles, advances relational principles for egalitarian society, which emphasise commitment to the protection and empowerment of fellow citizens. ‘Human dignity’ is concerned with the moral specialness of human beings. Human beings are special insofar as we recognise our inalienable moral worth (Donnelly 2015). We offer an exposition of the meaning of human dignity, with a view to its relevance for African political contexts. We use the phrase African contexts in two related senses. On the one hand, this identifies the geography or location of the authors and the issues that animate them. All the contributors to this volume are located in Africa. The question of location is crucial in that we are raising our hands as scholars located in Africa to draw attention to the voices, experiences, and perspectives on pressing issues affecting all of humanity from this vantage point. We also speak from ‘an African context’ to call attention to Africa’s rich cultural, axiological, and intellectual resources for global theories of dignity which may help to resolve issues affecting all human beings (Janz 2009). This contribution to global political theory draws on typically African political, ethical, and legal conceptions of human dignity. The major motivation for this project stems from our interest in African political theory, which has been neglected, relative to empirical political science in Africa, leaving theory to thinkers outside. There is scant African literature on theoretical concepts such as needs, rights, power, democracy, development, the state, and power. This is not to suggest one will not find chapters or articles, here and there, on these concepts. But one is unlikely to find a monograph or an anthology of systematically sustained reflection on their meaning and utility. Our general goal, therefore, is to contribute to the growth of African political theory, by focusing on underconsidered and underdeveloped political concepts and/or theories. Political studies in Africa have typically engaged with empirical problems through Western theory and concepts, providing data for Western thinkers. With this volume, and with our previous edited volume on needs (Molefe and Allsobrook 2021), we hope to reverse this order, which sustains epistemic injustices of assimilative neocolonial hegemony.

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We undertake this project to make available a single volume on the theme of human dignity. Our research into human needs in Africa found that human dignity underpins various basic needs in African political life, yet the foundational value of dignity for African political theory has been neglected. The value of dignity is taken for granted, while inquiry into its meaning has been neglected. To the best of our knowledge, there is no book in African studies, political theory, jurisprudence, or ethics that makes its intellectual object of concern the concept of human dignity, despite its enormous  importance in our ordinary lives, politics and law. Despite the significance of the struggle for recognition of human dignity in African history, there remains a paucity of literature considering what it is. As a measure of the state of the literature in African political thought concerned with the concept of human dignity, consider the literature on dignity in African philosophy more broadly. One of the most important debates in African philosophy considers its implications for human rights (Molefe and Allsobrook 2018). A primary question in this debate is whether Afro-communitarian polities are oriented by rights or by duties with regard to social justice (Menkiti 1984; Gyekye 1992). It is in relation to this concern with rights and duties that the concept of human dignity emerges in Kwame Gyekye’s (1997) moderate communitarianism to provide a foundation or justification for human rights. Three aspects of human dignity are worth noting in Gyekye’s treatment of the concept, reflecting the distinctive manner in which this concept is generally treated in African political theory. As is common in his style of philosophical elucidation, Gyekye tends to examine philosophical concepts in light of his indigenous Akan culture/ language. He philosophises by analysing matters from the standpoint of the Akan language to unearth an African perspective whose implications he considers for their bearing on philosophical issues. This African style of philosophy supports what the influential philosopher Kwasi Wiredu (1996) refers to as conceptual decolonisation. Conceptual decolonisation involves scholars of African thought using indigenous languages as resources to elucidate the philosophical content of African ideas and theoretical possibilities, challenging Western preconceptions (Gyekye 1995). One may take the Akan concept of a person, onipa, analyse it, and reconstruct an African conception to evaluate its philosophical plausibility (Gyekye 1992; Wiredu 2008). However, Gyekye’s conceptual elucidation, from African languages, of concepts and their theoretical implications has

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not, by and large, attended to human dignity, nor has African political theory more generally. Prominent scholars of African political science seldom engage in such linguistic philosophical analysis. Even philosophers, such as Wiredu (1996), Ilesanmi (2001), Menkiti (2004), Metz (2010), Ikuenobe (2017), and Molefe (2022), have failed to analyse human dignity in light of related African phrases and concepts, relying for the most part on the English concept and on its history and meanings from the West as a point of departure. Ikuenobe invokes the African concept of personhood, specifically, ubuntu, to construct a theory of human dignity, while the meaning of the concept itself, evident in African thought and social practices, remains unanalysed and underinvestigated linguistically. Neglecting the African language as a resource to reflect and elucidate conceptions of human dignity leads to the omission of indigenous gems inherent in African metaphysical, epistemic, and axiological resources. African words, concepts, and proverbs of dignity such as isidima, isithunzi, sirithi, hunhu, and many others offer deep metaphysical insights and axiological pointers to enrich our understanding of human dignity. The chapter by Lawrence Uguwuaanyi, in the volume (Chap. 10), speaks to this lacuna with fruitful results, drawing from the Igbo language to reflect on African dignity. Applying the Igbo thought scheme as an instance of the African thought scheme, the work translates the concept of dignity in Igbo thought to greatness, nobility, and honour. Likewise, the contribution to this volume by Christopher Mokolatsie (Chap. 12) undertakes a linguistically and culturally sensitive analysis drawn from the intellectual resources of the baSotho peoples and cultures. We are aware that some scholars in the literature have appealed to the seSotho word/concept for dignity, sirithi, but we find that such focused normative analysis is sorely needed for it to be useful in bioethics, environmental ethics, legal theory, and political theory (see, for instance, Shutte 2001). Mokolatsie shows how the Sesotho proverbs “motho ha se ntja ha a lahluoe” and “O se re ho moroa tooe” express the inwards and outwards perspectives of human dignity. It does not follow that all theorisation of human dignity must necessarily proceed from a philosophical analysis of African linguistic conceptions of dignity, but we point to a concerning gap in Gyekye’s philosophy and in African political theory more generally, which neglects to examine vital conceptual and linguistic resources on human dignity. The invitation is for scholars to pay closer attention to ordinary language to gain further

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understanding of the meaning of human dignity. Ugwuanyi’s and Mokolatsie’s chapters here are a useful starting point in this direction. The second consideration to note in Gyekye’s (1992, 1997) formative elucidation of his political theory of human rights is that he does not define the concept of human dignity. Although African political theory often appeals to the concept, for instance, in considering rights and duties, we observe a common tendency in the literature not to provide an explicit definition of the concept. We find appeals to an intuitive, universal sense of human dignity, pointing to the moral specialness of human beings (Donnelly 1982). However, a robust intervention in political theory requires us to go beyond mere intuition to define and specify the concept of human dignity at a theoretical level. This would surely enrich discourses in African thought, especially those that rely on the normative grounding that the concept offers. It is especially important to distinguish an explicit, clearly defined concept of human dignity, since the meaning of the concept is often ambiguous and vague, yet controversial, contested, colonised, manipulated, and open to various competing senses. Without proper clarification and elucidation, improper use of the concept tends to obfuscate rather than to illuminate discussions. We discuss scepticism over the controversial nature of the concept of human dignity further in the next section and in these chapters (see, for instance, Allsobrook, Chap. 7). The point here is that it is important for us, working in Africa, to pause, to consider and to define such central concepts, and to specify how we understand them, when the concept is so contested and controversial. It is refreshing to see scholars such as Ikuenobe (2018), Metz (2021), and Molefe (2022) recently clarifying and specifying the concept. Their work in this volume builds on these schemes. Finally, one will note, as Elphus Muade’s chapter explains in this volume (Chap. 12), how Gyekye tends to rely on Western conceptions of human dignity. Note that the comments above were directed at the conceptual level, referring to the abstract idea of a thing, whereas this comment is levelled specifically at a conception, that is, the substantive interpretation or theory, of human dignity (Swift 2007, 10). There may be one concept of freedom, justice, or dignity, for example, but many conceptions (interpretations or theories) of it. On the part of Gyekye (1997), in imagining rights in African thought as a foundation, he relies on the Christian theory of human dignity, of imago dei, and on Kant’s theory of dignity, which grounds it on the human capacity for rational autonomy. Muade’s chapter rightly raises concerns about ignoring salient African

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religious and secular resources to theorise about human dignity. His concern is that much of the literature falls prey to the temptation to rely on Western preconceptions, diminishing the unique significance of African cultural and ethical resources and, ironically, perpetuating the postcolonial influence of Eurocentric hegemony. We undertake this project, therefore, to respond to the three concerns raised above. We want to contribute to conceptual decolonisation and to the analysis of African concepts of human dignity in political philosophy. We want to go beyond intuition to be clear and precise about what concept of human dignity we have in mind when articulating African political theories. While we consider Western theories of human dignity a useful resource to understand and analyse human dignity, we are committed to elucidating and to developing African theories,1 drawn from African words, understandings and social practices, to suit African political contexts. This is an especially serious set of concerns for African political theory, given the foundational normative significance of the concept of dignity for concerns noted above, including human rights. A further important reason why we undertake this project involves our observation, after scanning the literature, that voices and perspectives from the West dominate much of the work on human dignity. A quick review of influential anthologies (see Malpas and Lickiss 2007; Kaufmann et al. 2011; Duwell et al. 2014), monographs (Kateb 2011; Rosen 2012), and journal articles (Habermas 2010; Hughes 2011; Miller 2017) substantiates our concern about the dominance of Western perspectives on this theme. The ethical duty to develop truly global theories of social justice, further motivated by considerations of epistemic justice, necessitates that we pay careful attention to voices and perspectives from marginal cultures in Africa. African peoples have significant cultural and axiological intellectual resources to contribute to the foundation theme of human dignity, with a bearing on all human beings, in their respective cultures 1  We do not want to give the false impression that all the chapters in this book do engage the three major limitations in relation to the concept of human dignity: the general lack of reliance on African languages to analyse human dignity, lack of explicit definition of human dignity and avoidance of relying on Western conceptions (or theories of human dignity) to accounts for African political theory. The point is to give the reader a sense of status of the literature in African political thought in relation to concept of human dignity and the limitations in the literature in relation to it. The hope is that this book goes some way toward responding to these limitations, while inviting other scholars to contribute to understanding of the concept of human dignity in African political thought.

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and societies, especially considering the historical record of African struggles for recognition of dignity. Diversity and complexity of thought would enrich our engagement on this theme and many others that remain dominated by the intellectual community of the global north. The human dignity of Africans has a long history, whose recognition has been only recently granted by Europeans, whose own colonial and imperial record betrays a poor understanding of the concept. To lay a foundation for our discussion of human dignity in an African context, the remainder of the chapter proceeds as follows. First, we address the meaning of ‘African contexts’ in relation to human dignity. The term ‘African’ can be confusing, controversial, ambiguous, and open to abuse by some scholars in ethically and methodologically deficient or inconsistent ways. To contextualise this work as ‘African’, we need to be clear about our use of the term. Second, we turn to the concept of human dignity itself, considering the following subthemes: (a) the contested character of human dignity, (b) the various senses of the term, and (c) use of the concept in ethics, bioethics, and political theory. The status of the concept of human dignity in African political theory necessitates an African perspective on the topic. Discussion of the various contributions to this volume will give the reader an overall sense of the themes and debates covered in the pages of this book. We begin by clarifying our use of the concept of ‘Africa’.

The Concept of Africa Since this is a contribution to ‘African’ political theory, it is important to clarify what we mean by Africa, or African. We broadly situate our work at the intersection between the place, Africa, and African political thought, or philosophy, broadly construed to include normative approaches to politics, legal studies, etc. The intersection between Africa and African thought is crucial, given that the colonial project misrepresented Africa as a vast, dark continent devoid of civilisation, history, intellectual engagement, and reason. This volume is motivated by our response to thinkers such as Mogobe Ramose, particularly his essay ‘The Struggle for Reason in Africa’, which shows us that Africa and its peoples offer a positive testament to reason, contributing to universal thought and knowledge. To clarify our understanding and our use of the concept of ‘Africa’, we begin with two disclaimers.

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First, we do not claim that the ideas expressed here represent the beliefs of all Africans. We do not expect to represent all African cultures and peoples. Rather, this book is written by scholars in Africa, by authors of African and of non-African descent, offering normative theoretical interpretations of the concept of human dignity, drawn from experiences in and of this place, and from related African traditions and texts. Some scholars in the volume deal directly with the concept of human dignity in light of African linguistic concepts (Ugwuanyi, Mokalatsie); others appeal to concepts of ubuntu or personhood in African philosophy to develop their own theories of human dignity (Ikuenobe, Metz, Masaka, Molefe, Mokolatsie, Sanni). Others focus on the salience of the concept for the politics of gender, racial identity, and recognition (Du Toit, Bailey, Allsobrook). We urge the reader to see this work as offering a novel perspective on human dignity, insofar as those living and working here consider African intuitions, ideas, insights, experiences, and theories as a unique and helpful resource for understanding human dignity. The second disclaimer is that we are not committed to any essentialism, cultural or otherwise, about Africa. It is not only outsiders who have tended to bundle African diversity into a single, undifferentiated concept. A common form of cultural essentialism evident in the literature, deploying the concept ‘Africa/n’, is evident in the tendency to offer a romantic representation of African social practices. An invented and imaginary Africa thus figures, with anachronistic atavism, as a utopian place of innocence, rooted in uncontentious  communal harmony. Scholars of Africa often presume an idealised conception of community as a model to theorise African cultural traditions, urging a return to imaginary origins. The views in this volume are offered from Africa, informed by African concerns, but we do not presume a singular conception of human dignity. We sympathise with Matolino’s and Kwindingwi’s (2013) trenchant criticism of unrealistic projects of return, which, they correctly observe, inevitably fall prey to repression. There is no original Africa to which we may return. Such ‘African’ romance presumes a prejudiced misconception of history, depicting a simple past of peace and prosperity encompassing the continent. The view is misinformed and monochromatic. Africa’s multifaceted history is as eventful, complex, diverse, agonistic, and controversial as that of any continent, with its own events, activities, opportunities, and struggles. Such simplifications and misrepresentations find expression in the tendency to present a homogenous and simple whole, whereas Africa and African people demonstrate considerable diversity and complexity. Among

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the 52 African states, there are more than a thousand cultural groups, with diverse languages, cultural practices, rituals, religious beliefs, etc. It is critical when we engage with Africa that we abandon the utopian view of one place, which is no place, to appreciate its heterogeneity, complexity, and diversity. With these disclaimers, we proceed to clarify our use of the term. It is appropriate to use the term Africa, for one, because the countries and peoples in it do not object to its use. Moreover, important institutions on the continent describe themselves as African, including the African Union (AU) and African National Congress (ANC). Many Africans accept the term as an appropriate descriptor of their origin, home, and identity. ‘Africa’, in this sense, conveys no degrading, demeaning, or pejorative connotations; it identifies a place and its people. Scholars of African thought distinguish at least two related senses when describing Africa in relation to their work, which we find methodologically tenable. Oritsegbubemi Oyowe (2014, 329, 333) distinguishes these two senses as follows: “One picks out a geographical category merely while the other refers to a family of ideas distinctive of cultures in the geographical area denoted as Africa”. The first sense refers to a geographical place, that is, a location we can objectively identify on the map (Janz 2009). The second sense identifies tendencies and salient cultural and axiological features of Africa. Metz comments as follows (2007, 324, emphasis mine), in the context of African ethics: What I claim are moral judgements more common among Africans than Westerners are values that are more widespread in the sub-Saharan part of the continent than in Europe, North America or Australasia. They are values that are more often found across not only a certain wide array of space, from Ghana to South Africa but also a long span of time in that space, from traditional societies to contemporary African intellectuals. They are also values that recur more often in the literature on African ethics than in that on Western ethics. Therefore, I am speaking of tendencies, not essences.

The second sense of the term, ‘Africa’, refers to a set of ideas or social practices that tend to be more salient in this part of the world. It is crucial to note that we are talking of tendencies; no essentialism is presumed. Notice that the claim is not that these properties are unique or exclusive to the place Africa; rather, they tend to feature more in Africans’ lives than elsewhere. Take belief in ancestors, for example. We are not aware of any

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indigenous cultural tradition among Africans that does not hold, when one dies, that one joins the community of ancestors to serve as a moral guardian of one’s family and community (Mbiti 1970; Wiredu 1992). This belief in the afterlife of ancestors is African to the extent that it is salient among most Africans and/or in Africa. To claim that the belief is salient in this place does not mean that everyone in Africa believes it. It is a metaphysical belief on which most African spiritual traditions touch, given its prevalence. Moreover, to claim that some belief is African, such as belief in the enduring spiritual lives of deceased ancestors, does not mean that it is not held in other places; rather, the belief is African to the extent that it is salient across Africa. In this light, the reader should not be surprised to find authors in this volume drawing from intellectual concepts that are salient in the African context. For example, the concept of personhood and/or ubuntu features significantly. These concepts salient in African metaphysical and axiological thought have long been intimately associated with African conceptions of human dignity. For example, Polycarp Ikuenobe and Thaddeus Metz rely on the concepts of personhood and/or ubuntu to articulate and to justify their conceptions of human dignity. Molefe’s analysis of metaphysical capacities in African thought takes its point of departure from the concept of personhood. There is no doubt that the African concept of personhood and/or ubuntu counts among the most influential concepts in the tradition of African philosophy (Masolo 2010; Behrens 2013; Molefe 2019),2 which informs the concept of human dignity at the root of African ethics, politics, and jurisprudence. Having clarified how we use the concept ‘Africa’ here, we now turn to consider the concept of human dignity insofar as African political thought is concerned with it.

The Concept of Human Dignity Our discussion of the concept of human dignity is divided as follows: (a) the contested character of the concept, (b) different senses of the concept, and (c) functions of the concept of human dignity from an African context. 2  It is not our view that for some idea to be African, it must be authored in Africa or have ideas that are salient in Africa. We do believe that the intersection of the two, writing from Africa and being influenced by ideas, values, traditions and/or experiences from it, represents the ideal condition for some view to count as Africa.

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The Contested Character of the Concept of Human Dignity There is no doubt that the concept of human dignity is contested in the wider literature. Influential ethicist Sarah Clarke Miller (2017, 108), who has considered the concept of dignity from the perspective of human need (2012), opens her discussion of human dignity from an ethical perspective on care by noting that dignity is “both a highly influential and a profoundly problematic concept”. She identifies several areas where the concept has been influential. The most well-known instance is in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR brought the concept of human dignity into the spotlight. In seeking to imagine and justify the new world order that emerged from the ruins of the imperialist era, after the Second World War, the UDHR offered a robust vision of accountability, with respect for all peoples  and for global civilisation, based on universal respect for human rights. The UDHR grounded and justified human rights as political instruments to protect the human dignity of all. The preamble of the UDHR recognises “the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” (UN 1948). Human dignity, evident in the inalienable moral worth of an individual, serves as the foundation for universal freedom, global justice, and world peace, underwriting the human rights proclaimed in this formative document. However, for all its foundational significance for human rights, the meaning of dignity remains deeply contested. Miller likewise considers the idea of human dignity tremendously important for philosophy, especially for Kantian scholarship in bioethics, which relies on the concept of autonomy. It is rare in Western political theory and ethics to find engagement with the concept of human dignity that does not involve Kant’s account (Rosen 2012). The concept is pivotal for bioethics, for example. The report on Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President’s Council on Bioethics (2008) promotes human dignity as a critical tool for engagement with bioethical issues. Controversial debates on beginning-and-end of life issues, such as abortion and euthanasia, ultimately turn on human dignity, as a foundational guiding normative criterion for bioethics, which underwrites most other human values and ethical principles of human life. This significance is not limited to bioethics, extending to political theory, environmental ethics, social justice, legal theory, and so on (Misztal 2013).

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Miller notes considerable scepticism about the concept. She cites Susan Macklin’s (2003) essay ‘Dignity is useless concept’ as an instance of the problematic status of human dignity. The gist of Macklin’s argument is that the concept lacks precise meaning, adding little to no theoretical clarity or value to debates in bioethics. She adds that dignity can be replaced by more meaningful concepts—such as autonomy—without losing anything. Macklin’s suggestion is that we should be rid of this concept. It is useless. Doris Schroeder and Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr (2017, 3), in a thorough review of the dominant literature on human dignity in the West, comment on such scepticism about its utility and status: This is necessary because dignity is one of the most controversial concepts of the 20th and 21st centuries. It has been described as powerful …, yet useless and vague…; arbitrary … yet addictive … elusive … yet widely used … groundless … yet revolutionary … of supreme importance, yet without a reference point.

The reader may at this point wonder why, if the concept has been described as controversial or even useless, meaningless, or lacking any clear reference, we are publishing a book on human dignity in the African context. In our view, it is important to distinguish between negative and positive approaches. The negative approach, exemplified by scholars such as Hobbes, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Singer, Macklin, Pinker, and others, tends to call for repudiation of the concept. While it is essential to consider such influential critique, to conclude that such a wide-ranging and foundational concept holds no meaning is to dismiss too quickly the considerable influence attributed to it, not only by scholars but also by citizens across the globe. Western scholars may find it easy to scoff at the concept as meaningless, now that it is granted to others, but Africans fought long and hard for recognition of human dignity. Is this struggle for recognition of nothing? Easier to contend for those who have long enjoyed the privilege. On our part, we adopt a positive approach to human dignity, not to invent some definitive meaning for a cliched abstraction but to establish its common sense for Africans, acknowledging contestation. We recognise the contested character of the concept. Some scholars classify dignity as one of the most essentially contested notions in the social sciences and humanities (Rodriguez 2015). A concept is essentially contested when no agreement can be reached over its core defining features. The positive

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approach we take is characterised by three assumptions about the foundational significance commonly attributed to the concept of human dignity in ethics, law, and politics, at least in the context of this book. First, we distinguish the concept from its conceptions. Controversies over dignity arise largely over its conception, not the concept. Most scholars, from various disciplines and schools of thought, agree that there is something morally special about human beings, which we ought to respect—in all of us—which we call dignity. The association of the concept of human dignity with respect for human beings is uncontroversial. Disputes and contestations over the meaning of dignity emerge where we are required to further substantiate what explains, causes, constitutes, or gives reason for the intrinsic moral worth or specialness of human beings. Why should we recognise the human dignity of each other? What is it about human beings that warrants the claim that we have dignity? It is over such contested conceptions of dignity that disagreement arises and not the basic sense of the concept itself. The second reason why we endorse the positive approach is that much of the confusion and contestation that arises over the concept of human dignity is attributable to ambiguity. The word dignity embodies different conceptions with different denotations and even connotations. For example, we can distinguish between dignity as a value and dignity as moral status (Waldron 2013). Dignity may be associated with an intrinsic property, with virtue, character, or excellence (Miller 2017). Much of the uncertainty over dignity resulting from its contested ambiguity can be reduced in intellectual debates if scholars are clear on their use of the term to define and justify their use thereof. If we disambiguate the concept with clarity on which conception we have in mind in our deliberations, we can have meaningful discussions about the role and value of human dignity in our lives. The following section discusses different senses of dignity that are distinguished in this volume. Finally, we adopt a positive approach toward the concept of human dignity for African political theory, specifically, since scepticism about the meaning of the concept, which is evident in the West, is generally absent in the literature on African moral and political thought. Scholars of African thought tend to endorse the intuition that there is something morally significant about human beings, which belongs to our dignity. This is not to say there is consensus over a specific conception. Scholars such as Setiloane (1979), Shutte (2001), Bujo (2001), and Cornell tend to endorse a religious view of human dignity, whereas Wiredu (1996),

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Gyekye (2004), Menkiti (2004), Ikuenobe (2017), and Metz (2021) work with a secular conception. In this volume, Agada (Chap. 13) explores two traditional African conceptions of God, namely, in traditional African theism and in the limited God school  of thought. Following Wiredu’s limited conception of God, he shows how this influences Wiredu’s preference for a secular, humanist account of morality, explaining why his idea of human dignity is ‘no less attractive than the conception found in traditional African theism’. Despite disagreements over specific conceptions of human dignity in African philosophy, for instance, over their religious foundation, there is near unanimous consensus on the central significance of the concept for African ethics and politics. Scholars accept that there is something morally significant about human beings, which the concept conveys. It is the prevalence of this intuition in African thought that informs the emergence of this book, which brings together scholars from various disciplines to reflect on and to contribute to understanding the various senses of the concept of human dignity in an African context. We acknowledge contestation over different conceptions of dignity, but fresh memories of harsh indignities remind us of what it means for the dignity of certain people to be denied. Next, we turn to the different senses of the concept of human dignity. Senses of Human Dignity In our effort to disambiguate the concept of human dignity, most especially as understood in this volume, we consider a few different models in the literature to ensure that the meaning of the concept we work with is clear. Consider the distinction between recognition of one’s dignified moral status and one’s achievement of dignity (Michael 2014). Consider also the distinctions between intrinsic, inflorescent, and attributed senses of dignity (Sulmasy 2008). Rosen (2012) offers a philosophically rich discussion of the history of the development of different concepts of human dignity in the Western tradition. He identifies four distinct senses: dignity as a moral status, as intrinsic value, as virtue, and as a right. Schroeder and Bani-Sadr (2017) identify two distinct concepts: aspirational and intrinsic dignity. Space will not permit an extensive exposition of these distinctions. To give a reader a sense of the main distinctions of the concept, we will discuss those that stand out. Let us begin with the idea of intrinsic/inherent dignity, which John Sanni addresses in Chap. 9. Intrinsic dignity signals that a human being

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has value/worth in and of herself. The source of her moral worth is a function of some aspects of her nature. That dignity is ‘intrinsic’ or ‘inherent’ indicates that the location or source of this value is internal. There are at least three aspects of intrinsic dignity we may distinguish. First, the individual is said to possess this kind of moral worth because of what she is ontologically. This intrinsic value of human beings is not bestowed by anyone, nor can it be taken away. It is a property an individual possesses for being human (Hughes 2011). Second, intrinsic dignity cannot be violated (Miller 2017). Since it is inalienable, there is nothing another can do to destroy it. Yes, we can act in ways that offend the dignity of another, but no one can expunge or obliterate another’s dignity. No person, group, or government can make a decision or perform an action, no matter how evil or degrading, that takes away one’s intrinsic dignity (Sulmasy 2008). No personal failure or neglect or lack of moral achievement on one’s part can be said to detract from one’s human dignity. A rapist or a hardened criminal may be said to have as much intrinsic human dignity as a morally exemplary saint or hero since intrinsic dignity is a necessary function of our ontological make-up as human beings (ibid.). Second, we may consider dignity a virtue. On our reading, Sulmasy’s talk of dignity as inflorescent and Michael’s talk of dignity as an achievement both identify dignity as a virtue. The core-defining feature of dignity as virtue/inflorescence/achievement may be said to follow from the ontological capacity, which accounts for our intrinsic dignity. If the human agent positively develops this capacity, he or she acquires this virtue or achievement of inflorescent dignity. Note that virtue refers to positive character traits toward which we develop a strong disposition, from habituation or cultivation over time (Gyekye 2010). Dignity as a virtue requires or depends on human conduct or performance. One who performs well to develop good character exudes dignity. This kind of dignity is not innate. It depends on performance. It is not universal, since some human agents achieve it, while others fail. This dignity is stadial or gradational since some earn more dignity than others. My dignity may deteriorate. One may lose one’s dignity. We can also identify a weaker sense of dignity as a virtue. The sense of virtue, the stronger version of it that focuses on the agent’s moral character, features in various interpretations of virtue ethics in African, Western and Chinese philosophy, for instance (MacIntyre 1981; Metz and Bell 2013; Molefe 2019). The weaker sense of dignity as a virtue corresponds with what Sulmasy (2008) refers to as attributed dignity and what

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Schroeder and Bani-Sadr (2017) call comportment. ‘Attributed dignity’ embodies a convention or standard of excellence in activities, such as sport, arts, and sciences. We may associate Lionel Messi and Immanuel Kant with attributed dignity. Comportment as dignity refers to how one fares relative to rules and practices of propriety or etiquette. An individual could be said to have dignity insofar as she characteristically exemplifies cleanliness, neatness, or even fashion, relative to generally accepted social norms or standards. Intrinsic dignity is central to ethics, applied ethics, and political theory. For example, debates in bioethics rely on this important concept. Ethical questions regarding biological conditions, such as pregnancy, illness, ageing, and final stages of life, often refer to human dignity; interventions responding to these conditions are regulated by appeals to the concept (Sulmasy 2008; Schulman 2008). Hence, “Inherent human dignity …plays a central role in the legal instruments relating to bioethics” (Andorno 2013, 45). Some argue that the vision of a new world order of basic respect for all human beings without discrimination, imagined by the legal and political culture of human rights, is grounded in the idea of inherent human dignity (Griffin 2008). Hughes (2011, 12) contrasts inherent dignity from achievement in the context of human rights, observing that the former “is philosophically the more important of the two, providing as it does the basis for the Declaration’s affirmation of human rights”. In this volume, Metz, Molefe, and Muade focus on intrinsic or status dignity as an innate capacity (Chaps. 2, 4, and 6). Metz’s account of human dignity as a moral capacity, he argues, is able to account for certain human rights better than three other conceptions salient in the African tradition, which claim that we have dignity in virtue of our vitality, moral behaviour, or capacity to care for others. He considers these African accounts of human dignity in relation to two notable human rights, that is, to the right to informed consent in health, and the right not to be tortured. Molefe considers whether metaphysical capacities are morally neutral, instrumentally good, or intrinsically good, arguing that intrinsic dignity is primary and achievement dignity is secondary in African ethical thought. Finally, Muade uncovers two underexplored concepts of human dignity, one religious and the other secular, based on personhood. Muade then fruitfully returns to Gyekye’s theory of social justice, theorising human dignity in light of these considerations. Sanni (Chap. 9) argues that these senses are intertwined in African ethics. On the one hand, one’s contribution to the common good of the

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community informs the foundational value of African conceptions of human dignity. On the other hand, Sanni assesses justifications for considering African conceptions of dignity as having intrinsic attributes. Dignity within African societies, he explains, is neither solely intrinsic nor solely instrumental, since the intrinsic values and attributes of human beings are driven by instrumental normative standards for any community, revealing intrinsic and instrumental dispositions of the individual towards themselves and the community. Allsobrook (Chap. 7) disputes the a priori moral status of intrinsic human dignity. This understanding of dignity, he argues, misses something of the value of the social ontology, which may be attributed to a typically African relational approach. Instead, he shows that the substance of human dignity follows from struggles against indignity for mutual recognition. He argues that human dignity is a criterion human rights must satisfy, which imposes a duty of mutual respect. Ikuenobe (Chap. 3), following Menkiti (1984), rejects the concept of intrinsic dignity altogether. He argues that dignity in ‘personhood’ is attained “when one is recognised for internalising communal norms, performing requisite duties, and participating in relevant functions”. Ikuenobe examines the implication of human dignity for punishment, arguing that the goal of punishment is not retributive but restorative, aiming at rehabilitation and reintegration to restore moral dignity that is lost and to reconcile the punished agent with those she harmed. These chapters touch on the slippage between intrinsic dignity and the achievement of dignity as a virtue, which has caused countless disagreements in African philosophy. We do not hope to settle such debate, but these attempts to clarify the meaning of the term are well overdue. Having considered the need for clearly distinguished senses of dignity, we now consider the use of the concept of human dignity for constraint, empowerment, and equality. Use of Human Dignity for Constraint, Empowerment, and Equality At least three crucial functions make human dignity relevant for bioethics, legal theory, and political theory: constraints, empowerment, and equality (Beyleveld and Rogers 2001; Jaworska and Tannenbaum 2018). Constraints impose the stringent duty not to interfere with and/or harm beings of dignity, respect of which we owe to all human beings. Actions are forbidden that would harm or interfere with the dignity of a person,

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regardless of the positive consequences of the intended action or policy. For example, it is wrong to torture a suspected terrorist to gain information that may help the state to prevent a planned attack to ensure harmony and peace. It is wrong to pursue economic programmes that would maximise profits in ways that undermine human dignity. A minimum criterion for permissible actions or policies in any state is that these must take human dignity into account and, at least, be consistent with it. Constraints may be understood as universal negative duties that the notion of dignity imposes on us, not to undermine, harm or interfere with the dignity of any individual or group in pursuit of the common good. Human dignity imposes constraints on the state and private interests with respect to every human being. Second, human dignity requires that we aid and empower one another (Jaworska and Tannenbaum 2018). The duties that dignity imposes are empowering insofar as they entail universal obligations to ensure that all human beings with dignity have access to basic resources to lead decent lives, at least to an acceptable minimum threshold. The state has a duty to provide education, healthcare, and employment opportunities to ensure that human beings are able to develop and exercise capacities to flourish. The provision of human rights may be understood to follow from this empowerment dimension to the extent that human rights impose an obligation on states to ensure that human beings can live dignified lives (Hughes 2011; Michael 2014). The last aspect associated with dignity is, quite simply, social egalitarianism, which requires that all beings of dignity be treated equally. This is not just some abstract consideration. Dignity imposes a burden of equal treatment. The state has a duty to secure conditions that promote substantive equality among beings of dignity. Jarwroska and Tannenbaum (2018) express the egalitarianism evident in considerations of distributive justice commonly associated with human dignity as follows: For instance, when distributing goods among such beings [of dignity], in circumstances when they can all benefit similarly, barring special purposes, relationships, or independent claims on the goods, we have strong reason to distribute the goods equally (or in another way that’s fair, depending on the account of fairness).

In this volume, Du Toit (Chap. 8) investigates philosophers’ suggestions for how African conceptions of human dignity affect moral

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decision-making. She examines the concept from a female-centred perspective, asking, can it “account for and promote women’s human dignity?” She asks if the notion of African human dignity can resist the colonial abjection of the Black female body. Might it align with indigenous resistance against violence against women? She claims the African conception of dignity in ubuntu must take its cue from, “vital tradition of struggles for recognition of dignity” in African countercolonial praxis. Steinman (in Chap. 11) explores whether inherent, egalitarian human dignity can accommodate African communitarianism, asking “whether judicialised dignity in all instances should trump the competing rights of a community over individual liberalism and autonomy”. As she explains, prior to the Second World War, dignity was typically attributed to individuals unequally. However, she observes that inherent universal dignity “has been incorporated into African constitutionalism since the late 1980s, and judges from different jurisdictions are applying the elements of generic dignity in their decisions”. A constructivist account of human dignity “synthesises the rights of the individual and the community in adjudication, and in some instances, community rights take preference over individual rights, and vice versa”. Due to “application of the principle of proportionality”, she continues, community rights do not always override individual rights. Human dignity has only recently entered African courts, but it has developed independently of cultural application, so she concludes, “there is consonance with its European counterpart”. As Masaka (Chap. 5) argues, human dignity may not be confined to geography in its application. Masaka therefore offers an idea of global human dignity, grounded in African political theory, that he considers a challenge to the “power politics troubling human relations from different geopolitical centres on account of insinuated differential human dignities”. Masaka sets out an African conception of human dignity that, he hopes, “may prove sufficiently open to be applicable universally, to foreground global justice discourse”. We began by noting the contested character of human dignity, distinguishing different senses of the concept and three functions of the term for constraint, empowerment, and universal equality. We hope this volume will open many further avenues in African political thought to show that dignity is far from meaningless or useless in Africa and that such abstract and conceptual consideration of its meaning and use in African political theory proves a fitting testament to its effect and impact on the practical lives of Africans across the continent.

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References Andorno, R. 2013. The dual role of human dignity in bioethics. Medical Health Care Philosophy 16 (4): 967–973. Behrens, K. 2013. Two ‘normative’ conceptions of personhood. Quest 25: 103–119. Beyleveld, D., and B. Roger. 2001. Human dignity in bioethics and biolaw. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bujo, B. 2001. Foundations of an African ethic: Beyond the universal claims of Western morality. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company. Donnelly, J. 1982. Human rights and human dignity: An analytic critique of non-­ Western conceptions of human rights. The American Political Science Review 76: 303–316. ———. 2015. Normative versus taxonomic humanity: Varieties of human dignity in the Western tradition. Journal of Human Rights 14: 1–22. Duwell, M., J. Braarvig, R. Brownsend, and D. Mieth, eds. 2014. The Cambridge handbook for human dignity: Interdisciplinary perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Griffin, J. 2008. On human rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gyekye, K. 1992. Person and community in African thought. In Person and community: Ghanaian philosophical studies, 1, ed. K.  Wiredu and K.  Gyekye, 101–124. Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. ———. 1995. An essay on African philosophical thought: The Akan conceptual scheme. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ———. 1997. Tradition and modernity: Philosophical reflections on the African experience. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2010. African ethics. In The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. E. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/african-­ethics. Habermas, J. 2010. The concept of human dignity and the realistic utopia of human rights. Metaphilosophy 4: 464–480. Hughes, G. 2011. The concept of dignity in the universal declaration of human rights. Journal of Religious Ethics 39: 1–24. Ikuenobe, P. 2017. The communal basis for moral dignity: An African perspective. Philosophical Papers 45: 437–469. ———. 2018. Human rights, personhood, dignity, and African communalism. Journal of Human Rights 17: 589–604. Ilesanmi, O. 2001. Human rights discourse in modern Africa: A comparative religious perspective. Journal Religious Ethics 23: 293–320. Janz, Bruce B. 2009. Philosophy in an African place. Lexington Books. Jaworska, A., and J.  Tannenbaum. 2018. The grounds of moral status. In The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. E.  Zalta. Stanford: The Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Language and In-formation, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/groundsmoral-­status/.

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Kateb, G. 2011. Human dignity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kaufmann, P., H. Kuch, C. Neuhauser, and E. Webster. 2011. Humiliation, degradation and dehumanisation: Human dignity violated. New York: Springer. MacIntyre, A. 1981. After Virtue. London: Gerald Duckworth and Co. Macklin, R. 2003. Dignity is a useless concept. BMJ 327: 1419–1420. Malpas, J., and N.  Lickiss. 2007. Perspectives on human dignity: A conversation. Dordrecht: Springer. Masolo, D. 2010. Self and community in a changing world. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Matolino, B., and W.  Kwindingwi. 2013. The end of Ubuntu. South African Journal of Philosophy 32: 197–205. Mbiti, J. 1970. Introduction to African religion. New York: Praeger. Menkiti, I. 1984. Person and community in African traditional thought. In African philosophy: An introduction, ed. Richard Wright, 171–181. Lanham: University Press of America. ———. 2004. On the normative conception of a person. In Companion to African Philosophy, ed. Kwasi Wiredu, 324–331. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Metz, T. 2007. Toward an African moral theory. Journal of Political Philosophy 15: 321–341. ———. 2010. Human dignity, capital punishment and an African moral theory: Toward a new philosophy of human rights. Journal of Human Rights 9: 81–99. ———. 2012a. An African theory of moral status: A relational alternative to individualism and holism. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice: An International Forum 14: 387–402. ———. 2012b. African conceptions of human dignity: Vitality and community as the ground of human rights. Human Rights Review 13: 19–37. ———. 2021. A relational moral theory: African ethics in and beyond the continent. Oxford University Press. Metz, T., and D. Bell. 2013. Confucianism and Ubuntu: Reflections on a dialogue between Chinese and African traditions. Special Issue: Confucian Philosophy: Innovations and Transformations 35: 78–95. Michael, L. 2014. Defining dignity and its place in human rights. The New Bioethics 20: 12–34. Miller, S. 2012. The ethics of need: Agency, dignity and obligation. London: Routledge. ———. 2017. Reconsidering dignity relationally. Ethics and Social Welfare 11: 108–121. Misztal, Barbara A. 2013. The idea of dignity: Its modern significance. European Journal of Social Theory 16 (1): 101–121. Molefe, M. 2019. An African philosophy of personhood, morality and politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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———. 2022. Human dignity in African philosophy: A very short introduction. New York: Springer. Molefe, M., and C.  Allsobrook. 2018. Editorial: African philosophy and rights. Theoria 65: v–vii. ———. 2021. Introduction to African Political Theory of Needs. Towards an African Political Philosophy of Needs, eds. Motsamai Molefe and Christopher Allsobrook, 1–19. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Oyowe, A. 2014. An African conception of human rights? Comments on the challenges of relativism. Human Rights Review 15: 329–347. Pojman, L. 2002. What is ethics? In Ethical theory: Classic and contemporary readings, ed. L. Pojman, 1–7. London: Wadsworth. Rodriguez, P. 2015. Human dignity as an essentially contested concept. Cambridge Review International Affairs 28 (4): 743–756. Rosen, M. 2012. Dignity: Its history and meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schroeder, D., and A. Bani-Sadr. 2017. Dignity in the 21st century Middle East and West. New York: Springer Open. Schulman, A. 2008. Bioethics and the question of human dignity. In The President’s council on bioethics, human dignity and bioethics: Essays commissioned by the President’s council, 2–19. Washington DC: President’s Council on Bioethics. Shutte, A. 2001. Ubuntu: An ethic for a new South Africa. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications. Sulmasy, D. 2008. Dignity and bioethics: History, theory, and selected applications. In The President’s council on bioethics, human dignity and bioethics: Essays commissioned by the President’s council, 469–502. Washington, DC: President’s Council on Bioethics. Swift, A. 2009. Political philosophy: A beginners’ guide for students and politicians. Cambridge: Polity Press. UN. 1948. Universal declaration of human rights. United Nations. http://www. un.org/en/universaldeclarationhuman-­rights/. Waldron, J. 2013. Is dignity the foundation of human rights? New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers. Paper 374. Accessed 18 November 2022. http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu_plltwp/374. Wiredu, K. 1992. Moral foundations of an African culture. In Person and community: Ghanaian philosophical studies, 1, ed. K. Wiredu and K. Gyekye, 192–206. Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. ———. 1996. Cultural universals and particulars: An African perspective. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ———. 2008. Social philosophy in postcolonial Africa: Some preliminaries concerning communalism and communitarianism. South African Journal of Philosophy 27: 332–339.

CHAPTER 2

Defending a Communal Account of Human Dignity Thaddeus Metz

Introducing Human Dignity in the African Tradition It has been fascinating to see those working in the African philosophical tradition develop sophisticated accounts of human dignity over the past 15 years or so, where ‘dignity’ here means a being with the highest moral status and, more specifically, with a superlative non-instrumental value that requires us to treat the being with respect. Prior to then, African philosophers had tended to point out in passing on a page or two that it has been common for African peoples to believe not only that we have human dignity but also that what confers it on us is a life force from God (e.g., Wiredu 1990, 244; Gyekye 1997, 63; Magesa 1997, 51–52; Kasenene 1998, 25; Deng 2004, 501). In more recent work, the discussion of human dignity has become philosophically richer and in a variety of ways, beyond simply involving entire articles, chapters, and books now devoted to the topic.

T. Metz (*) Department of Philosophy, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Molefe, C. Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1_2

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In particular, the focus these days is less on what some African peoples have thought about dignity and more on what should be thought about it, often in the light of certain indigenous values that merit belief upon some reconstruction. Relatedly, philosophers have been articulating careful and sometimes novel accounts of human dignity with a recognizably African pedigree, only some of which appeal to life-force. Furthermore, one now encounters more thorough applications of a given conception of dignity, with a proponent pointing out its plausible implications for practical issues such as the death penalty, euthanasia, or poverty. In addition, in recent times, those working in the African tradition have offered reasons to favour an African approach relative to Kantian and more generally Western ones and have argued amongst themselves about the philosophically most defensible interpretation of dignity. What this development means is that ‘(t)here is no one single African concept of dignity’ (African Consortium for Law and Religion Studies 2019). As the debate currently stands, there is on offer in literate African philosophy a variety of thoughtful positions about human dignity.1 According to my reading of the field, salient in the contemporary literature are the views that our dignity is constituted by: • Exhibiting life-force (Bujo 1997; Ilesanmi 2001; Iroegbu 2005; Molefe 2014, 2015; Rakotsoane and van Niekerk 2017; Lougheed unpublished) • Having become a moral person (Menkiti 1984, 172–173; 2004, 325; 2017, 468; Ramose 2005, 58; Ikuenobe 2016, 2018; cf. Murove 2016, 175–182, 210–216) • Having the capacity to be a moral person, perhaps specifically to care for others (Molefe 2020, 2022; Shozi 2021) • Being a member of the human species (Oruka 1997, 85, 138–140; Gyekye 2010: sec. 6) • Being a member of a community such as a clan, one that potentially includes invisible agents (Cobbah 1987; Botman 2000; Cornell 2014, 159, 167–168; cf. Bujo 2001, 88) • Having the capacity to relate communally (Metz 2010, 2012, 2022) 1  One scholar would have us look beyond written texts by philosophers to learn about human dignity (Afolayan 2016). While I agree that, say, popular culture can provide insights into dignity, in this essay I am interested in a normative theoretical approach to it, that is, whether a certain comprehensive account of what confers a dignity on us is justified, particularly in the light of its explanatory power with regards to certain intuitive human rights. For that project, philosophical texts are of most use.

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In this essay, I provide new argumentation that the latter position is more defensible than a number of its competitors in the recent African philosophical literature. Specifically, I argue that there are substantial theoretical advantages to holding that dignity inheres in our natural ability to relate communally relative to appealing to the properties of life-force, personhood, or caring capacity. That means that I, in this chapter, set aside the views that dignity inheres in being a member of Homo sapiens or a community, which I do mainly since I find membership a less plausible criterion than the others.2 My intention is to weigh up the view that we have a dignity because of our communal nature against its strongest rivals from the African tradition. In the following, I begin by summing up my theory of human dignity, sketching some reasons why it should be found prima facie attractive and responding to some criticisms that have been or would naturally be directed at it. In the rest of the essay, I compare the implications of my theory with those of rivals in two applied contexts, pertaining to informed consent and torture. Presuming that human rights to informed consent and not to be tortured are firmly and widely held, I argue that the communal theory does better than rivals at accounting for them, providing a strong reason to accept it relative to them.

Grounding Dignity on Our Communal Nature In this section, I expound my favoured conception of human dignity (initially advanced in Metz 2010, 2012), provide some considerations in its favour, and rebut some objections that have been or could be made to it. It is only in the following sections that I apply it to practical controversies and work to show that it is preferable to rival conceptions from the African tradition. The core idea of the account of human dignity that I have developed in the  light of ideas from African philosophical writings is that the moral importance of a being varies according to its ability to relate communally (elsewhere I have said ‘harmoniously’), where characteristic human beings 2  The concern about both is insufficient egalitarian standing—what about those who are not members of a given species or community? Intuitively, non-members, such as persons who are not humans, could have a dignity.

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are able to relate communally to a higher degree than anything else on the planet. In particular, they can be both subjects and objects of a communal (harmonious) relationship, whereas (at least a very large majority of) animals can be merely objects of one, and other things in the natural world, such as plants and rocks, can be neither. In the following, I spell out the key concepts. A communal relationship involves two logically distinct properties, namely sharing a way of life with others (in other texts, I sometimes say ‘identifying with’ others) and caring for others’ quality of life (a.k.a. ‘exhibiting solidarity towards’ others). To share a way of life means that one enjoys a sense of togetherness with another individual, avoids frustrating her ends, and instead coordinates with her to help achieve them. To care for another’s quality of life means that one meets her needs, which might be biological, psychological, or social, avoids causing harm, and does these things typically out of sympathy and for her sake, not one’s own long-term self-interest. The combination of sharing a way of life and caring for others’ quality of life (or identity and solidarity) is at the core of what many of us find appealing about the ways that family members or friends interact. In a healthy family or friendship, people have a common sense of self, engage in joint projects, aim to foster each other’s good, and do so for one another’s sake. Hence, my interpretation of what a communal relationship is or of what it means to enter into community is more or less equivalent to what many people mean by ‘friendliness’ or even one broad sense of ‘love’. One way of putting my view is hence this: human persons are capable of being party to a friendly or loving relationship in a way no other being on Earth can. In particular, we can be both subjects and objects of such a way of relating, whereas for all we can tell, nothing else (at least amongst perceptible objects) can do that. To be able to be a subject of a communal relationship means that one can, by one’s nature, commune with others. That is, one in principle could enjoy a sense of togetherness with them, advance their ends, promote their good, and do so out of sympathy and other-regard. Being able to be an object of communal relationships means that others can commune with one by one’s nature. So, one is the kind of being towards which human persons in principle could be friendly or loving. Broadly speaking, humans can be both subjects and objects of a communal relationship, many animals can be merely objects of one, and plants and rocks can be neither since they lack ends and a (welfarist) good.

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To be a subject of a communal relationship, in the way that I understand it, requires one to have the concept of another person as distinct from oneself, with her own goals and interests. Being friendly includes being aware of the other as other. While there is some evidence that animals such as apes and certain birds can be aware of themselves, it is not as clear that they are aware of others’ minds as distinct from theirs. Note that even if they do have that sort of awareness, it is still the case that their capacities for other-regarding behaviour are limited compared to ours. For some examples, it is far from clear that they can restrict their own desire satisfaction to enable another to achieve her ends, that they can willingly undergo burdens in order to meet others’ needs, that they can imagine what it is like to be others and act consequent to that, or that they can act for the sake of another. Insofar as a limited number of animals can approximate these behaviours, they would plausibly count as ‘higher’ members of the animal kingdom. However, a very large majority of animals, for all we can tell, are patently unable to be subjects of a communal relationship with us, even though they can clearly be objects of one. That is, we can share a way of life with them and care for their quality of life, although they cannot do these things with us. It appears, then, that, of beings on Earth, only human persons can be subjects of a communal relationship while also being able to be an object of it. That is, only human persons can share a way of life with others and care for their quality of life, while others can in turn share with and care for them. In summary, we can love and be loved in a way that nothing else (perceptible) on the planet can, where it is these capacities that confer dignity on us, by the present theory. Communal relationality constitutes our distinctive and higher nature as human beings that a moral agent must avoid degrading. One might be tempted to hold the view that dignity inheres in merely being able to be a subject of communal relationship, even if one is not able to be an object of it. Some might think that if God existed, God would have a dignity but that God could not be an object of communal relationship with us. After all, we could neither sympathize with God nor do anything to meet God’s needs. However, God would plausibly still have dignity, arguably precisely because of God’s ability to commune with us as a subject. I have not been sure what to think about the case, but, on balance, I have been partial to running with Desmond Tutu’s fascinating suggestion that our vulnerability is part of what confers dignity on us (Metz 2022,

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154). Tutu remarks, ‘We are different so that we can know our need of one another, for no one is ultimately self-sufficient. A completely self-­ sufficient person would be subhuman’ (1999, 214). This perspective is salient in the African tradition and nearly absent from the Western tradition, which prizes independence, autonomy, and self-reliance as constitutive of a higher nature. From the Tutuist standpoint, God would have dignity because God would be capable of being not merely a subject of communality but also an object of it. Concretely, consider that we could enjoy a sense of togetherness with God, could go out our way to fulfil God’s purpose, and could act for God’s sake (even if we admittedly could not sympathize with God being in physical pain that we could relieve). Hence, the present theory can plausibly make sense of the intuition that God would have dignity, and some other intuition would be needed to motivate the claim that merely being a subject of communality is sufficient for dignity. One argument in favour of the communal account of human dignity is that a very large majority of human beings do in fact exhibit the capacities to relate in the relevant ways, while nothing else (empirically apprehensible) does. Of course, sometimes humans are asleep, heavily intoxicated, enraged, or in some other state that temporarily stunts their capacity for positive other-regard. However, these individuals are still ‘capable’ of that in the relevant sense, insofar as they, by their nature, retain the ability. They will wake up, sober up, and calm down, at which point they can resume being communed with by others and communing with others. In contrast, trees and stones are by their nature quite unable to love and be loved, as these ways of relating have been defined here. Now, it is true that not literally all human beings are capable of communal relationality. Late-term foetuses and newborn infants lack the ability to be a subject of communality, for instance. Is that not a counterexample to the present theory (on which see Molefe 2020)? It is not obvious that it is, for a theory plausibly counts as one about ‘human dignity’ if humans characteristically, even if not universally, exhibit the relevant property. By the same token, there can exist a category of something properly called ‘human rights’, even if they do not apply to every single human being but rather a very large majority of them. In addition, upon reflection, late-term foetuses and newborn infants do have the ‘capacity’ to be a subject of communal relationship in a straightforward sense that a tree does not. In the normal course of events, the baby will develop a communal nature, whereas there is no avenue by which

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the tree ever will. Perhaps this broader notion of ‘capacity’ to relate communally, which is probably best labelled a ‘potential’, is what should ground ascriptions of dignity. Although I myself do not hold that particular view, it is one way of running with the broad approach to dignity advanced in this chapter. Note that the appeal to potential goes only so far, since we are aware of some human beings that will never become communal beings, no matter what might happen. Some individuals who were born with severe mental disabilities utterly lack the capacity to be a subject of communal relationships, insofar as there is nothing that can be done to enable them to become aware of others distinct from themselves and act for their sake. Here, there is not even the potential for becoming a person who shares with and cares for others. By my communal account of dignity, they indeed lack it, which might seem to be a serious problem (Samuel and Fayemi 2020, 35, 40) (whereas by comparison, the view that dignity inheres in being a member of Homo sapiens easily avoids that implication). On this score, note that the broader account of moral status of which my theory of dignity is a part can ascribe a very high moral status to mentally incapacitated humans (see Metz 2022, 163–165). Although those with certain severe mental disabilities as well as babies cannot commune with us, we can commune with them, giving them a partial moral status. Furthermore, we are disposed to share a way of life with these human beings and care for their quality of life to a noticeably higher degree than we are with, say, sharks or wombats, plausibly giving these humans a higher moral status than the animals. It could therefore still be a grave wrong to mistreat a severely mentally disabled human being or a human baby, even if the wrongness would not consist of degrading their dignity. It is a mistake to think that an account of dignity must entail and explain all instances of immorality. Another prima facie problem with the communal account of dignity is that the capacity to relate communally comes in degrees. Some people are better able to cooperate with others and improve their quality of life than others. Mother Teresa had a more robust communal nature than a fairly autistic logician, from which it counterintuitively appears to follow from my account that she had a greater dignity than him. Dignity is normally taken to be equal amongst human persons (which, again, would admittedly be readily accounted for if dignity were instead a function of being a member of the human species).

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In reply, it is open to me to ground dignity on a ‘range property’, as John Rawls (1999, 444–445) has called it, such that if a being has enough of a certain feature, then it shares an equal standing with everyone else who does.3 That is the standard way of interpreting Kantian accounts, after all. Virtually no Kantian ethicist maintains that, say, Albert Einstein had a higher dignity than human persons with much lower, normal IQs; instead, since they were all capable of self-awareness, deliberation, and agency to the requisite degree, they all were equally dignified and warranting respect in the form of human rights. I can make an analogous move, contending that if one has enough of the ability to be the subject and object of a communal relationship, one’s dignity is equal to that of all others who do. Finally, it might appear that my approach to dignity categorically forbids punishment for breaking just laws, violence in self-defence, and any other form of coercion (Ikuenobe 2016, 461–465; cf. Chasi 2021). If people by their nature have a dignity because of their ability to relate communally, it might seem that any anti-social action such as imprisonment for wrongdoing would objectionably degrade such an ability. However, I do not think pacifism is required by the logic of grounding dignity on our communal nature (and I have in other work articulated complex accounts of when punishment, defensive force, and the like are justified, on which see Metz (2010) and (2019) for two examples). To see why not, consider how Kantians make good sense of why coercion is justified, despite claiming that our dignity inheres in our capacity for freedom. For them, if a person misuses his capacity for freedom, it is not degraded if we restrict it to protect the freedom of others. Indeed, for quite a number of Kantians, punishment of the guilty is required as a way to treat their dignity with respect, that is, to treat them as responsible for their behaviour instead of as mere animals, infants, or mentally incapacitated. I make some parallel points. Coercion and other uncooperative behaviour can be justified, despite grounding dignity in our capacity to cooperate and otherwise relate communally, because if a person misuses his capacity to commune, it is not degraded if we restrict it to protect others’ capacity to be subjects and objects of communal relations. Respect for the dignity of victims as well as offenders requires the political community to express disapproval of wrongdoing, which can involve imposing burdens on those 3  I do not address here the criticism of this approach recently voiced by Ebert (2020), mainly since it applies to many conceptions of human dignity, not just mine.

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who have committed serious crimes (insofar as ‘actions speak louder than words’), ideally burdens that would prevent harm to victims or compensate them for harm wrongdoers have done to them. Thus far, I have spelled out my conception of human dignity, worked to clarify some of its implications, and rebutted some objections that have been or could be raised to it. What I have not yet done is spell out how grounding dignity in our communal nature powerfully accounts for a wide array of human rights that we intuitively have. That would be a large project to undertake, but what I can do in this essay is to address in some detail two such rights that I presume the reader will agree that we have. Specifically, in the rest of the chapter, I argue that the communal theory does a better job than rival African theories at accounting for the right to informed consent in medical contexts and the right not to be tortured as a penalty. First, however, I need to present the essentials of the rivals.

The Strongest African Competitors Having articulated a conception of dignity according to which it is constituted by our ability to be party to communal relationships as subject and object, I need to sketch the basics of the competing theories from the African tradition to be in a position to show that it is stronger than they are in accounting for certain rights. The following overviews should suffice for that purpose. As mentioned in the introduction, the most common account of dignity to encounter ‘on the ground’ with respect to African cultures is that human beings have it by virtue of their life-force. A frequent view has been that God exists, has the greatest life-force of anything in the world, and has fashioned the world by imbuing all concrete objects in it with some of this life-force (e.g. Magesa 1997; Teffo and Roux 2003; Imafidon 2014; Molefe 2014, 124–129; Lajul 2017). By ‘life-force’ is meant a divine energy that is (normally) imperceptible to human beings and is present in different amounts and kinds amongst both visible beings, which include the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, and invisible beings, such as the living-dead and the not-yet-born. According to one thoughtful African vitalist, ‘Life-force varies quantitatively (in terms of growth and strength) and qualitatively (in terms of intelligence and will)’ (Anyanwu 1984, 90). Considering quantity and quality together, God may be said to have the ‘greatest’ life-force. On the other end of the spectrum are tiny members of the mineral kingdom, such

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as a speck of dust or grain of sand, which have the least life-force. In between these extremes are the other, medium-sized things in the world, where rocks are thought to have a lesser life-force than plants, plants a lesser one than animals, and animals a lesser one than humans. The strong and deliberative life-force of the human being is (or at least constitutes) its dignified self or personal identity, which will survive the death of its body and continue to reside on Earth imperceptibly for about four or five generations. Some African peoples and thinkers do not accept this metaphysical picture (see, e.g. Kaphagawani 1998, 170–172; and Wiredu 2011, 24–25), and of course, relatively few beyond the sub-Saharan region do. In developing an account of dignity, I have been particularly interested in one that would appeal to philosophers and related thinkers around the world, not merely to those who adhere to an ontology that is highly controversial and largely restricted to one continent. Therefore, it is worth noting that a secular or multicultural variant of a vitalist approach to dignity is available. That is, one might plausibly hold the view that human beings have a purely physical property, let us call it ‘liveliness’, that is greater than what can be found in the rest of the natural world (Metz 2012, 2022, 78–84; Lougheed unpublished). Considering us as merely material beings, we still encounter a strong and deliberative vitality in characteristic human persons, and one that might be taken to make them more special than anything else on Earth. Although our liveliness would end upon the deaths of our brains and bodies, it would still be more forceful and complex than anything else that can be known with the scientific method. Although that view is admittedly less African than the traditional interpretation, it has an African pedigree and coheres with much of the reasoning that African philosophers have advanced in support of a vitalist approach to dignity. Another, logically distinct account of human dignity that is salient in the recent literature is focused on personhood, which in the present context is roughly equivalent to virtue or good character. The core idea is that those who have become real persons, or those who have been morally upright, are all and only those who have dignity. Polycarp Ikuenobe has both articulated and defended this view most explicitly and systematically of late (2016, 2018), and so I focus on his approach in what follows, although some brief remarks by the influential African ethicist Ifeanyi Menkiti suggest sympathy towards it (1984, 172–173; 2004, 325; 2017, 468).

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Interestingly, much of what Ikuenobe says about what it means to be a real person is reminiscent of the theory I advance. For instance, Ikuenobe speaks of the ‘communal basis for moral dignity’ (see the title of his 2016 article), and he says that dignity, i.e. what merits respect, consists of living up to the values of ‘mutuality and concern’ (2016, 449) and promoting ‘a positive sense of identity, solidarity, harmonious living’ (2016, 449–450). The difference between us is that, for me, it is the ability to live in these ways that confers an inherent dignity on us, such that a very large majority of human beings are, by their nature, entitled to respectful treatment in the form of (amongst other things) upholding human rights. In contrast, Ikuenobe says, ‘On my plausible view, respect by others is not something that one who is capable “has inherently”, but it is something earned and deserved based on the active and positive use of one’s capacities for moral excellence or superior achievements’ (2016, 460). For Ikuenobe, only what is commonly known as ‘appraisal’ respect, i.e. respect that is deserved because of one’s choices, is relevant to thinking about dignity, and he utterly jettisons the concept of recognition respect, which is roughly respect that is warranted simply because of what one is (see Darwall 1977 for the classic distinction). I believe that both sorts of respect are essential for a complete understanding of morality and that observing human rights is best understood as a kind of recognition respect for one’s inherent dignity, not as a form of appraisal respect for having lived in a dignified manner (or so I shall argue below). A third approach to understanding human dignity that is salient in the contemporary literature by African philosophers is, like mine, capacity-­ based. However, the relevant capacity differs. For one example, Motsamai Molefe (2020, 2022) has in two books argued that our inherent dignity inheres in our ability to become real persons, which, for him, is roughly equivalent to those who have the capacity to care for others or act consequent to sympathy for them. For another example, Bonginkosi Shozi (2021, 18–20) has also contended that our inherent dignity inheres in our ability to become real persons, but real personhood, for him, is more or less equivalent to having communed with others (as construed above). Notice that my conception of dignity includes more properties than the views of these thinkers. In contrast to both Molefe and Shozi, for me, dignity is not exhausted by the capacity to exhibit virtue or to treat others in certain ways and includes the ability to be treated by others in certain ways. Specifically, by my communal theory, part of what confers dignity on us is our ability to be an object of communal relationship (recall ‘Tutu’s

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point’ from the previous section). Our relational nature is fully captured by the point that not merely are we able to care for others and share a way of life with them but also others are able to care for and share with us. This distinction makes a difference, as I now begin to demonstrate.

Informed Consent Most moral philosophers, professional ethicists, and the like around the world hold that normally one may conduct medical research on participants or medically treat patients only once they have given a certain kind of consent to be studied or treated. Roughly, participants must be mentally competent adults who not only understand the basics of the researcher’s plan but also have, consequent to this understanding, agreed without coercive, deceptive, or exploitative manipulation to let the plan proceed. Of course, it can sometimes be difficult to obtain informed consent, for example, in situations of poverty and a lack of education. In addition, some argue that others beyond the individual, say, her family or the broader community, must also consent. However, these points are consistent with holding that usually a necessary condition of permissible medical study or treatment is informed consent from the one being studied or treated, where it would be degrading to proceed without it. Supposing that moral judgement is true, I argue that my communal theory does the best job of making sense of it relative to an appeal to vitality, personhood, or caring capacity. In particular, what seems to be degraded when a person is studied to obtain medical knowledge without her consent is her capacity for joint projects. In other words, the prescription to respect another’s dignified capacity to share a way of life does substantial explanatory work. A medical researcher does not genuinely share a life with his study participants when: they are unclear about the basic terms of his interaction with them; he uses force or takes advantage of weaknesses to pressure them into doing his bidding; or he interacts with them in ways that undermine trust. Failing to obtain free and informed consent amounts to flouting other people’s non-­ instrumentally and highly valuable capacity both to be cooperated with (as an object) and to cooperate of their own accord (as a subject). That is a plausible explanation of why informed consent is usually needed, one that, I submit, rivals the utilitarian and Kantian explanations that dominate global thought about the matter (on which see Metz 2022, 189–192).

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What do the other African theories of dignity entail with respect to informed consent? Consider them in turn. First, the idea that we have dignity by virtue of our vitalist nature does not seem promising as a way to ground a default expectation of informed consent prior to medical research or treatment. Why not? Because tricking someone into being studied for the purpose of obtaining medical knowledge, while indeed degrading, does not seem to degrade a person’s life-force or liveliness. I accept that if a study participant discovered that she had been tricked, she would likely feel used and have reduced esteem as a result. However, consider a case in which the participant was very unlikely to discover that she was tricked and indeed never finds out that she was tricked (Metz 2022, 87–88). That would be degrading, despite vitality not being undermined or even having been at risk of being undermined. Deception for the sake of obtaining knowledge does not pose any inherent threat to the individual’s vitality, however it is to be conceived. That means that a vitalist conception of dignity has difficulty explaining why there should be a (near) categorical expectation of informed consent in medical contexts. Second, consider Ikuenobe’s idea that dignity inheres in those who have become real persons or exhibited substantial virtue, say, by having prized relationships of identity and solidarity with others in the past. Again, a (near) categorical expectation of informed consent in medical contexts is hard to capture with this approach since not all study participants or patients have become real persons or exhibited substantial virtue. Indeed, in the African tradition, it is only elders who have done so! Yet surely younger people in their 20s and 30s have a dignity of a sort that should explain why they have a right to informed consent. Suppose, however, that we broaden our conception of who has lived a dignified life by having treated others morally. Let us imagine, contrary to much of the African tradition, that people in their 20s and 30s can be real persons or at least exhibit enough of the requisite virtue to be treated with respect (cf. Ikuenobe 2016, 465, where the bar is set low). Even so, there will be many people who have been routinely dishonest, selfish, rude, inhospitable, and the like who lack dignity by Ikuenobe’s theory but have entered medical contexts and are intuitively entitled to informed consent. His theory cannot easily explain why base individuals would be degraded if they were coerced against their will to submit to a medical treatment; after all, for Ikuenobe they simply do not have much, if any, dignity. Third, there is the view that it is not our personhood, but rather our capacity for personhood, that confers dignity on us, where in Molefe’s

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significant contributions, that roughly amounts to our ability to care for others. I suspect the trickery case above also tells against this approach. Tricking someone into being studied for the purpose of obtaining medical knowledge, while degrading, does not seem to degrade a person’s ability to care. Molefe claims that ‘dignity is a function of our capacity for virtue. The idea of virtue understood in terms of the primacy of sympathy, where sympathy represents our capacity to “hear-listen” to others, forms the basis of our duties towards them’ (2020, 58). Insofar as the ability to ‘hear-listen’ to others means the ‘capacity to be conscious of their needs, welfare and their perpetual need of our help’ (2020, 58), there seems to be nothing inherent to being deceived to obtain medical knowledge that would degrade that capacity. One could just as well act sympathetically upon being deceived by the researcher to participate in a medical study and thereby aid others with the resultant knowledge. In reply, Molefe might slightly refine his theory to say that virtue comes only from voluntarily caring for others. Having been deceived into helping others, while perhaps meeting their needs, is not meeting their needs in a way that would confer personhood on the one helping. For that, they must make a free and informed choice to help, such that deception would in fact stunt the capacity to care in the relevant sense. This reply is forceful, I accept. Note, however, that it is a (partial) explanation that I can also bring on board, insofar as the capacity to relate communally includes (but is not exhausted by) the capacity to care for others’ quality of life. Furthermore, and more deeply, the logic of Molefe’s theory is limited to this explanation and is unable to capture the judgement that it is in part our ability to cooperate with that trickery would degrade. Intuitively, what is disrespectful about the undermining of informed consent is not merely that the participant’s or patient’s ability to care for others is stunted (if it is) but also, and I submit primarily, that her capacity to have her ends advanced (and more generally to be party to a joint project) is flouted.

Torture In the rest of this essay, I consider how well the four African conceptions of human dignity considered thus far can entail and explain the intuitive right not to be tortured. It would be degrading to be tortured for the fun of it. It would be degrading to be tortured for information that is not essential to stop a proverbial ticking bomb. It would be degrading to be tortured as a penalty, even if one has committed a serious crime. I am not

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suggesting that torture, understood as the combination of complete subjugation and intense pain, is categorically wrong because it is degrading, but rather that it almost always is wrong for that reason. Which view of dignity on the table can make the best sense of that judgement? Not, I submit, the view according to which our dignity inheres in our vitality, whether that is life-force or liveliness. The trouble is that while the vitalist can account for torture being a degradation, she has difficulty accounting for how much of a degradation it is. Torture definitely reduces one’s vitality. Being bound so that one cannot move while being inflicted with great pain directly inhibits features such as health, growth, reproduction, creativity, vibrancy, activity, self-motion, and confidence. However, it appears difficult for the vitalist to explain why being tortured would be more degrading than being given a drug that knocks one unconscious for the same amount of time. Being put to sleep, perhaps from one’s drink having been spiked, would directly inhibit the above features at least to the same degree (if not more), but while that treatment would be disrespectful, it would not be nearly as disrespectful as being tortured. In reply, the vitalist might suggest that torture is more degrading because it would prevent life-force or liveliness in the long run more than being knocked unconscious would. From this perspective, the reason being tortured for three hours would be more disrespectful than being unconscious for the same amount of time is that the former condition would have unwelcome long-term results in terms of, say, painful memories, inability to trust, and lack of psychological strength. However, while I grant that the instrumental badness of torture is part of what we abhor about it, upon setting that aspect aside, we would still judge torture to be more degrading than being forcibly put to sleep. Focusing strictly on the respective three hours, and abstracting from whatever might result afterwards, I presume the reader agrees that three hours of being tortured is more disrespectful in itself than being ‘slipped a mickey’ and sleeping for the same amount of time. It is quite difficult for the vitalist to account for the differential degrees of disrespect. Consider, now, Ikuenobe’s personhood account of human dignity, according to which it is only those who have been morally upright that have it. The straightforward implication appears to be that those who have instead been morally wicked have no complaint about torture being disrespectful. Ikuenobe acknowledges that one ‘lacks some degree of moral dignity if one is a serial rapist, robber, or killer’ (2016, 459) and says that one ‘must choose to act based on communal values that demand one’s

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respect for oneself, others, communal harmonious relationship, in order to deserve “some degree” of respect from others’ (2016, 459). If a person has not upheld communal values and so does not deserve some degree of respect, torture appears not to be degrading, by the logic of Ikuenobe’s view. In reply, I note that Ikuenobe remarks at one point, ‘Although the community might justifiably imprison and violate the dignity of a dangerous criminal, my gradational and conditional view indicates that it must exercise some degree of caring and respect for him and his dignity by not torturing or allowing him to suffer excruciating pain’ (2016, 463). It is hard for me to understand how this claim squares with the logic of the account of dignity that Ikuenobe has offered. For Ikuenobe, dignity must be earned by becoming a real person, and it is not something inherent to human persons. Some individuals simply will not have become real people and earned dignity, where certain criminals are good candidates. It follows unavoidably that these individuals do not have a dignity of a sort that merits respect or at least not much of it. I cannot understand what in Ikuenobe’s theory can rule out as degrading the torture of those whom African peoples would describe as a ‘zero-person’, ‘non-person’, or ‘animal’ because of their wickedness (Nkulu-N’Sengha 2009). At one point, Ikuenobe makes another suggestion that might seem to be a way to make sense of how his view could forbid torture. He says that ‘it is a violation of human dignity to enslave people because to do so is to fail to meet one’s responsibility to provide the conditions for people to use their capacity for well-being, harmonious relationships, to realize moral personhood, and experience dignity’ (2016, 452). Replacing the word ‘enslave’ with ‘torture’, we obtain a promising claim, namely that torture would be wrong because it prevents people from acting morally and thereby acquiring dignity. Of course, imprisonment or any other form of coercion would, too, but set that point aside. The present reasoning is very similar to what I take Molefe’s capacity for the personhood view to entail. Recall that, for Molefe, our dignity inheres in our capacity to become virtuous, which, in turn, means acting consequent to having sympathy for others. Hence, for him, the natural explanation of why torture is degrading is that it stunts the ability of the one tortured to care for others. That fits with the reasoning Molefe provides elsewhere, e.g. he clearly holds that euthanasia is degrading when it destroys one’s capacity for virtue but is not degrading if one has already lost that capacity (2020, 54–55), and he maintains that poverty is unjust insofar as it prevents people from

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living virtuously, with the point of socioeconomic development being to enable them to do so (2019). I agree that part of the explanation of why torture is degrading is that it, in my terms, degrades the ability of a person to be a subject of communal relationship, that is, to care for others’ quality of life and to share a way of life with them. However, it is implausible to hold that this is the entire explanation of disrespect. Suppose that someone tortures me for the fun of it. Sure, part of the degradation done to me is impairing my capacity to act virtuously. However, that does not seem to be the primary degradation. ‘It hurts!’ ‘I can’t move!’ These are surely legitimate complaints about the degradingness of torture, apart from the facts that it immediately prevents me from acting virtuously and will likely make it harder for me to do so in the long run. Indeed, I can sensibly object on these grounds even if, were I set free, I would have no intention of caring for others. These complaints are naturally captured by the judgement that part of what gives me dignity is the ability of others to care for me and share a way of life with me. In subjugating me, my capacity to be cooperated with is utterly undermined, while in putting me in great pain, my capacity to be cared for is treated as though it does not exist or is worth nothing. In sum, my capacity to be an object of communal relationship is also what the torturer severely degrades, a much more comprehensive and powerful explanation than what Molefe’s and Ikuenobe’s views appear able to muster.

Concluding Thoughts on African Understandings of Human Dignity I have in this essay considered the implications of African accounts of our dignity for only two human rights, and I have admittedly picked two that seem clearly better accounted for by appeal to our communal nature than by appeal to our vitality, personhood, or capacity to care. There are many more rights that we intuitively have besides these two, including the rights to marry interracially, to participate in political governance, to be able to choose one’s own religious beliefs, and not to be enslaved. Although I have at times in my work argued that these and other rights plausibly follow from a conception of dignity as inhering in our ability to be subject and object of communal relationships, I have not yet argued that this conception does better than all three of the African rivals considered in

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this essay. I submit, however, that the reflections here reveal that the communal theory is at least a particularly promising interpretation of the African tradition and merits further comparison as the search continues for the most philosophically defensible African understanding of human dignity.

References Afolayan, Adeshina. 2016. Beyond theory: African philosophy, human dignity and popular culture. Draft talk delivered at the African Literature Association Conference in Atlanta, USA on 7 April 2016, https://www.academia. edu/25935467/Beyond_Theory_African_Philosophy_Human_Dignity_and_ Popular_Culture?auto=download. African Consortium for Law and Religion Studies. 2019. African perspectives on human dignity for everyone everywhere. Declaration signed at the Seventh Annual Law and Religion in Africa Conference Law, Religion, and Environment in Africa in Gaborone, Botswana, 19–21 May 2019. https://www.dignityforeveryone.org/wp-­content/uploads/sites/5/2019/10/African-­Perspectives-­ on-­Human-­Dignity-­for-­Everyone-­Everywhere-­2019.pdf. Anyanwu, K.C. 1984. The meaning of ultimate reality in Igbo cultural experience. Ultimate Reality and Meaning 7: 84–101. Botman, H. Russel. 2000. The OIKOS in a global economic era: A South African comment. In Sameness and difference: Problems and potentials in South African civil society, ed. J.R. Cochrane and B. Klein. Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. http://www.crvp.org/publications/ Series-­II/6-­Contents.pdf. Bujo, Bénézet. 1997. The ethical dimension of community. Translated by C.N. Nganda. Nairobi: Paulines Publications. ———. 2001. Foundations of an African ethic. Translated by B. McNeil. New York: Crossroad Publishers. Chasi, Colin. 2021. Ubuntu for warriors. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Cobbah, Josiah. 1987. African values and the human rights debate. Human Rights Quarterly 9: 309–331. Cornell, Drucilla. 2014. Law and revolution in South Africa: Ubuntu, dignity, and the struggle for constitutional transformation. New  York: Fordham University Press. Darwall, Stephen. 1977. Two kinds of respect. Ethics 88: 36–49. Deng, Francis. 2004. Human rights in the African context. In A companion to African philosophy, ed. Kwasi Wiredu, 499–508. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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Ebert, Rainer. 2020. Are humans more equal than other animals? An evolutionary argument against exclusively human dignity. Philosophia 48: 1807–1823. Gyekye, Kwame. 1997. Tradition and modernity: Philosophical reflections on the African experience. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2010. African ethics. In Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. Edward Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/african-­ethics/. Ikuenobe, Polycarp. 2016. The communal basis for moral dignity: An African perspective. Philosophical Papers 45: 437–469. ———. 2018. Human rights, personhood, dignity, and African communalism. Journal of Human Rights 17: 589–604. Ilesanmi, Simeon. 2001. Human rights discourse in modern Africa. Journal of Religious Ethics 23: 293–322. Imafidon, Elvis. 2014. On the ontological foundation of a social ethics in African tradition. In Ontologized ethics, ed. Elvis Imafidon and John Bewaji, 37–54. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Iroegbu, Pantaleon. 2005. Right to life and the means to life: Human dignity. In Kpim of morality ethics, ed. Pantaleon Iroegbu and A. Echekwube, 446–449. Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books. Kaphagawani, Didier. 1998. African conceptions of personhood and intellectual identities. In The African philosophy reader, ed. P.H. Coetzee and A.P.J. Roux, 1st ed., 169–176. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Kasenene, Peter. 1998. Religious ethics in Africa. Kampala: Fountain Publishers. Lajul, Wilfred. 2017. African metaphysics. In Themes, issues and problems in African philosophy, ed. Isaac Ukpokolo, 19–48. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Lougheed, Kirk. Unpublished. African liveliness as a secular moral theory: Problems and prospects. Magesa, Laurenti. 1997. African religion: The moral traditions of abundant life. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Menkiti, Ifeanyi. 1984. Person and community in African traditional thought. In African philosophy: An introduction, ed. Richard Wright, 3rd ed., 171–181. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. ———. 2004. On the normative conception of a person. In A companion to African philosophy, ed. Kwasi Wiredu, 324–331. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 2017. Community, communism, communitarianism: An African intervention. In The Palgrave handbook of African philosophy, ed. A.  Afolayan and T. Falola, 461–473. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Metz, Thaddeus. 2010. Human dignity, capital punishment, and an African moral theory. Journal of Human Rights 9: 81–99. ———. 2012. African conceptions of human dignity: Vitality and community as the ground of human rights. Human Rights Review 13: 19–37. ———. 2019. Reconciliation as the aim of a criminal trial: Ubuntu’s implications for sentencing. Constitutional Court Review 9: 113–134.

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———. 2022. A relational moral theory: African ethics in and beyond the continent. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Molefe, Motsamai. 2014. Critical reflections on Gyekye’s humanism: Defending supernaturalism. In Ontologized ethics, ed. E.  Imafidon and J.A.I.  Bewaji, 121–132. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. ———. 2015. A rejection of humanism in African moral tradition. Theoria 62: 59–77. ———. 2019. Ubuntu and development: An African conception of development. African Today 66: 97–115. ———. 2020. An African ethics of personhood and bioethics: A reflection on abortion and euthanasia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2022. Human dignity in African philosophy: A very short introduction. Cham: Springer. Murove, Munyaradzi Felix. 2016. African moral consciousness. London: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd. Nkulu-N’Sengha, Mutombo. 2009. Bumuntu. In Encyclopedia of African religion, ed. M. Asante and A. Mazama, 142–147. Los Angeles: Sage. Oruka, Henry Odera. 1997. Practical philosophy: In search of an ethical minimum. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers. Rakotsoane, Francis, and Anton van Niekerk. 2017. Human life invaluableness: An emerging African bioethical principle. South African Journal of Philosophy 36: 252–262. Ramose, Mogobe. 2005. African philosophy through ubuntu, Rev. ed. Harare: Mond Books Publishers. Rawls, John. 1999. A theory of justice, Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Samuel, Olusegun, and Ademola Fayemi. 2020. A critique of Thaddeus Metz’s modal relational account of moral status. Theoria 67: 28–44. Shozi, Bonginkosi. 2021. Does human germline genome editing violate human dignity? An African perspective. Journal of Law and the Biosciences 8: 1–24. Teffo, Lesiba Joseph, and Abraham Roux. 2003. Metaphysical thinking in Africa. In The African philosophy reader, ed. P.H. Coetzee and A.P.J. Roux, 2nd ed., 192–208. London: Routledge. Tutu, Desmond. 1999. No future without forgiveness. New York: Random House. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1990. An Akan perspective on human rights. In Human rights in Africa: Cross-cultural perspectives, ed. A.A. An-naim and F.M. Deng, 243–260. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. ———. 2011. Introduction: Decolonizing African philosophy and religion. In Decolonizing African religions, Rev. ed., ed. Okot P’Bitek, xi–xxxvi. New York: Diasporic Africa Press.

CHAPTER 3

An African Communal Approach to Punishment with Moral Dignity Polycarp Ikuenobe

Introduction In philosophical literature, the notion of ‘dignity’ is construed as the intrinsic worth of humans by virtue of their essential nature, which is couched in terms of the metaphysical attributes and capacities of human beings, including vitality, soul, autonomy, rationality, or agency. This suggests that the intrinsic worth of humans lies, essentially, in their capacity to choose freely, have a rational conception of the good, life plan, act voluntarily, and live life in a way that they deem fit. Without the capacity to choose and act freely, one lacks the opportunity to express one’s dignity and develop a robust sense of personhood. The idea that humans or their lives have dignity has moral implications for how human life ought to be treated, lived, sustained, and protected, including the nature and scope of rights, individual freedom and choices, when and how to die, and whether taking life is always bad. Dignity has become an essential notion in public policy discourse and in various legal, ethical, and political issues about life,

P. Ikuenobe (*) Department of Philosophy, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Molefe, C. Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1_3

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healthcare, justice, and individual and social well-being. Thus, the idea of dignity raises issues about the nature, goal and administration of punishment in the context of African communalism and the relevant conception of personhood. In this paper, I articulate a plausible African view of ‘dignity’, which distinguishes between descriptive ‘human dignity’, involving essential human capacities, and normative ‘moral dignity’ that is meritoriously attained or bestowed. I argue that this conception of ‘moral dignity’ has its foundation in the normative conception of ‘personhood’, which depends on the idea and practice of communalism. ‘Personhood’ involves the positive recognition and bestowal of honour based on the proper use of one’s natural capacities, as manifested in good character traits and behaviours that promote communal values of caring, mutuality, harmonious relationships, and solidarity. The status of ‘personhood’ is attained with moral maturity by internalizing communal norms, performing requisite duties, and participating in communal functions. The bestowal of ‘moral dignity’, which indicates elements of the status of ‘personhood’, reflects positive evaluation and bestowal of honour based on one’s comportment. This status, which implies ‘being worthy of respect’ and the consequent respect by others, is gradational and conditional on one’s good moral character and behaviours. A denial of ‘personhood’ or ‘moral dignity’ involves an approbation for bad character and lack of requisite virtues; sometimes, it requires punishment for bad behaviours that violate communal norms. I then examine the implication of this idea of ‘personhood’ and the gradational view of ‘moral dignity’ for a plausible conception and practice of punishment. I argue that a plausible communal goal of punishment is not retributive but reformatory, reconciliatory, rehabilitative, and reintegrative. A person who commits a crime, engages in deviant behaviours, violates rules or norms, diminishes his or her own ‘moral dignity’ or ‘personhood’, creates disharmony in, and is ‘estranged’ from his or her community. Such a person is thus in need of rehabilitation to improve his or her ‘moral dignity’, attain or maintain ‘personhood’, and be reconciled with his or her community. As opposed to violating one’s moral dignity, this reformatory approach to punishment promotes an individual’s moral dignity and communal harmony. This implies that, depending on the egregiousness of one’s bad behaviours, we can punish in different ways that respect or disrespect (to various degrees) one’s dignity. By engaging in redemptive behaviours, individuals gradually improve their moral

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character or restore the moral dignity they lost to be reconciled and be in harmony with the people and community they harmed, offended, and from whom they thus estranged themselves.

Personhood and the Basis for Moral Dignity The African normative conception of personhood specifies the social and moral conditions or standards that—by one’s actions and character—a person must satisfy. These conditions are essential for one to be socially and morally recognized and respected by others, and for one to adequately experience dignity or enjoy certain privileges. A denial of personhood involves a social-moral approbation, which is a consequence of a failure to satisfy these conditions; it is a way to hold individuals accountable and an indication of what one should do to be a dignified, respectable, and acceptable member of a community. According to Menkiti, “personhood is the sort of thing which has to be attained and is attained in direct proportion as one participates in communal life through the discharge of the various obligations defined by one’s stations” (1984, 176). This normative view of personhood presupposes that one is metaphysically able to act rationally or to have agency in terms of participating in communal life and discharging obligations. This implies that humans have an inherent metaphysical nature and inherent social-moral nature, and they are able to sustain relationships and solidarity with others in a community. The African conception of personhood has two foci. The first concerns descriptive biological, physical, psychological, and metaphysical features, and the second concerns normative, social, and evaluative features. These two foci represent two aspects of a robust conception of personhood, or in Menkiti’s (1984, 173) words, “a maximal definition of the person”. The descriptive features of a person provide the material conditions for the normative. Thus, one cannot be called a person in a ‘true sense’ if one has not satisfied the normative criteria. But in order to satisfy the normative criteria, one must have the requisite descriptive metaphysical and physical features of autonomy, spirit, vitality, agency, volition, and body. The normative aspect of personhood, which depends on descriptive features, is a significant material basis for bestowing ‘moral dignity’. It is also the basis for requiring the duty of respect by others for one’s personhood, rights, autonomy, and life. This conception of ‘personhood’, which is the basis for moral dignity, indicates that the notions of ‘personhood’ and ‘moral dignity’ are ‘thick concepts’ with essential evaluative and descriptive

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aspects, both of which are necessary for understanding the ideas of ‘personhood’ and ‘moral dignity’. Moral dignity and normative personhood are bestowed on or ascribed to humans based on how one comports oneself or properly uses one’s metaphysical and physical capacities for communal interests and well-being, on which individual interests and well-being depend. The bestowal of the normative status of ‘personhood’ or ‘moral dignity’ indicates honour and respect involving the positive social-moral evaluation and communal recognition of an individual. Such normative status is an indication of one’s good character, in terms of self-respect, respect for others, and proper adherence to communal values, norms, and performing one’s obligations. The social-moral status of ‘personhood’, the value of ‘moral dignity’, and the process of acquiring or achieving them are gradational and gradual. Thus, Menkiti (1984, 173) describes the status of ‘normative personhood’ in processual terms requiring incremental growth in wisdom or moral progression as one matures, learns, and internalizes communal norms and manifests proper moral functions by participating in communal activities. As Gyekye (1997, 49–50) indicates, this African conception of ‘personhood’ is essentially correct, and if it is understood as a social-moral thesis, then it is relevant for understanding the idea of communalism in traditional African cultures. In his words: The judgment that a human being is ‘not a person’, made on the basis of that individual’s consistently morally reprehensible conduct, implies that the pursuit or practice of moral virtue is intrinsic to the conception of a person held in African thought. The statement ‘he is a person’, then, … is a profound appreciation of the high standards of the morality of an individual’s conduct that would draw the judgment ‘he is truly a person’. (Gyekye 1997, 50)

The statement in African traditions that one ‘is not a person’ or ‘has no moral dignity’ is not meant to be merely descriptive, involving a denial of some natural, metaphysical, or psychological feature of a person. The statement that one ‘is a (moral) person’, or ‘has (moral) dignity’ involves the ascription of a value based on a normative evaluative judgment, indicating that one has virtuous or good moral character by consistently behaving, acting, or comporting oneself properly. It is also a prescription regarding how respectfully such a moral person ought to be treated, and that he is a person that others should emulate.

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It is generally accepted that the concept of ‘dignity’ is ambiguous, and its precise meaning depends on its use-sense and context. Thus, we can isolate the following three use-senses of dignity: (1) descriptive, (2) normative prescriptive, and (3) normative evaluative. These senses might, in the relevant contexts, be expressed as follows: (1) John has dignity (as a fact or a natural inherent feature); (2) John ought to be treated with dignity; (3a) James acted or behaved with dignity; (3b) James treated John with dignity; and (3c) John or John’s character or action exemplifies dignity. The first (1), which is a descriptive statement that a person has a capacity, is sometimes understood as implying that such capacity or person has inherent moral worth (Metz 2012, 20–21, 32). This is wrong in my view (see Ikuenobe 2018). However, the descriptive sense of having dignity or capacity could be performatively manifested morally in the contexts of one’s interactions, position, office (president), profession (doctor), or heroic achievement (conqueror). The second sense of dignity (2) is a normative prescriptive moral statement regarding how persons ought to be treated, while the third sense (3 a, b, and c) includes normative evaluative statements of moral judgment of one’s personhood, character, action, or comportment, involving efforts to actualize the potentiality of one’s capacity or achieve personhood. This plausible African view of the normative notion of ‘moral dignity’ as distinct from the descriptive notion of natural ‘human dignity’ or capacity is consistent with ordinary use-senses. For instance, we may predicate ‘dignity’ of, or have some respect for, or attach worth to, a person’s capacities or potential, position, or achievement per se, but may not have moral respect for, or predicate moral dignity of, how one uses one’s capacities in one’s action, because it fails to exemplify a moral worth. One may respect or affirm the dignity or non-moral excellence of someone as an effective strategic war general but may not respect him or affirm their ‘moral dignity’ because of their immoral war tactics. When one says, ‘one is a person of dignity’, it is ambiguously a positive (moral or non-moral) evaluation and praise for one’s comportment or the proper use of one’s capacities, as exemplified in one’s character, behaviour, achievement, or performance in one’s profession or position. Metz (2012, 21), among others, assumes without argument that the descriptive sense of dignity logically implies the normative (prescriptive, evaluative, or moral) sense of dignity. This involves a naturalistic fallacy in that a normative judgment cannot be logically deduced from a factual statement. The descriptive facts about a person’s ‘human dignity’ or

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having inherent capacities do not logically imply the normative prescription or judgment about the moral dignity of a person. To illuminate this, consider the following use-senses: (a) a person, X, has natural capacities; (b) X’s natural capacities have inherent moral worth; (c) the person, X, has an inherent moral worth; (d) X has inherent moral worth by virtue of X’s natural capacities and the inherent worth of such capacities. None of these statements logically implies the other because we can distinguish between ‘a person’ or ‘a person’s capacity’, and ‘a person’s use of a capacity’ and between ‘the moral worth of a person’ and ‘the moral worth of a person’s capacity’. One’s capacity is a ‘tool’, a ‘potentiality’ to be developed, nurtured, and used properly or actualized for self-realization, personhood, and wellbeing. One’s capacity (autonomy or rationality as a tool or potentiality) may have moral worth that is actualized in proper agency for the achievement of personhood, requisite interests, or well-being. However, the unactualized moral worth of one’s capacities does not imply one’s moral worth as a person—a social-communal being—or of one’s character or action. Because most discussions do not appreciate the above distinctions, they assume as self-evident that ‘dignity’ is a moral concept, indicating the inherent absolute moral worth of one’s descriptive metaphysical capacity (Metz 2012, 20–21). They also assume that the moral worth of such capacity implies that one has ‘moral dignity’ and rights, which imply unconditional and absolute respect by others (Metz 2010, 2012). Thus, the statement, ‘a person has inherent moral worth by virtue of the moral worth of her capacity’ is assumed to be intuitively true. It is not because it makes sense to say that, despite having relevant capacities, one lacks ‘moral dignity’ if one is a serial rapist, thief, or murderer, since one has not used one’s capacities properly to enhance harmonious social living and relationships. The African view of ‘moral dignity’ suggests that the worth of a person’s capacity for agency per se does not imply the moral dignity of that person as a socially embedded rational and autonomous agent. Thus, ‘having’ dignity or capacity for dignity does not imply that such capacity or person has an intrinsic moral worth or should be bestowed and ascribed ‘moral dignity’ irrespective of how the person acts or uses her capacity. The intuitive argument for seeing the ‘moral sense’ of dignity as different from the descriptive sense of dignity is that the normative idea of ‘moral worth’ is not conceptually built into the concept of ‘dignity’. If it were the case that every human has dignity in the moral sense solely by virtue of

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their nature or inherent capacities, then it would be superfluous to say in a normative evaluative sense that ‘this is a person of (moral) dignity’, and a contradiction to say, ‘this is not a person of (moral) dignity’. The normative moral sense of dignity logically implies, by a non-vacuous contrast, a descriptive non-moral sense of dignity: of position, office, or process. Nature has indeed endowed humans inherently with certain capacities and abilities, which have potential value. However, such values are actualized instrumentally and bestowed by the proper use of these capacities for certain interests, needs, and goals, which include experiencing dignity and wellbeing. The ideas and bestowal of ‘personhood’ and ‘moral dignity’ represent not only a form of affirmation or recognition but also the positive reinforcement and encouragement of one’s good character, behaviours, and actions. On the other hand, a denial of ‘personhood’ or ‘moral dignity’ represents a condemnation, disapproval, an approbation, and a ‘soft’ form of sanction, punishment, or reproach for one’s bad character, behaviours, and actions. This indicates that one has, based on one’s choices and actions, failed to use one’s capacity (inherent social-moral and metaphysical nature) properly to actualize the potential value of such capacity. This negative evaluation or judgment implies an expectation and prescription that one should improve, correct, and change one’s character and behaviours to achieve personhood and warrant or merit the appellation of ‘moral dignity’. This normative expectation or prescription is embedded in efforts to mould people’s character and behaviour via moral education, socialization, or acculturation into communal values, norms, and ways of life. With processes of character formation, modification, and positive reinforcement involving the bestowal of ‘moral dignity’ and ‘personhood’, the community is able to rehabilitate individuals and correct their deviant behaviours and bad character. Thus, ‘moral dignity’ translates into how well you conduct, ‘carry’, comport yourself or behave, which derives from the active manifestation of self-respect and respect for others. It implies ‘being worthy of respect’ and a corresponding respect, honour, and admiration by others. Therefore, moral dignity and correlative honour and respect by others are earned and deserved. They are not, as Metz (2012, 20–21) suggests, absolute or unconditional. Rather, they come in degrees and are conditional on the proper evaluation of the use of one’s inherent capacity in one’s comportment. A community evaluates and determines the degree of respect that is earned or deserved and the extent of responsibility,

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respect, and honour that people ought to have toward an individual based on the moral quality of one’s behaviour or character. However, this plausible view of ‘moral dignity’ implies that we have unconditional responsibility to love, nurture, care for, and respect the descriptive ‘human dignity’ and capacities of those (children, those with mental or physical disability) who currently lack the ability to use their capacity to earn ‘moral dignity’. Even if one feels a diminished sense of self-worth, self-esteem, and self-respect, in terms of lack of autonomy, loss of physical or mental capacities and self-control, based on factors beyond one’s control, such as illness or natural mishap, one would still have moral dignity and deserve the duty of respect by others. The idea of unconditionally respecting those who are not capable of acting to earn ‘moral dignity’ and respect is supported by the moral principle of ‘ought implies can’, which indicates that you cannot hold people responsible for what is impossible for them. Although ‘human dignity’ involves some degree of respect for one’s capacity, there is an added accountability and responsibility for those who are competent and able to use their capacity properly to act and perform requisite duties in a community to experience well-being and achieve personhood. This idea of accountability that undergirds ‘moral dignity’ gives credence to the African ethics of duty, which emphasizes duties to the self, others, and community. In contrasting the ‘priority of duties’ in African communal traditions with Western traditions, Menkiti says: African societies tend to be organized around the requirements of duty, while Western societies tend to be organized around the postulation of individual rights. In the African understanding, priority is given to the duties that individuals owe to collectivity, and their rights, whatever these may be, are seen as secondary to their exercise of their duties. In the West, on the other hand, we find a construal of things in which certain specified rights of individuals are seen as antecedent to the organization of society, with the function of government viewed, consequently, as being the protection and defence of these individuals’ rights. (Menkiti 1984, 180, my emphasis)

One’s autonomy or capacity is related to the valuable social-moral options and available material conditions that a community provides within which such capacity is properly used. In this sense, human natural capacity such as autonomy is relational, instrumental, and intentional: it is aimed at

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moral and non-moral goods, and it is a tool or means for choosing the goods that will contribute to one’s well-being (Raz 1986, 247).

Moral Dignity and African Communalism In the African view, a person’s ‘moral dignity’ depends on whether (a) one has the ability to use one’s capacity and (b) one has in fact used it properly to make choices, comport oneself, experience dignity, and self-actualize (achieve personhood) to promote harmonious communal living. As Mattson and Clark (2011) argue, dignity is: something to be realized through the individual human experience of autonomous choice in the domain of the political; of happiness, wellbeing, self-esteem, and psychological integrity in the domain of the psychological; of belonging to a group or culture, adhering to a set of norms, with access to approval, respect, and recognition in the domain of the social; and of access to security, food, shelter, and physical integrity in the domain of the material. (2011, 309)

This ‘experiential-material’ idea of dignity captures the African communal view of ‘moral dignity’: it is not a feature that individuals have passively, inherently, and abstractly unexperienced and unrealized. The emphasis here is that ‘moral dignity’ is an active individual experience of well-being or a positive sense of self-worth that derives from choices and agency in performing duties and using the positive social-communal, material, psychological, and normative conditions of empowerment that enhance one’s capabilities and their proper use. In the view of Mattson and Clark (2011), “People tend to experience greater subjective wellbeing when they are fed, sheltered, secure, and acknowledged; when they live within a family and a community; when they are afforded choice; and when they partake of a life of meaning—in other words, when they live a life of collective dignity” (Mattson and Clark 2011, 312). Therefore, moral dignity (as opposed to mere descriptive human dignity and potential value in the proper use of one’s capacities) is something that a person must, by one’s actions, play an active part in by using the material conditions provided by the community to achieve it. Hence, lack of comportment and improper use of one’s capacities involving bad behaviours that violate norms and values will be deemed

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unacceptable and punishable in a community; this involves a diminution of moral dignity. Hence, Mattson and Clark (2011) argue that the Western idea of the inalienable, inherent worth, and absolute view of dignity as a basis for rights makes sense only in individualistic cultures; it has no relevance in communitarian (communal) cultures that emphasize duties, participation in communal functions, and accountability. In their words, “Communitarian cultures tend to emphasize people’s duties and obligations rather than their rights. Dignity arises from fulfilling these obligations, typically involving acknowledgement by others” (Mattson and Clark 2011, 306). This view of dignity, which balances human individuality (rights) and human sociality or relationality (responsibilities), gives credence to both the individualistic and social-communal nature of humans and the communalistic conditions within which individual dignity is enhanced, experienced, and realized. Mattson and Clark’s (2011) view underscores the idea that ‘dignity’ is a thick concept in that it combines the descriptive idea of inherent individual ‘personal dignity’ with the normative social idea of ‘collective dignity’ that derives from, is enhanced, and supported by harmonious relationships and duties to the social community. They conceive of dignity “as a commonwealth of individually assessed wellbeing, shaped by relationships with others, affected by the physical world, and framed in terms of values” (Mattson and Clark 2011, 303). In their view, a plausible view of dignity is “a subjective experience of wellbeing [that is] contingent on the collective sum of (inter) individual experiences of values” (Mattson and Clark 2011, 316). One’s experience or perception of dignity or wellbeing and the bestowal of ‘moral dignity’ is not in a vacuum; it is dependent on the normative conditions provided by a commonwealth, based on individuals’ relationships with others, the reality of one’s existence, the values, and material goods that such conditions make available and prescribe. The community is essential for experiencing and bestowing moral dignity through the conditions and norms it provides, which encourage good behaviours and sanction bad ones. My plausible African view of moral dignity indicates that the moral worth of a competent person resides in one’s ability to use one’s capacity to act and comport oneself properly. This includes being critically reflective in one’s agency to develop and use one’s capacity to prioritize and perform requisite duties to promote communal relationships, self-actualize, achieve personhood, and experience ‘moral dignity’ and well-being in a

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community. This gives credence to the positive affirmation, recognition, bestowal, and ascription element of ‘moral dignity’ and ‘personhood’ and the negative approbation, reproach, sanction, and punishment element of ‘moral dignity’ and ‘personhood’. These positive and negative elements of ‘moral dignity’ and ‘personhood’ underscore the African communal approach to punishment, character formation, and behaviour modification. Thus, the central goal of any communal sanction or positive reinforcement is to ensure individual well-being in the context of communal well-being and solidarity with others in the community. To appreciate this African communal approach, one must understand the idea of ‘communalism’, which is captured by Mbiti’s (1969, 141) statement: “I am because we are, and because we are therefore I am”. Because ‘we’ is connected intimately with ‘I’ in the practical communal context, self-regarding interests and individuals’ well-being cannot be achieved without other-regarding interests and communal well-being. Communalism is also expressed by the idea of Ubuntu: that a person is a person through other persons, which is understood as saying that ‘my’ humanity, well-being, dignity, and rights are inextricably tied to the humanity, wellbeing, dignity, and rights of others in a community. This indicates, normatively, that one’s ultimate aim or goal in life is to act to improve one’s own well-being, achieve personhood, and experience dignity, which is best achieved in the context of harmonious communal living, collective dignity, friendship, and solidarity with others. The African idea of communalism is rooted in the tradition of a group of people with common kinship, aspirations, goals, interests, values, cultures, and beliefs, living together proximately and organizing cooperatively, aspects of their lives and actions in a community. A community connotes a sense of a ‘commune’ of people sharing social, moral, metaphysical, ontological relationships, and ‘communion’ that is manifested in shared interests, goals, beliefs, attitudes, values, and norms. In Menkiti’s (2004) view, a community involves “a mental commonwealth with others—others whose life histories encompass past, present, and future” (p. 324). Such mental commonwealth indicates shared memories, interests, values, desires, hopes, goals, and intentions to live harmoniously with others. Menkiti (2004, 324) refers to the African community as a “beingness together” or “beingness-with-others” that requires wanting, intending, or accepting to act to promote the shared values of caring, love, friendship, mutuality, and solidarity that make individual wellbeing and dignity possible.

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This African idea of a community as a mental commonwealth of beingness together is characterized by Menkiti (1984, 179) as a collectivist community, which he distinguishes from a constituted community. For him, a constituted community involves a “non-organic bringing together of atomic individuals …” and “a mere collection of self-interested persons, each with his private set of preferences” (1984, 179–180). However, a collective community, which he calls “collectivities in the truest sense”, has “an organic dimension to the relationship between the component individuals” (1984, 180). A collective community involves a complex organization of individuals, values, interests, and obligations that transcend individuals or their simple addition. The central goal of an African community is to organize people, normatively regulate conduct, punish, and correct deviant behaviour so that people act to promote, ‘organically’, the values of communal harmony, as well as loving and caring relationships with others. Julius Nyerere (1968) uses the idea of Ujamaa to articulate the organic nature of the African community and the goals and values of caring, mutuality, love, solidarity, and harmonious living and relationships. He argues that “In traditional African society we were individuals within a community. We took care of the community, and the community took care of us. … Nobody starved, either of food or of human dignity, because he lacked personal wealth; he could depend on the wealth possessed by the community of which he was a member” (1968, 165–166). Everyone with the requisite capacities has the responsibility to contribute to harmonious communal living and well-being to ensure that everyone is taken care of. Such contributions and duties, which define personhood, one’s moral dignity, and well-being, exemplify the value of egalitarianism, which requires the fair production and distribution of goods and responsibilities so that individuals can experience and live a robust life of dignity. The idea of performing duties that contribute to harmonious communal living allows the community to provide conditions, laws, rules, or norms and spiritual, moral, psychological, and social support and guidance for how well people use their capacities to live a good life, self-­ actualize, and experience dignity. This idea of harmonious communal living is instructive to the communal approach to punishment for any violation of law, norms or rules, or failure to perform requisite duties. Because of African communal ethics of duty and the goal of harmonious living, anyone who disrupts communal harmony by failing to perform their duties or violating requisite norms is held liable, accountable, and

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punished. The community’s goal of punishing and holding people accountable involves efforts to rehabilitate deviants or criminals to reintegrate them organically into the collectivist communal conditions of harmonious living, solidarity, love, caring, and friendship. Such conditions provide the motivation for individuals to achieve personhood and to merit the bestowal of ‘moral dignity’. These communal conditions require individuals to internalize communal values and norms and to manifest these norms and values in their actions, character, behaviours, and comportment to receive communal recognition and a positive appellation of ‘moral dignity’ and the attainment of personhood. This indicates how the community encourages those who contribute to harmonious conditions or punishes those who fail to contribute to such conditions. Menkiti (1984, 176) argues that in African communalism: the transgression of accepted moral rules gives rise not just to a feeling of guilt but to a feeling of shame–the point being that once morality is conceived as a fundamental part of what it means to be a person, then an agent is bound to feel himself incomplete in violating its rule, thus provoking in himself the feeling properly describable as shame, with its usual intimation of deformity and un-wholeness.

The socializing and acculturation processes emphasize the social and individual benefits of living harmoniously with others and contributing to such harmonious conditions. It also emphasizes the harms or drawbacks of failing to do so, which usually engender shame or inadequacy. It is expected that feelings of shortcoming, guilt, unwholesomeness, and shame should engender a willingness to correct one’s behaviour, improve one’s character, and make amends. This indicates that humans have a descriptive sense of dignity in terms of the psychological capacities for remorse, self-reflection, willingness to accept communal sanctions or punishment, take corrective measures, and engage in redemptive behaviours to gradually earn ‘moral dignity’ and ‘personhood’. This is different from the traditional view and individualist approach to punishment, which involves a form of harm, pain, or deprivation meted out to a person (as an individual) by a proper authority as a kind of payment, restitution, or retribution, and consequence of a legitimately determined or proven wrongdoing, harm, or violation of rule or law. This idea of punishment and its primary purpose are usually couched in terms of retribution—which is a

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form of deserved revenge or commensurate payback for a crime, bad behaviour, or violation of law or rules. On this view, punishment is, secondarily, rehabilitative—which is, perhaps, an unintended consequence.

African Communalism and the Basis for Punishment In the African communal view, punishment primarily involves a set of processes involving atonement, restitution, rehabilitation, restoration of harmony, reconciliation with others, and reintegration into a community. The goal of punishment is not to achieve justice in the specific individualistic sense of paying back a debt or loss or balancing the harm or deprivation caused by a bad action or violation of law, norms, or rules. Rather, the aim is to achieve justice in a communalistic sense of restoring harmony and achieving balance ‘within the individual’ so that one can be reconciled in harmonious relationships with others and the community. The notion of punishment here refers to a broad spectrum of different forms of regulative dictates and sanctions for modifying and correcting bad behaviour, actions, or character. These can range from deprivation, or restriction of freedoms, rights, privileges, goods, provisions, benefits, honour, to forms of private and public admonitions, ostracism, exile, and imprisonment. In this sense, withholding the status and honour of ‘personhood’ or ‘moral dignity’ and attendant respect and privileges because of one’s bad behaviours or violation of norms, rules, and laws would be a form of punishment in the African communal sense. The primary goal of punishment is to restore moral dignity and internal harmony within a person who violates laws, rules, or norms by rehabilitating and harmoniously reconciling the person with others and the community that have been offended by unacceptable conduct. A bad action, crime, or violation involves a diminishment of one’s personhood or moral dignity, a deviation from ‘normalcy’, and an estrangement from community, which creates disharmony in communal relationships. Punishment is thus a means of restoring harmony to overcome the disharmonious consequences of bad conduct that degrades the person and community because such conduct fails to contribute positively to the harmonious conditions and collective dignity of a community and, correlatively, one’s own wellbeing, dignity, and interests. This idea of punishment implies that ‘dignity’ and ‘autonomy’ as capacities are not inalienable and do not have inherent or absolute value; they are functional, conditional, instrumental, relational, and intentional. Hence, there are acceptable moral arguments for

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enforcing laws and meting out punishments, which diminish to some degree one’s dignity or restrict one’s autonomy when it is not used properly to achieve desired goals. The rehabilitative process of punishment ought to involve a form of acculturation, re-education, and re-socialization into the communal beliefs, norms, ways of life, and social and moral expectations of good and proper behaviour. This involves the positive process of affirming, encouraging, and reinforcing good behaviours and the negative process of disapproval, deprivation, and denial of privileges, benefits, or honour as a means of discouraging or deterring bad behaviours. Such denial makes the person aware of the harm, disruptions, and disharmony that his or her actions have caused in the community so that he or she can atone or make amends for them. Such atonement requires an individual to make significant efforts to bring about a change in attitudes and harmony within themselves, with others in the community, to earn moral dignity, the respect of others, and to achieve ‘personhood’. The gradational idea of ‘moral dignity’ and the process of achieving personhood imply the view that the status of personhood and the appellation of moral dignity can be attained, improved, diminished, or lost. This communal-rehabilitative approach to punishment indicates that a prison should not simply be a ‘warehouse’ or a way to house criminals for a specific period of time, to be deprived of certain privileges or freedom, as retribution for their crimes. The deprivation-warehouse-retributive approach to punishment does not address the fact that when a criminal is released from prison, he would need to be reintegrated into the community to live harmoniously with others. Without proper rehabilitation, acculturation, socialization, or the internalization of communal norms, rules, values, and ways of life, he would have relationship and behavioural problems that could further perpetuate the very type of criminal or deviant behaviours that initially culminated in him going to prison. Some traditional pathological views of criminality and punishment indicate that criminals are irredeemable social deviants, sociopaths, or psychopaths who need to be removed and completely isolated from the community to prevent them from harming others and the community. This is a standard justification for capital punishment, which, by its nature, is not meant to be rehabilitative or reintegrative. Hence, I am not addressing the death penalty (Metz 2012) as a form of punishment. Death does not ‘punish’ as such, in the sense of one feeling pain or suffering deprivation. The death penalty is socially curative or prophylactic only to the

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extent that it eliminates the danger or threat by the person—only the friends and family feel or suffer the loss or are truly punished. Some indicate that imprisonment as a form of punishment requires that prisoners be isolated from other people and the community to give them the time and opportunity for soul-searching and to critically self-reflect on their crimes, violations, and transgressions. In other words, prisons should be places where people are held temporarily and counselled to rehabilitate them and restore their internal harmony and normalcy. The prison should aim to be diagnostic and therapeutic. It achieves this by identifying issues with criminals to counsel them to understand how violations are not in their own interest, for their wellbeing, or in the interest and wellbeing of their friends, family, and community. In the process, criminals learn to modify their attitudes and behaviour because they realize the harmful nature of their behaviours and the implications for themselves and the community. Thus, a prison is seen as a micro-community within and an extension of the larger community that seeks to reintegrate individuals organically into the ‘collectivist’ community. Prison facilities can neither be totally removed from the community nor fully integrated into normal communal activities. However, prisons should be structured as communal institutions or facilities where people can learn and develop practical life, social, and job skills so that they are more useful to themselves, their families, friends, and the community. By providing proper structures in prison and enhancing social interactions, prisoners would be able to gain social-moral skills to strengthen their social relationships. Thus, prisoners should be allowed to maintain some positive relationships with people and the community during the period of imprisonment. This will incentivize and cultivate the proper social and moral attitudes and lifestyle that are conducive to communal harmonious living and solidarity. This would provide criminals with the social-moral tools to achieve ‘personhood’ or their full potential that could transform their lives for reintegration into the community. This rehabilitative and reintegrative communal approach to punishment prescribes that prisons should be structured as a type of formal and informal institution to teach, (re-) train, and help people to acquire the requisite virtues, attitudes, and skills and to mould their character, albeit outside normal communal living in preparation for their reintegration into the broader community. This means that prisons offer opportunities for the community to show ‘tough love’ to criminals and violators of rules. Here, their dignity is diminished to a certain degree, but at the same time,

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they are respected and valued such that their dignity is built up in the efforts to rehabilitate them for reintegration. This approach makes efforts to diagnose why a particular person committed a particular crime or violated a particular rule. For instance, if someone committed the crime of stealing or robbery to obtain a basic need such as food because one is desperate and hungry, then consistent with communal values and goals of caring and mutuality, the community must make efforts to provide the conditions and skills that he is able to provide for himself so that he is not in a state of desperation. Based on the communal values of caring, love, egalitarianism, and welfarism, as indicated by Nyerere’s principle of Ujamaa, one could argue that, in some situations, the community has failed any person who feels this extreme sense of desperation because it failed to provide him with the basic need of food. If one is unable to earn a living honestly to provide for one’s basic needs such that one is desperate, there would be no amount of threat or fear of punishment that could prevent one from acting criminally in such desperation to survive. However, if someone robbed or stole because he is simply greedy or envious of what another person has, then that person’s motivation for stealing is unacceptable and should be punished accordingly to address this motivation. If someone committed a crime with the hope that they will not be caught, then that can be addressed by providing specific punishments that constitute negative reinforcement, disincentive, or deterrence. Moreover, if someone is violent because they cannot control their anger, then that should be addressed with counselling and behaviour modification techniques. Thus, punishment should be targeted, designed, and meted out, specifically, to address or modify people’s attitudes, motivations, or character traits. For some individuals, public shaming, scolding, rebuke, ribbing, or loss of privilege might be an effective disincentive, while for some, imprisonment or community service might be effective. At the same time, punishment should give hope, care, love, encouragement, and positive reinforcement by providing strong incentives and motivations for a criminal to want to change. Punishments should be tailored to specific individuals, behaviours, needs, and circumstances. This idea is different from the view that punishment is effective only when it prevents a crime because it deters by being a proactive threat that indicates an anticipated pain or harm, which must be perceived as outweighing the impulse and urge to commit crimes or violate rules.

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Some have criticized the retributivist view of capital punishment and other forms of punishment—in the context of African communalism—as dehumanizing because it diminishes human dignity (Metz 2010). Retributivists could argue that punishment is meant to punish: a form of harm, deprivation, or pain, as a payment for a crime that involves the diminishment of one’s dignity. In other words, punishment is supposed to be uncomfortable, unattractive, and in some sense, degrading because it is meant to cause pain or discomfort, to deter crimes and to prevent harm to others and the community. This implies that we should not make prisons ‘luxurious’ because doing so will encourage recidivism and provide incentives for people to commit crimes or violate rules to enjoy the comforts of prisons. Moreover, we should not overlook the utilitarian view of punishment, which indicates that it is supposed to protect the community and help the individual criminal. So, the pertinent issue is how to reasonably punish with caring and a minimal diminishment of dignity. The African communal-rehabilitative approach to punishment is founded on communal ethics, which emphasizes the duties to care, love, and enhance individual well-being, harmonious living, relationships, solidarity, and human welfare (Gyekye 1997; Menkiti 1984). Such ethics indicate that a community has positive duties to enhance and promote the well-being and self-realization of its members, and all citizens have a duty to themselves, others, and the community to create the conditions and environment where this is possible. These positive duties provide the conditions for individuals to have ‘moral dignity’ and achieve ‘personhood’. These conditions involve meeting the basic needs of all humans, nurturing and helping them to develop their capacities. The idea of nurturing and developing human capacities and requisite harmonious conditions that a community must provide by encouraging or rehabilitating people to achieve these goals is consistent with the processual, conditional, and gradational conceptions of personhood, moral dignity and correlative respect by others, which are based on duties to the self, others, and the community. Hence, a failure by individuals to perform the requisite duties to achieve communal interests implies that a community must provide corrective or rehabilitative measures to diminish, to some degree temporarily, elements of a person’s capacity for free choice, deny a person of some dignity, the bestowal of the status of ‘personhood’, and the associated honour, respect, and privileges. If we accept, as Metz (2012) does, the view that ‘dignity’ involves the absolute, unconditional, and inalienable worth of one’s inherent natural

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capacity, then any punishment that limits the realization of such a capacity for dignity is morally wrong because it involves a diminishment of one’s inherent worth. In other words, any limitation of dignity, freedom, or agency is inconsistent with unconditional respect for, and intrinsic worth of, one’s capacity for dignity. However, imprisonment and other forms of punishment may be viewed as a limitation of one’s capacity and a diminishment of the worth of such capacity for dignity. This is a vexing conclusion. It suggests that the view that dignity involves having an absolute, inalienable, and intrinsically valuable capacity is problematic. A plausible response to this argument is to say that imprisonment and some other forms of punishment are not necessarily a violation of one’s inherent and inalienable dignity because punishment could be humane and voluntarily accepted. However, if punishment is not a violation of dignity, then it is unclear what dignity as a capacity truly involves, what ‘inalienable’, ‘unconditional’, or ‘absolute’ value means, and under what condition dignity is violated. One would need to explain how punishment or imprisonment (as a form of ‘imposed’ deprivation, restriction, or pain) is not a limitation of one’s capacity or a violation of individual dignity or autonomy. It is questionable whether the voluntary acceptance of punishment by a person in a situation where he has no choice is an indication that such punishment is not imposed. Obviously, the commission of a crime involves one’s misuse of one’s capacity and one’s own diminishment of one’s dignity. Moreover, criminal acts and punishment usually lead to social or moral stigma, the attenuation of other people’s respect, and thus, a diminishment of one’s ‘moral dignity’. The African communal approach to punishment and dignity (or human capacities) indicates that ‘moral dignity’ and its bestowal must be conditional on the proper use of such capacity. It also indicates that the improper use of one’s capacity in some circumstances requires rehabilitative punishment and redemptive behaviours, which are necessary for an individual to have and experience moral dignity. The basic idea underlying this communal approach indicates that imprisonment and some other forms of punishment are only temporary instrumental limitations on a criminal’s life, capacity, or agency to protect society and help the criminal himself. On this communal rehabilitative instrumental view of punishment, the issue of whether imprisonment or any form of punishment violates the dignity of individuals depends on how the punishment is carried out. This suggests that punishment must be carried out with love and caring, with the goal of taking into consideration the well-being of the individual being

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punished, the welfare of others and the harmonious communal living and relationships in a community—not solely and simply as a retribution. The African view of ‘moral dignity’ and the communal rehabilitative approach to punishment accept that imprisonment and some other forms of punishment diminish one’s moral dignity to some degree and that there are justifiable diminishments of one’s dignity, such as imprisonment. Thus, ‘moral dignity’, its violation, and respect for it are a matter of degree. This idea allows us to say without contradiction that imprisonment diminishes, to some degree, one’s ‘moral dignity’. Punishment involves the temporary diminishment of the moral dignity of a criminal for the purpose of restoring or improving the long-term moral dignity of the person. Such ‘loving’ or ‘caring’ imprisonment or punishment would also involve some degree of respect for one’s ‘moral dignity’. Although the community might justifiably imprison and diminish—to some degree—the dignity of a dangerous criminal, my gradational and conditional view of ‘moral dignity’ and my communal approach to punishment indicate that a community must exercise some degree of caring, valuing, and respect for the person and their dignity by not torturing or allowing him to suffer excruciating or needless pain. These communal ethical principles of caring and rehabilitation also indicate that a community may (albeit humanely or respectfully) put a dangerous mentally ill person in a straitjacket or force a dangerous drug addict and mentally ill into treatment. These measures, which are not punishments in the standard sense, may diminish their dignity temporarily, to some degree, by limiting the scope of their capacity, life, autonomy, and choices. These measures are consistent with maintaining some degree of respect for their dignity that is grounded in the ideas of communalism and moral personhood. In some real situations of practical reasoning, harmonious communal living is morally prior to the worth attached to individual autonomy or capacity for agency or the unconditional respect for someone who does not use his or her  capacity properly. The community should respect, to some degree, one’s autonomy to make some choices but not absolute respect for all choices; thus, some limitations on individual dignity, capacity, or autonomy are necessary. This idea of diminishing one’s dignity to some degree when one misuses one’s capacity for relationality or autonomy and of respecting one’s dignity to some degree only when one uses one’s capacities properly is supported by the communal idea of

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rehabilitating individuals and holding them accountable for their own good, well-being, and the general welfare or harmony of a community.

Conclusion The normative ascription of ‘personhood’ and the bestowal of ‘moral dignity’ assume that an individual has vitality, rationality, autonomy, and the capacity to internalize the communal norms and values of solidarity, caring, love, mutuality, and harmonious relationships. This implies that one is able to use internalized norms or values to comport oneself and act properly to achieve ‘moral dignity’ and the normative honorific status of ‘personhood’. The concept of ‘moral dignity’ involves the value, respect, and honour attached to an individual for using their capacity properly in action to promote the communal conditions that allow individuals to live meaningfully, experience well-being, acquire a sense of moral worth, attain personhood, and acquire honour and respect by others. A refusal to use one’s capacity properly diminishes one’s moral dignity, and it calls for punishment. This involves some degree of violation or diminishment of a person’s dignity to rehabilitate the person and restore and improve his or her moral dignity so that he or she may be reintegrated into harmonious communal living.

References Gyekye, Kwame. 1997. Tradition and modernity: Philosophical reflections on the African experience. New York: Oxford University Press. Ikuenobe, Polycarp. 2018. Human Rights, personhood, dignity, and African communalism. Journal of Human Rights 17: 589–604. Mattson, David, and Susan Clark. 2011. Human dignity in concept and practice. Policy Sciences 44: 303–319. Mbiti, J. 1969. African religions and philosophy. Oxford: Heinemann Publishers. Menkiti, Ifeanyi. 1984. Person and community in African traditional thought. In African philosophy: An introduction, ed. Richard A.  Wright, 171–181. New York: University Press of America. ———. 2004. On the normative conception of a person. In A companion to African philosophy, ed. Kwasi Wiredu, 324–331. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Metz, Thaddeus. 2010. Human dignity, capital punishment, and an African moral theory: Toward a new philosophy of human rights. Journal of Human Rights 9: 81–99.

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———. 2012. African conception of human dignity: Vitality and community as the ground of human rights. Human Rights Review 13: 19–37. Nyerere, Julius. 1968. Ujamaa—The basis of African socialism. In Freedom and unity, 162–171. New York: Oxford University Press. Raz, Joseph. 1986. The morality of freedom. Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 4

African Personhood, Metaphysical Capacities and Human Dignity Motsamai Molefe

Introduction This chapter contributes to ongoing philosophical discussions on the theme of human dignity in the tradition of African philosophy. The most prevalent and influential approach to the concept of human dignity in African philosophy is by way of reference to discursive practices regarding the African concept of ethical personhood. It is uncontroversial to observe that the concept of personhood counts among the most influential in the tradition of African philosophy (Masolo 2010). The concept of personhood is featured in a variety of debates in African philosophy. It prominently features in debates on personal identity, the nature of the relationship between the individual and community and on the nature of social justice (Menkiti 1984; Gyekye 1992; Dzobo 1992; Wiredu 1996; Matolino 2009; Oyowe 2014; Ikuenobe 2016, Molefe 2019). This chapter revisits these debates on personhood, specifically in relation to the distinction

M. Molefe (*) University of Fort Hare, Centre for Leadership Ethics in Africa, Alice, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Molefe, C. Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1_4

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between what Ifeanyi Menkiti refers to as the minimalist and maximalist conceptions of personhood. Menkiti observes that the former is dominant in the West and embodies a Western approach to personhood and value theory, whereas the latter is representative of an African approach to personhood and value theory. I will argue that this distinction poses a false dichotomy, and I will propose that a robust interpretation of ethical theory must consider both the minimalist and maximalist conceptions of personhood as components of African ethics or a plausible account of human dignity. Contrary to Menkiti, I will further propose that the minimalist conception of personhood is primary in ethical theory, and this move is important, particularly if one wants to take seriously the concept of human dignity in African thought. I will also suggest that the maximalist conception of personhood is secondary if one ranks the two. One is primary insofar as it operates on the zone of intrinsic value (of human dignity), and the other is secondary insofar as it operates on the zone of extrinsic value (of achievement, which emerges when the agent successfully develops the former). I defend the primacy of the minimalist conception of personhood for several reasons; two will suffice for the purposes of this chapter. First, the status of metaphysical capacities remains under-considered in the debates on personhood in African thought. I am not, here, referring to metaphysical capacities in general. I am specifically raising the question of metaphysical capacities in the context of considering whether they can be value-endowing in the sense that any entity that has them would have intrinsic value, (which is an important question in light of the modern discussions of the concept of human dignity that pervades all normative disciplines such as legal theory, ethics, international relations and politics). In the literature on the concepts of moral status or human dignity, particularly from the West, intrinsic value, moral status or human dignity are assigned to entities relative to whether they have the relevant metaphysical capacity or not. As an example, consider the abortion debate. The im/ permissibility of abortion depends on whether or not the foetus possesses the relevant value endowing metaphysical capacities. For some scholars, since the foetus does not possess the psychological property of consciousness, self-conception or rationality, among others, it does not have intrinsic value (moral status or dignity), and hence, abortion is permissible (Warren 1997).

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Two leading scholars of African moral thought, Ifeanyi Menkiti and Godfrey Tangwa, have objected to this way of conceptualizing value via metaphysical capacities. Menkiti (1984, 173) objects to this approach in this way: In light of the above observations I think it would be accurate to say that whereas Western conceptions of man go for what might be described as a minimal definition of the person—whoever has soul, or rationality, or will, or memory, is seen as entitled to the description ‘person’—the African view reaches instead for what might be described as a maximal definition of the person.

For another, consider Godfrey Tangwa’s (2000, 40, emphasis original) comments: [T]he morality of an action or procedure is to be determined from the standpoint of the agent rather than that of the patient (the recipient of action)… What the attributes of self-consciousness, rationality, and freedom of choice do… is load the heavy burden of moral liability, culpability, and responsibility on the shoulders of their possessor. Human persons are not morally special; they are morally liable.

One consideration, in particular, stands out from both scholars regarding the place of metaphysical capacities in defining personhood or African ethics. They find an approach that assigns value or conceptualizes a moral criterion or procedure in terms of psychological properties or patient-­ centred considerations, such as rationality and consciousness, to be minimalist or grossly inadequate. Tangwa specifically berates an approach that assigns the status of moral specialness to human beings by virtue of possessing certain capacities. They prefer an approach to ethics or personhood that “reaches for something beyond such minimalist requirements as the presence of consciousness, memory, will, soul, rationality, or mental function” (Menkiti 2004, 326). These scholars believe that African ethics, or a robust approach to morality, ought to emphasize not metaphysical capacities as the basis for moral value or ascribing value to some entity but rather value that emerges only in relation to the agent’s positive conduct and the positive execution of their responsibilities in the community. The consequence of criticizing approaches that emphasize metaphysical capacities could be very serious. The reader is left confused about the place or relevance of metaphysical capacities in value theory, if at all. It is one

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thing to say that Western approaches are minimalist, and it is quite another to reflect on the place and relevance of the metaphysical capacities themselves in value theory. Are metaphysical capacities completely irrelevant in moral theory? Or, are they relevant only as far as they are instrumentally valuable as the building block to pursue the achievement of personhood? These disparaging comments on metaphysical capacities raise these unanswered questions about the importance of metaphysical capacities in African ethics. This chapter attempts to answer these questions. The second reason for endorsing the minimalist conception of personhood, one that endows value relative to the possession of certain valuable metaphysical capacities, is that it offers us an opportunity to reflect on a plausible interpretation of African ethics. Is a plausible interpretation one that is capacity-based, one that is performance-based (maximalist), or one that accommodates both aspects into a single moral theory? If it is the capacity-based theory, what is the relevance of performance/merit in ethics? If it is performance-based, what is the relevance of capacities in ethics? If both aspects constitute a plausible interpretation of African ethics, which, between the capacity-based and performance-based concepts, would be primary in the structure of African ethics? This chapter argues for the primary status of a capacity-based view in lieu of securing a plausible theory of human dignity. It argues that metaphysical capacities are intrinsically valuable, and they afford us an account of human dignity. In addition, it argues that a plausible structure of African ethics conjoins the minimalist and maximalist conceptions of personhood, while the former is primary and the latter is secondary in value theory. I hope this interpretation will help us to have a better understanding of the concept of human dignity in discourses on African personhood, ethics, and political theory. To clarify the place of metaphysical capacities and human dignity in African philosophy, I structure the chapter as follows. The first section identifies different concepts of personhood in African philosophy. Often, discussions in African philosophy fail to take off because of a lack of conceptual clarity in relation to the concept of personhood. I will distinguish three distinct concepts of personhood, namely human being, moral status (or dignity) and virtue (moral achievement). The second section will proceed to distinguish two senses of human dignity in the literature. The third section turns to the core concern of this chapter, a maximalist, non-­ capacity-­based theory of human dignity, as the basis for value theory in African philosophy. Here, I will consider Ikuenobe’s performance-based theory of human dignity, which is inspired, in part, by Menkiti’s

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adumbrations on the maximalist conception of personhood and value. The final section offers a constellation of reasons drawn from bioethics, animal ethics and political theory to explain why a capacity-based view, as a strategy to account for human dignity, should be preferred over a performance-­based view.

Concepts of Personhood in African Philosophy I have insisted, in several of my previous publications, that to achieve meaningful engagement with the concept of personhood in African philosophy, we need to disambiguate it (Molefe 2018b, 2019). Part of this disambiguation involves identifying the different senses/concepts of personhood. In other words, we might have one word for a person in African languages, but this one word might be associated with various meanings. To avoid conceptual confusion, which would obfuscate discussions and debates, it is critical that we be clear about the different senses of the concept of personhood. For purposes of this chapter, I will distinguish at least three distinct senses of the concept of a person who I also believe are important for a plausible interpretation of African ethics. The first sense of the concept of a person is a metaphysical one, which identifies things such as me and you, the reader of this chapter. In this sense, when one uses the concept of a person, they are merely pointing us to a specific ontological class of things, i.e. human beings. In other words, if one were to scan through things in the world, among others, one will identify animals, trees, mountains, clouds, human beings and so on. As an ontological class, human beings are distinct from other things in the world, such as stones, trees and mountains. To capture the distinction (or difference) between human beings and these other things, one will simply have to describe properties that characterize the kind of a thing a human being is, which explains why scholars tend to classify this notion of a person as a descriptive one (Ikuenobe 2016). It is descriptive because to understand the kind of thing a person is, one simply has to describe or identify the ontological properties that constitute it, be it the body, soul and so on (Wiredu 2009; Ikuenobe 2016). Anyone born of human parentage, possessing human genetic material, is human. She does not earn this status, s/he simply needs to be born of human parentage to be human. The second and third senses are normative. The second sense of a person is usually associated with the concept of moral status (Behrens 2013). The concept of moral status is a technical term in moral philosophy that

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specifies a criterion for membership in the moral community. Note the heuristic distinction between the natural and moral community. Everything that exists in the world as we know it, plants, animals, the environment, human beings and all, are members of the natural world. To be a member of the natural world, all that is required is for the thing to be present or exist in it. The moral community, however, is a special class in that for something to be a part of it requires having a particular metaphysical profile. One important way to think of this metaphysical profile is in terms of those metaphysical properties (capacities) of a being that make all the difference in terms of the possibility of a moral life. As a patient and/or an agent, emphasis, in terms of determining moral status, is placed on the patient status. Consider Kant’s moral theory or the utilitarian view and the metaphysical profiles they consider essential for the possibility of morality. For Kant, the capacity for rationality serves as the relevant metaphysical capacity for the possibility of morality. For utilitarianism, the capacity to suffer or have pleasure accounts for the possibility of morality. In other words, depending on which moral theory one favours, without this metaphysical property, we can never speak of morality at all. In this sense, a thing is a person (or, has moral status) as long as it possesses the relevant metaphysical profile. That is, it possesses the relevant metaphysical capacities to participate in and benefit from morality. What is distinctive about the concept of moral status is that it is a patient-centred notion—remembering the distinction between a moral patient and an agent. It assigns personhood relative to the possession of certain metaphysical capacities, often psychological ones (rationality, memory, consciousness and so on), as the basis for personhood (Behrens 2013). The patient-centred notion of personhood can be described as moral personhood, which identifies moral patients, i.e. those things in the world that agents have obligations not to harm, negatively stated, or one’s agent has a duty to benefit or empower, positively stated. Personhood, understood in terms of moral status, has several important implications. First, the category of moral personhood is not limited to human beings. A range of things can be persons in this sense as long as they possess the relevant ontological make-up or capacities. If, as utilitarianism would have it, moral personhood is a function of having the capacity to suffer, animals count as moral persons, whereas if we can identify a human being that may not have this capacity, for whatever metaphysical reason, that human being is not a person in this sense. On this understanding of personhood, there is a distinction between being human and being a person. An animal may

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be a person, whereas a foetus, which is human, may not be one, depending on what is specified as the relevant metaphysical profile. Second, since personhood depends on possessing the relevant capacities, it follows that one is born with personhood. Personhood is not a property that one can either achieve or lose. Since one possesses the relevant capacity, one remains a person. Finally, to be a person in this sense carries with it a load of duties, both negative and positive, for moral agents. Important duties involve respecting the person for what she is, that is, as a being of value, which involves not harming and, to some extent, promoting her welfare. To be a person, a moral person, means to have moral status, which means one belongs to a community of persons in the world, whom we have duties not to harm and to benefit. The final sense of personhood is also a normative one, except that it is agent-centred in its orientation. In other words, it accords value to the agent relative to the quality of her conduct or character. In African philosophy, personhood is associated with the concept of excellence or virtue, i.e. it refers to an agent that has developed a robust character that exudes virtues (Menkiti 1984; Gyekye 2010). To be a person means that the agent has succeeded in the process of “ingathering of excellences”, she is a “a moral person or bearer of norms” since she has internalized moral principles for living a truly moral life. Gyekye’s (1992, 110) comments on the agent-centred notion of personhood are informative—“The pursuit or practice of moral virtue is held as intrinsic to the conception of a person”. To be called a person, in this sense, means one abounds with virtue, and to be called a non-person means one fails to develop a character disposition oriented towards virtue, so one has failed morally. Several features are worth noting about the agent-centred notion of person. One is not born with agent-centred personhood. At best, when one is born, one merely has a potential for it (Shutte 2001). The agent-­ centred notion of personhood, since it refers to something that we ought to achieve, depends on effort and performance—it is a merit-based concept. When we are born, we are persons only potentially, if we do well, we will achieve it and if we do worse, we will lose it. Personhood (as an achievement) is not guaranteed; it is safe so long as we consistently build a strong and good character as we navigate the many temptations and opportunities in the world. Since it is merit-based, it comes in degrees, as some will do better than others for one reason or another. It is this concept of personhood that tends to dominate the literature in African philosophy (Menkiti 1984; Gyekye 1997; Wiredu 2004; Masolo 2010;

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Ikuenobe 2016; Molefe 2021). It is the agent-centred notion of personhood that Menkiti (1984, 173; 2004, 326) characterizes as the maximalist notion, which one acquires as one converts what was “initially biologically given” (raw capacities of human nature) to become “a true person” “with all the inbuilt excellencies” of character. Above, we have distinguished three different senses of the concept of a person in African philosophy. One sense of it simply refers to the fact of being human. Another sense identifies moral patients, those who have moral status, as beings towards which we have direct obligations of respect that involve both not harming them and possibly promoting their welfare. The third sense of a person identifies an agent with a virtuous character, which is something s/he achieves over time relative to the quality of her actions and deportment. The next section draws the distinction between two distinct concepts of human dignity.

Intrinsic and Achievement Dignity Human dignity is controversial. We may distinguish several important distinctions in the concept. I understand the concept of human dignity to denote moral worth that requires or demands the moral attention of respect from moral agents (Donnelly 2015). In this section, we limit ourselves to the distinction between intrinsic and achievement dignity (Michael 2014). Distinguishing these two concepts of dignity is crucial to our efforts to outline a plausible structure of African ethics, from which to determine the place of capacities in value theory. Intrinsic dignity, which I consider similar to, if not continuous with, status dignity, refers to the kind of moral worth the individual has in and of herself. Remember Christine Korsgaard’s (1983) distinctions in goodness, where she distinguishes intrinsic from extrinsic goodness. She comments as follows on intrinsic goodness: To say that something is intrinsically good is not by definition to say that it is valued for its own sake: it is to say that it has its goodness in itself. It refers, one might say, to the location or source of the goodness rather than the way we value the thing.

At the core of the claim that some object is intrinsically good is the idea that the source of its goodness is internal to it or a function of its nature

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or some aspects of it. If once claims beauty is intrinsically valuable, then the goodness of beauty is internal to itself. Korsgaard then urges us to distinguish the core definition of intrinsic good, which identifies the location/source of goodness from the attitude we should have towards the thing with such a value. The appropriate response to a thing that is intrinsically good is to value it for its own sake. However, this is not the definition of intrinsic goodness; rather, it is an attitude we should have to it, which is consequent to its nature. Having clarified the meaning of the concept of intrinsic goodness, we can proceed to apply it with regard to the idea of intrinsic dignity. If we think of intrinsic dignity as indicating moral worth, then the source or location of the moral worth associated with being human is a function of our ontological make-up, or human nature. Being human, or something about being human, is the source ground for human dignity. Here, Sulmasy’s (2007, 12) comment on intrinsic dignity is informative: By intrinsic dignity, I mean that worth or value that people have simply because they are human, not by virtue of any social standing, ability to evoke admiration, or any particular set of talents, skills, or powers. Intrinsic value is the value something has by virtue of being the kind of thing that it is. Intrinsic dignity is the value that human beings have by virtue of the fact that they are human beings. This value is thus not conferred or created by human choices, individual or collective, but is prior to human attribution. Kant’s notion of dignity is intrinsic.

On the other hand, we have what is called achievement dignity. Achievement dignity is what an agent comes to achieve relative to successful efforts. The agent that has achievement dignity has it to the extent that she “possesses … special qualities, excellencies, or virtues” (2015, 17). We could distinguish varieties of this kind of dignity. One could manifest excellencies in art, science or sports, and in this sense, we could more accurately think of it as attributed dignity. This is the case because its possession depends on attribution, which depends on the norms or standards of excellence defined by the rules of the enterprise, be it sports, art or science (Sulmasy 2008). We could also think of achievement dignity in terms of the extent to which the agent is in “compliance with (the) rules of propriety and decency”, which is dignity as comportment (Schroeder and Bani-Sadr 2017: 34).

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The sense of achievement dignity that I have in mind is associated with the idea of virtue. Sulmasy (2007, 12) explains the kind of dignity that we achieve to refer to: …a process or state of affairs that is congruent with the intrinsic dignity of a human being. Thus, dignity is sometimes used to refer to a virtue—a state of affairs in which a human being habitually acts in a way that expresses the intrinsic value of the human.

Several things are worth noting about the nature of achievement dignity. First, this kind of dignity requires a process for its emergence. The process in question aims at the acquisition of virtue by internalizing habits that strengthen one’s disposition positively. The virtue that emerges is one that is connected directly with the development of the capacity that accounts for our intrinsic dignity. Achievement dignity involves the transformation of our raw value-bearing capacity to embody virtue. The difference between attributed and comportment dignity, in relation to achievement dignity, is that the former is a function of social conventions and standards, whereas the latter is a function of the objective feature of our human nature, the metaphysical capacity that accounts for human nature, and as such, it embodies a universal standard of a character-based ethics that applies to all human beings (Sulmasy 2007). Whereas attributed and comportment dignity will differ from place to place depending on the prevalent social norms/conventions, achievement dignity involves the development of objective features of human nature that embody a universal standard of character-based ethics. In this light, there is a nexus between intrinsic and achievement dignity. One (intrinsic dignity) is prior and informs the other (achievement dignity) in as far as the one (achievement dignity) depends on the positive development of another (intrinsic dignity). One could never fail at intrinsic dignity, all one needs to have it is simply to be born or to be human, whereas one could fail at achievement dignity, since it requires the agent to develop her capacity to acquire virtue. Moreover, the literature indicates that there is a relationship between dignity and respect. In fact, Jones (2015, 89) informs us that “the idea of dignity and respect are inherently related”. We have duties of respect towards beings of dignity. If there are two distinct kinds of dignity, I believe it follows that there should be two distinct kinds of respect that correspond with them (Darwall 1977; Molefe 2021). One kind of respect

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is deep in as far as it tracks ontology and intrinsic dignity; the other kind of respect is not as deep as it tracks performance. Darwall (1977) distinguishes between recognition and appraisal respect. The former is appropriate for intrinsic dignity because it respects a thing by virtue of the kind of thing it is—it tracks the ontological capacity that accounts for our intrinsic dignity. Appraisal dignity is appropriate for achievement dignity as it respects a thing relative to its conduct exuding excellence—it tracks the quality of the agent’s character. The next section considers Ikuenobe’s theory of human dignity, which may be contrasted with the above capacity-based theory of intrinsic human dignity.

Ikuenobe’s Performance-Based Theory of Human Dignity At the core of the concern of this chapter is the place, role and importance of capacities in personhood and value theory. In this section, we consider Ikuenobe’s theory of human dignity, since it follows from views advocated by Menkiti and Tangwa, which dismiss consideration of capacities in value theory, grounding morality or value entirely on agential features of personhood. To make a case for a theory of dignity that Ikuenobe considers both African and plausible, he appeals to the salient concept of personhood in African thought. He construes the idea of personhood to involve “positive recognition based on one’s behaviour or character traits that manifest and enhance the communal values of caring, mutuality, harmonious relationships, and solidarity” (Ikuenobe 2016, 438). The concept of personhood that he deploys to account for human dignity tracks behaviour or character traits by the criterion of whether they manifest community-­enhancing values. The notion of personhood on this account is similar to the agent-centred notion of personhood in that it is the internalization and display of virtue. Since Ikuenobe seeks to interpret the idea of human dignity in terms of a performance-based concept of personhood, he also defends a performance-­based concept of human dignity. He explains his account of human dignity as follows: … something earned and deserved based on the active and positive use of one’s capacities for moral excellence or superior achievements … One who

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manifests respect, acts or lives properly, and comports with communal norms, is usually said to be dignified or have dignity. (Ikuenobe 2016, 461)

In this view, to have dignity, moral dignity depends on the use an agent makes of their metaphysical capacities. If the agent uses them positively, which involves manifesting excellence, by habitually acting in ways that promote communal well-being, harmony, peace and prosperity, then she acquires personhood or moral virtue. Ikuenobe’s African theory of human dignity counts as an instance of achievement dignity because it depends on the behaviour that embodies and expresses communal values of well-­ being. In other words, in Ikuenobe’s view, having achieved personhood (virtuous character) is the same as having dignity. Note that Ikuenobe draws a distinction between factual and moral dignity. Factual dignity refers to the dignity we have because of the descriptive or metaphysical capacity of our human nature, whereas moral dignity emerges relative to the positive and successful use of this metaphysical capacity to achieve personhood. In Ikuenobe’s view, in relation to factual dignity, we are simply describing the metaphysical capacities that one must develop to achieve personhood or moral dignity. These factual capacities have no intrinsic value; at best, they are instrumentally good. Note the comment by Ikuenobe (2016, 437): “human capacities do not have any inherent moral worth. Capacities are instrumentally good, and their worth depends on how they are used to promote the moral good of communal well-being, on which individual well-being or dignity depends”. It is worth considering certain significant consequences of Ikuebobe’s theory of human dignity. First, Ikuenobe denies the intrinsic worth of dignity. In Ikuenobe’s view, following the lead of Menkiti and Tangwa, metaphysical capacities do not have intrinsic value. Second, the best way to understand value in African thought is in terms of the positive use of these capacities. The moral category used to attribute the positive use of these capacities is the normative idea of personhood. Personhood is a characteristic we acquire over time, which is the basis for human dignity. Hence, Ikuenobe advocates the achievement of dignity of personhood as the best way to conceptualize an African ethics of human dignity. The mere possession of metaphysical capacities does not secure human dignity. The value of our metaphysical capacity for dignity depends on our positive use thereof to acquire dignity. The next section evaluates Ikuenobe’s theory of human dignity.

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Reason to Favour a Capacity-Based Conception of Personhood and Human Dignity In what follows, I provide reasons to doubt the plausibility of Ikuenobe’s non-capacity-based theory of value or human dignity. Prevalent moral intuitions in bioethics, animal ethics and political theory are more consistent with the capacity-based view of human dignity than the agent-centred theory of value, I will demonstrate, in relation to bioethics (in the case of young children), animal ethics (in the case of the moral status of animals) and political theory (in the case of social egalitarianism). I begin with the case of bioethics. Bioethics and Ikuenobe’s Theory of Human Dignity Bioethical debates often pivot on the concept of human dignity. Some recent works on bioethics insist that the intrinsic idea of human dignity is relevant in bioethics (Schulman 2008; Sulmasy 2008; Miller 2017). A distinctive feature of the intrinsic idea of human dignity is that it accounts for value in terms of certain metaphysical endowments of human nature (be it consciousness, rationality, or whatever property a theorist prefers). To see how this matters for bioethics, consider the abortion debate. The debate on abortion turns on the permissibility of abortion. To decide on this matter, intrinsic value, moral status or human dignity are often invoked (Warren 1997). Moral status, or intrinsic value, is a function of possessing certain capacities. For example, on Kant’s theory of human dignity, which accounts for this in terms of the capacity for rationality, it would follow that a foetus lacks this capacity, which would imply the permissibility of abortion. Some religious theories account for dignity in terms of the sacredness of human life since human life participates in and resembles divinity (Molefe 2022). On this view, it is often argued that abortion is impermissible. What does the job of accounting for the value of an entity is whether it possesses the relevant ontological capacities. If it does possess the relevant ontological capacities then we have obligations towards it. If it does not then it is moral a patient, and we do not owe it any direct moral obligations towards it. The question that arises now is: how would an agent-centred theory of value, or human dignity, account for the intuition that young children have moral status (or intrinsic value)? The question arises precisely because Ikuenobe is unequivocal that the mere possession of capacity is not sufficient for intrinsic value. In fact, he states that capacities have no value

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except an instrumental one that tracks good conduct. On the face of it, a theory that grounds intrinsic value on the mere capacity, or even potential on the case of children, can explain why we do have duties towards young children. However, it is not immediately obvious how an account that attributes value strictly in terms of achievement of the pursuit of virtue would explain the value of children who have not yet reached such achievement. Indirect defences are too contingent to be satisfactory. If we must protect the child because of her mother (an indirect consideration) or because we are violating harmony in the community, we may always think of a situation where that is not the case. In that situation, since the value is not in the young child herself, she remains morally vulnerable and unprotected. The decisive advantage of basing intrinsic value on some property of the young child herself is that it offers robust moral protection for her, in her own right. I find it intuitively appealing to ground a robust ethical theory on the idea that you do not have to do or be anything to deserve moral attention, protection and empowerment. Ikuenobe (2016, 464) might offer another ground to protect the young child, and he does so in this fashion: My view implies that we have unconditional responsibility to respect, love and care for those (children…) who lack the ability to use their capacity to earn respect … The idea of respecting unconditionally those who are not capable of acting to earn respect is supported by the moral principle of ‘ought implies can’, which indicates that you cannot hold people responsible for what is impossible for them.

Here, we note that Ikuenobe draws our attention to two distinct kinds of respect. Conditional and unconditional respect. Conditional respect tracks the capacity and its (the capacity) positive use, and unconditional respect is associated with those who cannot use their abilities. It is not clear why we must accept unconditional respect given that moral worth in Ikuenobe’s view is a function of the positive use of capacities. It is also not clear what it is about lacking capacities that attract respect, while merely having capacities does not. Moreover, Ikuenobe argues that the value of capacities is merely instrumental. If that is the case, then we may legitimately inquire after the source of the value that justifies unconditional respect. Moreover, I remain unconvinced that the principle of “ought implies can” offers a convincing rationale for the unconditional respect we supposedly have towards those who lack the requisite capacities or their use. I

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say so because, in the first instance, we know that respect is a function of the positive use of these metaphysical capacities. Moreover, the mere possession of capacities has no value at all and, therefore, does not warrant any respect. It is uncontested that we cannot hold people responsible for what they cannot do, but that is not what is at stake. That is shifting issues. The real issue is on what grounds do we accord unconditional respect to individuals who cannot use their capacity if dignity requires such performance. Yes, we agree that we cannot hold the young responsible for what they cannot do, but that concession does not move us a step closer to answering the question of why we owe them unconditional respect. Next, I turn to the question of animals in light of Ikuenobe’s theory.

Animal Ethics and Ikuenobe’s Theory of Human Dignity I now turn to the question of whether Ikuenobe’s theory of human dignity can secure robust animal ethics. That animals have intrinsic value, or at least that we have direct duties towards them, is a prevalent moral intuition in philosophy across different traditions (Horsthemke 2015). There are at least two influential theories of animal ethics in philosophy. Utilitarianism secures the intrinsic value of animals since they possess the capacity to suffer (Singer 2009). Others such as Ronald Regan secure their intrinsic value and inherent rights by virtue of their being a subject of life—they are open to a variety of experiences connected to their existence and welfare (Regan 2004). The mere possession of the relevant capacity explains why they have intrinsic value, which accounts for our duties as agents towards them. One wonders how the agent-centred, non-capacity-­ based theory of human dignity advocated by Ikuenobe might account for the intuition that we have direct duties towards animals. For starters, on this account, animals do not have the capacity for personhood. If the value associated with dignity depends on the positive use of the relevant metaphysical capacities, it seems that animals have no place in the domain of value at all. This is a concerning state of affairs because, increasingly, robust theories of social justice are expected theoretically to account for the duties of justice that we have towards animals. At best, Ikuenobe’s theory of value can secure the welfare of animals on indirect grounds that I find to be unsatisfactory, similar to what Kant invokes to protect animals, where we must not show cruelty to animals, since that

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will work against the achievement of dignity (or personhood). If our goal is robust animal ethics, it would strike me to be grossly inadequate to base animal ethics on human interests or indirect grounds. Animal ethics projects ought to protect animal interests for their own sake. This is the case because we can imagine many cases where the indirect condition fails and, in those instances, we have no moral ground to protect animals, since their protection depends on the weak ground of indirect duties. It remains to be seen in future work whether an agent-centred theory of value can avail us of robust animal ethics, which can extend considerations of social justice to animals, or a robust environmental ethics for the natural environment. Next, I turn to the question of political theory. Political Theory and Ikuenobe’s Theory of Human Dignity One of the outstanding tasks of modern political theory, with respect to sexism, racism and xenophobia, is to build a robust political theory that is egalitarian in nature. That is, one of the features a robust political theory must satisfy is that it must be able to reckon with, and account for, the equality of all human beings. A just society, or a good state, is one that treats its citizens as equals or equally (Kymlicka 1990). The idea of intrinsic human dignity in modern political theory is powerful because it offers a promising way to account for egalitarianism. Waldron observes that the concepts of “dignity and equality are interdependent”. Michael Rosen (2012, 8) also notes that “that dignity and equality go together”. He goes to explain how these concepts are interdependent or go together in the history of the development of the concept of dignity in Western cultures in this fashion: One very common way in which writers present the history of dignity is as part of what I call an “expanding circle” narrative. From this perspective, the quality of dignity, once the property of a social elite, has, like the idea of rights, been extended outward and downward until it has come to apply to all human beings. This is all part of that great, long process by which the fundamental equality of human beings has come to be generally accepted.

Historically, dignitas functioned within a hierarchy or a ranking system. Those who occupied positions of social status or high ranking had dignitas. This kind of dignity was connected to the rank of the position one

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enjoyed, and it came with privileges and duties. The hierarchy distinguished commoners from those possessing dignity, where the latter had dignitas. In this context, dignity was a property of the elite few. The modern concept of dignity, however, is inclusive in that it accommodates all human beings in the high rank of the status of dignity. This is because the modern notion of dignity has been so revolutionized to be inclusive and equalizing that the idea of human dignity embodies social egalitarianism. What accounts for the inclusion of all human beings with the status of human dignity is the fact that they possess intrinsic value in that their nature is characterized by value-endowing properties. Hence, this comment by Brennan & Lo (2007, 47) offers a powerful summary of equality in relation to human dignity: The modern notion of dignity drops the hierarchical elements implicit in the meaning of dignitas and uses the term so that all human beings must have equal dignity, regardless of their virtues, merits, social and political status, or any other contingent features.

On this view, the equality of all human beings is a function of merely possessing the relevant intrinsic capacity, and it has nothing to do with any performance-related qualities such as virtue, merit, social standing and so on. Human beings have intrinsic dignity because they are human or possess relevant ontological features, and by virtue of their status of dignity, they are equal to all other human beings. The egalitarianism associated with intrinsic dignity makes it suitable to host and justify equal human rights for all. All human beings deserve equal rights because of the equalizing function of intrinsic dignity. The challenge that immediately emerges for a merit-based account of human dignity, such as that of Ikuenobe, is that it appears to struggle to explain or capture the idea that we are all equal. This is the case precisely because human dignity is a property that we acquire relative to the positive use of our abilities. The upshot of such a view of human dignity is that it fails to explain or offer an attractive account of social egalitarianism because it accounts for it on the variable property of performance or human excellence. Moreover, this view implies that morally evil people have no moral dignity and, as such, have no basis to claim human rights, let alone equal entitlement or access to them. If human dignity is something that we achieve, does that mean we also achieve human rights?

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Above, in a very sketchy way, I have painted a picture, or a triptych, of three concerning aspects of a non-capacity-based theory of human dignity. I have suggested that a non-capacity-based theory fails to offer a satisfactory explanation for our duties towards young children who are not yet in a position to have made adequate use of their capacities in the quest to pursue personhood. Such a theory does not seem to be able to hold promise for robust animal ethics, which can explain our direct duties towards animals by appeal to something about the animals themselves. Finally, I argued that a virtue-based account of dignity fails to secure the political ideal of social egalitarianism, which is important for human rights, for instance, since the view is based on a variable property of performance or merit. On the face of it, by contrast, the power and appeal of the capacity-­ based theory of personhood, human dignity and value in general accounts for the value of children, animals and human equality in terms of their possession of certain valuable intrinsic metaphysical capacities.

Conclusion This chapter explored the importance of metaphysical capacities in African philosophy, specifically in relation to personhood and human dignity. The core consideration revolved around whether a plausible account of African ethics ought to consider capacities merely instrumental to some ultimate moral good, or intrinsically good, in themselves. This question arose in relation to the scepticism from leading scholars of African thought regarding the primary status of capacities in value theory. To test the plausibility of a non-capacity-based theory of value, we visited Ikuenobe’s personhood-­ based theory of human dignity. On this view, human dignity is the function, or one acquires it in lieu, of the positive use of certain capacities. On this view, capacities have no intrinsic value but only instrumental value. Those who achieve personhood have moral dignity, and those who do not achieve it lack dignity. I suggested that Ikuenobe’s performance-based theory fails to account for the value of, and our duties towards, those who cannot use their capacities; in this instance, I focused on the case of young children. I also argued that a non-capacity-based view does not have the resources to ground a robust animal ethics project, which protects animals in their own right. Finally, I suggested that a performance-based account will not be able to accommodate the powerful intuition that a socially just society is one that treats its citizens equally. A capacity-based account can

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explain the basis of our equality, whereas a performance-based one cannot, as it is grounded on a variant property. Moreover, another suggestion that flows from the discussion above is that a robust African moral theory ought to accommodate both the patient- and agent-centred notions of personhood. The patient-centred notion of personhood, which is capacity-based, embodies intrinsic dignity, whereas the agent-centred theory, which is performance-based, embodies achievement dignity. The two are interconnected, where the former is foundational since it lays the basis for the latter, and the latter requires the development of the former. Moreover, intrinsic dignity, as a metaphysical capacity, is important theoretically and in practical disciplines of our lives. It offers us a promising theoretical criterion to resolve issues in bioethics, animal ethics and political theory. Notwithstanding the promise inherent in the capacity-based approach to value, two pressing issues call attention for future consideration. First, it remains open for those who are committed to the capacity-based approach to value theory to explain how a metaphysical capacity can bear intrinsic value. Second, the search for a plausible capacity-based theory of human dignity is still up for grabs in African ethics. At least, this account indicated the promise of a capacity-based approach, but what it has not done is to offer a substantive theory that will rival Ikuenobe’s virtue-based theory of value.

References Behrens, K. (2013). Two ‘Normative’ Conceptions of Personhood. Quest 25: 103–119. Brennan, A., and Y. Lo. 2007. Two conceptions of human dignity: Honour and self-determination. In Perspectives on human dignity: A conversation, ed. J. Malpas and N. Lickiss. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. Darwall, S. 1977. Two Kinds of Respect. Ethics, 80, 36–49. Donnelly, J. 2015. Normative versus taxonomic humanity: Varieties of human dignity in the Western tradition. Journal of Human Rights 14: 1–22. Dzobo, K. 1992. Values in a changing society: Man, ancestors and God. In Person and community: Ghanaian philosophical studies, 1, ed. Kwame Gyekye and Kwasi Wiredu, 223–242. Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. Gyekye, K. 1992. Person and community in Akan thought. In Person and community: Ghanaian philosophical studies, 1, ed. Kwame Gyekye and Kwasi Wiredu, 101–122. Washington, DC: Council For Research in Values and Philosophy.

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———. 1997. Tradition and modernity. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2010. African ethics. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/african-­ethics. Accessed, 16 January 2013. Horsthemke, K. 2015. Animals and African ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Ikuenobe, P. 2016. The communal basis for moral dignity: An African perspective. Philosophical Papers 45: 437–469. Jones, D. A. 2015. Human Dignity in Healthcare: A Virtue Ethics Approach. The New Bioethics, 21: 87–97. Korsgaard, C. 1983. Two Distinctions in Goodness. Philosophical Review 92: 69–195. Kymlicka, W. 1990. Contemporary political philosophy: An introduction. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Masolo, D. 2010. Self and community in a changing world. Indiana University Press, Indianapolis. Matolino, B. 2009. Radicals versus moderates: A critique of Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism. South African Journal of Philosophy 28: 160–170. Menkiti, I. 1984. Person and community in African traditional thought. In African philosophy: An introduction, ed. Richard Wright, 171–181. Lanham: University Press of America. ———. 2004. On the normative conception of a person. In Companion to African philosophy, ed. Kwasi Wiredu, 324–331. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Michael, L. 2014. Defining Dignity and Its Place in Human Rights. The New Bioethics: A Multidisciplinary Journal of Biotechnology and the Body 20: 12–34. Miller, S. 2017. Reconsidering Dignity Relationally. Ethics and Social Welfare 11: 108–121. Molefe, M. 2018b. Personhood and Rights in an African Tradition. Politikon 45: 217–231. ———. 2019. An African philosophy of personhood, morality and politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2021. Partiality and Impartiality in African philosophy. New york: Lexington books. ———. 2022. Human dignity in African philosophy: A very short introduction. Cham: Springer. Oyowe, T. 2014. An African conception of human rights? Comments on the challenges of relativism. Human Rights Review 15: 329–347. Regan, T. 2004. Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights. New York: Lexington Books. Rosen, M. 2012. Dignity: Its history and meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schroeder, D., and Bani-Sadr, A. 2017. Dignity in the 21st century Middle East and West. Springer Open, New York.

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Schulman, A. 2008. Bioethics and the Question of Human Dignity. In The President’s Council on Bioethics, Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President’s Council (pp. 2–19). Washington DC: President’s Council on Bioethics. Shutte, A. 2001. Ubuntu: An ethic for a new South Africa. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications. Singer, P. 2009. Speciesism and moral status. Metaphilosophy 40: 567–581. Sulmasy, D. 2007. Human Dignity and Human Worth. In Perspectives on Human Dignity: A Conversation, eds. J. Malpas and N. Lickiss, 9–19. Cham, Springer. ———. 2008. Dignity and Bioethics: History, Theory, and Selected Applications. In The President’s Council on Bioethics, Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President’s Council (pp. 469–501). Washington DC: President’s Council on Bioethics. Tangwa, G. 2000. The traditional African perception of a person: Some implications for bioethics. Hastings Center Report 30: 39–43. Warren, A. 1997. Moral status: Obligations to persons and other living things. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wiredu, K. 1996. Cultural universals and particulars: An African perspective. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ———. 2004. Introduction: African philosophy in our time. In A companion to African philosophy, ed. Kwasi Wiredu, 1–27. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. ———. 2009. An Oral Philosophy of Personhood: Comments on Philosophy and Orality. Research in African Literatures 40: 8–18.

CHAPTER 5

Human Dignity, Ubuntu and Global Justice Dennis Masaka

Introduction In this chapter, I glean a notion of human dignity from a principle of ubuntu that recognises the intrinsic value of being human, which may, correspondingly, be affirmed and reinforced by recognising and respecting the same in others (see also the argument by Allsobrook, in this volume, on dignity in mutual recognition). This is something close to what Thomas Pogge claims when he states, ‘it is through the encounter of others and their achievements that human beings reach their full potential’ (Pogge 2014, 480). In doing so, I am aware of a certain reading of ubuntu that appears to implicate it in the denial of individual autonomy of persons, as a normative ground for dignity, instead prizing relationality as the point from which human dignity could be teased out (see Gyekye 2010, 104). Thaddeus Metz (2012a, 20–21) has compellingly shown that the communitarian conception of dignity rather than the vitalist one is more appealing for an adequate conception of human dignity in sub-Saharan D. Masaka (*) Department of Ethics, Philosophy, Religion and Theology, Great Zimbabwe University, Masvingo, Zimbabwe Department of Philosophy and Classics, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Molefe, C. Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1_5

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Africa. In this chapter, my interest is with the Afro-communitarian relational conception of human dignity that Metz (2012a) has advanced and that he goes on to develop in this volume. As Metz explains, ‘in order to commune with others in the relevant sense, one must be autonomous or rational as per Kantianism, but, on the African view, one has a dignity only insofar as one is capable of using one’s intelligence in a particular, other regarding way’ (Metz 2012a, 27). Metz further refines his idea of relational moral theory in one of his latest works on the subject, where he sees himself as advancing ‘a modal relational view, according to which moral status is constituted by an individual’s capacity to relate to others communally, regardless of whether the individual has in fact so related’ (Metz 2022, 231). This idea of human dignity, which belongs to our capacity for harmony or relational communing, does not leave out those who on occasion fail to commune. Simply having this capacity is enough for one to be a creature of dignity. Therefore, conceived, dignity is something to which all humans are entitled, in virtue of having a modal property, that is, a capacity for harmony. While I similarly feel that ubuntu could ground human dignity, I invoke a different interpretation of ubuntu from that which grounds Metz’s (2012a) communitarian conception of human dignity; that is, one that principally gives premium to the autonomy of individuals as well as the capacity for relational communing (see Gyekye 2010, 122). Thus, I take a different perspective from one in which a ‘human being has dignity in virtue of his [her] capacity for community or friendship, conceived as the combination of identity and solidarity, where to identify with others is to share a way of life with them and to exhibit solidarity with others is to care about their quality of life’ (Metz 2012a, 32). I find human dignity to be grounded in an understanding of ubuntu, which prizes an individual as a creature of dignity by virtue of being human, without reliance on any one specific attribute. Our capacity for communing, even when conceived as a modal property, is not an adequate justification for why human beings are worthy of dignity, albeit a moral capacity that is highly valued in African moral thinking. The position I advance on ubuntu is attractive enough to account for a well-meaning conception of global justice, on the basis of which to advance fairness in human relations at the global level (see Etieyibo 2017). As I will argue, it does not sit well for human dignity to be grounded in one’s capacity to commune. Instead, I propose that an individual is a creature of dignity by virtue of simply being human, which can be taken to

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entail one’s individuality in a relevant sense; a position that aligns with what Kwane Gyekye posits in regard to a moderate communitarian thesis that is amenable to ‘communal values, as well as to values of individuality, to social commitments, as well as to duties of self-attention’ (Gyekye 2010, 122). A similar idea is discernible in ubuntu, and I have chosen this basis to ground a conception of human dignity that could in turn inform a plausible idea of global justice. Ubuntu is not averse to explicit self-­ regarding and other-regarding values. Human dignity may be inferred legitimately to flow from an individual’s station as a human being, with the capacity for communing playing a complementary role. One’s dignity may be reinforced by noting and respecting the dignity of other human beings in relation to one’s own. While my position aligns with the understanding of human dignity as something that flows from one’s human nature or humanity, it cannot be conflated with or reducible to the latter. My contention is that human dignity ought to be conceived as flowing from a human being, such that along the way no one who is human is left out from being considered a creature of dignity. Understood thus, relational communing reinforces and implants a sense of assuredness of human dignity through interpersonal recognition of the intrinsic worth of every human being. Such a notion of human dignity may not be limited by race or place, as Kant (2011, 58–59; [2: 253]) seems to imply, in imputing to Europeans, a standard of rationality that may exclude humans elsewhere, whose thinking is judged not to meet such a standard. Rather, it reflects a more comprehensive notion of human dignity that may ground a universal sense of global justice, since it not only considers the individual, per se, as a subject of dignity but also gives weight to relational considerations of human existence as reinforcing such dignity. As Mogobe Bernard Ramose argues, ‘that Ubuntu philosophy is the lived and living experience of human beings means that the human dignity of the Bantu-speaking peoples demands recognition, protection, promotion and respect on the basis of equality with all other human beings, wherever they may be on planet Earth’ (Ramose 2014, 121). In this light, I advance an idea of global human dignity that challenges the power politics that currently troubles relations of humans from different geopolitical centres on account of insinuated differential human dignities. In arguing thus, the motivation is not to seek legitimation or accommodation in particular ‘closed’ notions of human dignity but to identify an African conception that is open and comprehensive enough to foreground global justice discourse.

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To achieve the aims of this chapter, the following sections will suffice. In the first section, I show that the notion of ‘human dignity’ has been deployed in the literature in ways that have not reflected a unified account of what it means, as an attribute of human beings, which other creatures are thought not to have (Malpas and Lickiss 2007, 1–2; Sulmasy 2007, 12). These accounts have not generally agreed on what makes human beings creatures of dignity in ways that would engender an uncontentious and unanimous conception disinvested of cultural prejudices. In this connection, I have interest in Metz’s (2012a) claim that ubuntu-inspired human dignity that is typical of sub-Saharan communities is different from that which may be credited to the influence of Immanuel Kant, and more generally, ideas of dignity that are commonly held in the Euro-North American world. In the second section, I argue that an ubuntu-inspired conception of human dignity offers a more plausible and comprehensive idea of human dignity that could be extended across cultures. I do so by advancing a different interpretation of ubuntu from that which is favoured by Metz (2012a) and instead argue that an individual is a subject of dignity by virtue of being human, with the capacity for communing playing a reinforcing role. In the final section, I argue that my preferred reading of ubuntu takes individuals to embody intrinsic qualities that underpin human dignity while acknowledging that our relational existence helps to secure human dignity more broadly. I further argue that such an ubuntu-­ based conception of human dignity could provide a plausible grounding for global justice that is currently beset by various geopolitical narratives masquerading as authentic global theorising.

Human Dignity: Lessons from Some Influential Accounts in African Philosophy The notion of ‘human dignity’ has attracted a wide variety of interpretations in terms of what it means, what grounds it, and whether it is something that all humans have in equal measure (see Düwell 2014, 23–24; Sulmasy 2007, 12). Such equality could arguably be defended on the basis of a common understanding of explicit qualities that individuals ought to have, to be considered creatures worthy of dignity. At least from some accounts of human dignity, it would appear that dignity is something extended to individuals on account of our having a capacity for communing (Metz 2012a). Metz considers the capacity for harmony to be an

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inherent or modal property of individuals, which suggests that it is an inalienable property of every human being. However, one has to contend with prejudicial distinctions that have typically been attributed to various human capacities—most notoriously, human reason, rationality and autonomy, to specific segments of humans, while denying such attributions to others, as if these special capacities can be conferred to some and not others (see Molefe 2019, 124). This record puts into question how such a notion could be understood to underpin human equality, and it raises the question of whether it is possible to gain an understanding of human dignity that at least has some semblance of transcultural appeal. This is necessary to glean at least a common notion of human dignity that could ground a well-meaning account of global justice. With these contestations in mind, it is necessary to tease out how some accounts of human dignity conceptualise it and then to try to show how it plausibly can be conceived in a way that is all-embracing in terms of what defines human beings as creatures of dignity. I will choose for substantive focus Metz’s (2012a) claim that the ubuntu-inspired conception of human dignity that is typical of sub-Saharan communities is different from the one credited to Immanuel Kant with respect to what underlies or grounds it. I will reserve a critical engagement with Metz’s (2012a, 35–36) comparison of the two in the next section. One can hardly doubt the important role of the notion of human dignity in respecting humans as such, and its significant function for interpersonal relations at the local and global level, to make this world a better and more egalitarian place, at least in terms of human relations. Human dignity is something that seems to make an individual a recipient of certain goods that are commonly believed to accrue to one who is thought to have certain specific attributes (while eluding those who are thought not to have them). However, this differential aspect puts into question what we truly mean by human dignity. Is it something that inheres in individuals independently of our opinions about them, or is it something that is dependent on what we think of other people? It would appear that the former is more attractive on the grounds that it is bound to be more objective and not susceptible to changing whims of individuals who make judgements about someone or other people’s dignity. The trump card of dignity, as a basis for human rights and global justice, is that qualities from which it flows are independent of what individuals might think of others; that is, they are innate and inalienable (Molefe 2019, 126). These innate and inalienable qualities somehow ignite thoughts in others to recognise

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and respect such individuals as necessarily worthy of dignity, but this does not mean that dignity is something that is conferred by other people as such. The latter notion of human dignity appears problematic, as it seems to place the mandate to bestow dignity on an individual or a group of people on the opinions of others and is not grounded in the inalienable qualities residing in them. More often than not, such opinions are not objective, and they are inclined to prejudicial labelling, which makes the bestowal or denial of dignity rather contentious and rationally unconvincing, as a basis for universal equality. In the Euro-North American tradition, Immanuel Kant is credited for having initiated an attractive philosophical idea of human dignity extended to humans that have the attributes of reason and autonomy (Hill 2014, 215; Kerstein 2014, 222–223). Humans have inner or inherent worth (Kant 2002, 53; [Ak 4:435]; 1991, 231; [436]) because of their capacity to reason and to make free or voluntary choices as opposed to other things in nature that operate according to physical laws. Dignity, according to Kant, is ‘an unconditioned, incomparable worth’, and ‘Autonomy is [thus] the ground of the dignity of the human and of every rational nature’ (2002, 54; [Ak 4:436]). This understanding of human dignity has generally been taken as normative since it regards dignity as inherent in human beings. From this rendering of human dignity, one may draw the conclusion that human dignity is a property of all humans. However, Kant (2011, 58–59; [2: 253]) reserved considerable misgivings about the humanity of certain segments of humans, such that they were denied attribution of this normative property. Once the humanity (qua autonomy) of some peoples is put in doubt, which in turn denies their capacity for the exercise of reason and autonomy, it means that they cannot be of a kind that deserves to be treated with dignity. This discrimination is the major undoing of the Kantian account of human dignity, even though, when it is divested of prejudicial posturing, it would appear to offer an objective standard from which human dignity can be grounded. Nevertheless, one can still find this grounding of human dignity to be essentially problematic, as it does not seem to cater for those humans who, say by deformity of birth, demonstrate no capacity to exercise those qualities from which human dignity is said to flow. At face value, one may be sympathetic to the idea that human dignity flows from qualities or attributes in individuals that are innate and inalienable. As Pogge correctly puts it, ‘dignity is different from those many things and attributes that are valuable insofar as they are valued’ (Pogge 2014, 480). It is something that enjoys independent existence and

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for this reason cannot be conferred to an individual but is innate and inalienable. However, then problems are encountered when some people are denied these attributes or when they are on occasion denied them such that they would not seem to be inalienable. For example, humans may be treated in some rather undignified manner because they have been convicted of some crimes or because  they face some constraining environment, as is the case with captured belligerents in a war. These cases put into doubt the otherwise compelling case that human dignity is inalienable. Relatedly, one might want to know on what occasions human dignity may be suspended and whether such situations might not be abused by individuals or segments of humanity for self-serving ends. History has shown the tendency to deny some people human dignity by claiming the absence of attributes of rationality and autonomy (Kant 2011, 58–59; [2: 253]) to humiliate or conquer them, thereby weakening the inalienability argument. Metz (2012a) has debated the question of what makes humans worthy of dignity. In so doing, Metz makes a comparison of African and Western thinking on human dignity primarily on the basis of his reading of African communitarian thinking that has, in turn, a bearing on his preferred idea of human dignity in an African space. Metz (2012a, 23–27) distinguishes at least two African conceptions of human dignity that may be gleaned from African moral thinking, that is, the vitalist conception and the communitarian conception, which is just as plausible as Western conceptions of dignity. My interest in this work is in the latter, which Metz (2012a, 20) considers a worthy competitor to the Kantian account of human dignity. I do not consider the vitalist conception of human dignity since I agree with Metz’s argument (2012a, 20) that the communitarian conception of relationality is more attractive in grounding human dignity from which human rights flow. I do not seek to ground human rights on human dignity as Metz (2012a, 35–36) does, but I try to imagine how a certain understanding of human dignity may prove attractive as a basis from which to ground a compelling case for global justice. Metz (2012a, 22) takes the idea that human dignity is grounded in individuals’ capacities for autonomy to be Western, while at the same time, he accepts that people from other parts of the world may hold the same idea. The designation of this conception as Western is sustained by the claim that such a conception is commonly held and predominant in the West, without implying that everyone in that space holds such a conception or that others elsewhere do not. The same reasoning applies to African ideas about human dignity, as

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Metz (2012a, 22) argues. With respect to the Western understanding of human dignity, Metz (2012a, 22) argues that the capacity for autonomy or rationality is considered the source thereof, a view that is represented in Kant’s philosophy. In this light, humans have more value than any other being in this physical world because of our capacities for autonomy and reason. This compares sharply with the communitarian understanding of human dignity, which is predominant in Africa, where communal relations are the basis of human dignity. Valuing other peoples’ lives and interests is grounded in communal relations, Metz claims (2012a, 23). This means that our communal nature makes human beings of higher worth, which in turn grounds an attractive conception of human dignity. Thus far I have covered Metz’s (2012a, 35–36) comparison of the Kantian understanding of human dignity, grounded in our capacity for autonomy, said to be predominant in the West, with a dominant African communitarian understanding of human dignity, that is based in our capacity for relationality. I do so to assess their merits not for their normative value for human rights but for their efforts to ground global justice.

In Defence of Ubuntu-Inspired Human Dignity In this section, I set out to show that an ubuntu-inspired notion of human dignity appears to provide a plausible and comprehensive idea of human dignity that could be extended across cultures. I do so by offering an alternative interpretation of ubuntu from that which is advanced by Metz in two essays, (2012a, 2012b) in which community is prized over the individuality of humans. Metz’s relational account reinforces a popular interpretation of African relations between individual and community, whereby our capacity for communal relationships is claimed to ground human dignity. I argue that human dignity is grounded in qualities residing in individuals which are implied by a certain underemphasised reading of ubuntu, or African communitarian thinking, which is broader in scope than just our relational existence or communing, as many defenders of African communitarian thinking and ubuntu have argued. My overall objective is to offer a different reading of ubuntu that foregrounds the individuality of individuals in understanding human dignity in the African space, while at the same time cherishing how the importance of relational existence would help in building a case for a worthy idea of human dignity that might be attractive even at the global level.

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It is important to understand Metz’s (2012a, 23) preference for an African communitarian conception of human dignity that draws from relational existence, in which identity and solidarity are more important than what he calls the ‘Kantian-Western’ premium on the autonomy of individuals. The term ‘identity’ is understood as ‘sharing a way of life’, and ‘solidarity’ is understood as ‘caring for others’ quality of life’ (Metz 2012a, 27). By prizing communing as the basis of human dignity, African communitarian thinking appears to be all-encompassing because the capacity for harmony or communing is conceived as a modal property, which means simply having a capacity and not ‘relating itself’ (Metz 2022, 168). This might mean that human dignity is extended to a human being merely on the basis of a potential for harmony. Understood thus, it appears unclear how Metz’s position is different from one that takes dignity to be something that is entitled to a human being by virtue of being human, with relationality playing a reinforcing role. The position I defend does not pick out a particular modal property to ground human dignity. One’s station as a human being is enough to ground human dignity, which communing complements. This is not meant to downplay the importance of relational existence in promoting a more humane community of human beings. The ubuntu-­ inspired idea of human dignity I defend extends dignity to humans for the simple reason that one is human, while our capacity for harmony reinforces this. I offer an account of human dignity grounded in qualities that define a human being as such more generally while at the same time paying a premium on individuals’ duty to recognise and respect the humanity of fellow humans. As Motsamai Molefe (2019, 126) has argued, human dignity must ‘secure goods due to each human being merely because they are human. Thus, since the modern idea of dignity grounds it on some facet of human nature, it is egalitarian; as such, grounding equal respect to all human beings’. Although Molefe (2019, and in this volume) does not speak of an ubuntu-inspired idea of human dignity as I do in this chapter, I find his conception of human dignity to resonate with how I would conceive it as something that is unconditionally extended to all humans, in turn securing it by taking seriously relational existence. With this in mind, unlike the Kantian conception (1991, 2002) and Metz’s (2012a) communitarian conception of human dignity, this account does not specify a particular quality of human beings (in this case, the capacity for autonomy or communing, respectively) but one that is more generic, belonging to all humans, while also taking note of the intrinsic relatedness of humans.

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A popular reading of ubuntu philosophy in scholarship has conceived of it as giving primacy to the community over the individual (see Ramose 1999; Metz 2012b; Etieyibo 2017, 146–147). This interpretation has been recurrently put forward as the dominant sub-Saharan African position (Ramose 1999; Tutu 1999; Metz 2012b). However, it would appear that individuality is not commonly devalued in African thinking (see Gyekye 2010, 115). Moreover, acknowledging that an inherent attribute of individuality is the basis of human dignity does not imply denial of the relatedness of humans. Grivas Muchineripi Kayange (2020) has recently undertaken to revisit the conception of the individual in community that is commonly attributed to ubuntu, where the individual’s self-actualisation is said to be realisable only through relational existence, or alternatively, the capacity to exercise other-regarding duties. This approach puts individuality or pursuit of self-regarding duties in doubt. The rationality and autonomy of individuals are essential to human beings independent of and over and above our duties to commune. The denial of individuality is one of the major undoings of the radical interpretation of ubuntu, which can lead to contestable claims that human dignity can be grounded on one’s capacity to commune and not on general properties that define a human being as such. As a result, Kanyage argues that the radical interpretation of ubuntu is a grand distortion of African thinking that neglects its ‘individualistic elements’ (Kayange 2020: 4; see also Gyekye 2010, 114–115) and foists an appreciation for communing on us as an overbearing concern that grounds human dignity for African people. To this extent, Bujo adds, ‘the statement that in Africa the community alone matters and not the individual is hardly right’ (Bujo 1998, 147). Sidestepping individuality or some general properties thought to be constitutive of an individual human being, as the basis of human dignity, in favour of, say, a single modal property, that is, the capacity to commune, may be misconstrued to mean that African thought, on significant scores, is a stark opposite of other thought systems, such as Euro-North American ones. This oppositional characterisation does not help matters, as some of the individual properties that reside in an individual, which Africans commonly prize, such as rationality and autonomy, would then possibly be conceived as an anathema to some of the central claims of African thought. This line of thought has served to validate an otherwise debatable notion that Africans are characteristically communing beings (Gyekye 2010, 103; Kayange 2020, 6) and thus less inclined than Westerners to value

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characteristics of individuality, especially in terms of being valued independently of what they may or may not do for the community. However, it appears reasonable to accept that both self-regarding and other-regarding dispositions are valued in an African space (see Gyekye 2010, 114–115; Kayange 2020, 7) and that self-regarding human attributes are central to African conceptions of human dignity. It does not bode well to deny that self-regarding duties define a human being in the ontological sense more broadly. To insist on this seems unattractive. At the same time, respecting individual humans as creatures of dignity is important for reinforcing relational existence. It seems plausible to read ubuntu as embracing both self-­ regarding and other regarding duties and to argue that the former grounds human dignity, which is in turn reinforced by the latter, to promote a more humane world. This more balanced view of dignity, which values our individuality as much as our relationality, rejects the radical interpretation of ubuntu, which conceives of one’s humanity in stereotypically African terms of our relational capacities alone. Acceptance that a human being has intrinsic worth and is thus important in her or himself is central to the appeal of an ubuntu-inspired account of human dignity (Ramose 2009, 420). Acceptance of individual intrinsic worth is fundamental to human dignity with respect to those properties of the individual, whose value does not pertain to valuations or perceptions of our relations with others. At the same time, the relatedness of human worth is also important for reinforcing human dignity. This balanced view overcomes the one-sidedness of the representation of human dignity in oppositional terms, as consisting, either in our capacity for autonomy or our capacity for relationality, offering an African conception of dignity that is preferable to the dominant reductionist Kantian approach. A balanced interpretation of ubuntu-inspired human dignity appreciates both innate characteristics of individual humans’ dignity and relational characteristics of dignity in community, by which we appreciate each other. This more balanced characterisation, grounded in the values of ubuntu, has better credentials insofar as it offers a universal conception of human dignity, which may be recognised at the global level. The central assertion in ubuntu thought that ‘to be human is to affirm one’s humanness by recognising the same quality in others and, on that basis, establishing humane relations with them’ (Ramose 2009, 420) may be taken to imply that a human being is not a creature of intrinsic worth independently of our capacity for relational existence. This would justify grounding human dignity on relational existence. One may suggest that such a

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claim needs to be understood to affirm intrinsic individual human worth, for it to explicitly resonate with claims about the intrinsic worth of individual humans. One ought to emphasise, by such a balanced understanding of ubuntu, that human dignity can be reinforced by valuing the same in others, without expressly implying that without valuing the dignity of others, one might cease to be a bearer of dignity. The idea of human dignity that may draw on ubuntu is one that takes note of two core philosophical principles: (1) that every human being has intrinsic, as opposed to extrinsic, worth; (2) that humans ought to respect fellow humans’ intrinsic worth, since doing so reinforces and guarantees the human dignity of each and every other human being in society. In this sense, although I have drawn on Ramose, I have also provided an alternative interpretation of two philosophical principles of ubuntu that he has advanced (2009, 420) to help me to argue the case for an ubuntu-inspired account of human dignity that prizes the intrinsic worth of humans, while at the same time emphasising that such worth is best sustained where every human being recognises the intrinsic worth of every other human being across the world as something that must be seriously respected and protected. Such an understanding of ubuntu-inspired human dignity makes a case for global justice more compelling than that which relies solely on our capacity for relationality.

Ubuntu-Inspired Human Dignity and Global Justice In this section, I argue that my preferred reading of ubuntu offers a plausible basis for human dignity, which in turn is necessary in arguing a case for global justice. To this end, I advance the claim that an ubuntu-inspired conception of human dignity is well suited to ground global justice as it conceives of individuals as embodying intrinsic human qualities constitutive of a human being more generally, from which human dignity flows, while at the same time taking seriously the importance of our relational existence to make human dignity more secure. I take this ubuntu-inspired human dignity to offer an alternative perspective in the scholarship on human dignity more generally, one that could provide a more compelling ground for talk about authentic global justice. With this in mind, I invoke it to ground an idea of global justice that I feel has better credentials compared to available attempts, which grossly understate the importance of existing asymmetries between peoples from different spaces of this world born of skewed notions of human dignity, that is, one that disqualifies

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other humans’ dignity, say, on accusations of lacking certain capacities such as rationality. However, beforehand, it is necessary to revisit some accounts of global justice, with the objective of highlighting their merits and deficiencies, against which I advance an ubuntu-inspired human dignity as a compelling basis for global justice. Global justice is yearned for, especially in some spaces in this world, where it is felt that presently there are noticeable and worrying asymmetries in the way peoples of this world relate to one another and/or perceive one other, which overall is indicative of growing injustice of significant proportions. We are witnessing growing polarisation between different peoples as asymmetries of wealth, access and opportunities increase. With that in mind, global justice is an ideal that is imagined to challenge various injustices evident on the world stage. At least there is consensus among various scholars of global justice, who draw on African philosophy, that it is something that needs to be established (Flikschuh 2014; Graness 2015; Chimakonam 2017; Masaka 2017). However, global justice remains a concept that can hardly claim trans-geopolitical scope. I see this as reflective of the contested narratives around global justice, since definitions assigned to it are bound to particular locations from which they are conceived, and, most importantly, geopolitical particularities impinge on its conceptualisation. At this present stage of development, the idea of global justice has exhibited demonstrably divergent perspectives on what needs to be done to consummate it. I have in mind here perspectives of some exponents of global justice from philosophical traditions of the global North (Cabrera 2004, xiii-xiv; Pogge 2014) and from the global South (Graness 2015; Chimakonam 2017; Masaka 2017) on what global justice resides in and what needs to be done to attain it. A cursory look at some of the literature may incline one to presume that there are at least two essentially contested ‘global justices’ struggling to find each other in terms of their significantly divergent underlying reasons and objectives. When one considers how accounts of global justice from the global North are conceived, one might discern a materialistic dimension whereby, as part of its objective, the wealthier countries that are predominant in the global North have devised ways of lessening or altogether expunging distributive disequilibria of material goods between the global North and the global South (see Brock 2009, 10; Barugahare and Lie 2014, 87; Weinstock 2005, vii). More explicitly, the global North is urged to do something about the general material poverty of the majority of those in

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the global South as a show of working towards attaining global justice. It would sound compelling from the perspectives of some of these thinkers from the global North that such efforts to lessen material poverty and to narrow the gap between the two geopolitical centres is something to cheer, and indeed something that is indicative of pragmatic attempts at attaining global justice. Viewed from the lens of the global South, such efforts seem to suffer from a fundamental and recurrent problem of global injustice, which some countries of the global North have caused. Letting the global North determine what the global South should accept as measures to consummate global justice is at best naive, and such an approach is unlikely to yield a plausible idea of global justice, since such an approach fails to take stock of perspectives from the global South. Considering this glaring flaw in the current narratives on global justice that are predominant in the global North, Anke Graness argues, ‘it seems that the academic debate itself is still rooted in a system that has yet to adhere to such fundamental principles of justice as the recognition of and respect for the opinions, concepts, and systems of norms and values of different cultures and regions or the practice of non-violent and non-hierarchical discourse’ (Graness 2015, 127). Some accounts of thinkers from the global South, who are sympathetic to the cause of global justice, have indeed agreed on the need for fair trade in their material resources, as well as on the need to engender self-understanding in areas of knowledge production outside the constraining control of other peoples’ knowledge traditions. They also call for authentic intercultural debates on what would yield a truly all-­ embracing idea of global justice, not only in terms of its scope and agenda but also in its very construction (Graness 2015, 127; Chimakonam 2017, 120; Masaka 2017). Thus, there is a discernibly distinct list of demands and expectations that thinkers of the global South claim the idea of justice will address. As I have highlighted above, there is a concerning disconnect between the approaches from the global South and from the global North on fundamental issues that must inform the idea of global justice. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the global justice debate has a long history in the global North, while the global South is of late making its perspectives felt on what may be conceived of as part of its central agendas. As a result, there is a likely temptation to be drawn toward the notion of global justice that is predominant in the global North as indicative of what global justice more generally ought to be understood. However, this move glosses over the injustices of the construction of such an idea , since it reflects the

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perspective of one geopolitical centre, yet it deceptively assumes the mantle of global justice in the authentic sense. As Anke Graness rightly notes, ‘the problem of global injustice begins with the terms of the debate’ (Graness 2015, 128). A corrective might come in the form of a more engaging method of devising the idea of global justice that respects the agency of both the global North and the global South. I consider the outcome of such authentic intercultural engagements to stand a better chance of advocating an idea of global justice worthy of the name than a perspective advanced from the global North alone. Moreover, I would argue that global justice would be well placed to consider from the South an ubuntu-­ inspired conception of human dignity to offer a reliable normative demand for it. Recall that the ubuntu-inspired conception of human dignity I advance prizes self-regarding duties as the basis of human dignity, while at the same time acknowledging that relational existence reinforces human dignity (see also Gyekye 2010, 122). In addition, recall that one’s intrinsic individual worth is reinforced and assured of equal weight with those of others if we are prepared to treat one another humanely and to recognise the humanity of other humans more generally. The essence of this understanding of ubuntu-inspired human dignity is that not only is the intrinsic value of an individual valued and taken as the basis of human dignity, but so is the expectation to extend equal respect to all other humans, irrespective of their offices in life, race, ethnicity, stations or conditions of existence or space they occupy in the world. In light of this understanding of human dignity, it appears that all human beings are bearers of dignity. Note that this ubuntu-inspired account of human dignity does not point at any specific attribute of a human being from which dignity is thought to flow, as Metz does when he grounds human dignity on the capacity for harmony. The only condition for bestowing dignity to humans is by virtue of our being human and not on account of some selected property or properties that other humans may, for example, value for self-serving reasons. An interlocutor may intervene and argue that such a notion of human dignity is hazy, as it draws from some non-specific attributes that are presumed to reside in an individual human being, simply to state that one must be a human being in the most general sense to deserve to be treated with dignity. With this in mind, such an interlocutor may even reject the supposed merits of this basis for grounding human dignity over its competitor positions, such as one that grounds human dignity on the modal

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capacity for communing (Metz 2012a, 2022, 168) or another that grounds it on the capacity for autonomy or rational reflections (Kant 2002, 53; [Ak 4:435]). Kant (1991, 2002) and Metz’s (2012a) ideas of human dignity are merited because they ground it on specific capacities and not on the grounds of simply being human. A converse criticism may be extended to an ubuntu-inspired human dignity, on the grounds of its failure to pick up on or focus upon a particular human quality or qualities, as grounding human dignity, instead claiming that one is entitled to it by virtue of simply being human and that its recognition depends on mutual recognition. Although such averments may appear compelling, they seem to miss an important point that an ubuntu-inspired conception of human dignity raises by stating that it is something that is extended to an individual by virtue of being merely human, which acknowledges our dependence on one another for mutual recognition of one another’s innate worth. As I see it, this balanced approach avoids the problems of reductionist essentialism that accrue from grounding human dignity on specific attributes that may be and have been used to justify denial of other humans’ dignity. It would be good, so I argue, if human dignity is indexed to that which no human being can fail, that is, the fact that one is simply a human being. Assuming these responses to the would-be interlocutor are plausible, it becomes necessary to attempt to establish a compelling ground to construct a notion of global justice that demonstrates better credentials than existing accounts. While such an account falls foul of similar mistakes committed by global justice accounts from the global North, of trying to portray a particular view as applicable across the world, I contend that conceiving human dignity as inalienable and owed to all human beings merely by virtue of being human is widely shared across geopolitical centres and hardly controversial outside of the global South. On this score, grounding global justice on an ubuntu-inspired conception of human dignity avails a platform where the intrinsic value of every individual human being is guaranteed by virtue of being human, which is further reinforced by the demand to ensure that each human being respects the dignity of fellow humans in equal measure. This balanced approach, which draws on ubuntu, may provide the tonic that global justice debates need to take a transformational turn and draw from an idea of human dignity that does not reduce it to a single capacity or attribute, which depends on some elitist or privileged enterprise of scholarly precision but ensures that every human being is simply considered an individual with intrinsic worth, while

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at the same time ensuring that relational existence is invoked to reinforce human dignity in society. If such a notion of human dignity were to foreground our concern for global justice, it may assist in producing one that allows significant buy-in from the global South. Legitimate talk about the possibility of constructing an idea of global justice presupposes that all humans—wherever they are in the world—take humans as creatures from which dignity flows without exclusionary qualifications, be it a capacity for communing or a capacity to exercise autonomy or reason, or any other particular capacity for that matter, but for simply being human. One might retort that brandishing the ubuntu-inspired notion of dignity as not bound by place, race, relationality or some specific attribute belonging to people inhabiting a geographic locale—embodying the wishes of global justice in the truest of senses—makes it lose its distinctively African parentage. To this, I would respond, the account of dignity recognised in ubuntu could also be applied outside the confines of its space of origin. Dignity is extended to an individual by virtue of one’s being human, and one’s intrinsic human worth is reinforced and assured in recognition of the intrinsic worth of every other human, wherever they are found in the world.

Concluding Remarks As I conclude this chapter, I take note of the fact that we lack a unified understanding of the agenda of global justice, and of how it can possibly be construed in a way that may embrace perspectives from both the global North and the global South to culminate in a representative account that is acceptable to both. Drawing from what I have called an ubuntu-inspired human dignity account, I have attempted to present a sound basis for a more all-embracing idea of global justice. Founding global justice on such an inclusive notion of human dignity may assure us of reliable normative grounds for advocating for a world that is fairer, more just and more inclusive. If anything, attempts at making this world a better and fairer place for all humans are most likely to be vigorously pushed from the global South in a way that takes both the global North and the global South as its co-­ creators. The reason is that the global South has over the years suffered power asymmetries with the global North (see Shivji 2014: 137). From the vantage point of disadvantage, the global South can contribute meaningfully to global theorising about human dignity and global justice in ways that disrupt not only the narrative that the global North is better disposed to do so but also by ensuring that it actively contributes to

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dominant theoretical conceptualisations by availing alternative notions of dignity. In addition to urging that ‘global normative theorists should take an interest in what and how distant peers might think, from within their particular contexts, about issues of global justice’ (Flikschuh 2014, 14) [and human dignity1], the so-called ‘distant peers’ need to participate actively in intercultural conversations by constructing notions of human dignity and global justice that realistically engage different perspectives and establish unified ideas.

References Barugahare, J., and R.K.  Lie. 2014. Obligations of poor countries in ensuring global justice: The case of Uganda. Etikk i praksis. Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics 8: 82–96. Brock, G. 2009. Global justice: A cosmopolitan account. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bujo, B. 1998. The ethical dimensions of community: The African model and the dialogue between North and South. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa. Cabrera, L. 2004. Political theory of global justice: A cosmopolitan case for the world state. London: Routledge, Taylor and Francis. Chimakonam, J.O. 2017. African philosophy and global epistemic injustice. Journal of Global Ethics 13: 120–137. Düwell, M. 2014. On the border of life and death: human dignity and bioethics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. M. Düwell, J. Braarvig, R. Brownsword and D. Mieth, 23–49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Etieyibo, E. 2017. Ubuntu, cosmopolitanism, and distribution of natural resources. Philosophical Papers 461: 139–162. Flikschuh, K. 2014. The idea of philosophical fieldwork: Global justice, moral ignorance, and intellectual attitudes. The Journal of Political Philosophy 22: 1–26. Graness, A. 2015. Is the debate on ‘global justice’ a global one?: Some considerations in view of modern philosophy in Africa. Journal of Global Ethics 11: 126–140. Gyekye, K. 2010. Person and community in African thought. In Person and community: Ghanaian philosophical studies, I, ed. K.  Wiredu and K.  Gyekye, 101–122. Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. Hill, T.E. 2014. Kantian perspectives on the rational basis of human dignity. In The Cambridge handbook of human dignity: Interdisciplinary perspectives, ed.

1

 My own addition.

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M. Düwell, J. Braarvig, R. Brownsword, and D. Mieth, 215–221. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. 1991. The metaphysics of morals. Trans. Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2002. Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals. Trans. Allen W. Wood. New Haven: Yale University Press. ———. 2011. Observations on the feeling of the beautiful and sublime and other writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kayange, G.M. 2020. Restoration of ubuntu as an autocentric virtue-phronesis theory. South African Journal of Philosophy 39(1): 1–12. Kerstein, S.J. 2014. Kantian dignity: A critique. In The Cambridge handbook of human dignity: Interdisciplinary perspectives, ed. M.  Düwell, J.  Braarvig, R.  Brownsword, and D.  Mieth, 222–229. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Malpas, J., and N. Lickiss. 2007. Introduction to a conversation. In Perspectives on human dignity: A conversation, ed. J.  Malpas and N.  Lickiss, 1–5. Dordrecht: Springer. Masaka, D. 2017. ‘Global Justice’ and the suppressed epistemologies of the indigenous people of Africa. Philosophical Papers 46: 59–84. Metz, T. 2012a. African conceptions of human dignity: Vitality and community as the ground of human rights. Human Rights Review 13: 19–37. ———. 2012b. Ethics in Africa and in Aristotle: Some points of contrast. Phronimon 13: 99–117. ———. 2022. A relational moral theory: African ethics in and beyond the continent. New York: Oxford University Press. Molefe, M. 2019. An African philosophy of personhood, morality, and politics. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Pogge, T. 2014. Dignity and global justice. In The Cambridge handbook of human dignity: Interdisciplinary perspectives, ed. M.  Düwell, J.  Braarvig, R.  Brownsword, and D.  Mieth, 477–483. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ramose, M.B. 1999. African philosophy through Ubuntu. Harare: Mond Books. ———. 2009. Towards emancipative politics in modern Africa. In African ethics: An anthology of comparative and applied ethics, ed. Felix Murove, 412–426. Scottsville: University of Kwa-Zulu-Natal Press. ———. 2014. Ubuntu: Affirming a right and seeking remedies in South Africa. In Ubuntu: Curating the archive, ed. L.  Praeg and S.  Magadla, 121–136. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Shivji, I.G. 2014. Utu, Usawa, Uhuru building blocks of Nyerere’s political philosophy. In Ubuntu: Curating the archive, ed. L.  Praeg and S.  Magadla, 137–149. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.

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Sulmasy, D.P. 2007. Human Dignity and Human Worth. In Perspectives on Human Dignity: A Conversation, ed. J. Malpas and N. Lickiss, 9–18. Dordrecht: Springer. Tutu, D. 1999. No future without forgiveness. New York: Random House. Weinstock, D. 2005. Introduction. In Global justice, global institutions, ed. D. Weinstock. Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary Press.

CHAPTER 6

Moderate Communitarianism and Human Dignity Ndivhoniswani Elphus Muade

Introduction There is no doubt that moderate communitarianism counts among the most influential political doctrines in African philosophy. Kwame Gyekye defends moderate communitarianism as a plausible interpretation of an African conception of social justice. His quest to articulate a plausible conception of social justice in Afro-communitarianism is motivated by at least two considerations. The first involves the ideological choice of most of the post-independence leaders that tended to interpret Afro communitarianism in terms of socialism, where the state is solely responsible for economic planning (Gyekye 1992; Wiredu 2008; Matolino 2009). The second is the philosophical view expressed by Ifeanyi Menkiti, who understands the community to be the defining feature of African moral and political thought. The critique expressed by Gyekye in relation to the ideological orientation of post-independence leaders and Menkiti’s interpretation of Afro-communitarianism is that they both fail to recognize the individual and the value associated with her in her own right. Specifically,

N. E. Muade (*) University of Fort Hare, Alice, South Africa © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Molefe, C. Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1_6

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these views embody what he calls unrestricted or radical communitarianism insofar as they fail to recognize the inalienable rights of individuals (Gyekye 1992, 1997). Moderate communitarianism emerges as a philosophical corrective to the excesses associated with the ideological and philosophical importance associated with the community in African political thought. At the core, moderate communitarianism argues that a plausible conception of social justice must recognize the individual and her inviolable human rights. The literature in African philosophy has tended to understand the debate concerning the plausible interpretation of Afro-communitarianism to be essentially about the idea of human rights. Gyekye, in his exposition and defence of moderate communitarianism, could be credited, rightly so, for throwing the spotlight on the idea of human rights in the literature in African philosophy. The major criticism in the literature, however, against moderate communitarianism has been that it also fails to provide a satisfactory account of individual human rights (Matolino 2009; Famanikwa 2010; Oyowe 2014). The chapter aims to shift focus away from the fixation on human rights in the debates on moderate communitarianism to the underexplored idea of human dignity with the hope of expanding our search for a plausible conception of social justice. Roughly, I understand the concept of human dignity, at least for the purposes of this chapter, to refer to the high value or moral worth associated with human beings (Metz 2011). Specifically, this chapter revisits Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism as a heuristically useful resource to theorize about human dignity in African philosophy. Two questions might require our attention before we proceed. Why focus on moderate communitarianism and why human dignity? I select moderate communitarianism as a heuristic resource because it is one of the most influential political theories in the literature on African political philosophy. When opening a philosophical conversation that is still in its embryonic phase, I find it to be a useful strategy to start from a familiar ground. I believe that moderate communitarianism can serve as a familiar ground from which to theorize human dignity without suggesting that it is the only or the best means to do so. This is just one strategy to contribute to the literature on human dignity. Two reasons motivate the focus on human dignity. First, the literature on human rights tends to operate on the assumption that there is a relationship between human dignity and human rights (Freeman 1995). Surely, there are many ways to capture this relationship. Some scholars

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construe dignity to be primary or foundational (Griffin 2008; Donnelly 2011). Some scholars take the relationship to be a complex one, where there is an intrinsic and reciprocal interaction between the two concepts (Habermas 2010). Some scholars take the relationship to be that of a status-term (human dignity) that functions merely as an abbreviation of the package of benefits/burdens (rights) associated with it (Waldron 2013; Toscano 2011). In my view, the dominant approach in the literature is that human dignity serves as the foundation for human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, among others, is open to the interpretation that human dignity is foundational, whereas human rights serve as socio-political tools to ensure a dignified existence for human beings by protecting human dignity (Nickel 1987; Novak 1999). If rights are in the service of human dignity, it should follow that a robust search for a plausible Afro-communitarianism ought to consider this primary concept of human dignity since rights serve to protect it. This chapter focuses on the idea of human dignity that scholars of African thought have ignored in debates involving the search for a plausible version of Afro-communitarianism. Second, there is scant literature in African philosophy focusing on human dignity (Molefe 2022). For example, I can only think of a few books in the literature focusing, in part or fully, on the idea of human dignity in African philosophy (Metz 2022; Molefe 2019, 2020, 2022; Molefe and Allsobrook 2023). In addition, one will find fewer than a dozen articles focusing on this concept in the literature (Ilesanmi 2001; Metz 2010, 2011; Ikuenobe 2016, 2017). Moreover, I am not aware of any work in the debate on moderate communitarianism that focuses on the idea of human dignity. This chapter is important in that it focuses our attention on this underexplored concept of human dignity, specifically in the context of the debate on the plausibility of moderate communitarianism. This, I believe, will enrich our debates on political philosophy and will contribute to the scant literature on human dignity in African philosophy. The chapter does not aim to defend a plausible theory of human dignity in African philosophy. The search for a plausible theory strikes me as premature when the literature on human dignity is still in its early stages of development. A promising starting point involves unearthing possible resources and theories of human dignity in African philosophy. I will explore resources and ideas to construct interpretations of human dignity in lieu of Gyekye’s adumbrations on moderate communitarianism. This interpretative project is important in that it will serve as a foundation for

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the future search for a plausible theory of human dignity in African philosophy. Moreover, this project will also be important for cross-cultural comparison in the search for a decolonized and plausible view of human dignity. This chapter is divided into two major sections. The first section will give the reader a rough picture of moderate communitarianism as a moral-­ political theory. The discussion will reveal that social justice is a function of equally recognizing the inherent worth of the individual and the social goods necessary for securing individual well-being. The second section will identify possible resources for theorizing human dignity in Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism, and it will proceed to articulate two African theories of human dignity. The lesson that will emerge is that Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism embodies two underexplored theories of human dignity, one religious and another secular. The religious view offers a life-based theory of human dignity, and the secular view explains it in terms of the human capacity for autonomy or rationality. Below, I begin by discussing moderate communitarianism.

Moderate Communitarianism The debate about the nature of the relationship between the individual and community is one of the most important debates in African philosophy. This debate is relevant in African philosophy in light of two concerns. On the one hand, African philosophers find individualism, which is generally considered a hallmark of Western thought and cultures, to be problematic (Menkiti 1984). On the other hand, African philosophers are concerned about the actual or even possible excesses of the community that might undermine the individual and her individuality (Gyekye 1992; Eze 2009). Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism aims to avoid both extremes. Gyekye (1997, 47) observes, “The individual is by nature a social (communal) being, yes; but she is, also by nature, other things as well, that is she possesses other attributes that might be said to constitute her nature”. On the one hand, Gyekye wants a theory that recognizes the importance of the community insofar as the individual is essentially social by nature. The individual, for her ordinary functioning as an individual, requires the cultural community. The cultural community should be understood in the broadest sense to include micro-and-macro relations within which individuals negotiate their personal identity, cultural identity,

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agency and citizenry. Gyekye (1997, 43) captures the point of the sociality of the individual and the cultural community in this fashion: …a person’s identity derives, at least in part, from a cultural context, that is, a community. Thus, in the articulation of a deep sense of personhood as well as individuality, the community plays an important and indispensable role.

Note that the emergence of a functional human agent depends, in part, on the community that should provide the socializing and humanizing resources. Emphasis should be placed on the observation that although the community plays an indispensable role in socializing and humanizing the human agent, this is only a part of the whole story of the emergence and functioning of a person. It is for this reason that Gyekye insists that we need to balance the story by recognizing the importance of the individual in her own right. On the other hand, Gyekye wants a theory that recognizes that the individual possesses her own attributes that make her count in her own right. In relation to these attributes, Gyekye (1997, 53) insists that they belong to the individual and “The community only discovers and nurtures” them. A plausible theory must appreciate these two aspects of our nature. The recognition of both of these features, the communal and individual, constitutes the making of moderate communitarianism. It is moderate in that it avoids both excesses associated with the exaggerated importance of the community, where the individual is understood to be entirely a function of her social relations or where the individual is so unencumbered that social relations are merely contingent. Moderate communitarianism places a premium on the sociality of the individual, which corresponds to the value of community, or what Gyekye refers to as the “common good”, and it also places a prime on the individual and individual features that recognize the inherent value of the individual, which Gyekye construes in terms of human dignity. Gyekye’s (1997, 41) comment on the two elements of moderate communitarianism is informative: In view of the fact that neither can the individual develop outside the framework of the community nor can the welfare of the community as a whole dispense with the talents and initiative of its individual members, I think that the most satisfactory way to recognize the claims of both communality and individuality is to ascribe to them the status of an equal moral standing.

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Hence, we note that moderate communitarianism interprets social justice in terms of a kind of communitarianism that is alive to both features of the person, the communal and individual features, and it ascribes equal value to both features. The individual feature points us to human dignity, and the communal feature points us to the common good. Both of these values, which correspond to the features of our nature as human beings, are equally significant components of a plausible account of social justice. The value of human dignity emerges as a function of the individual feature of the human agent. That is, human beings have intrinsic worth since they possess certain ontological features. In one instance, Gyekye (1992, 107) refers to these individual attributes as “mental features”. He singles out the mental feature of autonomy as the basis for intrinsic worth (human dignity) and human rights serve to protect this human condition of worth. The common good, which Gyekye (1997, 46) also describes in terms of the “human good”, refers to the basic needs that each individual human being requires to lead an ordinary human life. Without the provision of these basic needs, human existence is in jeopardy and unfortunate. The common good refers to the material that is necessary for human well-­ being and the emergence of a functional agent that can pursue projects in the world. The goods in question are ‘common’ in that they are universal to all human beings. These goods entail duties that operate at both the micro and macro ethical levels. At a micro ethical level, they encapsulate the pro-social duties that individuals have among themselves to promote each other’s well-being. At the macro-ethical level, they refer to the compassion-­based duties that the state and its subsidiary institutions have to promote the well-being of all its citizens. The decisive contribution of moderate communitarianism can be summarized as follows: It urges us to hold a plausible view of the relationship between the individual and community, where the individual is as important as the community. It also argues that we should work with a correct conception of human nature, which recognizes both the individual and social aspects of it. It associates the individual aspects with the value of human dignity, and it associates the social aspects of our nature with the common good. A socially just social arrangement is one that promotes the common good in ways that are consistent with human dignity (Metz 2011). It argues that rights are an indispensable part of a plausible interpretation of Afro-communitarianism because they function to protect human dignity.

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Human Dignity in Moderate Communitarianism A casual reading of Gyekye’s adumbrations on moderate communitarianism will stumble upon the two Western theories of human dignity. One theory is secular, and it accounts for human dignity in terms of the human capacity for autonomy. This account of human dignity is associated with Immanuel Kant, and it requires us to treat a person as an end since she possesses the capacity for autonomy (Kant 1996). The second theory is religious in that it accounts for human dignity in terms of some supernatural endowment, specifically being created in the image of God. Since we participate in the divine nature or bear the divine resemblance, we have dignity (Ritschl 2002). Grounding human dignity on autonomy/rationality and/or the image of God typically draws from Western conceptions of human nature. I do not mean to suggest that no resource or concept from the West can be useful in the context of articulating an African philosophy. I do believe, however, that before we harvest from other intellectual cultures, such as the West, we have a duty to explore what African intellectual resources can avail in our efforts to theorize a promising Afro-­ communitarian vision of human dignity. I take this route of exploring African conceptions of human dignity from cultural resources indigenous among the African peoples motivated for two reasons. To begin, note that Gyekye is committed to the view that human dignity is an important component of a plausible Afro-­ communitarian theory of social justice. However, he remains non-­ committal as to whether the secular (autonomy) or religious (imago dei) views he mentions are plausible interpretations of it. This non-committal stance, in terms of which theory is plausible, leaves a gap for us to suggest other more relevant alternatives, particularly if these alternatives have an African pedigree. If we are searching for a plausible version of Afro-­ communitarianism, it should make sense for us to rely on an African conception of human dignity as a point of departure. The second reason is related to Gyekye’s (1995) own prescription of what is to count as a proper work of African philosophy. His criterion has two conditions. The first condition requires that the theory must be hewn from the cultural resources of African peoples. The second condition specifies that foreign elements can be part of African philosophy only after they have been properly incorporated into the intellectual culture and life of African peoples. I remain unsure as to whether the two ideas—being created in the image of God and that of autonomy—meet the criteria specified by

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Gyekye. To buttress my doubts, two comments will suffice. In relation to a religious conception of human dignity, there might be truth to the claim that some parts of Christian ethical thinking can be considered an important part of African cultures. Indeed, Christianity can now be considered an intrinsic part of many African societies (Richardson 2009). However, the colonialism associated with the emergence and presence of Christian ethics in African cultures gives us a strong reason to be suspicious of its place among African cultures. Moreover, and importantly, the erasure of African religious beliefs and practices gives us even more reasons to search among indigenous resources to ground an African religious conception of human dignity. The emerging evidence in the literature in the African philosophy of religion does not account for human dignity in terms of human beings bearing the image of God (Ilesanmi 2001; Molefe and Maraganedzha 2023). Before drawing from Christian culture, I believe we should draw from African religious resources to explore their implications for human dignity. In relation to the notion of autonomy, it is important to note that it seems to embody the excesses of individualism that seem to inform much of the repudiation of individualism that is characteristic of Western thought. It is not necessarily the concept of autonomy that embodies these, but rather those that rely on individualistic epistemic and moral frames that tend to take independence and distance from others as their core feature. To identify and clarify a version of autonomy much more compatible with communitarian or relational approaches, such as feminist ethics, these scholars have coined what they have termed relational autonomy (Christman 2015). Autonomy is not a feature that emerges in isolation; rather, it emerges in being embedded in robust relationships with others. This insistence, among communitarians and feminists, might be a telling objection against the Kantian conception of dignity as a function of autonomy construed within the problematic framework of individualism. It is for this reason that we will not consider Gyekye’s borrowing of Kant’s autonomy-based conception of human dignity. A more productive way might require us to carefully revisit Gyekye’s adumbrations on moderate communitarianism to investigate if there are no underexplored resources to articulate an African conception of human dignity. I suggest that two such theories are present in Gyekye’s exposition of moderate communitarianism. The first resource for constructing human dignity is religious, and the second is secular, which might imply that the Afro-communitarian theory of social justice is open to both religious and

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secular interpretations of it. Gyekye (1997, 63) remarks in this fashion in relation to the religious resource to account for human dignity: Some conceptions of human dignity are anchored in theism, in the conviction that dignity of the individual is a natural endowment by some supernatural creator of humankind. One proverb of the Akan people, whose social structure is communal, states, “All human beings are children of God, no one is the child of the earth”. The insistent claim that every human being is a child of God does seem to have some moral overtones or relevance, grounded, as must be, in the conviction that there must be something intrinsically valuable in God. Human beings, as children of God, by reason of being created by God and possessing, in the African belief, a divine element called the soul, ought to be held as of intrinsic value, as ends in themselves.

Note that there is the Christian or Catholic view of human dignity, which accounts for it in terms of being created in the image of God (Ritschl 2002). Gyekye articulates his African religious conception of human dignity in light of certain African metaphysical and/or religious beliefs. These beliefs include (1) the idea that all human beings are children of God and (2) the idea that they are children of God because he created them. Since God is intrinsically valuable, it should follow that they are also intrinsically valuable. Gyekye is very clear that we are intrinsically valuable because we possess the divine feature of the soul. The English concept of the ‘soul’ can be very confusing because it is metaphysically loaded with Western connotations that might be absent in African thought. The Akan word for a ‘soul’ is the concept of okra. A human being in Akan thinking is constituted by three elements: the okra, mogya and sunsum (Gyekye 1995; Wiredu 1996; Kaphagawani 2004). Okra refers to the spiritual dimension of human nature. Gyekye (1995, 85) refers to it as “the essence” of a person, which the individual has because she embodies “a spark of a supreme being”. A more fruitful way to appreciate the idea of soul, or divine spark, or okra in African thought is through the metaphysical system of vitality or life force. That vitality might offer us a useful way to construe this idea is suggested by Gyekye (1995, 88) when he interprets the idea of okra in terms of the idea of “life force”. The idea of life force, vitality, or, simply, life operates within an African metaphysical system (Magesa 1997). The metaphysical system construes all of reality in terms of a hierarchy of beings. At the top of the

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hierarchy is God, followed by ancestors and then human beings. Immediately after human beings are animals, followed by plants and, at the bottom, inanimate things (Magesa 1997). The hierarchy captures the position or status of each thing in the universe. The universe is divided between the visible (natural) and invisible (supra-sensible). Vitality is the spiritual force or energy that defines the very essence of divinity. Metz and Molefe (2021, 398): It is common in the Abrahamic faiths to think of God ultimately in terms of logos. In contrast to rationality, what stands out about the African tradition is the conception of God in terms of bios, that is, what African philosophers tend to call “life-force” but what may also be called “vitality”.

The belief in African metaphysical thought is that God perfectly possesses vitality. All that exists has vitality since God has distributed it to everything in varying degrees (Magesa 1997). The status or position of a thing in the hierarchy is determined by the quantity and quality of vitality that is present in that thing. Human beings, in this view, have intrinsic value, similar to many other things in the hierarchy, because they possess vitality. In the natural realm, the visible community, human beings occupy the highest position that secures their status of dignity (Metz 2011). The vitality-­based account of human dignity is an underexplored conception of human dignity present in Gyekye’s adumbration of moderate communitarianism. The reader might still not be sure how this view of human dignity differs from the imago dei conception of human dignity. The major difference between the Catholic view of human dignity as imago dei and the African vitality view is that the former is absolutist in a way that the latter is not. For example, the sacredness of a human being in Western thought that secures her status of dignity forbids euthanasia. This is the case because all instances of killing count as murder and a violation of human dignity. Only God has the licence to terminate life. In the dominant interpretation of the Western (Christian) religious view, all instances of euthanasia are forbidden. In African thought, euthanasia may be permissible. The permissibility may be justified when the individual has reached a point where he cannot meaningfully grow his vitality. At a point where the individual can no longer contribute positively by engaging with other vital forces, for reasons associated with a deteriorating biology or extreme medical condition, the vitality view would consider it dignified to let the individual die, even if it means the medical practitioner actively kills the

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person—active euthanasia. The major difference is that the idea of vitality secures intrinsic value; it also has the added dimension of perfectionism associated with it, which is generally absent in the Western imago dei view of dignity (Molefe 2022). That is, the mere possession of vitality secures human dignity, but what the agent can or cannot do with vitality is equally important. As long as the agent is alive, her sole purpose is the acquisition of more vitality. When she reaches a point where the capacity or ability to participate in vitality is out of reach, euthanasia is a permissible option. I now turn to the second resource of human dignity found in Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism. One of the central concepts in the discussion of moderate communitarianism is that of personhood. We can immediately distinguish three distinct concepts of a person in Gyekye’s adumbrations. First, a person could refer to the mere fact of being human. The second and third concepts are normative in nature, and they often escape the attention of many readers of Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism. One can be said to be a person since she possesses the relevant value-endowing ontological capacities. On the other hand, one can be said to be a person relative to her moral conduct, specifically her moral achievement if she has a virtuous character.1 Gyekye (1997, 55) captures this distinction in the following fashion: There are at least two senses in which an agent may be said to be moral: an agent may be said to be moral in the sense that he has the moral sense or capacity to distinguish between the good and evil, but he may also be said to be moral in the sense that he does that which is good and that his actions conform to the existing moral values or rules.

One may be a person, in the moral sense, in two distinct ways. One may be a person because she possesses the relevant ontological capacity, and one may be a person relative to how one uses that ontological capacity. The first way of capturing personhood is capacity-based in that the mere possession of certain ontological capacity is necessary and sufficient for personhood. The capacity-based conception of personhood is based on an invariant property, one either has the property or not. One cannot lose or achieve this kind of personhood because it is capacity-based. The second way is a performance-based approach to personhood, where the agent is a 1  I am indebted to Molefe (2019) for his exposition of the distinct concepts of a person in African philosophy.

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person relative to the quality of her conduct or character. The performance-­ based conception comes in degrees since it depends on the quality of conduct or lack thereof. One can either achieve or lose personhood, as it depends on the agent’s conduct. The common idea of personhood in the literature in African philosophy is performance-based, which refers to an agent that is a moral exemplar or one whose character manifests a virtuous character (Menkiti 1984; Dzobo 1992; Wiredu 2004; Gyekye 2010; Oyowe 2014; Ikuenobe 2016). It is the capacity-based concept of a person in Gyekye’s adumbrations on morality, personhood and moderate communitarianism, which serves as a resource and basis for another underexplored conception of human dignity. Gyekye anticipates this concept of human dignity when he deals with the case of infants in African thought. There is a sense in which infants and children in general are not moral, and there is a sense in which they are moral. The sense in which they are not moral is obvious and uninteresting, i.e. they are not moral because they have not yet developed their human capacities to actually pursue the good. If all goes well, they will succeed; if not, they will fail. In other words, in terms of the performance-­ based concept of a person they are not yet persons. At best, they possess the potential. However, they are moral as long as they possess the relevant potential to be moral in the future. It is by virtue of them that they possess the potential to have intrinsic value. Gyekye (1992, 282) captures this point as follows: The foregoing discussion of some morally significant expressions in the Akan language or judgements made about the conduct of persons suggests a conception of moral personhood; a person is defined in terms of moral qualities or capacities: a human person is a being who has a moral sense and is capable of making moral judgments. This conception of a person, however, must not be considered as eliminating or writing off children or infants as persons even though they are not (yet) considered moral agents capable of exercising moral sense. The reason is that even though children are not morally capable in actuality, they are morally capable in potentiality. Unlike the colt, which will never come to possess a moral sense even if it grew into an adult (horse), children do grow to become moral agents upon reaching adolescence: at this stage, they are capable of exercising their moral sense and thus of making moral judgments.

The reader should bear with me quoting such a long passage from Gyekye’s analysis of personhood. The passage is important because it makes two

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important points. First, it affirms a capacity-based view of personhood, an African conception of moral status or human dignity. Second, it deals with the case of children as bearers of moral value. Note that Gyekye draws a relationship between the performance-based concept of a person and the capacity-based concept. He states that “the conduct of persons suggests (or implies) a conception of moral personhood”. That is, the belief that we have that persons (agents) can achieve personhood (virtue) commits us to a particular conception of moral status or human dignity (Molefe 2020). Moral personhood, in this instance, is a function of possessing certain ‘moral qualities or capacities’. These capacities are directly connected to being able to participate in morality. A moral person, in this sense of human dignity, is one, according to Gyekye, who has moral sense or is capable of making moral judgements. We can conclude that Gyekye’s adumbrations on personhood in African thought, in light of the debate on personhood in African philosophy, embody a theory of human dignity, which renders it in terms of the human capacity for virtue. Scholars of African thought had already anticipated the distinction between the performance- and capacity-based views of personhood. Two recent expositions of this distinction come to mind. Tony Oyowe (2018) had already observed that we can draw a distinction between the weakly and strongly constrained normative concept of personhood in African thought. The weakly constrained concept of personhood is a function of merely having certain capacities, and the latter is a function of the agent’s conduct. He proceeds to ground social justice and human rights on the weakly constrained concept and expresses serious doubts that the latter is apt to ground a robust social justice. Motsamai Molefe (2020) draws a distinction between what he calls the patient-and-agent-centred concepts of personhood, which he believes give us a clearer and fuller understanding of an African ethics of personhood. In his view, African ethics deals with two aspects of value: the value one has as a patient (capacity-based) and the value one achieves as an agent (performance-based). The patient-­ centred view embodies an African concept of human dignity, which serves as the basis for making an African contribution to bioethical and political thought (Molefe 2020, 2022). The second part of the passage I quoted above from Gyekye’s adumbrations on personhood is crucial in that it allows us to draw important distinctions among things in the world. First, we can draw a distinction between things that have no intrinsic value and those that have it. The case

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of a colt and a child, in Gyekye’s view, is an example of this distinction.2 The difference lies in that one does not have the potential to participate in morality in the relevant way and the other does. The colt will never develop moral sense, whereas a child will, in the unfolding of time, do so. Second, we can draw a distinction between things that have intrinsic value, those that have it partially and those that have it fully (Jaworska and Tannenbaum 2019). The case of a child and a normal adult is an example of this distinction. A child has partial intrinsic value because she merely possesses the potential, whereas a normal adult has full intrinsic value, or human dignity, because they actually have the capacity for moral sense. In summing this section, notice the differences between the two underexplored interpretations of human dignity in the context of moderate communitarianism. One view of human dignity takes a religious orientation, where the possession of okra secures human dignity. The other views take a secular orientation, where it accounts for human dignity in terms of the ability to participate in the project of moral development or personhood. Moreover, it is also important to appreciate that both views of human dignity are compatible with moderate communitarianism as an account of social justice. The vitality view recognizes the individual in her own right as a bearer of okra, but it equally recognizes her as a member of a broad community comprising the spiritual, human and environmental communities. Vitality is an ontological feature that at once is individualistic so far as it inheres in the individual, but it equally serves as a connecting link with all other communities beyond human dignity. Any robust account of social justice must recognize the individual in her own right, but it must also recognize her in terms of her connectivity with spiritual, human and environmental communities. The indication of social injustice is a function of conditions, be they due to deteriorating individual agency or institutional arrangements, which undermine vitality. From the vitality view, the function of human rights is to protect the vitality of individuals. This view of social justice may not be attractive to those of a secular bent, but it does offer a useful and underexplored religious conception of human dignity, human rights and social justice in 2  I am not sure that I agree with Gyekye that a colt has no moral status at all. The point that we need to be able to tell the difference between things that have moral status and those that do not have it is important. The example of a colt, however, Gyekye provides to indicate things that have no moral status is mistaken. I am aware that Gyekye’s moral philosophy is humanist since it accounts for morality solely in terms of some aspect of human nature, which explains why he excludes the colt from beings that have value (Molefe, 2015).

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African thought. Those of a secular inclination might find the personhood-­ based account of human dignity associated with moderate communitarianism. This interpretation of human dignity in terms of personhood, where a human being has dignity because she has the capacity for virtue, captures both the individualistic and communal features essential for moderate communitarianism. Note that human dignity is individualistic in that it is a function of the human capacity for virtue. A human being has intrinsic value merely because she possesses this capacity for morality. This capacity for virtue, valuable as it is, cannot emerge or develop outside of the community. It is the warmth of human communion where true dignity is realizable. Dignity demands both the recognition of the individual and that we recognize the importance of the community for a true life of dignity. Indicators of social injustice are a function of the conduct of individual or institutional agents that tends to be contrary to the cultivation of virtue. On the part of the individual, it will be through a pursuit of actions that tend to corrupt instead of nurturing virtue. On the part of the institutions, it will be through creating conditions that disempower agents in terms of the possibilities of pursuing virtue.

Conclusion This chapter revisited moderate communitarianism, Gyekye’s political theory of social justice, as a resource to theorize about human dignity. Moderate communitarianism interprets a socially just society as one that promotes the common good—provision of basic needs to secure human well-being and the emergence of an agent and the protection of human dignity. Two possible resources for accounting for human dignity were harvested from Gyekye’s adumbrations of human dignity—the Akan concept of okra (soul) and the African concept of personhood. The idea of okra (soul) grounds human dignity on the divine spark of life force or vitality. The idea of personhood embodies the view that human beings have dignity because they have the capacity to participate in morality. There are two ways in which our theorization about human dignity can proceed from here. The first way, characterizing those scholars that doubt that rights are essential in African thought, will seek to evaluate if they are compatible with a rights-based conception of social justice as anticipated by Gyekye. The second way, typically characterizing those who are committed to human rights, is to establish if these theories will embody robust accounts of human rights.

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CHAPTER 7

An African Communitarian Conception of Dignity in Mutual Recognition Christopher Allsobrook

Introduction It is curious, even contradictory, despite the long struggle of African people against dehumanising treatment by European colonial and imperial powers, demanding recognition of their sovereignty and human dignity, that African philosophers typically target for criticism a conception of human dignity, which Western philosophers have upheld as a foundation for human rights. European conquest and enslavement of African people was often justified on the basis that African people were less human or less civilised than Europeans; that Africans are minors, needing salvation, enlightenment, upliftment, maturity, civilisation, or, more recently, “development”. If wars of independence were fought for recognition of dignity and sovereignty, why, after liberation, have African philosophers criticised human dignity? With independence, Europeans now take pains to show recognition of Africans’ dignity, or, at least, they claim to do so, with

C. Allsobrook (*) Centre for Leadership Ethics in Africa, University of Fort Hare, Alice, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Molefe, C. Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1_7

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superficial apologies. However, this is not the kind of dignity African philosophers want. Therefore, what conception of dignity is acceptable for African philosophers? Would it prove compatible with universal dignity? If an African conception of dignity is particularly, or uniquely, African, can it be extended universally? The main problem Ifeanyi Menkiti identifies with Western conceptions of dignity is its individualism in an ontological and a methodological sense. He explains, ‘whereas most Western views of man abstract this or that feature of the lone individual and then proceed to make it the defining or essential characteristic which [she] must have, the African view … denies that persons can be defined by focusing on this or that … characteristic of the lone individual’ (1984, 171). In contrast, he claims, ‘in the African view it is the community which defines the person, not some isolated static quality of rationality, will, or memory’ (1984, 172). Dignity is social, or communal, explains Kwasi Wiredu (2008, 332). Nyerere and Nkrumah ‘regarded African communalism as a sure foundation of their ideologies’ (2008, 333), whereas ‘Western kinship systems are generally more individualistic than traditional ones’ he adds (2008, 335), explaining that ‘the African conception of a person is normative’, such that ‘a person is not just an individual’, but ‘an individual who satisfies certain norms’. However, although the dignity of ‘personhood’, for African communitarians, ‘is defined by the community’, he assures us, ‘this is not to override individual rights’ (2008, 336). To this end, we must ask: can African dignity provide a foundation for human rights, for all, if it is bestowed by the community to a person only in honour of communal contributions? A second, related, problem African philosophers identify with Western conceptions of dignity is that they are most often bound up with rights or entitlements for individuals, whereas African conceptions of dignity are understood to honour the performance of duties towards the community. Thus, Polycarp Ikuenobe contrasts the ‘African communal conception of dignity that emphasises individual responsibilities’ against the Western liberal view of moral dignity, which overemphasises ‘an individualistic self-­ regarding entitlement that inheres in human nature … without a corresponding emphasis on duty’, as a basis for human rights. This, he claims, ‘is not an adequate way of maintaining rights, well-being, and dignity for all, especially the vulnerable’ (2018, 589). In contrast, he argues for an African view that emphasises duties to nurture our capacities to respect and to protect rights and dignity (2018, 589). He claims that Western conceptions presume ‘a liberal view of the person as inherently

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rational, free, atomistic, and solipsistic’, wherein ‘individual rights must necessarily override responsibilities to others, relationships and community’, since ‘the duty of respect derives only from inherent dignity or rights’. This contradicts the coextensive ‘moral mutuality’ of rights and duties and a ‘methodological priority … of duty over rights’ (2018, 594). As I shall explain further, Menkiti emphasises, dignity in ‘personhood is the sort of thing which has to be attained … through the discharge of the various obligations defined by one’s stations’ (1984, 176). According to Josiah Cobbah, responsibility to the community involves ‘reciprocity of generosity’. This ‘burden of obligations’, which African philosophers find in dignity, offers to the person ‘a network of security’ (1987, 322). In Akan culture, he argues, ‘the pursuit of human dignity is not concerned with vindicating the right of any individual against the world’, but with ‘a vindication of the communal well-being’ (1987, 322). Since ‘respect is the cardinal guiding principle for behaviour within the family and the society’, he adds, ‘individual rights must always be balanced against the requirements of the group’ (231). This answer to our first question—that the conception of dignity European states belatedly extended to Africans (following women, workers, and children) is conceived as an individualistic entitlement and not a collective, social, or communal duty—also pushes the problem deeper: if dignity depends on actual social recognition, how can it belong to every individual by human nature? Before we explore these problems, it is worth remarking on the surprising affinity that the African critique of individualistic dignity shares with Western critics, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, who dismisses ‘phantoms such as the dignity of man’ and ‘the dignity of labour’ as ‘the needy products of slavedom hiding from itself’ (in Rosen 2013, 144). Ruth Macklin famously criticised the concept of dignity for its “uselessness” in the British Medical Journal since, she argued, it is just ‘a vague restatement of other more precise notions’, which ‘means no more than respect for persons or their autonomy’, and ‘adds nothing to the topic’ (2003, 1419–1420). Steven Pinker’s article, ‘the stupidity of dignity’, finds it a redundant concept, meaning no more than autonomy, or “informed consent”, which more adequately does the job (Rosen 2013, 150). This may be all very well, responds Rosen, but ‘dignity is surprisingly deeply entrenched in our moral discourse’ and ‘it is not going anywhere any time soon’, although he worries that the concept lacks a single, well-defined meaning’, which ‘leaves it open to exploitation’ by ‘interested parties’ who ‘seek to impose moral prescriptions that lack … legitimacy’ (2013, 154). Former South

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African Constitutional Court Justice Edwin Cameron recalls the comment of US feminist legal scholar Catherine MacKinnon, who paid a visit to our local top court in February 2010, (describing herself ‘as the pioneer of the “substantive equality” approach to rights’ he adds with polite indignance), where she ‘forcefully’ expressed ‘her bemusement that the court’s equality jurisprudence centred on the right to dignity’ (2013, 467). MacKinnon recognised the significance of the ‘deprivation of dignity’ for the ‘substance of inequality’, Cameron explains, but ‘she has also asserted that ascribing dignity to humans’ is ‘inadequate to address social practices or relationships that undermine it’ (2013, 467). In response, Cameron argues in “Dignity and Disgrace” that the substance of “dignity” is represented by human rights it supports, which emerge from struggles against indignity. The circular problem with this view is that human dignity is thus grounded in the rights it is expected to ground. What a Grundnorm! No matter how human dignity is interpreted, legally or culturally, if it secures human rights, it must apply to every human. Human dignity serves, at least, as a criterion for the universal common good. In response to this back-and-forth stalemate between African and Western conceptions and between opposed African camps, I contend that it is not my dignity or your dignity, in a person, which we recognise in human dignity, but our dignity, between us. It is the social ontology entailed by such mutual recognition of human dignity that is foregrounded by the African communitarian ethics of ubuntu. I develop this claim, with reference, first, to the Western account set up above for critique, then to various accounts of dignity put forward by African moral and political philosophers, followed by a critique from African philosophy, from which I develop a substantive account of human dignity as a criterion that must be recognised for human rights, which depend on it. In previous work on rights recognition in African ethics, I criticised the convenience of fiction in the claim that human rights follow from some particular aspect of human nature or from the ontology of the human person (Allsobrook 2016, 2018, 2021). However, it is clear from various accounts of dignity, which I discuss in this paper, that actual struggles for the recognition of human dignity in Africa have given substance to the normative conception of human dignity, which underwrites the contingent but actual recognition of human rights in African legal systems. Whereas dignity is often understood to belong inherently to all human beings, as an attribute of human nature, I advance an account of human dignity, which belongs not

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to any inherent capacity of human beings, as such, but to mutual recognition, or respect, between persons.

Human Rights and Duties from a Transcendental Kernel of Inherent Dignity In personal communication with Justice Edwin Cameron, following her visit to the South African Constitutional Court, Catherin MacKinnon declared, ‘As a pioneer of the substantive equality approach, I just don’t get why anyone thinks dignity has to do the work’ (2013, 467). However, Cameron responds, ‘there is a sound reason why dignity… has taken so central a place in the formative jurisprudence of the court’ which he finds in ‘South Africa’s past of racial indignity’, ‘where racial subordination was premised on and itself enacted shamefulness and disgrace’ (2013, 468). Apartheid laws ‘damaged both white and black, by stigmatising black people, placing a mark of shame on their race, and by injuring white people with a false conception of superiority’ (2013, 468). Colonial occupation and apartheid-imposed systems of discrimination degraded the civic status of black South Africans, with laws that branded them as inferior (2013, 470). Post-apartheid South African constitutional jurisprudence, therefore, rejects ‘any value system that reduces human worth’, and it ‘has helped to foster the notion of an inclusive moral citizenship in South Africa, unburdened by the humiliating exclusions and degradations of the past’ (2013, 473). This explains ‘the central role of dignity in the South African constitutional order’ (2013, 473). Moreover, dignity is not just a fundamental right in Constitution; it is also a founding value, ‘embodied in the status and protection that legal, social, and political institutions confer’, so, for instance, the court has held that ‘the anti-discrimination provisions of the constitution provide “a bulwark against invasions which impair human dignity”’ (2013, 474). Since the constitutional value of dignity is ‘best understood through the indignity that apartheid inflicted on most South Africans’ (2013, 475), ‘the function of dignity in South African constitutionalism has been to repair indignity, to renounce humiliation and degradation, and to vest full moral citizenship in those who were denied it’ (2013, 476). The constitution ‘serves as a simple statement and thus an assertion of the dignity of all South Africans’, and it ‘provides a practical framework for… attaining internal dignity, and asserting it

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externally, by disclaiming stigma and disgrace, and affirming moral citizenship and worth’ (2013, 489). These comments introduce a paradox: if dignity is inherent, how can a constitution help us to attain it? And, if we always already have dignity, how can discrimination undermine it? The longstanding Western response to such questions comes from the imago dei tradition, which holds that the holy spirit of God gives each human being dignity (Dellavalle 2013, 435). Therefore, while we may contingently feel indignity in ill-treatment that fails to respect our dignity, we always have dignity, necessarily, whether we know it or experience it or not. In theistic traditions, human dignity typically depends on God’s revelation and on the exceptional position of human creatures (2013, 437). Dellavalle finds, ‘Christian philosophy developed the idea of human dignity mainly from the vision of man in the image of God, first outlined by the Jewish tradition’ (2013, 438). While the Ash’ariyyah school of Islamic tradition derives dignity from Allah’s will, as expressed in the Qur’an, the Mu’tazilah school also finds dignity in rational considerations, confirmed in scripture (2013, 437). However, the problem Dellavalle finds with this theological recognition is that ‘in most historic situations’, ‘the assumption of the nearness of man to God’, has not secured ‘universalistic respect for human dignity’ (2013, 439), especially the dignity of those with different religions beliefs. Thus, while Wiredu acknowledges the religious basis, in African culture, for belief that we must respect the speck of vitality given by God to all humans, he also insists that the principle extends just as well from humanistic principles, which hold that all value derives from human interests and needs (1992, 194). In response to Wiredu, one may counter that humanistic principles run into the same problem as Godly dignity if “human interests” are not universally recognised for all humans. Since our concern is to identify African conceptions of human dignity that secure human rights, the worry, expressed by Jack Donnelly, is that ‘there are conceptions of human dignity which do not imply human rights’, and ‘societies and institutions which aim to realise human dignity entirely independent of human rights’ (1982, 303). In 1982, Donnelly went so far as to argue that ‘most non-Western cultural and political traditions lack not only the practice of human rights but the very concept’ (1982, 303). This is contradicted by the fact that almost every state in the world has signed up to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, arguably on the basis of an overlapping consensus on basic rights, which conforms to

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their own comprehensive doctrines, as Donnelly himself later agrees (2009, 6). A key contributor to the document, Jacques Maritain recalled that astonishment was expressed—at a UNESCO Commission leading up to the UDHR—that representatives of ‘violently opposed ideologies’ could agree on a list of human rights. Yes, came the reply, ‘we agree about the rights but on condition that no one asks us why’ (Verdirame 2013, 31). Maritain thinks agreement on human rights was possible on the basis of practical moral conclusions, despite disagreement on their justification. Does this include dignity? Is human dignity a justification for human rights or just a criterion that human rights must meet? Donnelly’s position makes more sense when we discover his conceptions of human dignity and human rights. He discounts Islamic conceptions of human rights, which follow from human dignity since, in Islam, ‘what really matters is duty rather than rights’ (1982, 307). Since ‘traditional Chinese doctrine is expressed almost entirely in terms of duties of rulers’, he argues, this is not a ‘different approach to the problem of human rights’—as Chung-Shu Lo claims (in Donnelly 1982, 309)—but ‘in fact, it is an approach to the problem of human dignity which involves no human rights’ (1982, 309). Donnelly, like Cameron and Habermas, we will see that human rights reflect ‘a particular specification of certain minimum preconditions for a life of dignity in the contemporary world’ that respond to threats to dignity this world imposes. He understands dignity as the ‘inherent worth of human person’ (2009, 83). He allows that human dignity may be ‘an ‘essentially contested concept’ but adds that ‘contestation concerning justificatory details does not prevent agreement on its quasi-foundational use in international human rights law’ (1982, 83). The concept of inherent dignity, which Donnelly sought elsewhere in vain, is central to the Western conception that is commonly understood to underwrite human rights law. This goes back to Aquinas’s idea of “something’s goodness on account of itself”, which Kant baked into the concept, as a matter of intrinsic value found only in ‘morality and humanity insofar as it is capable of morality’ (in Rosen 2013, 147). Kant claims, ‘Autonomy is… the ground of the dignity of human nature’ (in Rosen 2013, 150). Like Donnelly, Rosen identifies ‘an internal transcendental kernel’ in dignity that founds human rights—i.e. ‘something intangible that all human beings carry inalienably inside them that underlies the moral claims that they have just by being human’ (2012, 9). He calls it ‘an intermediate concept that links human rights to comprehensive doctrines’.

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I endorse the latter claim, but I identify among comprehensive moral doctrines of African ethics a universal conception of dignity that does not depend on the “convenient fiction” of a sublime transcendental kernel open to exploitation since we cannot settle on its universal sense. Such a sense may be imposed by well-meaning philosophers, but it is preferable to locate this normative foundation in operative comprehensive moral doctrines that it actually practically obtains. Drawing on Pico della Mirandola’s claim that humans are distinctive, since we choose our own destiny, it is Kant who connects dignity with the idea that human beings all have unconditional, intrinsic value. We must always be treated as ends in ourselves (Rosen 2012, 15). As Rosen explains, for Kant, dignity prohibits treating persons as a means only (2012, 83). This idea of non-instrumental, intrinsic value informed most subsequent accounts of human dignity insofar as it functions as a foundational and nonderogable value for all human rights. On this basis, Rosen insists, like Donnelly, that ‘a modern understanding of dignity’ must (1) ‘explain and justify the claim that all human beings share “inviolable” dignity and that they are “free and equal”’, (2) show that they thus have ‘inviolable and inalienable rights’, and (3) ‘identify what those rights are’ (2012: 54). While Donnelly insists on entitlements, it is significant that, for Kant, ‘the primary feature of morality is the duty it requires of us unconditionally’, which is ‘respect for the rights of others’ (in Rosen 2012, 56). As Rosen puts it, ‘to respect someone’s dignity by treating them with dignity requires that one shows them respect’ (2012, 58). The point of the Geneva Convention is not to ground a basic set of rights; rather, it imposes ‘a requirement’ that everyone should treat everyone with dignity (2012, 60). This basic duty, in turn, imposes a correlative right to be respected with dignity (2012, 62). Although Rosen distinguishes (a) dignity as a right from and (b) dignity as a foundation for rights in general, it is clear from this account, contra Donnelly, that the focus of Chinese, Islamic, or African moral doctrine on duty entails a correlative right. Moreover, human rights are primarily addressed to states, imposing duties on states to respect them. Dignity in constitutional law sets limits for behaviour beyond which states must intervene, as a duty, which imposes respect for others (2012, 90). However, Rosen expects more from dignity than just respect. He admits that ‘the idea that humiliation or degradation counts as a violation of human dignity has a very good claim to be universal,’ but he insists, ‘this conception … is not equivalent to the idea of dignity as the central core value behind human rights in general’. (2012, 127). It is this contention

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with which I take issue, with reference to a relational conception of human dignity in mutual respect, which may be discerned in African ethics. To see the significance of the issue at stake here, consider that the beneficiary of dignity, for Rosen, is me, and not us. As he puts it, ‘our dignity to respect the dignity of humanity is a duty to ourselves, so that we undermine our own humanity when we fail to respect the humanity of others’ (Rosen 2012, 150?). Furthermore, while the first two criteria he gives for human dignity are uncontroversial, that 1. all humans share it equally and inviolably, such that 2. we all have inalienable human rights, the third demand is especially burdensome and unusual, from an African perspective, that this concept should ‘specify what those rights are’. Rosen’s Kantian understanding of dignity as a transcendental Grundnorm, freighted with consequent categorical norms, from which one may elicit human rights, outstrips the modest position I advance of dignity as a criterion that human rights must satisfy. It is beyond the scope of the concept of dignity to generate a list of human rights. Dignity just establishes a criterion for human rights, that they must always apply to all of us. This accords with Kant’s insistence on respect for the dignity of others (2012, 152), but it does not entail the individualistic focus of the claim that I owe dignity to myself, and I carry it within myself. In contrast, I will argue, 1. dignity can only be recognised between human persons, and 2. dignity does not elicit comprehensive norms; it is just a criterion for them.

Communitarian Conceptions of Dignity from African Comprehensive Moral Doctrines Josiah Cobbah expresses the above criticism of the Western concept of human dignity and rights, which I have suggested with reference to a Kantian account of dignity in human rights, from an African perspective, with his observation that ‘the natural rights origins’ of such a conception show that ‘the concept denies culture in a very fundamental sense’, and he insists that ‘we should talk about rights within a cultural context’ (1987, 310). This is not to suggest that he wants to restrict the scope of the concept to African culture. Rather, he recommends that the ‘Africentric conception of human dignity’ may enrich universal understandings of human rights and dignity. Cobbah supports the first two criteria for human rights, discussed above, that they belong equally and inalienably to all human beings, but he finds a liberal conception of human rights, as natural rights

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belonging to persons by virtue of their inherent autonomy, too “individualistic”. This ‘postulate … raises the most suspicions about the Western view of human dignity and liberty’, he remarks, since it excludes group rights and those with disabilities. Cobbah suggests that we consider how other cultures approach the issue of human dignity. Aligning his critique of liberal natural rights with the views of none other than GW Hegel, he argues that the liberal conception leaves out not just group rights but, more so, the essence of man’s social and political relationships that inform our conceptions of rights. He affirms Hegel’s view that humanity is defined by ‘a condition in which human beings give recognition to each other and recognize rights as correlative to duties’ (1987, 318). He also agrees with Hegel that ‘participation in the practice of rights enmeshes individuals in a network of social relationships and social structure’ (in Cobbah 1987, 318). The basic unit of society is not the individual but ‘society and social relationships’ of which the individual is a function. This Hegelian view accords with the communitarian outlook of African societies on human dignity, wherein rights and duties are organised around principles of respect, restraint, responsibility, and reciprocity (1987, 321). Of these principles, he argues, ‘respect is the cardinal principle’ for families and society. For instance, in Akan society, he claims, ‘the pursuit of dignity is not concerned with vindicating the right of any individual against the world’; but the ‘family seeks a vindication of communal well-being’ (1987, 322). The starting point is not the individual but the group (including the living and the dead). In sum, Cobbah argues that ‘Africans do not espouse a philosophy of human dignity that is derived from a natural rights and individualist framework,’ but, ‘a communal structure’ of cultural humanity. Moreover, he claims, African ‘cultural values provide human beings with dignity’ (1987, 331). Polycarp Ikuenobe likewise contrasts the Western liberal rationalist view of human dignity as a basis for ‘individualistic self-regarding entitlement that inheres in human nature’ against the focus of African cultural practices of dignity on duties toward the community (Ikuenobe 2018, 589). Against overemphasis on entitlements, without correlative emphasis on duty, Polycarp Ikuenobe endorses Menkiti’s “maximal” view of moral dignity, mentioned at the start of this chapter, which ‘involves recognition of a person’s worth, rights, autonomy, achievement, actions or character’, including how one comports oneself as ‘worthy of respect’ (2018, 590). Thus, ‘in order to be a “true person” who is ascribed moral personhood,

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one must satisfy normative criteria’, such that its normative attribution ‘would come in degrees’, which ‘indicates an earned moral status’, depending on ‘how one fulfils obligations to enhance communal harmony’ (2018, 591). On this maximal view, Ikuenobe claims ‘respect for persons… is not based solely on the mere having of capacities but on how properly they are used, and the consequent communal respect and moral recognition’ (2018, 592). Dignity is a “thick” concept, Ikuenobe claims, following Menkiti, with descriptive and normative components (2018, 593), which means that it is more than a capacity with which we are born and must be earned. Following Menkiti, Ikuenobe takes issue with the interpretation, offered by Thaddeus Metz (2012), of the African conception of human dignity as a natural capacity we all have inherently for friendly relations with others. This capacity is supposed to have intrinsic worth, which inheres in a person’s capacity for relationality. Significantly, for Ikuenobe, it is not variably dependent on the goodness of one’s character or dependent on others’ perspectives. It is due to this capacity that one is entitled to unconditional respect, from others, of one’s human rights. Ikuenobe criticises Metz’s view of dignity for ignoring ‘conditions for nurturing the active and proper use of one’s capacity for communal relationships’ (2018, 593). He argues, ‘it is problematic to conceive of human dignity and rights as intrinsically moral with a duty of respect without including how humans use their capacities or comport themselves in communal relations’ (2018, 594). Moral dignity is not just having a capacity for harmonious communal living, but the actual use of that capacity for the promotion of love, friendship, solidarity, and so on (2016, 437). However, in defending his maximal view of dignity, Ikuenobe also trips up on its problem, which is that it implies, ‘human rights are not inalienable or absolute’ and ‘the ideas of dignity and rights cannot imply unconditional duty of respect’ (which follow from ‘a liberal view of the person as inherently rational, free, atomistic, and solipsistic’) (2018, 594). This overstatement falls short on two counts. Ikuenobe picks up on a problem with Metz’s interpretation, which construes dignity respect as a natural and inherent human capacity. As Cobbah explains (alongside Hegel), neither the inalienability of human dignity and rights nor our duty to respect these depend on the atomistic, solipsistic person. However, Ikuenobe goes further, claiming that human rights are neither inalienable nor absolute. As Motsamai Molefe rightly objects, this radical repudiation of ‘the ontological approach to dignity in

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favour of a performance-based one … sacrifices the attractive feature of egalitarianism’; the view ‘is intrinsically inegalitarian because it bases respect on moral performance’ (2020, 52). To an extent, Tony Oyowe deflates this sharp dichotomy, allowing that dignity belongs to a normative conception of personhood, which we attribute to others, but contending that ‘a strongly normative requirement is not conceptually necessary for personhood’ (2018, 784). He observes that ‘it seems especially odd to claim that persons are rare’ (2018, 789). Full personhood, Oyowe argues, should not be a requirement for respect for one’s human and civil rights (2018, 791–792). ‘It is difficult to see how’, he adds, ‘rights and privileges, can be assigned at all or justly distributed in direct proportion to the degree of personhood attained’. (2018, 792). This means that respect for dignity depends on basic conditions of status and not on moral performance. Oyowe argues that dignity is owed to others, but it is only weakly normative. This deflation bridges Ikuenobe and Molefe, but the claim is too weak since dignity must secure human rights. On this point, Molefe helpfully distinguishes (a) recognition respect, which is associated with dignity or moral status (which we deserve because we are human), from (b) appraisal respect, which is associated with virtuous conduct. He aligns this division with Menkiti’s distinction between ontological and “strongly normative” concepts of personhood, but, he argues, appraisal of virtuous conduct is not enough to ground human rights (Molefe 2021, 6). ‘Beyond the high esteem and praise from members of society’, he explains, ‘the secondary sense of recognition has no crucial moral and political goods for the individual… like “human rights” or “basic needs” or central capabilities’, which, ‘are the function of human dignity’ (2021, 16). Molefe associates dignity with recognition respect as a basis for human rights, and he distinguishes this from appraisal of virtuous conduct. However, it is important to note here that he does not attribute dignity to recognition respect per se. Rather, he defines dignity as ‘a function of our capacity for virtue’ (2020, 35). Molefe draws on Menkiti’s conception of dignity—in recognition respect of persons—as that which is ‘owed to entities that are capable of a sense of justice’ (2020, 45). He contrasts this view with Ikuenobe’s strongly normative, maximal, and inegalitarian construal of dignity—as appraisal respect—of an agent’s moral achievement of personhood in making use of her ontological capacities for virtuous conduct in the performance of her duties to the community. Contrasting achievement with capacity, Molefe claims that human rights, which follow human dignity, do not depend on our achievements; they are

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due to our capacity for virtue (2020, 52). Do human capacities have inherent moral worth? Wiredu claims, ‘the reason ontological issues are not as worrisome here as they are in Western philosophies is that sharp dichotomies’ such as between mind and matter ‘do not exist on the African side’ (2009, 13). However, the debate continues between status and recognition respect. Molefe’s criticism of Ikuenobe’s maximal normative account of human dignity in persons, with corresponding emphasis on the duties of the individual toward the interests and welfare of others as a condition for recognition by a community of the dignity of a person, follows from a well-rehearsed argument, by Kwame Gyekye, against Menkiti, that African communitarianism does not invariably conceive of the person, ‘as wholly constituted by social relationships’ (1992, 102). Gyekye argues that Menkiti’s views on this count are ‘overstated’ (1992, 103) and ‘radical, excessive and unrestricted’ (1992, 104). He agrees that African communitarians see the person ‘as an inherently (intrinsically) communal being, embedded in a context of social relationships and interdependence’ and the community as a group with interpersonal bonds, common interests, goals, and values (1992, 104), wherein ‘social relationships are not contingent but necessary’, but he insists that we are only partly constituted by social relationships. We become what we are because of what we are, not what we acquire 1992, 109). Gyekye admits that one’s social status depends on the fulfilment of social norms, but he takes pains to distinguish the attribution of social status to an individual from personhood, per se, ‘so that it is social status, not personhood, at which individuals could fail’ (1992, 111). As Gyekye explains, ‘respect for human dignity, a natural or fundamental attribute of the person which cannot, as such, be set at nought by the communal structure, generates regard for personal rights’. (1992, 113). Membership in a community, he argues, cannot rob the individual of dignity or worth, which is ‘a fundamental and inalienable attribute he possesses as a person’ (1992, 114). African communitarians ‘give priority to duties rather than rights’, since they are concerned with the common good or the communal welfare (1992, 117), and since ‘the common good… requires that each individual should work for the good of all’ (1992, 118), but, ‘the duty one has toward the community and its members does not—should not—enjoin him to give over his whole life and be oblivious of his personal well-being’ (1992, 120). Gyekye concludes that African communitarianism imposes dual duties on the person, not just to the well-being of the community but also to oneself.

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Although this response to Menkiti is well known in the literature on African ethics, it bears repeating here to single out a significant and recurring problem with intrinsic dignity he raises, which is that conceptions of dignity are socially and culturally determined, that is, artificial, and not natural, intrinsic, or inherent. What we are depends, in part, on what we come to think we are, and this is not up to any individual. Dignity is not a natural attribute of the person since what we know of dignity depends on socially mediated recognition. Whatever it is, we only know of it that which we have recognised in it. African communitarianism rightly affirms the relational social ontology that dignity must entail and the web of communal responsibilities this implies, whereby we owe it to one another to respect human rights. However, human dignity secures human rights. Therefore, it is essential that it satisfies egalitarian criteria of equality and inalienability, which means that everyone, especially the state, owes recognition of human dignity to every human being. African communitarian conceptions offer a helpful corrective emphasis on the social responsibilities of dignity, evident in respect, which is often fatally neglected in Western or liberal interpretations of the concept, as a basis for individual liberties and entitlements. This distinctive value of an African perspective is lost if we insist that dignity is a natural attribute of humans. To presume that an African conception of dignity is an intrinsic capacity of the individual is to lose the sense in which it is African. An African conception of dignity is not a natural attribute each person possesses in virtue of being human. Rather, it attends to social relations of mutual recognition between human beings. As Dismas Masolo puts it, ‘our cognitive and moral capacities start with the reality of others with whom we enter into association’, and ‘this association is part of the essence of being human’ (2004, 496). Responding to this tension in African ethics, Simeon Ilesanmi carefully distinguishes culturally specific conceptions of human rights from a trans-­ cultural perspective on universal human rights that pertain to each and every human being (1995, 294). Ilesanmi finds human dignity to be the most significant general reason why human rights are honoured and why human rights belong to all human beings (1995, 298–299). He claims, ‘dignity is not only the justifying basis of all rights but also the end that any right ought to serve’ (1995, 300). He agrees with Wiredu that humans are entitled to claim human rights ‘by virtue of their status as human beings’, which is ascribed naturally and not earned or achieved (1995, 300). He maintains, ‘it is the human person, not culture, that constitutes the grounding subject of rights’ (1995, 301). These views are certainly

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trans-cultural. However, the problem with his insistence on transcultural claims about universal human dignity and rights is that he calls into question the relevance of African culture for his account. Why do we need ‘a clarification of the place of the human person in African moral thought’ (1995, 304)? One reason may be that African moral thought offers a unique perspective on the social ontology of the dignity of the human person, which explains the justificatory value of dignity for human rights. In this respect, at least, Ilesanmi offers a unique cultural perspective, with trans-cultural relevance, with his claim, ‘the Yoruba and the Akan also believe that human rights are entitlements entailed by the intrinsic sociality of the human status’ (1995, 315). If human dignity is attributed to ‘intrinsic sociality’, even from a culturally particular perspective on dignity, all may rest assured, and human dignity demands mutual respect between everyone equally. At least, this social ontology goes far enough for dignity to secure human rights. Human dignity may not be a transcendental kernel freighted with a set of human rights, but it does require that, whatever human rights we endorse, they must apply to everyone equally. The culture of human rights may well influence how we interpret human rights, according to the perspectives offered by various comprehensive moral doctrines that we endorse, which fortunately overlap enough for human beings to have (almost) unanimously agreed on a universal list of basic human rights; however, no comprehensive moral doctrine may stipulate a human right that does not apply to everyone. An African perspective on human dignity and its function for human rights is valuable for emphasising the intrinsic sociality that human rights and human dignity must entail. As I shall explain, with reference to Metz’s relational account of human dignity, the ‘intrinsic sociality of the human status’, which Ilesanmi finds in Akan and Yoruba moral doctrines, may not be a natural, inherent, or intrinsic attribute of each individual human being, but it must at least belong to our concept of human dignity, which offers universal scope, as a foundation for human rights for all. One may complain that such a basic transcultural account of human dignity is no less compatible with African ethics than it is with Western communitarianism, which, as Masolo understands it, ‘stands more as a watchdog for the common good than as a robust social theory’ (2004, 488). However, this is to miss the radical sociality of the insistence on the ‘intrinsic sociality of the human status’ in African communitarian thought, which implies that human dignity does not belong to a single person but

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to mutual recognition between people. African communitarian recognition of the necessary sociality of human dignity is not natural or inevitable but rooted ‘as an ethic of everyday life’ which precedes, and which is also historically informed by, ‘the emancipatory politics of independence from European colonialism’ (2004, 494). African leaders ‘could appeal to African traditional social and political orders as backing for their claims’ (2004, 488). For instance, Senghor argued that the ‘Marxist ethic fell short of stressing the centrality of people’, with its emphasis on the economic factor and the class struggle, whereas in West Africa, ‘the group holds priority over the individual’ (in Masolo 2004, 489). Masolo stresses that the African conception of the ‘self’ is of a ‘metaphysical collectivity’, in which ‘individuals depend on others… for what really makes them humans in the real sense of the term’ (2004, 490). By this he means, ‘the factors that determine personhood… are believed to acquire partly from the individual’s socio-ontological beginnings…. Attained through … learning to apply those capacity in ways considered socially appropriate’ (2004, 491). Debate over personhood—whether it is a status with which an individual is born or which she earns, focusing on the individual—misses the significance of intrinsic sociality in an African conception of human dignity, that is, that it applies not to a single individual but to mutual respect between people. As Masolo puts it, in our ‘socio-ontological beginnings’, we are never alone. ‘Every individual’, Masolo insists, ‘would not be what they ought to be without the input of most others with whom they share a social space’: social respectability depends on custom (2004, 492–493). Human dignity, we see, depends on mutual recognition. In his ‘Reply to Critics’, Masolo acknowledges, ‘concepts of the dignity and freedom of the individual are powerful and appealing reminders of what every individual should be accorded’ (2011, 193), but he insists, we only come to grasp the sense of the “I” through the interactive mediation of (the presence of) others’, for instance, in community, with language and concepts (2011, 195). His point—contra Descartes—is that ‘what we come to know as mind… would not even be known to be if a human being were not immersed in a communicative system’ (2011, 196). The radical sociality of dignity accords with Masolo’s definition of personhood, ‘as a socially generated category, or one that is conferred by society in a variety of ways depending on the context’ (2011, 197). This is to say that no person or group may refuse to recognise another with human dignity. As Masolo explains, ‘the cattle thief across the river is no less a person than

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the … virtuous army captain whose life is a model of a good member of society’, since dignity belongs to human sociality per se, wherein ‘even in ordinary existential conditions, the “I” is always in oppositional relation to another’ (2011, 200). Masolo acknowledges that the term “person” is often used to emphasise normative standing, but, in common, we use the term “person” to apply to all members of the species Homo sapiens (2011, 211). Masolo’s main point here is to explain the view that the relative autonomy of the individual emerges ‘within the interactive conditions that both community and… “environment” … provide’ (2011, 227). ‘The human mind and self’, he explains, ‘arise in the process of conduct’ (2011, 228). As Menkiti puts it, ‘the African conception of the human person is metaphysically communally situated’ (2017, 461). This implies that human dignity is not attached to one person but recognised between people, which is not to say that it is natural but that its radical sociality must be the case, and this is what the concept means from the perspective of a comprehensive African moral doctrine. Human dignity belongs to humans, not animals, since ‘animals are not able to assume reciprocal moral obligations’, whereas persons ‘are able to correct each other by confronting one another with reciprocity claims’ (2017, 467). It is the reciprocity of mutual recognition that makes human dignity. In the expression of ubuntu, “I am because we are”, explains Menkiti, ‘the individual recognises the sources of her humanity in community, with internal assurance that, in the absence of others, no grounds exist for a claim regarding the individual’s own standing as a person’ (2004, 324). He therefore argues, ‘one does not know what dignity is except by reference to observed social facts… issuing from countable individuals already engaged in an established social game… from an understood perspective embracing all’ (2017, 468). ‘The quality of mutual accommodation, of mutual respect, within any given society has to be a key issue in any discussion. Mutuality is key…. If one is forced, it cannot possibly be a good thing’ (2017, 471). ‘Community is not an adornment’, he concludes, but a central defining feature of our existence as persons in the world (2017, 473). To then push the sociality of human dignity back to an attribute of the person, as he does, is to miss this defining feature. Metz attributes dignity to my intrinsic capacity; Menkiti to another. Both are wrong on this. Although Wiredu’s communitarian critique of liberal individualism focuses on the value of individuals, he also emphasises in Akan culture ‘the

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view that sympathetic impartiality is the first principle of all morals’ (1992, 198). This principle, he explains, ‘is the logical basis of the golden rule, or the obverse of the common and frequent Akan ethical maxim, “Do not do unto others what you would not they do unto you.” (Nea wo yonko de ye wo a erenye wo de no mfa nye no)’. (1992, 199). This maxim provides, he claims, a ‘solid foundation for the definition of moral worth in its most edifying sense’ (1992, 199). While ‘habitual default in duties and responsibilities could lead to a diminution of one’s status as a person in the eyes of the community’, he adds, this does not imply that one is ‘unworthy of human rights’ (1992, 199). Although respect for each other varies, our dignity cannot be lost since it belongs to core respect, which attends to our necessary sociality. A normative concept of dignity must at least align with what Wiredu calls the golden rule of morality, but this is not to say that an individual possesses dignity, since it emerges from our intrinsic sociality. Dignity is not the possession of an individual but, rather, a property of our social interdependence. Since we depend on others, we owe each other mutual aid and solidarity. What Wiredu terms the “Golden Rule” serves as a criterion for all rules of morality, which must be ‘supplemented with the customs governing behaviour in a given society or culture’ (2009, 15). On the reading of human dignity, which I present in this chapter, with respect to human rights, human dignity speaks for this Golden Rule as a criterion for human rights, which all rights must meet. Human rights are not encoded in a concept of dignity, such that we elicit human rights from it, but whatever human rights we support from the perspective of our respective comprehensive moral doctrines, they must meet this criterion. It is through human dignity that our cultural values of human rights gain trans-cultural, universal status. We gain insight into the social ontology of human dignity from African cultural conceptions of it.

On the Privatisation of an African Social Ontology of Dignity for a Public Grundnorm Thaddeus Metz has developed an intriguing, influential African theory of moral status, social justice, personhood, and dignity, grounded in one’s capacity for friendly relations with others. Situating his account of human dignity for human rights alongside the dominant Western tradition in political theory, which grounds human rights ‘on a principle of respect for

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human dignity’, Metz explains: ‘the standard thought has been that human beings characteristically exhibit a superlative, non-instrumental value that must not be degraded, where human rights violations are severe degradations of our worth’, and ‘quite often, a Kantian account of our dignity in terms of our capacity for autonomy or reason has been advanced to fill out this approach’ (2015, 180). However, he claims not to ‘conceive of dignity in an individualist manner’, with respect to ‘how rights are a function of dignity’. Rather, ‘instead of rationality as its ground’, he explains, ‘I suggest relationality’ (2015, 180). Human rights are supposed to follow from this concept of human dignity insofar as: for a state to treat people as special in virtue of their capacity for communal relationship, when it comes to their group membership, it must not degrade their psychological and social abilities to commune and their particular actualisation of this capacity, namely in the form of extant communities, by which I mean instances of identity and solidarity. (2015, 185)

The idea of human dignity as relationality, as a basis for human rights, boils down to an individual’s capacity for communal relationships of identity and solidarity with one another. Ikuenobe responds: ‘Respect by others is not something that one who is capable “has inherently” but is something earned and deserved based on the active and passive use of one’s capacities for moral excellence or superior achievements’ (2016, 460). In African customary social practice, he observes, ‘one who manifests respect, acts or lives properly, and comports with communal norms, is usually said to be dignified or have dignity’ (2016, 460). This ‘African sense of “dignity”’, he argues, ‘translates into how well you conduct, “carry”, comport yourself or behave, which implies being worthy of respect, honor or admiration’ (2016, 460). Ikuenobe raises the stakes: ‘if all humans had moral dignity, then it would be superfluous to say in an evaluative moral sense that “this is a person of dignity”, and a contradiction to say, “this is not a person of dignity”’ (2016, 458). He argues that ‘one’s claims regarding rights and dignity are meaningful only when there are others to respect them’ (2016, 460). ‘The conception of dignity as “being worthy of respect”’, he concludes, ‘can only arise from the active manifestation of self-respect or comportment, which implies respect for others’ (2016, 460). He acknowledges the distinction Molefe makes between the descriptive and evaluative aspects of recognition, but he rejects the claim that dignity is a function of the former mode

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of recognition, insisting that dignity is a “thick” concept involving ‘evaluative and descriptive aspects’ of recognition, which he also terms ‘the ‘status and achievement senses of dignity’ (2016, 440). One may argue—contra Molefe—that dignity implies both types of recognition (respect and appraisal), but Molefe is right, at least, to find that Ikuenobe goes too far to deny human rights belong to the latter sense alone. Human rights are not attributed to specific humans on the basis of personal appraisal or achievement. On the other hand, Ikuenobe raises a significant problem, which is that dignity is not a capacity we are born with by nature: ‘human capacities do not have an inherent moral worth’ (2016, 466). In contrast, I would add, dignity depends on a dynamic of mutual recognition. In a social relationship of recognition, dignity is not a right, or entitlement I am owed by myself, but equally, a duty of respect I owe to the other. Ikuenobe is surely right, at least, that ‘dignity arises from interactions with others in a social context’ (2016, 454). In an earlier paper published in 2012, Metz considers an alternative interpretation of moral dignity from Desmond Tutu, which is ‘the idea that a communal relationship itself is the bearer of moral status’ (2012, 392). Metz draws this interpretation from Tutu’s claim, ‘Harmony, friendliness, community are great goods. Social harmony is for us the summum bonum, the greatest good’ (1999, 35). However, Metz dismisses the view ‘that moral status inheres solely in existing relationships of any sort’, since, he argues, ‘this means a being who is not part of the relevant relationship lacks moral status’. (2012, 392). He discounts communal relationships per se as the basis of human dignity—that is, the structural social ontology of a human relationship between two or more people, and the normative implication belonging to such a relationship of mutual respect, which Wiredu calls the Golden Rule, following from it. However, if human sociality is what makes us human, as influential African ethicists have argued, then the ideal of social harmony, which Tutu singles out as the greatest good, is surely relevant to and applies to all human beings equally, regardless of communal exclusion or lack of personal achievement in fulfilling moral duties. The golden rule obliges us to treat each other with mutual respect, since this is what we owe to each other, belonging between us. Metz argues that ‘the most plausible way to account for universally binding duties not to seriously interfere in people’s lives for the greater good, i.e., for human rights, is to appeal to the idea that individuals have a dignity that demands respect’ (2010, 93). To have a dignity, he explains, is ‘to have a superlative non-instrumental value that deserves respectful

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treatment; there is some facet of characteristic human nature … that grounds human rights’ (2011, 19). This individualistic formulation of the relationship between human dignity and human rights packs human dignity into the natural human capacity of individuals, detracting from the social ontology that human dignity entails and which African ethics emphasises. To avoid such individualisation of dignity, one may reformulate the phrase: a plausible way to account for the universality of human rights is that they satisfy the criterion of human dignity, which involves mutual respect between persons. It is mutual human respect to which the moral status of human dignity belongs, which provides a criterion for human rights that they must meet. Whereas Metz asks, ‘in virtue of what’ do ‘things either have dignity or lack it’, by contrast, one may ask what a relationship of dignity between persons entails? A relationship of dignity between persons entails mutual respect. Dignity does not determine what these rights are, we do, on the basis of our comprehensive moral doctrines. However, the concept of dignity does determine that human rights must belong equally to everyone. While Metz insists that ‘the concept of dignity is the idea of what it is about the nature of typical human beings that makes them objectively good for their own sake to an equally incomparable degree entitling them to respectful treatment in the form of recognising human rights’ (2012, 21), one may respond that dignity is entailed by the social ontology of ethical relations between people, which implies a common good of mutual respect, in mutual recognition, which human rights must satisfy. Metz’s account is not far from the relational social ontology of human dignity I advance. For instance, he acknowledges, ‘to have a dignity is to be entitled to respectful treatment’ (2011, 21). As he puts it, ‘respecting another’s dignified capacity to exhibit harmony and to be harmonised with means treating it as the most important value’ (2015, 180). Therefore, ‘everyone has a moral status, even a dignity, by virtue of their natural ability to relate communally, and hence everyone merits equal respect’ (2015, 185). However, in a significant structural sense, his capacity for relationality functions in much the same way as Kant’s autonomous rationality, to the extent that it accords not to respect between people but to a capacity within each individual for relationality. For Metz, ‘what is special and inviolable about human nature is our capacity for communal relationship’ (2010, 82). This relationality is a curious attribute that does not emerge from relations between people but exists within each person when we are born, such as a human genome or a transcendental kernel of capacity to

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harmonise with others, which each individual brings into the world by human nature. Metz’s concept of relational human dignity does not designate mutual respect, per se, but one’s capacity for it. This repackages into individual personhood the relational social ontology of dignity in mutual recognition. The problem, I shall now explain, with reference to a critique from Mogobe Ramose, grows bigger as a Grundnorm, a role Metz transposes onto ubuntu, to find a comprehensive basic norm to underpin African ethics (2007, 347).

Born in the RSA: An African Theory of Respect for Universal Human Rights in Dignity In response to ‘Metz’s undertaking, in seeking a “comprehensive basic norm” to underpin African ethics’, Ramose argues, ‘African ethics does not need to be underpinned by an approach such as … Hans Kelsen’s postulation of the Grundnorm in his Pure Law of Theory’ (2007, 347). Furthermore, he adds, this ‘preference for seeking to develop a Grundnorm rests upon a failure to attend carefully to the distinctness of African thinking from Western ethical thinking’ (2007, 347). Ramose’s point is that ‘specific moral terms’ in African ethics ‘illuminate different moral practices in a variety of communal contexts’ (2007, 350). Wiredu and Benezet Bujo, whose interpretations of African moral aphorisms he cites, ‘do not speak to Metz’s conception of “normative theory” as “the articulation and justification of a comprehensive, basic norm that is intended to account for what all morally right actions have in common as distinct from wrong actions”’ (in Ramose 2007, 351). Rather, ‘they speak to a multiplicity of Ethical principles that found and permeate African morality without any implicit or explicit claim to immutability, essentiality, or eternity’ (2007, 351). As Ramose explains, ‘Metz’s quest for a “normative theory”, constructed upon a “comprehensive, basic norm”, implies exactly the three features disclaimed by African ethics,’ which leads to ‘absolutism and dogmatism’ (2007, 351). Since contingency ‘is an incomplete realisation of the absolute’, he continues, ‘a pluralism of concrete ethical norms has to be admitted’ (2007, 351). Metz ‘undertakes the project to implant and grow the seed of the metaphysical Grundnorm’, while failing to recognise the ‘philosophic aversion against the Grundnorm qualified by immutability, essentiality, and eternity in indigenous African ethics’ (2007, 351). Ramose calls this a ‘vigorous battering upon a cadaverous caricature of

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ubuntu’, to which the ‘best reply’ he can offer is, ‘Yes, Hans Kelsen was not born in Africa’ (2007, 355). This is not his best reply. Of course, neither Kelsen nor Metz were born in Africa. Metz is American. Kelsen was born in Prague to a Jewish family who moved to Vienna when he was 3 years old. He authored the Austrian constitution at 39, moved to Cologne 10 years later, for 4 years, before the Nazis removed him from his post in 1933, then shifted back and forth between Geneva and Prague, before he fled Europe for the USA in 1940. Kelsen’s mixed heritage did not detract from his achievements in Austria or USA, despite accusations that he did not belong. Does it matter where he was born? Ramose’s point should not be taken against Metz personally but against his approach. To grasp the significance of this critical response to Metz’s account, we must understand Ramose’s claim that ‘talk about ontology and epistemology is meaningless if it precludes the actual existence of a living organism that actually perceives and is aware of its own existence as well as that of others’ (1998a, 380). In contrast, ‘to dissolve the specificity of ubuntu into abstract “universality” is to deny its right to be different. It is to assign undue primacy to the universal over the particular’ (1998a, 383). Ubuntu law, Ramose explains, ‘is flexible, un-formalised, reasonable and linked to morality’; it ‘consists of rules of behaviour contained in the flow of life… It cannot be decided in advance that certain legal rules have an irreversible claim to exist permanently’ (2001, β6). Since law is ‘a continually lived experience’, he claims, ‘prescription is unknown in African law’, and, as such, judicial decisions ‘must always be able to be called into question’ (2001, β7). He maintains that the ‘hallmark of racism’, evident in colonisation, lies with ‘the claim that other human-like animals are not truly and fully human’ (2001, β11). In contrast, the struggle against colonial conquest of the African peoples denies this. We must interpret Ubuntu law according to our lived experience, which advances a living dynamic of mutual recognition: ‘Ubuntu is the principle that we act humanely with respect towards others as a way of demanding the same from them’ (2001, β8). ‘Ubuntu ethics…. resolves the problem of exclusion in bounded reasoning by prescribing mutual recognition and respect complemented by mutual care and sharing’ (1998a, 386). To the Western reader, Ramose’s formulation of a universal golden rule for the moral principle of Ubuntu, which may be attributed to human dignity in reciprocal recognition between persons and which may be said to belong to all human rights and duties as a basic ethic, may seem like a comprehensive basic norm, accounting for what human rights have in

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common. However, a subtle distinction here concerns what dignity tells us about human rights. A Grundnorm is a comprehensive basic norm that tells us what all human rights have in common. For instance, Rosen expects the concept of human dignity to tell us what those rights are. In contrast, Ramose’s social ontology of dignity gives us a criterion for human rights, of mutual respect between humans. It does not tell us what human rights are or what all human rights have in common. As Ramose argues, ‘All theories of human rights share a fundamental characteristic in common, that the fact of being-a-living-human being deserves recognition by all other human beings’, meaning, ‘respect for and the protection of the fact of being a-living-human-being’ (1998b, 744). Likewise, ‘to denigrate and disrespect the other human being is in the first place to denigrate and to disrespect oneself’, since ‘the claim that one makes about oneself one concedes to the other’ (1998b, 753). ‘Thus’, Ramose argues, ‘human dignity is far from alien in traditional African philosophy. In addition, so, nothing could serve better as the basis for an indigenous human rights philosophy’ (1998b, 753). What our human rights are depends on human beings’ interpretation of the living law, in accordance with the comprehensive moral doctrines of precedent customary social practices. Dignity is not a transcendental kernel, a gene, a germ, or a seed, whose outcome is inherent within the grain; it is not a thing but an ethical mode of respect that we owe one another in mutual recognition. Dignity is a contested term that leads to various ethical maxims regarding moral conduct and to different theories of human rights, on which we agree, in the overlapping consensus of our comprehensive moral doctrines and cultural maxims. Ubuntu, Ramose explains, consists of various principles ‘of sharing and caring for one another’; ‘it is not an -ism’ he insists, an idea or practice ‘that is absolute and unchangeable’; rather, ‘motion is the principle of be-ing’, which is to say that ‘the forces of life are there to be exchanged among and between human beings’ (1998b, 752). Ramose concludes, based on this interpretation of dignity, that the human being, that is, Motho is never a finished entity in the sense that the relational context reveals and conceals the potentialities of the individual. The concealed potentialities become revealed whenever they are actualized in the practical sphere of human relations. Outside of this sphere, motho remains a frozen fossil. (1998b, 753)

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Whatever human rights and duties we specify with reference to the concept of human dignity, the South African legal scholar Stuart Woolman explains, dignity functions as ‘a regulative ideal that informs the rules we deploy’ (2013, 64). Regulative ideals ‘do not operate as part of a chain of propositions from we can simply deduce a rational response to a particular problem the world has for us’ (2013, 63–64). The Frankfurt critical theorist Juergen Habermas likewise argues that although human rights are conceptually connected to human dignity, we do not elicit these rights from the concept; changing historical conditions make us aware of the normative substance of the equal dignity of every human being, which human rights spell out in overlapping consensus (2010, 467). ‘Different aspects of the meaning of human dignity emerge’, he argues, ‘from the plethora of experiences of what it means to be humiliated and deeply hurt’ (2010, 468). The concept of human dignity ‘registers what is constitutive for a democratic legal order, namely just those rights that the citizens of a political community must grant themselves if they are to be able to respect one another as members of a voluntary association of free and equal persons’, which is to say, ‘human dignity forms the “portal” through which the egalitarian and universalistic substance of morality is imported into law… the conceptual hinge that connects the morality of equal respect for everyone with the positive law’, to, ‘give rise to a political order founded upon human rights’ (2010, 469). We find a number of different specifications of the concept of dignity as a relationship of recognition from various sources across the world. David Owen and James Tully agree that ‘struggles over recognition are always struggles over the prevailing intersubjective “norms” (laws, rules, conventions, or customs) under which members of any system of government recognise each other as members and coordinate their action’, such that ‘struggles for recognition always have a redistributive dimension, and struggles for, or over, redistribution are always struggles for recognition’ (2007, 267–268). Axel Honneth takes the point from Ernst Bloch that what we know of “human dignity” may be ‘ascertained indirectly’ from ‘personal degradation and injury’. Thus, it is ‘negative experiences of disrespect and insult’ that inform the normative sense of dignity (1992, 187). He agrees that our understanding of dignity is informed by maltreatment, but he adds, conversely, that human integrity ‘depends on receiving approval and respect from others’ (1992, 188). From this positive basis of dignity, he unpacks three forms of recognition: love, rights, and solidarity, which serve as criteria for conditions of interaction in which we can feel

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assured of our dignity (1992, 196). It is not the negative experience of indignity that underwrites human rights, he concludes, but the positive conception we derive from our responses to indignity to make things right, which secures the rights we secure to prevent indignity. Since ‘a morality that attempts to bring the principles of mutual recognition to bear can only find a weak empirical footing in the affective reaction of shame’, he continues, ‘a concept of morality based on the theory of recognition would rely… on… studies that are capable of showing that moral progress is born of the struggle for recognition’ (1992, 200). The final point to note here is that it does matter where Hans Kelsen was born, worked, and lived. It is no surprise that the constitution to which he contributed was for Austria, given that he was raised, educated, and worked in Austria, speaking German, nor that his understanding of the law, including his aversion to decentralised legal principles, and his search for a superior Grundnorm—the most superior norm in a hierarchy of normative order—was influenced by German rationalism and his experience of dangerous cultural relativism, as an alienated outsider, arguing for universalistic principles that apply to everyone. However, dignity cannot tell us what all morally right actions have in common. It is up to us to insist on dignity in positive law. For example, in South Africa, unlike the USA, Woolman explains, ‘dignity demand for equal concern and respect outweighs dignity interest in expression as a form of self-actualisation… since justice in post-apartheid South Africa requires that all persons are treated with equal respect’ (2013, 55). However, although our positive conceptions of dignity are contested, it tells us, at least, that human rights are owed to everyone equally. It is helpful to take note of African studies of human dignity, which show us that moral progress is born of struggles for recognition. This is not just because of the significance—for a universal conception of human dignity—of the political struggles of African people for sovereign independence. Our conception of dignity is enriched by the context of struggles in Africa against the racist negation of African dignity in colonialism, which were ‘predicated on the inferiority of the black man’ (1987, 88). However, in addition, African conceptions of human dignity offer us positive interpretations of the political, economic, and cultural significance of the concept. Under the indignity of apartheid, Biko observed, ‘the black man has become a shell… The first step therefore is to pump back life into his empty shell, to infuse him with pride and dignity… This is the definition of “Black Consciousness”’ (1987, 29). African dignity implies a

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positive task. It is not just defensive. We need not take our marching orders for—or against—a Grundnorm to rule all norms. It is worth paying attention to the positive moral emphasis of ethical African communal and customary social practices of dignity on the communal sociality of African dignity recognition, which corrects misconceptions or misrecognition of the concept, freezing the living spirit of the law into a conceptual fossil or a transcendental kernel. Dignity recognition, in sum, is not an individual capacity or status, belonging to an individual, but an exchange between people.

Conclusion I identified two problems with Western conceptions of dignity identified by African ethicists. First, Western dignity is thought to be too individualistic, whereas African dignity is oriented to communities, owing to moral agents in virtue of contributions to communal well-being. However, I asked, how can such contingent attributions ground universal human rights? Second, Western dignity grounds entitlements, whereas Africans tie dignity to duties. I explained that rights and duties of dignity are correlative. I then discussed Western criticisms of dignity, complaining of a vague, convenient fiction, reducible to rational autonomy and/or informed consent, which is inadequate to address social practices that undermine it. The substance of human dignity, I respond, follows from struggles against indignity for mutual recognition. I find the sticking point between African and Western conceptions and between African camps to follow from the misattribution of dignity to a person, whereas dignity belongs to mutual recognition between people. This insight shows the value of African conceptions of dignity for universal understanding of the concept. Metz and Molefe see dignity as an intrinsic capacity, grounding human rights. Rosen, too, thinks dignity specifies human rights. With Ramose, I argue that human dignity is not a Grundnorm. It is a criterion human rights must satisfy, I add, which follows from our relations with one another and which imposes a duty of basic mutual respect. Ikuenobe and Menkiti are mistaken for abstract recognition respect for another from status respect for oneself. Rosen and Metz are mistaken to impose a Grundnorm that dictates human rights to us. I claim that human dignity is a criterion for the human rights we establish in customary social practices and comprehensive moral doctrines, which stipulates that they must belong to everyone equally.

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CHAPTER 8

African Conceptions of Human Dignity and Violence Against Women in South Africa Louise du Toit

Introduction The question posed in this chapter is whether dominant African conceptions of personhood and their attendant understandings of human dignity can serve as a resource in the struggle against the dehumanisation and degradation accompanying violence against women in contemporary South Africa. I refer to forms of violence that are predominantly perpetrated by men against women because the victims are women or feminised creatures. It thus includes sexualised forms of violent assault, including sexual harassment, rape, and intimate partner violence such as verbal abuse, battering, partner rape, and femicide. This way of framing the issue is not meant to imply that there are no male victims of sexual assault or that women never aid or abet violence against other women or never engage in violent assault themselves. All these things also happen, but my focus is on the much more pervasive and often naturalised/normalised phenomenon of male-on-female violence, with or without an overtly

L. du Toit (*) Philosophy Department, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Molefe, C. Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1_8

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sexual element. Related forms of interpersonal violence such as sexual assault of men and boys (see Du Toit 2022a; Du Toit and Le Roux 2021) and rape understood as a way of ‘punishing’ or ‘correcting’ homosexuality (see Westman 2022) or gender nonconformity are not explicitly included here either since they deserve separate investigations in African philosophy. Additionally, the specific focus on women victims of violence is chosen because I am interested in the larger question of how women (and girls) as a group relate to dominant conceptions and ideals of personhood and their attendant dignities in African philosophy. I thus ask about the moral status of women in the existing canon of philosophical thought on African personhood and dignity. Since African philosophy entails to some extent an exploration and interpretation of a living tradition, the key question here is whether African traditional moral thought and practice provide robust homegrown, indigenous, or local, “axiological strategies” (see Molefe 2017: 218) for critiquing and resisting interpersonal violence committed against women.1 The chapter is structured as follows: First, I provide a brief overview of Ifeanyi A. Menkiti’s classic view of African personhood. In the second part of the chapter, I discuss feminist arguments that African conceptions of personhood (notably Menkiti’s) militate against the full dignity of women. Such arguments have been put forward by Oritsegbubemi A. (Tony) Oyowe and Olga Yurkivska (2014), Nompumelelo Manzini (2018), Rianna Oelofsen (2016), Amanda Gouws and Mikki van Zyl (2015), Sanya Osha (2006), and Sinenhlanhla Chisale (2018), among others. I will show that these arguments capture how the normative notion of personhood is often interpreted and deployed to oppress women in the name of African tradition, with dire consequences for their dignity. In section three of the chapter, I introduce some recent work of Elvis Imafidon in an edited collection called Handbook of African Philosophy of Difference (2020). I discuss his criticism of African personhood based on 1  Nothing that I say in this chapter should be construed as assuming or implying that Black South Africans are more guilty of violence against women than the other ethnic or racial groups, just because I search for normative resources for resistance in indigenous African frameworks. African Blacks make up 81% of our population according to the statistics of 2022, and by all accounts, South Africa is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman, given the levels of violence perpetrated against women. See https://www.statista.com/statistics/1116076/total-population-of-south-africa-by-population-group/. If there are indigenous, embedded normative frameworks that can be used to help protect women against violence, then they are worth considering.

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the distinction that Gouws and Van Zyl draw between ‘ubuntu-talk’ (normative) and ‘ubuntu-do’ (descriptive) but show that his critique is even more radical than the typical feminist critiques explored in section two. For Imafidon, it is not simply that African personhood fails to live up in practice (‘ubuntu-do’) to high moral ideals contained in its theoretical form (‘ubuntu-talk’). Instead, he says the systemic failures and limitations of African personhood lie in its basic formulation, thus in ‘ubuntu-talk’ itself: intrinsic worth itself, he claims, is unevenly distributed. To make these points, he directly addresses the shortcomings in Menkiti’s classic conceptualisation of African personhood as normative and communitarian and shows how it leads to discrimination on various fronts. However, this discriminatory interpretation, in both philosophical theory and communal practice, I argue in the fourth section of the chapter, fails to acknowledge and incorporate the metaphysical properties of persons and thereby loses a key transcendent element of relational personhood—an element that I claim potentially saves African personhood from an oppressive (even suffocating) immanentism. Moreover, this neglected yet inherent aspect must therefore be strengthened for African philosophical conceptions of personhood to play a stronger critical role in opposing and dismantling traditional shared understandings that systematically undermine the personhood of some categories of humans, including women. To help me make this argument, I draw on Motsamai Molefe’s understanding of moral standing and dignity in African thinking on personhood as set out in his African Personhood and Applied Ethics (2020). Like Imafidon, Molefe also distinguishes between the intrinsic and extrinsic worth of persons, but unlike Imafidon, he sees the intrinsic worth element to be egalitarian, universal, and as having priority over the extrinsic worth element (in principle, if not always in practice). This is an important move towards perpetual transcendence of tradition itself and must historically have inspired many traditions of struggle for dignity on the continent. In the fifth and final section, I link Molefe’s emphasis on what he calls “the [intrinsic] dignity embodied by personhood” (2020: 51) with what I identified as the neglected element of transcendence. I give an indication of how I think his conception could be further amended to become at once more African and more critical, thereby obtaining a more inclusive and thus more critical-normative appeal, which provides an important alternative to both mainstream ‘Western’ conceptions of dignity and democracy and to either overly idealistic African renditions of Ubuntu and personhood or renditions that give too much weight to existing practices

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and customs. This approach, I argue, is not a free-floating, contextless version of personhood but rather has a concrete history in the struggle past in South Africa and elsewhere on the continent. By returning to the African struggle history of human dignity, we can make the idea workable again for grassroots, inclusive, indigenously embedded, broad social movements against violence against women and girls in our own time and place.

Menkiti’s Classic View of African Personhood Menkiti’s two essays on personhood in African “traditional thought” (as he terms it), published in 1984 and 2004, respectively, have been remarkably influential. It is noteworthy that he sees his description of African personhood as entailing a translation from traditional thought in Africa into “the idiom of modern philosophy” (1984: 171). This description of his task points to two fault lines that run through the whole discipline of African philosophy. The first tension or fault line runs between descriptive and prescriptive or normative emphases. The moment one asks about what makes African philosophy ‘African’, the answer will have to be that the ideas discussed are in some way embedded in the ways of life and traditions of wisdom of the indigenous peoples of the continent. This is where the emphasis on description operates in the attempt to stay close to ‘traditional thought’ and even to empirical realities that characterise African ways of life. At the same time, it is in the nature of philosophical thought, especially in the normative fields of moral, social, and political philosophy, that it often stands in sharp contrast with its surrounding reality, in that it tries to say not only how things in fact are but also how they are currently wrong or unjust and how they instead ought to be. This ‘ought’ can moreover be based on a spectrum of possible considerations, including greater clarity or consistency in people’s beliefs, logic, or what is argued to be morally better, whether consequentially or in principle. These aspects are not unique to African philosophy or ethics, but one does wonder with respect to the latter approach, the normative moment, whether or when it becomes too far removed from the actual moral world(s), virtues and frameworks of Africans and thereby risks losing its ability to articulate something about the continent’s peoples’ current understandings or future aspirations. With respect to the former, the more descriptive approach, one may well wonder to what extent critical distance can be maintained and to what extent this approach conflates ‘is’ with

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‘ought’, in what might be described as a suffocating immanentism. Further connected with the former, to what extent can the dynamic, multiple, contested, and other more radical dimensions of African normative systems as living systems be preserved in a discourse that aims to provide generalised descriptions of African moral realities? Does not the very attempt to ‘salvage’ African thinking in the postcolony carry within it a conservative intent that may emphasise stability, even timelessness, of contingently dominant positions and practices, at the cost of contestation and change? In this respect, I take my cue from Alistair Macintyre’s insight into tradition (After Virtue): “Traditions, when vital, embody continuities of conflict” (1984: 222). By ‘conflict’, he means here that the very tradition, social practice, or organisation consists to a significant extent of a “continuous argument” or ongoing discussion as to what the organisation or tradition is and ought to be and what it means to be a good tradition or community. The second fault line or tension that Menkiti’s notion of ‘translation’ shows on my reading is the problem of working within the wake of the epistemicide brought about by African colonisation (see Mignolo 2011 and Osha 2006: 159). As we can see in Menkiti’s 1984 essay, he attempts to simultaneously describe what is distinctive about African “traditional thought” and render it understandable to a ‘modern’, global philosophical audience. This is a tension-filled exercise, an encounter taking place in a highly unequal discursive space, requiring several layers of translation. For example, we know that public and inclusive deliberation is a hallowed tradition in many sub-Saharan societies—see, for example, Haang’andu and Bélant’s (2019) discussion of deeply entrenched precolonial democratic practices in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. Their project runs parallel to mine, since they seek “democratisation without westernisation” by excavating democratic practices embedded in local African cultures and ontologies. Drucilla Cornell (1998: 160ff) provides a feminist example with a similar logic in her essay, ‘Troubled Legacies’. There, she discusses Surinamese women’s usage of the Afro-Surinamese Winti religion’s vocabulary (relating to the Mother Goddess of the Earth, Mama Aisa) to empower themselves (in relation to their own community and in relation to the national state) and to agitate for land and other rights for women. They do not draw on Western conceptions of personhood, or notions of individual rights, to make their strong, culturally embedded, claim to equality, dignity, and inclusion. My question is thus whether we can resist violence against women without westernisation of our frameworks. This is

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a large and contentious issue, and I am aware I cannot finally resolve it here; only give a few pointers for further investigation. However, let us return to Menkiti’s classic discussion of personhood in African thought. For Menkiti, in the African conception, “the communal world takes precedence over the reality of individual life histories” (1984: 171). This ‘precedence’ is a primacy that is in the first place understood ontologically, in that individuals are seen (descriptively) as in fact emerging from preexisting networks of relationships. In a sense, the individual or the personal life story is a product (or node) of dynamically unfolding, living relationships; the unique person understood as issuing forth from a preexisting and sustaining web of life (see Tshivhase 2013, on individual uniqueness). In contrast, says Mbiti—and I believe the social contract tradition of Hobbes and Locke is a prime example of this—in Western thinking, the individual life exists initially or primordially as an independent atom, as an individual autonomy, and only secondarily enters into relationships through contract-like agreements that it construes from rational self-interest. Western feminists such as Rosalyn Diprose (1994, 2002), Adriana Cavarero (2016), and Judith Butler (2004), among others, have also criticised Western metaphysics for erasure of the subject’s or philosophical ‘Man’s’ emergence from its fleshy entanglement with the maternal body and from initial relations of striking yet inevitable asymmetrical (inter)dependence. Christine Battersby (1998) demonstrates how the female body that menstruates can both accommodate, bring forth, and support forms of bodily otherness, thus providing the symbol par excellence of the material interdependent aspect of human existence. Butler, moreover, emphasises how ‘the subject’ is called into existence and shaped from the ground up by a ‘social ontology’ consisting of formative relationships and discursive norms. These (minority) Western authors also see the self as existing first for others and in risky exposure to otherness, before (both chronologically and ontologically) it comes to exist also for itself. Self-awareness, and thus personhood, is therefore just about saturated with constitutive otherness. However, the difference between Western feminist critiques and African approaches should not be ignored. In Menkiti’s (1984) words and in Mbiti’s understanding that he draws from, Africans readily view communities as organic wholes preceding their parts, whereas for mainstream (male-dominated) Western thinking, communities are artificial (loose) constructs entered voluntarily and cerebrally by preexisting individual persons acting from enlightened self-interest. Social living is thus a secondary phenomenon to individual life and

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presents itself as the lesser of two evils (when compared with Hobbes’ inevitable war of all against all in the ‘state of nature’). In contrast, for Africans, sociality describes the core of human beings, and a human who damages or severs such constitutive social bonds risks losing their very humanity, dignity, or personhood status. Menkiti sees the community as being both ontologically and epistemologically prior to individual existence, in that selves are constituted by their relationships and only secondarily emerge for themselves and for others as unique selves through reference to the whole of the social group. Epistemologically, this implies that individuals also obtain their knowledge from the living tradition in which they grow up. Menkiti (1984: 172) believes that this communitarian understanding of personhood implies two further aspects. First, “in the African view [of man][sic] it is the community which defines the person as person, not some isolated static quality of rationality, will or memory” (emphases added). Second, he thinks this view implies that African personhood is processual. The latter point means that “persons become persons only after a process of incorporation” (p. 172) into the social body. The community is pivotal in one’s journey on the way to personhood, as it plays a key role “as catalyst and prescriber of social norms” (p. 172) and facilitates the social and ritual transformation needed to become a full person. In African thinking, one becomes a person over time; this aspect is played down or negated in dominant Western models that view personhood as more statically inhering in a certain type of body with characteristics such as rationality. Moreover, arguably, in Western thinking on personhood, childhood is seldom explicitly considered, and the question of becoming-a-person (an autonomous, rational adult) and the labour of (m)others that goes into that process are all but completely ignored.2 Thus, these two aspects—the communitarian and the processual—Menkiti interprets to mean that “personhood is something which has to be achieved” (p. 172) and “personhood is something at which individuals could fail” (p. 173). In contrast with dominant Western views that hold that “either an entity is a person, or it is not”, for 2  And, it should be added, just as authors discussed here show supposedly neutral African notions of normative personhood to be infused with masculine-biased elements, Western notions of normative personhood have similarly been criticised by feminist authors who showed how e.g., Aristotelian and Christian virtue ethics, and Kantian deontology, are similarly rife with gender biases and misogynistic assumptions. For example, virtues like courage and righteous anger are not even considered as important for women’s moral excellence, in the ancient Greek tradition.

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Africans, one gains in personhood over time through an “ontological progression” marked by “fundamental changes at the core of one’s being” (p. 173). However, crucially, whether one progresses toward personhood is not objectively given; it is dependent for its reality upon the recognition and affirmation of the community through the bestowal of respect and entitlements. With reference to Tempels’ informants, Menkiti shows that not every man who reaches biological maturity achieves excellence. He describes such excellence here as having become “a powerful man” and a man with “plenitude of force at maturation”. This influential view of Menkiti has come to be denoted as the ‘normative conception’ of personhood in African philosophy. It seems to me the precise ways in which Menkiti here unpacks what it means to be acknowledged as a (full) person in African thinking are what leads to the real danger of bigotry (including misogyny) in African societies, associated with what I want to call a suffocating immanentism. I also believe the tension can be somewhat alleviated if we accept his starting point but unfold its implications differently.

Feminist Criticisms of African Personhood In their criticism of the gender neutrality presupposed in the philosophical discourse on African personhood, Oyowe and Yurkivska (2014: 88) explicitly draw on Menkiti’s 1984 essay to make their point concrete. They conclude that African philosophers—writing about personhood in a seemingly gender-neutral way—have in fact only managed to conceptualise “what it means to be an African man while ignoring what it means to be an African woman” (Oyowe and Yurkivska 2014: 87). In fact, “the problems of female personhood and gender inequality are still very much ignored by African philosophy at large” (p.88). Their accusation seems plausible, especially given the striking absence of African women working in instituted African philosophy and articulating its main tenets. Additionally, consider Menkiti’s example of a full or excellent person as a powerful and virile man quoted above. It might seem from this example that full personhood is defined in a way that excludes women from the chance of achieving it. The next logical question is whether the tradition only appears as male-dominated, even misogynist, because almost only men are currently participating in its philosophical explication, or whether their rendition is accurate, with the implication that there is in fact very little space for manoeuvre for anyone attempting to endow women with

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equal dignity, while drawing exclusively on traditional African understandings.3 However, let us look more closely at Oyowe and Yurkivska’s argument. They read Menkiti to say that the person, and personal identity, are firmly rooted in community, with the ontological and epistemological consequences alike, as explained above. John Mbiti possibly puts this strongest when he says “[t]he community must therefore make, create, or produce the individual” (1969: pp. 108–9; emphasis added). Oyowe and Yurkivska see Kwasi Wiredu (1992), Mbiti (1969), and Menkiti (1984 and 2004) as all agreeing that the community and a preexisting web of life (“well-­ defined social affiliations” in Wiredu 1992) constitute the individual person, who cannot “be conceived apart from the community” (Oyowe and Yurkivska 2014: 89). This is the first point they highlight in Menkiti. Second, they agree with his emphasis on the processual nature of personhood, which refers to the gradual process of becoming socialised into personhood. For Wiredu (2005), this process is the gradually growing realisation (concrete manifestation) of the individual’s solidarity with and belonging to the community, with all the obligations and responsibilities this entails. Normativity is thereby already built into this processual view of personhood emerging or unfolding over time and through right action. The point of the process is stronger integration into the community and excellence in exhibiting communal values. Third, Oyowe and Yurkivska explicate this dimension of normativity, which through the notion of ‘excellence’ denotes for them an essential characteristic of African personhood. They deduce from this picture of the person, that “[a]n individual’s failure to conform [to the community’s norms] constitutes failure to attain personhood” (p.  90), agreeing with Menkiti, who sees personhood as a performance at which one may fail. They see these three moments or normative dimensions of personhood as being “interlinked and mutually definitive” in the African understanding of personhood (p.  90). From these interlinked elements, they conclude that African personhood is radically relational, to the extent that “the individual cannot be conceived, either in principle or practically, as separable 3  An additional complicating factor is the question of the extent to which patriarchal Christian-missionary elements (alongside other colonising devices such as indigenous law) have infiltrated and distorted precolonial worldviews. This contributes to the multiple layers of translation needed to say anything meaningful about traditional African thought. There is not space here to elaborate on this point.

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from the community”. This leads them to their central claim, namely that if personhood is indeed this strongly relational (constitutively social), it cannot at the same time also be gender neutral (and thus egalitarian). This is the case, since empirically, in most African societies, “gender serves as an indispensable category in conceptualising the idea of individual rootedness in community” (p.  90). The very social norms that prescribe the process of intensifying personhood, together with all the attendant rituals and milestones that transform the individual on the way to excellent or mature personhood, are strongly gendered (p. 92). In addition, if Wiredu’s description of Akan personhood is to be believed, personal identity is already strongly gendered even before birth, with different networks of kinship coming into play, depending on the social status of mother and father, respectively (Wiredu 1992: 197). Ifi Amadiume’s (1987) description of a flexible gender structure in traditional Igbo society shows that even if a person’s sex and gender could be distinguished (resulting, for example, in a male daughter or female husband), the feminine role was still dominated by feminine virtues and values, culminating in the prescribed role of self-sacrificial mother. Acclaimed novelist Buchi Emecheta, with her ironically titled work The Joys of Motherhood (1979), provides a compelling narrative account of the shadow side to this aspect of traditional Igbo society, showing in concrete detail how cultural norms work to oppress, blame, and ostracise women who somehow fail to live up to the demanding ideals of motherhood. As Oyowe and Yurkivska show in their reading of Amadiume (pp.  92–3), “while socialisation of boys stressed masculinity, equated with virility, violence, valour and authority, socialisation of girls stressed self-denial and submissiveness”. Clearly, there are different paths for women and men aiming to attain personhood. For them, a gender-neutral conception of personhood exists nowhere on the continent; thus, attempts to formulate personhood in gender-neutral terms are divorced from traditional African thought, and gendering means inequality when seen “in conjunction with the idea of the relational nature of personhood” (p.  96). For Manzini (2018: 25–6), the way in which rites of passage are strongly tied to reproduction moreover betrays an “anti-queer”, ableist, and anti-intersex stance and is prejudiced against persons who do not procreate (p.  28). This remains true even if we grant Amadiume’s claim that a principle of strong gender differentiation need not translate into a hierarchy but might instead manifest as complementarity. Oelofsen (2016) takes a similar approach to this as Amadiume and draws on Nkiru Nzegwu (2006) to further

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strengthen the claim that African gender is a form of differentiation that need not be hierarchical but may imply a gender dualism, where interdependence, relationality, and care are emphasised instead of individual autonomy. In their incisive feminist interrogation of Ubuntu,4 Gouws and Van Zyl (2015: 173) draw a distinction between ‘ubuntu-talk’ and ‘ubuntu-do’ (another version of the central fault line in African philosophy, between the descriptive and normative approaches) and draw similar conclusions to Oyowe and Yurkivska. An example of ‘ubuntu-talk’ that they give is Thad Metz’s (2011) defence of the normative conception of a person against the argument that culture-specific biases and power relations embed Ubuntu and recognition of personhood in age and gender hierarchies. For Metz, “ubuntu communal social principles [overcome] the distancing and objectification of the other” (quoted in Gouws and Van Zyl 2015, p.175). However, in their own empirical research, Gouws and Van Zyl found that the burden of care (of people living with HIV, of poverty, of gender-based violence, of neglected children), and thus the burden of other-­directedness supposedly recognised and awarded in ubuntu, in postcolonial South Africa, in fact fall on the shoulders of women, almost exclusively so (Gouws and Van Zyl 2015). Moreover, where women do shoulder this burden and thus excel in community service, it does little to enhance women’s dignity or status (or reciprocal care). Similarly, authors such as Bohler-Muller (2005) and Keevy (2009) are critical of how South African customary law entrenched gender inequalities (Gouws and Van Zyl 2015: 175). Gouws and Van Zyl thus point to the reality of pervasive gender hierarchy infusing understandings of ubuntu (and the burdens of other-directedness) in actual African communities in South Africa. Is this a simple case of communities professing one thing and doing another? If so, ubuntu values of community service, other-regarding virtues, and the maintenance of caring bonds can be used to criticise what often happens in practice, and to argue with Metz that “ubuntu communal social principles [ought to overcome] the distancing and objectification of the other”. More particularly, some South African men’s avoidance of care responsibilities and their poor treatment of women who take them 4  In discussing ubuntu as central to the debate on personhood, I follow Molefe (2020: 9–10), who treats the notions of ubuntu and personhood as “continuous, if not synonymous”, since “to say that someone has ubuntu is the same thing as to claim that they are a person”, on the agent-centred view of personhood, as will be discussed below.

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on,  should be a primary target of ubuntu-based critique. Communities placing high value on the intrinsic value of social bonds should arguably vigorously protect those who build and maintain bonds of care and sanction those who destroy such bonds. Caring communities would care for and about carers. Alternatively, there might be aspects or dimensions in ‘ubuntu-talk’ itself that are problematic and lend themselves to a justification of the status quo where women carry the moral and material burden of ubuntu, but without enjoying the benefits of community recognition, respect, and reward that it promises. Sanya Osha (2006: 157) certainly thinks so, when he says, “… the female African subject has to contend with layers of subjugation; first, at the stark existential level and second, at the meta-discursive level”. If so, then we should look to ways to redefine or modify what possibly passes for mainstream interpretations of ubuntu in the name of greater equity and fairness within African communities. Although this is not necessarily how he meant it, Wiredu’s citation of the Akan maxim, “When a human being descends from on high, he or she alights in a town”, also quoted by Oyowe and Yurkivska (2014: 91), can be read as also pointing to the difference or possible tension between ‘ubuntu-talk and ‘ubuntu-do’. Even though a human being can (be said to) have a transcendent status (coming from on high), once they alight in a town, they are defined relationally by that place’s customs and values, and apparently, on most of the African continent, this means women have lower status than men and wives less agency and respect than husbands, irrespective of how they conduct themselves. This then would be an example of where a suffocating immanentism drowns out transcendent aspects of personhood that would allow for radical criticisms of the communal status quo. An author who contests these feminist criticisms in an interesting way is Sinenhlanhla Chisale (2018), who participated in a study that interviewed several elders in KwaZulu-Natal on their understanding of ubuntu as caregiving. She agrees with the findings of Gouws and Van Zyl, who are similarly concerned that although ubuntu can be rightly understood as an ethics of care (Molefe chooses for an ethics of sympathy, as we shall see), “[i]n African contexts, social communal unpaid care is assumed to be feminine”, and unpaid caregiving practices such as “mothering, care for children, elderly, and people with disabilities, visitors and extended family [are] primarily considered as feminine vocations”. Chisale then closely reads some comments made by the interviewed elderly who she believes think of ubuntu as a set of care obligations in gender-neutral terms. One

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example is where a Zulu woman (one Gogo maThebe) said that her belief in ubuntu would in the past make her respond with care and attentive hospitality toward African migrants (foreigners) looking for work in South Africa. Her hospitality included food, accommodation, safety, and even help with job searching. Chisale emphasises how this woman in her narrative included her husband in the hospitality shown to strangers, in that he “helped me in getting them employment to move out”. Chisale deduces from this and other anecdotes from the elders and from sayings from Tutu on the nature of ubuntu that this “care of a traveller was mutually shared between husband and wife because it uplifted their family name”. Clearly, then, we see here the gender-neutral understanding of personhood featuring explicitly as communitarian and processual. Other interviewees emphasised how it used to be the social obligation of every adult in a community to drop everything and participate in all other members’ losses and griefs as well as their celebrations. Communal harvesting where crops were shared and mutual assistance with home building were similarly traditional, nongendered moral obligations. She explains how poverty “was a sign of exclusion from ‘the web of life’, and that therefore communities felt they could only prosper as a community if they were generous in a way that affirmed their interdependence” (Chisale 2018: 6). Contrary to what we see in many instances, for Chisale, ubuntu understood as concrete caregiving ought not to be a gendered obligation but must be “explicitly gender neutral”, and deviations from this, such as when “some people abuse [ubuntu] for their personal agendas particularly in enforcing patriarchy, gender binary and social constructions in communities”, are therefore an aberration and a perversion of the true nature of ubuntu (p. 4). On her reading, then, the correct understanding of ubuntu (as witnessed by the elders interviewed) is that its virtues are strictly universal and gender neutral. Thus, the provision of care is equally expected from everyone— even towards strangers and migrants—and ‘family name’, reputation, or respect (recognition of achieved personhood, Menkiti might say) should follow such virtuous behaviour, from the side of the community. Summarising this section, one could say that some authors read the radically relational, communal, processual, and normative understanding of ubuntu as rendering it vulnerable to the charge of social immanentism (my word, not theirs). In other words, it may function as a conservative philosophy or idea(l) that tends to justify and preserve, rather than challenge, entrenched social patterns of power, status, hierarchy, and domination, precisely because the emphasis is squarely on social harmony.

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Individual (or minority) well-being, resistance, or revolt against embedded power structures can be too easily quashed in the name of the community. This seems to be particularly salient with respect to gender domination. Where ubuntu is used to justify gender domination, it seems to place the ethical obligations associated with ubuntu, such as care, altruism, forgiveness, generosity, and such other-regarding virtues, one-sidedly on women, without also bestowing upon them the recognition of moral and personal excellence and respect and protection that ubuntu seems to promise those who perform well in communal virtues. Other authors contest this prevalent reading of ubuntu’s gender oppressiveness in two ways. On the one hand, there are theorists such as Metz and Molefe (and to an extent Oelofsen), who argue in an analytic way for an understanding of ubuntu that eschews the creation of hierarchies, including gender hierarchy—with the attendant danger of focusing only on ‘ubuntu-talk’, at the expense of ‘ubuntu-do’, and arguably at the expense of explicitly challenging abuses condoned in the name of ubuntu. On the other hand, we have a critic such as Chisale, who makes the case that empirically, there exist examples (even if they are historical) of ‘ubuntu-do’, where ubuntu as a care ethic functioned in a gender-neutral way, or at the very least, in a gender inclusive way. Whether her examples are minority and contesting positions or whether they were once dominant understandings is not clear. With ‘gender inclusivity’, I refer to Chisale’s description (2018: 6) of how the labour of hospitality is gendered, with the woman (wife) taking care of feeding travellers or strangers, giving them clean linen and warm water for bathing. The ‘husband’ (she assumes heterosexual monogamous households in her discussion of hospitality), she says, “discourages the perpetrators of rape and other forms of abuse on women’s bodies”; in other words, the husband plays a part in hospitality by making sure the guests behave themselves. Thus, even though hospitality is shared, it is a “partnership between wife and husband”, characterised by a clear division of labour: she writes, “… caregiving is not gendered, both men and women are custodians of caregiving in their own right and difference” (p. 7). Such a shared purpose with differentiated gender roles seems to echo Amadiume’s, Nzegwu’s, and Oelofsen’s visions of an ubuntu that recognises (gender) difference without using it to ground a gender hierarchy. Thus, on this reading, the obligation of ubuntu’s care ethic is universal or inclusive and apparently egalitarian; everybody, whether male or female, must enact care for the family name, and for the sake of the larger community, but there may be

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gender-specific ways in which they might have to do so. However, against this attractive version of ubuntu, we must also consider Elvis Imafidon’s position, which calls out both ubuntu-do and ubuntu-talk (the idealised position) for being inherently discriminatory in ways that go beyond gender.

African Personhood Discriminates Beyond Gender Imafidon levels an explosive charge against the African conception of personhood in his recent publication in Handbook of African Philosophy of Difference (2020), of which he is also the sole editor. His criticism of African personhood is focused on ubuntu-talk (values and principles) more than on ubuntu-do (practices). We have seen that there is a perhaps dominant, at least pervasive, understanding of personhood in the African context that sees it as normative, in the sense that it is something to be achieved. Imafidon refers to the normative or prescriptive sense of personhood so vividly discussed in Menkiti. According to this communal and processual understanding of personhood, he asserts, “it has to be acquired through internalisation of, or at least commitment to, social norms” (Imafidon 2020: 244). According to this perspective, also picked up by Gade (2012) as being pervasive among South Africans of African descent, personhood is conditional upon the fulfilment of certain social obligations and social roles. However, as Gade also shows, not all such conditions can in principle be fulfilled by everyone, since, for example, one of them stipulates being Black. Similarly, as we have seen in Menkiti, human beings who have not been transformed socially and ritually by a specific community, including young children and strangers, through no omission on their own part, can consequently not be viewed as (full) persons. Imafidon responds to this same problem in certain prevailing conceptions of African personhood. He goes further and claims that African conceptions of personhood do in fact distinguish between intrinsic value of human beings and purely extrinsic value that one can earn for oneself, but that this distinction is then used to ontologically divide human beings into those with, and those without, intrinsic value, and subsequently also those with and without, the capacity for normative personhood. His description of this situation is quite an indictment against those who consider African conceptions of personhood and ubuntu to entail universal or egalitarian obligations:

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…we could think of a foreigner who resides in an African place. She may live a community-accepted life and may be doing well in the normative sense of being a person within the community in which she lives, but it would still be difficult for her to be accepted as an African person or as part of the community of persons, and she may never be able to enjoy all the rights that persons within such a community enjoy because she is not yet seen as a person in the ontological sense. (Imafidon 2020: 245)

There seem to be many categories of human beings who lack personhood in this specific, ontological sense, according to Imafidon: people with mental or physical disabilities, children born of an African father and non-African mother or vice versa, persons with albinism, foreigners, non-­ Africans, and so on. Such persons are consequently also excluded from the full set of rights that come with assimilation and acceptance, by which the deep connection between personhood, recognition, and dignity is demonstrated: “rights to political participation, right to life and security, right to inheritance, right to own property, right to basic social amenities, right to benefit from religious rituals, and right to a proper burial” (p. 246). Full personhood thus clearly comes with a full suite of communally bestowed rights. Specifically, a person with albinism is viewed as possessing vital force but no spirit, rendering them incapable of becoming an ancestor after death (Imafidon 2018: 39–40). According to at least some sources (e.g. Gable 1996), at least in some communities, women generally also do not become ancestors after death. However, Imafidon claims that African women “that fulfil the ontological and normative conditions for personhood are indeed persons” (Imafidon 2020: 251), even if they are viewed as naturally/ontologically lacking in the traits that make for leadership and headship (p.  251). African women seem to me on his reading to hover uncertainly between those beings inherently bereft of personhood and the full personhood associated with the excellence of masculine virility and leadership (Imafidon, p. 241). Imafidon also offers an interesting explanation for African communities’ exclusion of those they regard as ‘ontologically other’: …African scholars pride themselves in the all-inclusive nature of African ontology. But as interconnected and interlocked as the African community of beings may be, it still excludes a number of beings or entities. The basic reason for this is to protect the socially approved web of relationships from anything that is different from or may threaten its harmony and equilibrium. (Imafidon 2020: 373)

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Arguably, if a community has such a suite of demanding caring obligations towards everyone who is recognised as a person, and thus ‘interlocked’ with them, then the community must be somewhat selective about whom it allows into its close-knit web of life to begin with, whom it endows with ontological considerability, one might say. This selectivity may also be understood in terms of the high levels of reciprocal support and mutuality that are prescribed based on the ontological interdependence of all community members. Therefore, what we see is that Imafidon strongly denies that personhood is always normative and conditional upon performance. He claims that African traditional thought acknowledges intrinsic worth alongside acquired worth (excellence), an extension of the duality inhering in personhood between “the metaphysical and communitarian conceptions of the African person, the ontological and social conception…, or the descriptive and normative conception…” (p. 241). On his understanding, for those appearing before the community bereft of intrinsic worth, there is still the option of becoming a person “if he [sic] works tirelessly toward it”. However, rightly, this for him is fundamentally unjust and a flaw in the African understanding of personhood; instead, Africans should “appreciate the importance of difference in the unfolding of reality” (p. 240) and come (change) to recognise “the intrinsic worth and value of all human beings regardless of their ontological and normative status”. This echoes Manzini (2018: 30), who calls for a recognition of relationality in African philosophy that is “guided by a stance of getting-­ to-­know, openness to communication that recognises differences cannot be erased”. Failure to do so leads in African societies to “a constant struggle for those not fitting into [personhood] to earn their worth and lead meaningful lives” (Imafidon 2020: 241). Imafidon thus, like Manzini, extends the discussion of African treatment of difference beyond sex and gender difference to other forms such as different skin colour and disability. He shows that African conceptions of personhood serve to disqualify certain human beings at the outset from respect and recognition by the community. An intrinsic worth, ontological status, judgement is thus at work prior to Menkiti’s famous normative personhood dependent upon performance of communal values and virtues. For such ontologically disqualified or at least ontologically problematic ‘persons’, then, personhood is understood to be fragile, conditional, and fully based upon achievement and on contingent social acknowledgement of such achievement. Imafidon thus contests Menkiti’s emphasis on personhood as a precarious achievement in all instances. When Menkiti

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claims that personhood is a project or process “at which individuals could fail” (p. 173), for Imafidon, this risk is not equally distributed, and some categories or persons are marked from the start as likely to fail at it. The full suite of rights bestowed by their community is highly unlikely to come their way. Where Menkiti’s example and discussion focus on the ‘positive’ end of the spectrum, i.e. the achievement of personhood through excellence (recall the paradigmatic masculine figure who obtains “plenitude of force at maturation”), Imafidon is rightly concerned about the other end of the spectrum, where one’s very personhood and thus one’s right to basic recognition, is greatly unstable and at grave risk due to factors of ontological exclusion from personhood. I now turn to ways in which personhood and ubuntu have been (re-)conceptualised to counter the view that these concepts have built-in justifications for the oppression of women and other categories of people.

Moral Standing (Dignity) in African Personhood I already pointed to the distinction between ‘ubuntu-talk’ and ‘ubuntudo’—a distinction that is probably, as Gouws and Van Zyl, from whom I obtain the distinction, also acknowledge (Gouws and Van Zyl 2015: 173), part and parcel of any normative system. There is always a gap between what people say they value and how they act in fact, and it would be unjust to the group in question (sub-Saharan Africans in this instance) not to acknowledge that all-too-human gap; not to say, to close off possibilities for internal reform and cultural change. A group can always be called upon to act better (more morally) either by reminding them of their professed values or proposing a new interpretation of those values that shows the way to morally better behaviour. As I read them, authors such as Metz, Molefe, and Imafidon propose amendments or new accentuations to the key concepts of ubuntu and personhood in African philosophy to prevent them from, or to sanction them for, being abused to justify oppressive relationships. I focus in this section mainly on Molefe’s insightful monograph, African Personhood and Applied Ethics (2020), because he captures the essence of the larger debate and suggests ways of strengthening the notion of African personhood to do the desired work in terms of contemporary ethics and applied ethics. I would say, characteristic of the kind of work Molefe and Metz produce, is a recognition that we should take as our point of departure (for our African social and political context) traditional African understandings, concepts, and values. However, they also

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agree that it is equally imperative that these should be critically scrutinised to ensure: (1) that they do not become mere reflections or feeble repetitions of dominant Western paradigms and simultaneously, (2) that they provide us with strong, critical frameworks that can assist us in thinking through complex, pressing, geo-political moral and political issues of our own time, with solutions that may go beyond and may disrupt traditional practices. Maybe one could say these theorists place ‘ubuntu-talk’ before ‘ubuntu-do’ in the sense that they want to strengthen the moral framework and then ask how it should be applied to concrete moral questions. Standing in some tension with this, as we have already seen, are thinkers such as Chisale, Gouws and Van Zyl, Oyowe and Yurkivska, who focus first on ‘ubuntu-do’ and then alert us to some of the problematic ways in which ubuntu is in fact currently understood and drawn upon to decide moral matters. Both these approaches run risks, as I already indicated, including foreclosing the discussion on ubuntu or rendering it impossibly utopian (vacuous and vague) and unrecognisable to contemporary Africans. In line with Imafidon, Molefe (2020: 1) also wants to focus on what he sees as an under-theorised aspect of African personhood, namely, moral status as intrinsic/inherent/innate or ontological dignity, as distinct from what he calls ‘moral perfection’ understood as performative, gradual, achieved self-realisation. He further fleshes out this distinction by importing the difference between patient-centred notions of personhood and agent-centred notions of the same (p. 3). For Imafidon, as we have seen, the parallel distinction is between intrinsic and extrinsic or acquired worth. Drawing on Western literature, Molefe (p.  4) sees the recognition of ‘moral status’ (in the moral ‘patient’) as respect being attributed to a being’s welfare, interests, and rights, “merely because it possesses relevant ontological features”. In this literature, such features typically include sentience, rationality, the soul, and the ability to suffer—all aspects that have been singled out as shared universally by all humans and that call for respect for their intrinsic dignity. While Molefe agrees with Menkiti, Kwame Gyekye (1992), Kevin Behrens (2013), and others who view the agent-centred, normative idea of personhood as dominant in the African tradition, he wants to emphasise what he sees as the underappreciated yet necessarily present element of patient-centred (or intrinsic worth) personhood, without erasing the action-centred view. He thus does not see them as competing or ‘diverging’ moral terms but instead wants to “appreciate the dual features” of personhood (both patient and agent) and focus on

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their interconnectedness (p.  6). More than finding this substantiated in traditional thought or practice, Molefe sees the patient-centred notion of personhood as a logical presupposition of the action-centred one, with the latter being “grounded on a particular view” of the former. His claim is thus that an intrinsic worth view underlies and precedes the extrinsic worth view, even though it is “usually implicit and not typically clarified, elaborated and defended in the literature” (p.  6). This argument runs parallel to those by Oelofsen (2016) and Manzini (2018) that a strongly relational ethos that explicitly prizes healthy relationships logically implies mutual respect, attentiveness, openness to difference, and equality because these are the conditions under which relationships thrive. To my mind, Molefe’s is an elegant way to harmonise two different perspectives on personhood and to enrich (some may say correct, moderate, or supplement) the prevailing African understanding of personhood as an achievement, which may nevertheless only be embarked upon by some. Inspired by the debate between Menkiti and Gyekye on personhood and moral status, Molefe (2020) concludes that underlying the high expectations that Africans have for the formation of moral excellence, or full personhood, is an intrinsic worth view—“human beings have moral status/ dignity insofar as they have the capacity for virtue” (p.  49). This view underscores the processual nature of personal formation as discussed earlier, as well as the optimistic view of human nature generally held by African scholars (p. 49), in contrast with dominant Western concepts such as ‘man is a wolf to other men’ and an ‘original sin’ that sowed permanent division among humans but also between humans and god/s and humans and nature. Molefe’s marriage of intrinsic and extrinsic worth also explicitly links what is intrinsically valuable (calling for respect) in human beings to their capacity for moral excellence. Finally, this inherent capacity for excellence is in African thought—different from key Western notions, for example, in the comparable tradition of virtue ethics—resolutely other-­ regarding, socially and relationally oriented. Here, Molefe (2020: 50) follows Wiredu (1996) by claiming that the ontological capacity for sympathy (ontological, intrinsic worth) is the root virtue that needs to be displayed/demonstrated/realised (acquired worth) if African humans wish to be recognised as persons by their communities. It is their intrinsic capacity for sympathy towards others that lends humans their moral dignity status. Molefe concludes, “Giving sympathy this foundational status means that to possess personhood is simply to be sympathetic [act sympathetic]; and the goal of morality is to develop this moral

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capacity” (p. 50; original emphasis). Such a view would support the idea that personhood is a personal achievement, the presence of which is the outcome of a person’s actual behaviour, leading Sebidi to say, “For Africans, human nature is capable of increasing or decreasing almost to the point of total extinction” (a private paper quoted in Molefe, p. 20). One becomes more or less of a person depending upon how much sympathy one concretely manifests towards others, with a total absence of sympathy (i.e. cruelty) ostensibly having the potential to obliterate or extinguish one’s personhood altogether. Behaviour over time, the kinds of repeated sympathetic  acts that become habitual, such as Aristotelian virtues, determine the extent to which we achieve excellent personhood. What Molefe wants to stress alongside this fundamental and widely shared idea is that it assumes that humans have intrinsic value because they (almost always) have the latent capacity for sympathy and for developing an excellence in expressing or embodying that core virtue. Molefe’s supplementation of the extrinsic worth model with what he assumes to be an intrinsic worth model presupposed by the former, and thus his view that they should be treated as logically and practically interconnected, ‘dual facets’ of African personhood, can help Imafidon to make the case that both aspects should be applied universally to all human persons and that deviations from this in practice and thought (that he points out) should be rejected as aberrations of African tradition. In other words, the very idea that groups of people (women, persons with albinism, or strangers) ontologically lack the very capacity for sympathy that makes us capable of personhood and that their personal status should thus be treated from the outset with suspicion now becomes untenable. The payoff of integrating (or Molefe might say explicating) the intrinsic worth side of the duality is considerable regarding African moral thinking’s capacity to criticise power imbalances and abuses within communities and thus to strengthen the democratic potential in African communal decision-making processes. In this regard, the way that Molefe goes about this integration or explication reminds me strongly of the work of Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela on the nature of political forgiveness. In my recent discussion of her work (Du Toit 2022b), I showed how she (interestingly!) rejected the idea of some Western scholars that some acts are intrinsically unforgivable (reflecting the dominance of the idea of extrinsic worth or normative personhood) in favour of an intrinsic worth perspective. However, she is cautious in this regard. For Gobodo-Madikizela, no

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specific act— however atrocious—can be said a priori to have destroyed the agent’s personhood (necessarily or automatically, permanently, and completely). The question is rather whether their immoral behaviour in the past has in fact (empirically) damaged them so much that they have lost all capacity for future sympathy with others. One sees here clearly the optimistic and dynamic view of the person, who is born with the capacity for sympathy and virtue and might be reborn into it, even after serious misdeeds. However, as we know, the mere abstract capacity is not enough; sympathy must be concretely manifested, as the African normative conception of personhood so eloquently emphasises. For Gobodo-Madikizela, this notion is paradigmatically expressed in her sustained encounter with Eugene de Kock, one of the masterminds of the apartheid regime’s dirtiest tricks. Gobodo-Madikizela, I showed (Du Toit 2022b) … does argue that interpersonal violence always harbours the potential to destroy the capacity of both victim and victimizer for human connection and empathy, leading to precisely such a loss of humanity (Gobodo-Madikizela 2008: 58). However, whether anyone has in fact permanently lost that capacity due to a traumatic event is something that can only be determined empirically, not in the abstract, and not in principle.

Forgiveness sometimes happened between victims and perpetrators meeting at the TRC hearings, according to her, because the mutual capacity for sympathy or empathy emerged and managed to be extended between the two parties, rehumanising both (Du Toit 2022b). The powerful insight that emerges in this scenario from an African sensibility is that since our humanity or personhood depends upon other humans, by allowing perpetrators of supreme cruelty back into the human (or ‘personhood’) fold, we might succeed in restoring their personhood status precisely by holding them to account, even more so than where punitive justice systems are at work. Molefe’s emphasis on the action ‘to hear’ the other, as a definition of the notion of sympathy he is after, is also instructive here. Often it was upon attending closely, in an embodied way, to the agony of the other, that the capacity for sympathy in spite of oneself welled up and created a way back to a humane relationship with the former enemy. In the unfolding, humanising drama of mutual sympathy being extended that Gobodo-Madikizela describes here, one can thus also see the interconnectedness of the two faces, as it were, of personhood, as discussed by Molefe.

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In Conclusion: African Personhood and Violence Against Women Amanda Gouws (2022) writes, “on 1 August 2018, thousands of women marched under the banner #TotalShutdown to bring South Africa to a standstill about the extraordinarily high levels of social violence (42,289 reported rape cases for 2019/2020) and intimate femicide five times higher than the global average”. World-record high levels of sexual violence against women seem to continue year in, year out, decade after decade, despite the country’s transition to democracy almost 30 years ago, and in spite of some government attempts to address the problem, such as the Thuthuzela Care Centres at police stations and the special Sexual Offences Courts, and despite women’s social and political protest. My question in this chapter is whether African understandings of personhood and Ubuntu work to normalise sexual violence against women or whether they (can) assist in opposing the phenomenon and can be effectively harnessed to demand justice and (a recognition of their) dignity for South African women. To the best of my knowledge, women activists have not yet drawn on the vocabulary of ubuntu and African traditional personhood in their demands for justice. However, should they? And if they do, how should they frame it? We have seen thus far that the dominant fault lines in African philosophy led some philosophers to argue that we should ‘fix’ ubuntu-talk, or the concept of personhood, e.g. by substituting or supplementing extrinsic worth of persons with intrinsic worth of persons, or by insisting on the equal and universal application of personhood categories. Conceptual clarifications thus emerging from philosophical laboratories, so the presumption goes, can then be used to criticise practices and ideals that go under the banner of tradition or culture but that distort these (logically or morally purified) concepts in reality. The dominant move is thus from theory to practice, on the assumption that some ‘traditional’ practices distort the proper understanding of ubuntu or personhood and that correct understandings will trickle down into better practice or ubuntu-do. Earlier, I indicated that such an approach runs the risk of prescribing a-historical and decontextualised moral notions to African communities in ways that are alienating and whose African lineage is obscure. To counter these risks, I suggested that we should look more closely at instances of ‘ubuntu-do’, where we are likely to find understandings of personhood and morality at work that are richer than philosophical

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models such as that provided by Menkiti and Mbiti, for instance. Moreover, in this concluding section, I propose that philosophers and other theorists should specifically focus on and learn from concrete traditions of struggle on the continent and thus on social movements that have in fact drawn from African notions of personhood to fight for the recognition of their dignity. We are bound to find there a struggle notion of African dignity and humanity that has been largely overlooked by the philosophical debates thus far and that definitely does not equate personhood with internalisation of, and compliance with, dominant social hierarchies and embedded patterns of domination. These approaches, I argue, are characterised by an element of being human that transcends and challenges existing power patterns and thus the suffocating immanentism that I propose threatens some versions of African tradition. This focus, rather than the philosophical approaches to personhood taken thus far, could better yield a conception of African personhood that can assist South African women in their struggle for dignity. To briefly summarise the pitfalls that we should avoid if we want to convincingly employ ubuntu and personhood in struggles for social justice, as they have crystallised in the discussion thus far. As Molefe (2020) also indicates, the word ‘dignity’ has retained something of a historical ambivalence. Etymologically, in the thirteenth century, the term (from the Old French and Latin) was closely associated with privilege and honour, and in the fourteenth century, it referred to “an elevated office, civil or ecclesiastical”, also to an “honourable place or elevated rank”. (Online Etymology Dictionary) The historical meaning of the term is therefore elitist—it precisely cannot logically refer to everyone because it is used to refer to select persons of an elevated rank who are meant to stand out amongst the anonymous crowd. It only later obtained the meaning that is today more commonplace, namely of an intrinsic worth that is found in every person. As such, I would argue, the term has become inherently part of a history of struggle—throughout (modern) history, groups of people who had to struggle to be recognised as beings with intrinsic, ontological worth (beings worthy of basic respect and a decent life, irrespective of their achievements) drew on this modern notion of dignity, universal(ising) and radically inclusive in its very nature. John Holloway (1998) (discussed in West 2015: 86) captures this struggle character of the idea of ‘dignity’/ intrinsic worth very well:

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Dignity, understood as a category of struggle, is a tension which points beyond itself. The assertion of dignity implies the present negation of dignity. Dignity, then, is the struggle against the denial of dignity, the struggle for the realization of dignity. Dignity is and is not: it is the struggle against its own negation.5

My concern is that oftentimes dignity functions more like a rank or status in much of African traditional thought, rather than as a category of radical contestation and a principle of justice in the hands of the powerless (see Vincent W Lloyd’s 2022 book, Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination). In other words, as Molefe also indicates, and Imafidon laments, the notion of intrinsic worth (as the call for recognition) rather than social honour or esteem seems to me to be underdeveloped in some influential renditions of personhood on the continent. Examples would be where only (able-bodied, reproductive) adult males have the chance to obtain levels of personhood that would allow them to obtain the status of ancestors, with albino persons, women, and people who do not procreate (successfully), categorically excluded from the same recognition and rights. Thus, the normative (also processual, communal, aspirational, ritualised, progressive) notion of personhood comes dangerously close to the older notion of dignity, closely associated with rank and elevated office and institutionalised power. With Menkiti’s and Wiredu’s recognition that personhood in this mode is viewed as concretely tied to the actual rituals, roles, norms, and expectations of the community into which an individual is born, the spectre of suffocating immanentism rears its head. If moral excellence and what it means to be a person is fully equated with internalising one’s local place’s values and sanctions and equating one’s being with one’s prescribed role, then standards of moral excellence leave very little space for the challenge of those very values and roles in the name of a higher or different (what I called ‘transcendent’) principle of justice. I contend that this is the kind of scenario that Manzini resists, that Imafidon resists, and what Makungu Mabunda (2022) describes in her thesis on child sexual abuse in traditional communities in South Africa. Her main finding was that: A cultural norm that seems to be common in most of the cultures identified in the studies under review is the need to protect the family name of the 5

 http://l’ibcom.org/library/dignitys-revolt-john-holloway.

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victim or survivor of child sexual abuse to avoid shame, disrespect, and embarrassment within the neighbourhood and community; therefore, families conceal the abuse and prefer to resolve the issue within the family context. Families also value privacy in sensitive matters; hence, they keep child sexual abuse a secret.

This is a worrying finding. However, ‘not reporting’ child sexual abuse may be interrogated. One might argue that state bodies are not trusted, but that child sexual abuse might nevertheless be brought to light and decisively dealt with within the family or families involved. However, when the details of the study are explored, it becomes clear that children themselves, and their families and the broader community, tend to allow shame to attach to the victims of abuse, leading to understandable fear in individuals (victims and their close supporters such as peers, siblings, or parents) to take the matter further. Such a situation, of course, provides fertile ground for further abuse and abuse with impunity. Communities tend to treat perpetrators with kindness and forgiveness and to underplay the injustice done to the victims. This is an application of ‘ubuntu’ (ideals of interrelatedness, sympathy, restoration of relationships, social harmony, and a good reputation) that potentially leads to grave injustices towards children in these communities. If ubuntu is understood in this context as a way to stabilise the community by reinforcing power relations, superficially harmonising relationships, and rendering the most vulnerable even more vulnerable still, then this becomes a good example of what I mean by suffocating immanentism. If Molefe’s cardinal ubuntu virtue of sympathy is invoked to forgive perpetrators rather than call them to account, then, as in the case of women who do all the care labour, ubuntu is invoked to justify harmful systems of domination. Gerald West’s (2015) insightful discussion of the self-understanding and revolutionary practice of Abahlali Basemjondolo helps us to see how traditional African understandings of personhood might be and are in fact employed in social justice struggles. For these activists, being rooted in family, community, and other cultural associations does not translate into stagnation but is the very basis for demanding radical social change, since 2005, in the name of the dignity of a countercultural or minority community. Their struggle/social movement itself is construed as “a space of dignity” for the shack dwellers, where ubuntu demands that they value one another as fully human in the face of a social order (including government agencies, local developers, academics, and NGOs) that

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fundamentally and concretely denies their humanity and dignity. Recall Chisale’s insight into how poverty is rightly traditionally understood “[as] a sign of exclusion from ‘the web of life’, and that therefore communities felt they could only prosper as a community if they were generous in a way that affirmed their interdependence”. Abahlali’s first president S’bu Zikode says their demands and their struggle is ‘about “being human”’, i.e. about intrinsic worth and personhood that must be recognised by the powerful. They see their demand for dignity as rooted in “the ideas of community and reciprocity found in the long struggle against apartheid” (West, p. 83). For this social justice movement, the cry and demand for dignity and a decent life is far removed from the normative (achieved) idea of personhood expounded by Menkiti. Their understanding of dignity is instead tied to resisting domination and oppression and humiliation: through reciprocity (amongst each other but also between themselves and their political opponents—they will be spoken with, not about, and they will be treated as equals or they will leave the table), through agency and voice, through autonomy (including thinking and deciding amongst themselves and educating themselves), and solidarity. Their struggles for ubuntu, personhood, and dignity mean that they are radically disobedient to the current order, without becoming criminal or violent. They say, “it is good to be out of order. We are not loyal to this [unjust and dehumanising] order”. Molefe also calls for ubuntu to be used to insist that “the material, social and economical conditions necessary for a human life to be possible” (for the pursuit of ubuntu in the sense of excellently other-regarding) is a basic condition that needs universal recognition. This reminds me of Gogo maThebe’s insight that traditionally ubuntu meant first and foremost that nobody should be too poor to live a decent life and participate in reciprocal support and mutually humanising activities. Speaking directly to the injustices that I see as sometimes justified by ubuntu-talk, Molefe states, “Ubuntu would be rendered unjust if it will push for reconciliation by avoiding to redress past injustices… [U]buntu … must critically position itself as an emancipatory discourse in the search for freedom and dignity of peoples below the Saharah and world-over” (Molefe and Magam 2019: 322). This is precisely the direction in which African personhood must be pushed, the direction in which its embeddedness in struggles for concrete dignity in South Africa must be rediscovered and further fleshed out by philosophers in a new movement from ubuntu-do to ubuntu-talk,

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for this debate to become fruitful for women’s struggle for dignity in contemporary South Africa. Finally, in response to my question at the outset of the chapter of whether dominant African conceptions of personhood and their attendant understandings of human dignity can serve as a resource in the struggle against the dehumanisation and degradation accompanying violence against women in contemporary South Africa, the answer is a resounding no. Or to qualify: the dominant conceptions of personhood within the philosophical literature are an unlikely resource for women’s struggles, whereas the dominant ‘struggle’ conceptions of personhood mentioned are a much more likely contender. This insight might imply that Menkiti’s canonical conception of African personhood might have to be dropped as the starting place for thinking about the issue. What Menkiti seems to me to leave largely undertheorised is the question of who the community is, and he seems to work with an idealised, timeless, and relatively isolated community, based upon nostalgia for a precolonial Africa that may never have existed. In an urban, multicommunal, and dynamic society such as contemporary South Africa, the question of the identity of the community is not discarded but has been radically destabilised and must be considered ever anew. Community, solidarity, identification, and what values should precede and harmonise social relations have all had to be rethought during South Africa’s long history of liberation struggles. To think that for the resolution of today’s most pressing social justice concerns we can revert to an idealised, closed community in which the moral demands of personhood can simply be read off the existing cultural scripts, is the utmost naivety, if not a way of avoiding confronting precisely these issues. A notion of African personhood that can do justice to women’s demands for dignity in a society where violence against women has become endemic and pervasive should not take its cue from conservative notions of community preceding personhood but rather from the vital tradition of struggles for recognition of dignity and for community itself, that started with the first movements against colonisation in Southern Africa. If we follow this route, we might have to again redefine the (counter)community to which we want to belong ontologically and epistemologically, which will be radically different in regard to the treatment of women than the one we currently must negotiate. Until then, “it is good to be out of order”.

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References Amadiume, I. 1987. Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society. London: Zed Books. Battersby, C. 1998. The Phenomenal Woman. London: Routledge. Behrens, K. 2013. Towards an Indigenous African Bioethics. South African Journal of Bioethics and Law 6: 32–35. Bohler-Muller, N. 2005. Fragile Connections. Griffith Law Review 14: 61–90. Butler, J. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. Brooklyn, London and Paris: Verso. Cavarero, A. 2016. Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Chisale, S. 2018. Ubuntu as Care: Deconstructing the gendered ubuntu. Verbatum et Ecclesia 39: 1609–1617. Cornell, D. 1998. At the Heart of Freedom: Feminism, Sex, and Equality. Princeton: Princeton Press. Diprose, R. 1994. The Bodies of Women: Ethics, Embodiment and Sexual Differences. London: Routledge. ———. 2002. Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas. Albany, New York: SUNY Press. Du Toit, L. 2022a. Contesting the Meaning/s of Sexual Violence in the South African Postcolony: Where Are the Male Victims? In Intimacy and Injury: In the Wake of #MeToo in India and South Africa, ed. Srila Roy, Shilpa Phadke, and Nicky Falkof. Manchester University Press. ———. 2022b. An African Feminist Approach to Forgiveness: Pumla Gobodo-­ Madikizela Considered. In Conflict and Resolution: The Ethics of Forgiveness, Revenge, and Punishment, ed. P.  Satne and K.  Scheiter, 239–264. New York: Springer. Du Toit, L., and E.  Le Roux. 2021. A Feminist Approach to Male Victims of Conflict-related Sexual Violence. European Journal of Women’s Studies 28 (2): 115–128. Emecheta, B. 1979. The Joys of Motherhood. London: Allison & Busby. Gable, E. 1996. Women, Ancestors and Alterity among the Manjaco of Guinea-­ Bissau. Journal of Religion in Africa. 26: 104–121. Gade, C. 2012. The Historical Development of the Written Discourses on Ubuntu. South African Journal of Philosophy 30: 303–329. Gobodo-Madikizela, P. 2008. Transforming Trauma in the Aftermath of Gross Human Rights Abuses: Making Public Spaces Intimate through the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In The Social Psychology of Intergroup Reconciliation, ed. A. Nadler, T.E. Malloy, and J.D. Fisher, 57–75. Oxford University Press.

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Gouws, A. 2022. Book Review, Ending Gender-Based Violence: Justice and Community in South Africa by Hannah Britton. Urbana: University of Illinois Press 2020, Hypatia, 2022, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.54. Gouws, A., and Van Zyl, M. 2015. Towards a Feminist Ethics of Ubuntu: Bridging Rights and Ubuntu. In Care Ethics and Political Theory, ed. Daniel Engster and Maurice Hamington. Oxford; (Online Edition, Oxford Academic, 20 August 2015; Accessed 7 January 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof: oso/9780198716341.003.0010). Gyekye, K. 1992. Person and Community in African Thought. In Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies, ed. Kwame Gyekye and Kwasi Wiredu, vol. 1, 101–122. Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. Haang’andu, P., and Bélant, D. 2019. Democratization Without Westernisation? Embedding Democracy in Local African Cultures. Politikon 46 (2): 219–239. https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2019.1612179. Holloway, John. 1998. Dignity’s Revolt. In Zapatista! Reinventing Revolution in Mexico, ed. John Holloway and Elíona Peláez, 159–198. London: Pluto. Imafidon, E. 2018. African Philosophy and the Otherness of Albinism: White Skin, Black Race. London: Routledge. ———., ed. 2020. Handbook of African Philosophy of Difference. Switzerland: Springer. Keevy, I. 2009. Ubuntu versus the Core Values of the South African Constitution. Journal for Juridical Science 34 (2): 19–58. Lloyd, V.W. 2022. Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Mabunda, M.G. 2022. Unpublished Master’s Thesis: “The Influence of Indigenous Cultural Norms on Non-Disclosure of Child Sexual Abuse: A Systematic Review.” University of Fort Hare. MacIntyre, A. 1984. After Virtue. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Manzini, N. 2018. Menkiti’s Normative Communitarian Conception of Personhood as Gendered, Ableist and Anti-Queer. South African Journal of Philosophy 37: 18–33. Mbiti, J. 1969. African Religions and Philosophy. New York, NY: Doubleday. Menkiti, I. 1984. Person and Community in African Traditional Thought. In African Philosophy: An Introduction, ed. R.  Wright, 171–181. Lanham: University Press of America. ———. 2004. On the Normative Conception of a Person. In Companion to African Philosophy, ed. K. Wiredu, 324–331. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Metz, T. 2011. Ubuntu as a Moral Theory and Human Rights in South Africa. African Human Rights Law Journal 11: 532–559. Mignolo, W. 2011. The Darker Side of Western Modernity. Duke: Duke University Press.

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Molefe, M. 2017. Personhood and Rights in an African Tradition. Politikon 45 (2): 217–231. https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2017.1339176. ———. 2020. African Personhood and Applied Ethics. Makhanda, South Africa: African Humanities Program Publications. Molefe, M., and N. Magam. 2019. What Can Ubuntu Do? A Reflection on African Moral Theory in Light of Post-Colonial Challenges. Politikon 46: 311–325. Nzegwu, N. 2006. Family Matters. New York: SUNY Press. Oelofsen, R. 2016. Afro-communitarian Implications for Justice and Reconciliation. Theoria, Issue 146, Vol. 63, No. 1 (March 2016): 1–19. https://doi. org/10.3167/th.2016.6314601 Osha, S. 2006. Philosophy and Figures of the African Female. Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy 20 (1–2): 155–204. Oyowe, O., and O. Yurkivska. 2014. Can a Communitarian Concept of African Personhood be both Relational and Gender-Neutral? South African Journal of Philosophy 33: 85–99. Tshivhase, M. 2013. Personhood: Social Approval or a Unique Identity? Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy 25: 119–140. West, Gerald. 2015. Contending for Dignity in the Bible and the Post-Apartheid South African Public Realm. In Restorative Readings: The Old Testament, Ethics, and Human Dignity, ed. L.  Juliana Claassens and Bruce C.  Birch. Eugene; Oregon: Pickwick Publications. Westman, Claire. 2022. Precarity, Ungrievability, and Thinking Beyond the Law: A Framework for Understanding the Position of LGB Individuals in South Africa. Acta Academica 54 (1): 1–20. Wiredu, K. 1992. Moral Foundations of an African Culture. In Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies, ed. K.  Wiredu and K.  Gyekye, 193–206. Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. ———. 1996. Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ———. 2005. Personhood in African Thought. In New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. M.C. Horowitz, vol. 4. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

CHAPTER 9

Intrinsic or Instrumental Value? African Philosophical Conceptions of Dignity John Sodiq Sanni

Introduction The notion of dignity in philosophy has been thematised within two main strands of thought. On the one hand, dignity is considered intrinsic, and on the other hand, dignity is said to be instrumental. These positions, of course, have implications for how other theories, for instance, human rights and social relations, are conceptualised. Australian philosopher Suzy Killmister (2017, 2064), who has written extensively on the moral debate on dignity, calls us to address three distinct clusters of moral issues surrounding dignity: first, “dignity has to do with the respect persons command, qua human being”. A good theory of dignity should provide sufficient philosophical reason for the claim that human beings, by virtue of their humanity, possess dignity or command respect. Killmister refers to this as the “universalist desideratum”. Second, “… dignity is the kind of feature that can be damaged, or persons can be stripped of—particularly if they are subject to severe humiliation, and most paradigmatically if they

J. S. Sanni (*) Department of Philosophy, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Molefe, C. Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1_9

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have been tortured” (ibid.)—Killmister refers to this as the “vulnerability desideratum”. A moral philosophical engagement should provide a clear justification on how a human being could be stripped of or reduce their dignity through acts of dehumanisation such as torture and rape. Last, actions must be critically analysed in a way that reveals an individual’s value and inherent dignity (Killmister 2017, 2065). The goal here is to adequately engage reasoning that “… explains why dignity is a virtue held to a higher degree by certain individuals”—the “achievement desideratum” (ibid.). This chapter focuses on the conceptual framing of dignity from an African philosophical perspective and the kind of value that can be reasonably attributed to dignity. It is in this sense that various ways of theorising dignity are important. Dominant Western views about dignity, such as Killmister’s, and African philosophical positions often consider only one of the two strands of theorising dignity; that is, they consider dignity either as an intrinsic or as an instrumental value. It is rare that these aspects are connected. For instance, Western positions, such as Donnelly (2015) and Kant (1996), understand dignity as an intrinsic value of human beings. The second strand of dignity, the “inflorescent” sense of dignity, is involved with the use of human agency and freedom through choice (Sulmasy 2008). Daniel Sulmasy rightly implies an important overlap between intrinsic and inflorescent dignity when he notes that inflorescent dignity entails “… living lives that are consistent with and expressive of the intrinsic dignity of the individual” (Sulmasy 2008, 473). Likewise, against a solely intrinsic account, I argue that dignity may be understood as a complex overlap of both instrumental and intrinsic values. For instance, human value is always determined in relation and not in isolation. This position is different from a Western account that considers dignity as emerging from an autonomous ontological foundation, wherein an individual is born with a distinctive ontological character of dignity. I consider an African philosophical position that makes a similar claim, but that provides a clearer and more plausible justification than dominant Western positions, for thinking of dignity as not solely an intrinsic and/or instrumental value at any given time. It is important also to note here that the overlap of intrinsic and instrumental dignity I propose is different from Sulmasy’s account. The African philosophical conception of dignity—as an overlap of intrinsic and instrumental value—reveals intrinsic dignity a posteriori, as opposed to expressing a priori dignity. The former presupposes the existence of intrinsic dignity, while the latter determines intrinsic dignity only

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after the instrumental value has been measured. The African conception of dignity I propose here reveals the intractable interwovenness between the intrinsic and the instrumental and the personal from the communal. This conception reveals the irreducibility of dignity to either the individual or the communal. In contrast, dignity as a value emerges from the intricate exchange between the communal and the individual. The word ‘value’ presupposes an implicit and explicit ontological connotation. This is because of the question ‘what?’ or ‘who?’ to which value must be attributed. The ontological category that I focus on in this chapter is that of human beings. Theorising dignity helps us philosophically engage with the kind of value we ought to attribute to human beings. The argument I make may be attributed to animals, but I focus mainly on human beings and the various ways we can theorise human dignity and the values that constitute human dignity. There are two main ways of conceptualising values: narrow and broad. In a narrow conception, value “is that which is good, desirable, or worthwhile” (Mintz 2018, n.p.). In a broad sense: Values are basic and fundamental beliefs that guide or motivate attitudes or actions. They help us to determine what is important to us. Values describe the personal qualities we choose to embody to guide our actions, the sort of person we want to be, the manner in which we treat ourselves and others, and our interaction with the world around us. They provide the general guidelines for conduct …. Values are the motive behind purposeful action. They are the ends to which we act. (n.p.)

On the one hand, Mintz’s conception of dignity as value in a narrow sense, in that it is good, desirable, or worthwhile. On the other hand, dignity as value in a broad sense points to the basic and fundamental beliefs that inform attitude and behaviour. This point will be further developed. However, it is very important to highlight, at this point, that value is measured by human actions and the implications of these actions for the community. In what follows, I develop, in three main sections, arguments from African philosophy that justify dignity with both intrinsic and instrumental values. In the first section, I explain how dignity is a value in an African philosophical worldview. Here, I draw on various African philosophical beliefs and concepts that demonstrate the importance of the value of dignity in African societies. Second, I present a critical engagement with

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various justifications for distinguishing intrinsic from instrumental African conceptions of dignity. In this section, I also present various Western conceptions of dignity to show how they differ from African conceptions. Third, while focusing on instrumental value, I explain why the African philosophical understanding of dignity is not exclusively intrinsic or instrumental value. In contrast, I argue that it is more complex and, therefore, both intrinsic and instrumental. To think of dignity as solely intrinsic is to undermine the social dimension, and to think of dignity as exclusively instrumental, one risks neglecting the individual factor. In other words, I argue that dignity is a value that is neither narrow nor broad.

Dignity as a Value in an African Episteme The erosion of African epistemology by colonialism has not entirely ridden Africa of its societal values. This is evident in the continuous use of proverbs, folktales, and wise saying. These African intellectual resources, as scholars such as Kwasi Wiredu (2003), Jonathan Chimakonam (2019), and Molefe (2022) have argued, should constitute an essential component of theorising about dignity in contemporary African societies, and this engagement must include a reimagination of and reflection on African cultural contexts and resources. It is important to reiterate here that my focus is on human beings as the only ontological category that I address in this chapter. Therefore, within African traditional societies, the ontological questions of ‘who?’ and ‘what?’ depend on the value that human beings deem appropriate or ascribe to this particular ontological category of being. It is important to add that by implication, and importantly, human beings, through the community that they form, promote values, rules, belief systems, and practices that justify and encourage values such as dignity, be it of intrinsic or instrumental/extrinsic value (I will use the terms instrumental and extrinsic interchangeably). Since human beings are the focus of the understanding of dignity that I present in this chapter, I consider it important to engage the various ways human beings, as an ontological category, are understood to be bearers of dignity in the African philosophical context. In this chapter, I explore four important ways of attributing dignity to human beings in African societies. First, human beings are considered dignified in their potentiality. Scholars such as Kwasi Wiredu (1996) argue that human beings are valuable and worthy of dignity by virtue of being born as human beings. This position, to my mind, supposes a particular kind of dignity that is informed

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by the potentiality of this particular ontological category. The point here is that a child might be incapable of elevated levels of cognitive awareness attributed to adults, but this child has the ability to attain adulthood and the necessary cognitive awareness that is constitutive of this adult stage once they have encountered the relevant maturation processes. Second, I consider the understanding of dignity as ontological actuality. This conception of dignity, which I shall unpack further shortly, pertains to a particular kind of ontological presence in the community that is reserved for older members of the community and ancestors (the living dead). Third, I consider the understanding of dignity as ontological instrumentality. This category is not only limited to things (nonhuman things) and animals. In various ways in African traditional societies, human beings are encouraged, while taking into consideration their importance/value, to cultivate individual dignity and values that promote the dignity and well-being of other members of their society or community. For instance, procreation is an important aspect of African society, and the value associated with procreation is often accorded to couples who have children, as opposed to those who do not. The value attached to having children is social in the sense that couples are valued for being able to contribute to the expansion of the community and for having heirs of their own—promoting their lineage. While this is the case, scholars such as Graness maintain that “[a] fundamental positive image of the human being does not allow seeing any individual as a threat, but only as a chance for the development of one’s own capacity for being human” (Graness 2019, 106). For Graness, this image of being human, understood here as having dignity, involves an aspect of relationality that is built on mutuality. In other words, dignity requires a commitment to duties that benefit others. This brings us to our fourth consideration, that is, of how human beings are considered dignified in relationality. The propensity or ability of every person to commune and relate with others is considered by a number of African philosophers to be the essential component of dignity (Metz 2011a, 237; see Molefe 2022). This understanding of the human ability to commune with others is shared by Julius Gathogo, who argues in favour of a conception of dignity as “being willing to work towards a better society that not only respects human dignity; but more importantly, a holistic and prosperous society for all” (2008, 52). The point here is that human dignity is summed up in the ability to promote peaceful communal relations and desire for collective growth.

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It is important to add that, regardless of the individualistic goals, what is essential to the communal approach to dignity is the notion that it “instructs us to respond to beings with a great capacity for community in a way that prizes community with them, i.e., that draws out, or actualises, this capacity” (Metz 2011a, 237). Within African societies, there appears to be individual dignity on the one hand and communal dignity on the other. In most African communitarian accounts of dignity, the focus is on communal dignity, but it is important to note that individual dignity not only constitutes communal dignity but also promotes and strengthens communal dignity. Matolino (2014, 10) also adds that “at the forefront of the characterisation of the communitarian thesis will be a recognition that any thesis that calls itself communitarian will seek to prioritise the importance of the community in the identity of the individual”. This idea resonates in the unique understanding of oneself in relation to others when Arendt notes that “though I am one, I am two-in-one and there can be harmony or disharmony with the self” (Arendt 2003, 90). The values, beliefs, and principles of African philosophy aim to advance the well-being of every member of the community. This position resonates with Martha Nussbaum’s outlook, where she notes that society will “seek to honor the dignity of each person … concerned with the development and maintenance of mutually affirming and enhancing relationships” (Nussbaum 2002, 1). Morality, as rightly observed by Molefe (2022), is the sole constitutive element of dignity. Human beings have dignity if they act and conduct themselves in ways morally acceptable to the community. The goal is to achieve integrity, as Krog puts it, by “becoming one-in-many— dispersed as it were among those around one” (Krog 2008, 363). Krog appears to suggest that dignity is not derived through a sense of self-­ absorption. In contrast, dignity does not entail solely being oneself. It involves being in a relational coexistence with others. To conclude, this section, I want to highlight an important point that I believe guides the crux of the claim that I make in this chapter. The understanding of dignity that I advance here is derived from the human capacity to be “both the subject and object of a communal relationship” (Metz 2011b, 169). Human relations are not static in a subjective or objective state; they are caught in a pendulum between objective and subjective states. Dignity in African traditional culture includes the desire to embrace these multiple states of being and to effectively discern the communal invitation. This idea will be further developed as this chapter unfolds.

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Intrinsic or Instrumental Value The nature of dignity demands that we reflect on its true state in a way that responds to the question: is dignity an intrinsic or instrumental value in African traditions and/or cultures? Discourses on dignity are also relevant in the sense that they engage and seek to respond to the questions on the ontological foundations for grounding moral relations. In various works of Sulmasy (2007, 2008), Lewis (1983, 197), and Molefe (2022), allusions are made to three important conceptions of dignity: (a) intrinsic dignity, (b) attributed dignity, and (c) inflorescent dignity. ‘Intrinsic dignity’ refers to an understanding of dignity that is attained by virtue of being a human being, and this is often considered the sole determinant of human dignity. This conception of dignity has also been understood as inherent dignity (Hughes 2011; Michael 2014; Miller 2017). It is important to emphasise here that intrinsic dignity is informed by an understanding of human beings as having value regardless of their disposition or benefit to the community; this view of dignity is often inferred from significant qualities or attributes belonging to the nature of human beings. A major characteristic of intrinsic dignity, as rightly articulated by Molefe, is that it is ‘inalienable’ because it is based on necessary facts of human existence (Molefe 2022). Attributed dignity stems from the value that is attached to individuals based on their life choices (Sulmasy 2008; Molefe 2022). By this, Sulmasy and Molefe maintain that individuals’ actions could be the bases for dignity. For instance, the presidents of nations, such as Barack Obama, Robert Mugabe, and Nelson Mandela, earned dignity by virtue of their role within society. To my mind, this understanding of value could be likened to an instrumental value. This is because the nature of this value is one that is ascribed to the individual. Unlike intrinsic dignity, attributed dignity is not a value that one acquires by virtue of being born. In other words, attributed dignity is not based on a value that a thing or a person has ‘in itself’ and/or value in themselves, regardless of external influences, merits, or other factors. It is based on human achievements, the value that is attributed to the achievement and the resultant dignity that emerges from these achievements. Those who consciously pursue this kind of dignity have arguably derived their dignity from extrinsic sources, and thus, it is also instrumental. Therefore, it is plausible to argue that attributed dignity is based on extrinsic values that are at the same time instrumental. The point here is that values that are not intrinsic could be instrumental and/or extrinsic.

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The last conception of dignity that I engage here is ‘inflorescent’, and it refers to a kind of dignity that emerges from a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic value, which I have also referred to as instrumental value. This value has to do with living and leading a life that is concomitant with both instrumental and intrinsic virtue. Molefe has the following to say about this point: “It is a term that captures human or moral excellence insofar as the individual would be living a life expressive of the basic features of human nature and its possibilities” (Molefe 2022, 7). I interpret Molefe here to mean that there may be a connection between intrinsic and extrinsic (instrumental) value. Inflorescent value is a combination of both extrinsic values and intrinsic values, including how one reflects the other. An example will further illustrate this point. For instance, a person known for acts of generosity in the community is said to be a ‘generous person’ because the act speaks for the person’s internal disposition. In a way, the respect implied by the phrase ‘generous person’ is not solely intrinsic; it is also revealed in actions or deeds. From the above notions or kinds of dignity, it is plausible to argue that there is a connection or interconnection between intrinsic and extrinsic dignity that results in inflorescent dignity. Put differently, intrinsic and extrinsic values are always connected. The basis of this connection is in the relationality of dignity, which measures the intrinsic on account of the extrinsic (instrumental). This connection, informed by an African conception of dignity, is such that it is difficult clearly to distinguish between the personal and the communal in any discourse on dignity. From a moral point of view, which is the point that I advance in this chapter, intrinsic and extrinsic dignity reveal a complex layer of dignity that needs to be engaged. I already alluded in the previous section that all extrinsic dignities are not necessarily moral in the sense that their intent stems from the instrumentalisation of intrinsic dignity for the purposes of attributed dignity. The question that emerges then is how do we have or gain access to someone else’s intention? Perhaps a more complex question is, granted that dignity entails being subject to, and upholding, relevant normative principles (Killmister 2017), are acts with intended instrumental goals dignified acts? In response to these questions, one could rightly argue that the violation of dignity depends on the subjective or communal course, and this falls back to, as Killmister puts it, “the agential and social harms that accompany dignity violation” (2017, 2063). The measure of the value accorded to dignity depends on subjective and communal agreements. While dignity is considered an intrinsic value, as opposed to instrumental

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value (a kind of value attributed to a car, house, food, clothes, etc.), these attributes are considered instrumentally valuable in the sense that they help us to achieve other goods. The position that I propose in this chapter goes beyond the narrow attribution of dignity to either intrinsic or instrumental value. I propose an understanding of dignity, originating from African traditional notions, which align with ‘inflorescent’ accounts of dignity. However, as opposed to the inflorescent value that emerges from the combination of intrinsic and instrumental value in the understanding of dignity, I argue that dignity is at no point solely intrinsic or instrumental. Put differently, within intrinsic notions of dignity are some instrumental foundations necessary for the validation of intrinsic value, and the same applies to the instrumental value; within instrumental value are intrinsic values that justify and necessitate instrumental value. Focusing mainly on the African philosophical framework, I proceed to further my argument in the next section.

Dignity: Intrinsic and/or Instrumental Value As a starting point for this section, I consider it necessary to re-emphasise the agential nature of human society in African cultures. This agential nature does not merely differentiate between the individual and the collective or the subjective and the communal; it goes beyond these divisions by underscoring the significance of the communal over the individual even though the individual makes up the community. This communal foundation permeates every aspect of African cultures and societies. Menkiti (1984, 180) is emphatic about the communal foundation of a particular African society when he notes that: In the African understanding, priority is given to the duties which individuals owe to the collectivity, and their rights, whatever these may be, are seen as secondary to their exercise of their duties. In the West, on the other hand, we find a construal of things in which certain specified rights of individuals are seen as antecedent to the organization of society; with the function of government viewed, consequently, as being the protection and defence of these individual rights.

In light of Menkiti’s position, it is necessary to introduce a subset to the understanding of dignity. This is necessary for theorising the kinds of value that Africans attach to dignity. Within African societies, one must distinguish subjective dignity from collective dignity. We could also think of this

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distinction in terms of individual and communal forms of dignity. For Menkiti, an individual’s relationship to the community is conceived in terms of duty, and it is presumed that the community has a right to individuals’ duties. There is a lot of literature that discusses Menkiti’s position, but my task in this chapter does not demand that I engage this any further than I have. Menkiti’s point remains clear, which is that the community and the individual are connected through collective duty. Similarly, scholars such as Killmister observe that “[a]n agent’s dignity can also be constituted through being subject to standards that her community recognises as binding on members” (2017, 2073). The point is that an individual’s understanding of dignity and/or value is driven by internalised standards that have been adopted from society. However, this is not the only way. The internalisation of social standards, upon reflection, can bring about new individual standards of dignity. Killmister writes, “We are dignified when we uphold those standards. More carefully, we come to have the status of a dignity-bearer because we recognise standards of behaviour and bearing, which we take to have normative force over us” (2017, 2071). While I agree with the position of Killmister, she is not precise about the origin of this individual dignity and the implication of violating the source of this individual dignity. It is important to note, however, that an individual’s dignity-bearing depends on the relationship that an individual has towards herself, first, and to the community. For instance, within an African traditional setting, a lazy seamstress who is not faithful and committed to the terms of an agreement between herself and a patron could be considered as lacking dignity and integrity. People in the neighboured might go to the extent of publicising the seamstress’ disrespect to herself and to the community. It is necessary to highlight an important nuisance here: not all instances of personal dignity are tied to the community. These, to my mind, do not have any influence on the community in the same way the case of the seamstress does. In summary, there are instances when personal dignity is subjective. In most African societies where as I have highlighted, there is a strong emphasis on community, the measure of normative value is set by standards of the community. It is difficult to emphasise or justify a value that undermines the values of the community. I maintain that an individual’s dignity, what Killmister refers to as ‘personal dignity’, depends on an individual’s ability to respect the dignity of others by not violating communal standards. In other words, respect for other people’s dignity serves to validate or reaffirm personal or individual dignity. Individual dignity is

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necessary for communal dignity because of the inextricable ties that human beings always have to the community. According to Gyekye (1997, 67), these communal normative standards “implicate the individual in a web of moral obligations, commitments and responsibilities” for the sake of communal dignity. The argument that personal dignity does not depend on communal dignity is misleading because it does not consider the complex layer that emerges when philosophically engaging with individual dignity and its connection to communal standards. For instance, one may consider the case of mentally incapacitated individuals who do not have sufficient moral capacity to uphold communal standards of dignity. Can mentally impaired people be accorded dignity in the same way as people with sufficient moral agential capacity to execute the demands of communal normative standards? The demands on morally impaired people in African society are often not that high due to our awareness of their inability to process and execute these communal standards. Unlike scholars such as Meyer (1989), who insist that dignity depends on the human ability for self-control, societies in Africa often encourage their members to take care of morally impaired people, who are unable to self-regulate, from exploitation and violation. Mental impairments are not necessarily the only form of impairment within societies. There are other cases that could be classified under ‘mild sense of impairment’, and these could be attributed to people with ill health or to those who are fragile due to aging, among other factors. Again, in these instances, it is binding on members of African societies to protect and aid those who are unable to process and execute the normative communal standards of dignity in the society. In African societies, “… immorality is the word or deed which undermines fellowship” (Kasenene 1998, 21), and to maltreat people for any reason is immoral. Scholars such as Gyekye spell out the nature of these communal standards that inform the commitment that individuals have not only to themselves but also to other members of the community. These include but are not limited to communal aid, reciprocity, social harmony, solidarity, interdependence, and generosity (Gyekye 1996, 35). These communal normative standards are necessary for “the individual human person lacks self-sufficiency … clear from the fact that our capacities and talents, as human beings are plainly limited and not adequate for the realisation of basic needs” (Gyekye 1996, 37). Put differently, individual dignity depends on our ability to protect and execute the communal normative standards of dignity. This brings us to the second subset of dignity, communal dignity.

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I have referred to communal normative standards without sufficiently addressing their nature or how they are formulated and their implications for communal dignity. I have, however, hinted that human dignity, in African ethics, can only emerge through commitment to communal normative standards. Within societies, there are normative standards that human beings personally recognise and that are binding on members of that community (See Killmister 2017). The violation of these normative standards brings about shame and disrespect to the person, such that the person is said to lose their dignity. The foundation of this relational conception of dignity stems from an understanding of community that remains a live source of an individual’s identity. Gyekye (2003, 352) succinctly captures the implications of the communitarian conception of the individual: (i) that the human person does not voluntarily choose to enter into human community, that is, the community life is not optional for any individual person; (ii) that the human person is at once a cultural being; (iii) that the human person cannot—perhaps, must not—live in isolation from other persons; (iv) that the human person is naturally oriented towards other persons and must have relationship with them; (v) that social relationships are not contingent but necessary; and (vi) that, following from (iv) and (v), the person is constituted, but only partly […], by social relationships in which he necessarily finds himself.

From the above, we can define communal normative standards as a set of rules formulated and passed down to the community to protect the lives, rights, and interests of members of that community. Imafidon (2012) rightly observes that by virtue of our existence, we are communal beings. Every human being necessarily enters into a community of other humans. According to Gyekye, “community existentially derives from the individual and the relationships that would exist between them” (Gyekye 1997, 38). Gyekye’s position proposes, to my mind, two ways of understanding human disposition to social dignity. On the one hand, social dignity is internal, and on the other hand, it is external. The external disposition pertains to how communal normative standards are formulated and how rules meant to punish violators are regulated. Social dignity can also be considered internal in the sense that it is the individuals who constitute the communal cluster that determine the normative standards that justify rules, punishment, or praise. The internal conception of dignity is always informed by the normative standards of the communal of which the

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individual is part. The point here is that the external and the internal constitute the body that regulates norms of integrity and dignity. Since it is the community that “transmit[s] a shared moral culture from generation to generation, as well as constantly reformulating this moral framework over time” (Gilman 2005, 778–779), there must be internal integrity and dignity within the process. This is why scholars such as Wiredu (2003, 338–347), while demonstrating the practical implications of communal leadership, insist on how, within the Akan culture of Ghana, the common good is the hallmark of collective principles of security and the promotion of the standards of human dignity within the African community. Desmond Tutu also notes that “[s]ocial harmony is for us (Africans) the summum bonum—the greatest good. Anything that subverts or undermines this sought-after good is to be avoided like the plague” (Tutu 1999, 35). Tutu points to the fact that individual dignity cannot and should not be prioritised over the common good of the community. However, it is important to add here that the common good explicitly promotes a kind of reciprocity that encourages generosity (Cobbah 1987, 322–323). The understanding of the communal good here is not a once of act of kindness; as Murove (2007, 181) puts it, “(O) ne should always live and behave in a way that maximises harmonious existence at present as well as in the future”. Therefore, the instrumental nature of dignity is crucial for according and measuring intrinsic dignity. Intrinsic dignity is measured against human abilities to contribute to or generate communal good through acts of kindness. The overlap is in the intention, having processed communal goals, that informs instrumental dignity (acts of kindness). This framework is different from the Kantian position that the nature of dignity is intrinsic in the sense that it promotes and emphasises human autonomy. This is a position that views human dignity as absolute as opposed to relative or conditional (Formosa 2014; Beitz 2013; Dan-Cohen 2011; Kerstein 2010). Contrary to this, others have argued that we must think of dignity as instrumental in the sense that we expect a kind of final value or an end result (Rønnow-Rasmussen 2002), and some scholars even go further to add that intrinsic value is dependent on instrumental value (Korsgaard 1983). John Mbiti’s (1969, 141) classic aphorism, informed by the Sub-­ Saharan African moral framework, “I am because we are; and since we are, therefore I am” speaks to the question of dignity in general and to the nature of dignity in African society in particular. If we hold the aphorism

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to be true, then it is difficult to think of dignity as strictly intrinsic in the sense that Kantians conceive of it. If one is to formulate an aphorism in line with an African conception of dignity, drawing from Mbiti’s formulation, it would read thus, my dignity depends on the dignity of other persons, and without their dignity, I am not a bearer of dignity. What this aphorism points to is that the classification of the nature of an individual’s dignity as either intrinsic or instrumental depends on communal normative standards. The question of whether dignity is an intrinsic good in itself or an extrinsic good that is instrumentally valuable for the community only arises in relation to the other and not in isolation. The measure of the intrinsic nature of human dignity in African society can only be weighed against the human disposition toward the communal normative standards of a given society. Human relations can only be measured instrumentally because this is the only epistemic access the community has to the individual. The focus, for most African societies, is on what an individual brings to the community and what that presents or prevents within the community (Conee 1982). My task in this section has been to philosophically engage with the nature of intrinsic and extrinsic value in theorising dignity within most African societies. Although scholars such as Gyekye (2003, 359) call for a more “appropriate and adequate account of the self than the unrestricted or radical account in that the former addresses the dual features of the self: as a communal being and as an autonomous, self-determining, self-­ assertive being with a capacity for evaluation and choice”, the various aspects of human autonomy gain validation and legitimacy within a community. This is the reason behind the position that “[e]very member is expected to consider him/herself an integral part of the whole and to play an appropriate role towards achieving the good of all” (Gbadegesin 1991, 65). While I understand and fully subscribe to conceptions of dignity that differentiate between intrinsic and instrumental values and personal and communal dignity, for the reasons presented above, I argue that these classifications or subsets are not applicable within African societies. This is not because they are not present. In contrast, it is because they are interwoven in an intractable way that it is difficult to disentangle the intrinsic from the instrumental and the personal from the communal. The significance of conceiving dignity as a value that is not exclusively intrinsic or instrumental reveals the importance of the relational dimension of value in societies in Africa. While focusing on instrumental value, I maintain that dignity in Africa is conceived and perhaps should be understood as both intrinsic and

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instrumental value. Since human beings are relational beings, to think of value as nonrelational is not only theoretically implausible but also practically impossible and morally unreason in African societies.

Conclusion In summary, the first section of this chapter highlighted an important dimension of the African philosophical conception of dignity. Drawing on the works of various influential African philosophers who address this subject, I explained how one’s contribution to the common good informs the core value of African dispositions toward dignity. This disposition toward dignity is revealed in African philosophical views, beliefs, and religion. In the second section, I presented a critical philosophical appraisal of some justifications for thinking of African conceptions of dignity as having both intrinsic or instrumental attributes. In that section, I also highlighted various Western conceptions of dignity and how they differ from African conceptions. Third, this chapter explained how the African understanding of dignity is typically conceived. I argued in this chapter that dignity within African societies is neither solely intrinsic nor solely instrumental at any given time or circumstance. This is because the intrinsic values and attributes of human beings are driven by normative standards guiding a community. The violation or adherence to communal normative standards does not solely reveal either the intrinsic or instrumental disposition of the individual. Conversely, they reveal both the intrinsic and instrumental dispositions of the individual towards themselves and the community. Thus, the value attached to dignity in African societies is intricately both intrinsic and instrumental. The implication of theorising dignity as a value that is not exclusively intrinsic or instrumental is that it reveals the importance of the relational dimension of dignity as a value in African societies. While focusing on instrumental value, I maintain that dignity in Africa is conceived and perhaps should be understood as both intrinsic and instrumental value.

References Arendt, H. 2003. Responsibility and judgement. New York: Schocken Books. Beitz, C. 2013. Human dignity in the theory of human rights: Nothing but a phrase? Philosophy & Public Affairs 41: 259–290. Chimakonam, J. 2019. Ezumezu: A system of logic for African philosophy and studies. Cham: Springer.

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Cobbah, J. 1987. African values and the human rights debate: An African perspective. Human Rights Quarterly 9: 309–331. Conee, Earl. 1982. Instrumental value without intrinsic value? Philosophia 11: 345–359. Dan-Cohen, M. 2011. A Concept of Dignity. Israel Law Review 44: 9–23. Donnelly, J. 2015. Normative versus taxonomic humanity: Varieties of human dignity in the Western tradition. Journal of Human Rights 14: 1–22. Formosa, P. 2014. Dignity and respect: How to apply Kant’s formula of humanity. Philosophical Forum 45: 49–68. Gathogo, J. 2008. African philosophy as expressed in the concepts of hospitality and ubuntu. Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 130: 39–53. Gbadegesin, S. 1991. African philosophy. New York: Peter Lang. Gilman, M. 2005. Poverty and communitarianism: Toward a community-based welfare system. University of Pittsburgh Law Review 66: 721–820. Graness, A. 2019. Ubuntu and the politics of migration. In Ubuntu and the everyday in Africa, ed. J. Ogude and U. Dyer, 89–112. Trenton: Africa World Press. Gyekye, K. 1996. African cultural values: An introduction. Accra: Sankafa Publishing Company. ———. 1997. Tradition and modernity: Philosophical reflections on the African experience. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2003. Person and community in African thought. In The African philosophy reader: A text with readings, ed. P. Coetzee and A. Roux, 348–366. Cape Town: Oxford University Press of Southern Africa. Hughes, G. 2011. The concept of dignity in the universal declaration of human rights. Journal of Religious Ethics 39: 1–24. Imafidon, E. 2012. The concept of person in an African culture and its implication for social order. Lumina 23: 1–19. Kant, E. 1996. Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. Translated by M. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kasenene, P. 1998. Religious ethics in Africa. Kampala: Fountain Publishers. Kerstein, S. 2010. Dignity and preservation of personhood. In Humiliation, degradation, dehumanisation: human dignity violated, ed. P. Kaufmann, H. Kuch, C. Neuhäuser, and E. Webster, 231–241. Dordrecht: Springer. Killmister, S. 2017. Dignity: personal, social, human. Philosophical Studies 174: 2063–2082. Korsgaard, C. 1983. Two Distinctions in Goodness. The Philosophical Review 92: 169–195. Krog, A. 2008. ‘This thing called reconciliation…’: Forgiveness as part of an interconnectedness–towards–wholeness. South African Journal of Philosophy 27: 353–366. Lewis, D. 1983. Extrinsic properties. Philosophical Studies 44: 197–200. Matolino, B. 2014. Personhood in African philosophy. Dorpspruit, Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications.

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Mbiti, J. 1969. African religions and philosophy. Doubleday and Company, New York. Menkiti, I. 1984. Person and community in African traditional thought. In African philosophy: An introduction, ed. Richard Wright, 171–181. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Metz, T. 2011a. An African theory of dignity and relational conception of poverty. In The humanist imperative in South Africa, ed. John De Gruchy, 233–241. Stellenbosch: Sun Press. ———. 2011b. Ubuntu as a moral theory and human rights in South Africa. African Human Rights Law Journal 11: 532–558. Michael, L. 2014. Defining dignity and its place in human rights. New Bioeth 20: 12–34. Miller, S. 2017. Reconsidering dignity relationally. Ethics and Social Welfare 11: 108–121. Meyer, M. 1989. Dignity, rights, and self-control. Ethics 99: 520–534. Mintz, S. 2018. What are values? Ethics Sage. Accessed 11 June 2023. https:// www.ethicssage.com/2018/08/what-­are-­values.html. Molefe, M. 2022. Human dignity from an African perspective: A short introduction. Cham: Springer. Murove, M. 2007. The Shona ethic of Ukama with reference to the immortality of values. The Mankind Quarterly 48: 179–189. Nussbaum, M. 2002. Capabilities and disabilities: justice for mentally disabled citizens. Philos Top 30: 133–165. Rønnow-Rasmussen. 2002. Instrumental values—strong and weak. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 5: 23–43. Sulmasy, D. 2007. Human dignity and human worth. In Perspectives on human dignity: a conversation, ed. J. Malpas and B. Lickiss, 9–19. Springer, Dordrecht. ———. 2008. Dignity and bioethics: history, theory, and selected applications. In The President’s Council on bioethics, human dignity and bioethics: Essays commissioned by the President’s Council, 469–501. Washington, DC: The President’s Council on Bioethics. Tutu, D. 1999. No future without forgiveness. New York: Random House. Wiredu, K. 1996. Cultural universals and particulars: an African perspective. Indiana University Press, Indianapolis. ———. 2003. The moral foundation of an African culture. In The African philosophy Reader: A text with readings, ed. P. Coetzee and A. Roux, 337–348. Cape Town: Oxford University Press of Southern Africa.

CHAPTER 10

Un/Re-covering the Concept of Dignity in an African Thought Scheme Through Igbo Proverbs on Greatness, Nobility and Honour Lawrence Ogbo Ugwuanyi

Introduction Whereas there is a wide range of literature on justice, rights and personhood in African philosophy,1 there is poor literature on the notion of dignity in African philosophy. By dignity, I mean dignity as it relates to the human person; that is, dignity as it can be ascribed to a person or an individual. However, dignity broadly conceived as relating to the entire fabric of African life features as an overall normative consideration in African philosophy. Indeed, the subject of dignity at the broader social 1  Some of the literature on rights and personhood in African thought include (Ake 1987; Ananyo 1998; Cobbah 1987).

L. O. Ugwuanyi (*) Department of African Philosophy, Centre for Mobilisation of Stakeholders, University of Abuja, Abuja, Nigeria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Molefe, C. Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1_10

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level is implicated in the entire project of African philosophy as part of an effort to reclaim the humanity and dignity of Africans that have been subjected to ridicule through colonialism. However, if dignity at the wider level has gained enough attention in African scholarship, why has discourse on the dignity of the person and the grounds on which it is upheld been neglected? Why did the broader normative question of the dignity of a person not motivate focused investigation on the concept of dignity itself in African philosophical enquiry? These questions are implicated in one another, and I shall answer them jointly. A plausible answer to these questions is that the social dimension of dignity might have drawn more attention in African philosophy because the reading of the human person is somehow imbued with strong assumptions such that theorising about the person is often very demanding. The concepts that are desired to engage the human person are often considerably psychological and sociological, and it would take some advancement in and application of African psychology or African sociology to engage the subject of dignity in African thought reliably. The second answer is that there is a beclouding emphasis on the sociality of the person in African thought at the expense of consideration of the individual, which can affect the study of the person (individual) in relation to concepts such as dignity. The third plausible answer is that dignity strictly speaking does not command such force and interest as other political values and principles such as right and justice. One cannot, strictly speaking, be punished for lacking dignity, while a person can be punished for not observing the principles of justice and right. A forceful and impactful concept of dignity may be seen to be lacking in African society. However, this is not the case with other concepts such as justice, rights and peace. These concepts are legally more demanding in the sense that a person can be punished for violating these principles. Hence, they are inscribed in many laws and regulations of society. Dignity may ground these concepts, normatively speaking, but only indirectly may it be said to impact African political life, with respect to justice, rights and peace. What I aim to do in this work is to engage with the concept of dignity by interrogating how it is read in the Igbo thought scheme. To do so, I engage with Igbo proverbs on dignity. In doing so, I do not hold that all Africans approve of the Igbo thought scheme. However, I suggest that the Igbo concept of dignity is a credible and reliable medium for locating an African notion of dignity. This is because while there are cultural differences among Africans, these differences are less stark at the ontological

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and anthropological levels. This can be illustrated in the commonality of values such as the sacredness of life, respect for life and hospitality to strangers among Africans, to which the Igbo belong. The other reason for this approach is that many of the views authoritatively held by Africans may be located through proverbs and axioms, and the Igbo especially prizes the use of proverbs to convey normative concepts. Among the Igbos, proverbs are like manures that fertilise thought and provide the basis for an illustration of speech. An Igbo proverb captures the unique and invaluable worth of proverbs in administering wisdom when it says A tụọrọ ọmara ọ mara; a tụọrọ ofeke o fenye isi n’ọhịa (If you speak to the wise, he understands, but if you speak to the fool he/she flies to the bush). Another proverb states that “A child who knows how to use proverbs has justified the dowry paid on his mother’s head”). To achieve the objectives of the work, I first articulate the notion of dignity in Igbo thought and articulate the possible illustrations of dignity in Igbo thought. I then interpret dignity as Greatness, Nobility and Honour, and I map out proverbs that illustrate these principles and values. I explain the proverbs and the meanings that they suggest. I then relate the notion of dignity to the Igbo ontology. In relating the notion of dignity to Igbo ontology, I will relate dignity to Igbo existentialist ontology, that is, the notion of being and the principles that define and direct that in Igbo thought, which leads the Igbo to try to attain the status of a dignified person. My aim here is to illustrate how the Igbo notion of life and meaning could be held to foreground the notion of dignity in Igbo thought. I will do this because for the Igbo, everything has a material and spiritual counterpart, and seeking to explain the idea of dignity would demand locating how the spiritual aspect of Igbo thought approves my claim. Finally, I note that this study is not a work on anthropology, ethnology or sociology but a hermeneutical engagement with African philosophy. My work takes a hermeneutical approach toward foundational micro-­principles built into a concept so that the meaning assigned to the concept of dignity may be properly read.

Dignity in Igbo Thought To the ordinary person, who does not have a deep encounter with the Igbo thought scheme, the expression Kwanyere onwe gi ̣ ugwu (respect yourself), might be used to capture the demand for dignity. This is probably because one achieves dignity first by respecting oneself or that

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self-­respect is a highly placed value ethic in Igbo thought. Ugwu might roughly stand for dignity. Hence, it is common to hear the expression Ugwu bụ nkwanye nkwanye! (Respect is reciprocal). However, while this expression may capture an aspect of dignity, it does not do so totally. This is because there are other wider meanings that can be attached to dignity that these expressions do not capture. Consider the Igbo custom of burying the dead with a sacred cow or carrying out the funeral of a dead elder with a cow—the type that falls under the category of Efi Igbo—Humpless Longhorns (N’Dama). Part of the explanation for this custom is the nobility with which a cow is identified and how a cow is considered to be the animal that can appease the spirits and admit the dead to the class of ancestors. In this tradition, the cow is a symbol of a dignified burial of the dead. Here, the illustration is not just of respect but also of the fact that the cow is a sign of nobility and greatness of the life lived by the dead. However, while ugwu may usually be thought to denote dignity, this is not correct. In Igbo thought, dignity properly construed translates to ọgọ. To refer to a thing as dignified, the Igbo could say—ihe a di ̣ ọgọ. Ọ gọ might embody many other concepts, including ukwu—greatness, ihe rọrọ arọ—(Deeply engaging), but ukwu is only a reflection of ọgọ. Ukwu is not Ọ gọ. Dignity (Ọ gọ) embodies concepts, which could translate to that which is full, attractive, complete, alluring, awesome. There could be different translations and other meanings that can be imputed to ọgọ. For instance, i mere mmadụ ọgọ (to do favour to someone), Onye a di ọgọ (this person is elegant, in terms of appearance). It is likely in terms of the onye a dị ọgọ or ihe di ̣ ọgọ that the concept of dignity could be read in Igbo thought. The Igbo translation of dignity could also mean—ihe zuru oke— that which is complete or that which leads to, commands or demands contentment and or satisfaction in terms of expectation in human terms. Dignity, however, could be very broadly conceived in African thought. It could relate to (a) how someone is perceived and/or how society places or locates one and (b) gender roles assigned to one or how or whether one does not function outside the assigned gender roles. For instance, within the gender roles in traditional Igbo thought, it is not acceptable for a man to cook or fetch firewood in some parts of Igboland, such as Nsụkka. Similarly, it is not allowed for a woman to mould heaps or mounds for yam. In some parts of the Igbo area, one’s background—family or lineage—enhances the terms on which one can enjoy the virtue of dignity to the fullest. Those who are considered the first aborigines of an area are

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called di ala—a child in the maternal home. They enjoy this kind of respect and distinction for this. In places where the ohu caste system functions and/or is still functioning, the fullest approval of dignity cannot be ascribed to each person in the same way. To engage the notion of dignity in the Igbo thought scheme, I submit that there are three concepts—underlying principles in relation to dignity—that could be applied to capture the meaning of dignity. They are ukwu (greatness), izu oke (completeness/nobility) and ugwu (honour). Thus, the notion of dignity ọgọ could be translated to mean Greatness, Nobility and Honour; that is, dignity in terms of what someone is/or should strive for and achieve, maintain or consolidate. These virtues, as I see them, suggest or denote the principle of excellence, which is desired in Igbo life on which the individual attracts dignity. The African philosopher Ifeanyi Menkiti makes allusions to this when he applies the concept of excellence to illustrate how personhood is upheld in African thought and how higher faithfulness to moral norms plays a role in the making of an individual or in the promotion of “the excellencies” (Menkiti). In articulating the notion of dignity, I associate dignity with morality and ethics, not in the sense of autonomy but in the sense of defending the communal norms through which personhood is validated and approved in the Igbo thought scheme. I then attempt to locate the micro virtues that are embodied in Greatness, Nobility and Respect and the specific expectations and measures of these virtues and ideals. I translate Greatness in Igbo thought to mean being Powerful, Outstanding and Dazzling. By this, I mean that in Igbo thought, greatness amounts to a positive quality in and of an individual who is bestowed on or acquired by an individual through hard work, which is a point of influence and affluence that distinguishes him from the rest. Similarly, I translate Nobility in terms of that which is Awesome, Valuable and Desirable. Finally, I translate Honour to mean that which commands attention—that which is complete or exhibits marks of Completeness, Self-­ containing/Contentment and Self-Respect. I argue that within the provisions of the assumptions of Igbo thought, a candidate who possesses these virtues achieves a strong status for which dignity could be ascribed to him/her. The question arises: why would dignity (ọgọ) translate to greatness, nobility and honour? A possible answer to this is that dignity in Igbo thought would usually arise from the impression made on society and other individuals. The Igbo notion of dignity provokes the impression

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that other people would have about a person such that no one can claim dignity on or by him or herself without the approval from or by the Igbo social group. As a result, the hallmark of dignity (or a dignified person) in the Igbo world is often a title bestowed on the individual. In addition to the title of the Eze, the approved rulers of different Igbo communities are the Ọ ha and Ndị Nze na Ọ zọ, who are the titled members of the Igbo community, and who are also revered and respected distinctly. The second way of explaining why the concepts of greatness, nobility and honour are applied to locate dignity in Igbo thought is to relate this to Igbo relativism and Igbo egalitarianism. Igbo relativism refers to the Igbo belief that every object or person is limited such that only that which is remarkably different and unusual and is able to sustain and retain this in Igbo imagination could be held to demand or possess (dignity) ọgọ. For example, an Igbo proverb holds that Nkụ dị be ndị na-eghere ndị nri (the firewood in a people’s village cooks for them). Thus, that which has (dignity) ọgọ can only be that which can subdue the Igbo imagination with awe. Igbo egalitarianism, on the other hand, is the belief in the equality and sameness of every human person, which is implicated somehow in Igbo relativism, which makes nothing, no person or achievement final, however highly valued, in Igbo thought. To further capture the notion of dignity in Igbo thought, I engage some literature on the Igbo worldview that suggests how the notion of dignity could be read. These include Equiano (1794), Nwoga (1984) and Menkiti (1984). Olauda Equiano,2 in his autobiography written in 1794, says of his Igbo people who: We are all habituated from our earliest years. Everyone contributed something to the common stock, and as we are unacquainted with idleness, we have no beggars.

Additionally, T. J. Dennis asserts that among the Igbo, “all carried themselves with a dignified air, or perhaps more correctly, a sort of swagger, as 2  Olauda Equiano is an Igbo slave who was kidnapped in what researchers have revealed to be present day Isseke town in Anambra State of Nigeria in 1745. He was sold and resold several times but later bought his freedom. Upon his education he was referred to Gustavus Vassa the African. Olauda is the first Igbo to get his works in print and led the campaign for end of slave trade which Parliamentarians like William Wilberforce were to take on. He published his famous book which is a document of his life in 1794 where he gave, among other biographical details, an original account of Igbo life during his life and as he could remember within the eleven years he spent in the Igbo land before his capture. Books on Olauda Equiano include: Acholonu (2007) and Korieh (2009).

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though the world belonged to them” (cited in Oguejiofor 1996, 16). Richard Henderson, an American anthropologist who studied the Igbo in the postcolonial era, titled his book The King in Every Man (1971). The Igbo historian Adiele Afigbo also writes that there is nothing that the Igbo despise more than humiliation. A cursory attention to these views suggests that dignity in Igbo thought is founded on (a) moral maturity, (b) hard work and (c) self-pride. This is because these are three core virtues that are remarkable in the Igbo world. They are adequate characterisations of Igbo belief in the virtues of hard work and self-pride or perhaps self-pride promoted by hard work and how they serve as important avenues to locate the notion of dignity. This perhaps explains why Nwoga submits that the Igbo world is predominantly characterised by relativism and that it is probably in the very act of becoming or trying to become, or resisting the forces that would or could limit the potentials or ability to become, that which should be upheld to be dignified. As he puts it, “for the Igbo, the reality of an object emerges or assumes validity at the time when the object is in the process of performing its function” (Nwoga 1984). This suggests a concept of being in relation to its action or what can be called actionism, where the action is the ground for the constitution of meaning. It is arguably in line with this school of thought that Menkiti provided the views that hold that personhood might not be a static concept but one that is based on being progressively human. This is because being a person is, in the thought of Menkiti, linked with the progressive discharge of communal duties. A second way to read the meaning of dignity in Igbo thought could be by locating and interpreting a number of Igbo institutions—titles, honours and their import. For instance, titles are often reserved for the noble, those who have distinguished themselves in character and hard work. Similarly, Igbo institutions such as moral institutions (the family, the clan, the elder), political institutions (the Ọ ha, the Igwe in council, the Ụmụ-­ ada), priestly institutions (the Atama, the Ọ ga-Ma (the priestly cult), etc. provide norms and values, the adherence to which confers dignity on a person. These political institutions are highly revered, and belonging to them already makes one dignified. Thus, dignity in Igbo thought basically demands the ethics of responsibility and moral accountability. As a result, the opposite of dignity, or the undignified, could easily translate to the efulefu or akalị ogoli (the worthless person), one who does not command the kind of respect or attraction that qualifies one to be called dignified.

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To proceed in the effort to articulate the idea of dignity in African philosophy through the Igbo thought scheme, I outline the following Igbo proverbs that in my estimation capture the notion of dignity and provide their equivalents in the English language. Thereafter, I provide some explanations of the meaning that can be read from the proverbs. Proverbs That Reflect Dignity in Broad Terms In the first set of proverbs, I outline proverbs that portray dignity as a virtue in action. Or actions that portray and reflect respect for a number of virtues that constitute dignity. What is suggested by these proverbs is that dignity may reflect the actions that embody the three virtues of greatness, nobility and honour in one action or in one instance, and this is the case with the proverbs outlined below. I map out these proverbs and proceed to elaborate on them: (i) Onye yie nki ̣rịka akwa, a gwa ya nki ̣rịka okwu—“One who dresses in rags should expect disrespectful words”. This means that one is addressed by virtue of how the person dresses. This proverb is applied when one wants to emphasise presenting oneself in a dignified manner. It emphasises the need for a good outlook, backed up with good action. This is because one can dress well, but his/her behaviour is poor. When this is obtained, we use the proverb below to capture this instance: obele ọcha mmanya mmiri (white [gourd] container with watery wine). (ii) Ọ bụ ihe adi ̣ghịrị nwoke mma mere e ji nkata tinyere ya nri—“When a man is served food in a basket, it is a sign that he is not doing well financially”. This means that wealth creates an aura of respect. This proverb is applied when an effort is made to capture why perhaps someone is treated in an undignified manner. (iii) Onye nwe abalị anaghị eji ehihie agba izu. “The king of the night does not hold counsel in the afternoon”.

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This means that one who has authority dictates the direction of events. The proverb is an invocation of authority and power. In literal terms, this proverb holds that one who is in charge of the night could dictate and determine what to do with the night. (iv) Nwaanyị olu ọma, di anaghị ajụrụ ya nri—“A good-mannered wife does not get her food rejected by her husband.” This means that good behaviour necessarily attracts value and love for the agent. This proverb suggests the effusive nature of good behaviour and manner. Eating one’s wife’s food is a confirmation of love for the woman in Igbo culture, and what this proverb is saying is that a good-mannered wife would always attract the love of the husband. (v) Ụbọchị a mụrụ dike na mba ka a mụrụ ibe ya “The day a hero is born in a place is the same day that another hero is born in another place”. This means that greatness is usually worked out. This proverb could be applied in any situation that seeks to emphasise individual possibilities. (vi) Ọ sa gbajiri ọdụ ya arụọla mma ya—“The squirrel that breaks its tail has spoilt its beauty”. This means that beauty is an aggregate of parts of the body. This proverb emphasises expertise in whatever one does. It suggests that one must be efficient in the performance of one’s art in order not to soil its beauty/dignity. This proverb suggests the need to be humble to preserve a highly valued treasure. (vii) Ọ gazị machaa mma, e ji ya agọ mmụọ?—Despite the beauty of a guinea fowl, is it good for sacrifice to the gods? This means that what is odd remains so despite efforts to paint it differently. It is a reminder that there are inner principles that create or lead to the nobility of persons and things. After an outline of these proverbs, let me proceed to elaborate on them. To do this, I will highlight some intuitions that can be gained from these proverbs and how they mirror the notion of dignity.

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A Critical Reading of the Concept of Dignity Through Proverbs That Reflect Dignity in Broad Terms It could be noted from a general reading of these proverbs that dignity relates to the quality and measure that emerge from a person. These proverbs emphasise different virtues that could capture the positive use of human potential. For example, while proverb (i) suggests outlook, (ii) suggests wealth, while (iii) suggests power and (iv) emphasises egalitarianism. What these imply is that dignity is not strictly related to the nature of a person but follows from what has been made of this nature—that is, the human personality. The question could arise thus: Why is human nature itself not seen as a core principle of dignity in Igbo thought? A plausible answer to this is that human nature in Igbo thought has such wide categories that it is impossible to assign a narrow definition of human nature to dignity and to locate a set of fixed terms belonging to human nature that may be assigned to dignity. Among the literature on human nature in Igbo thought, some texts suggest that human nature can be categorised into two aspects, namely, ahụ (body) and mmụọ (spirit) (Nwala 1985; Isiguzo et  al. 2004; Okoye 2011); others suggest that human nature is divided into two aspects, but they have different names for this: ahụ (body) and mkpụrụ obi (heart) (Olisa 1972). From the literature and many other proverbs not outlined here, human nature may be said to fall into three broad categories in Igbo thought—the physical category, the spiritual category and that which jointly belongs to the physical and spiritual category. Among (A) the physical aspects of human nature, we may outline, (Ai) ahụ—body (Aii) mkpụrụ obi—heart, (Aiii) ọbara—blood and (Aiv) onyinyo—shadow. The spiritual aspects of human nature (B) include (Bi) mụọ—spirit, (Bii) uche—mind and (Biii) Chi—guardian angel. The aspects of human nature that are considered to have both physical and spiritual dimensions (C) are—(Ci) ndụ—life or life-giving force, (Cii) mụọ (Spirit) and (Ciii) Chi—guardian angel. These distinctions explain the complexity of human nature and reveal why it is the inner manifestation of human nature in a person, found in character and achievement, that suggests the idea of dignity in Igbo thought. What is implied here is that dignity is strictly a function of the progressive and dynamic humanism of the Igbo that arises from and through human nature in Igbo thought. Dignity resides in virtues such as hard work, achievement and the general manifestation of the inner potential of a person. Thus, dignity in Igbo thought might, especially in relation to the

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human person, be captured as an outcome of the cultivated principle of the person defined as the character and virtue of the person. The dignified person should have the virtues of achievement or what can be called the productive action principle (vitality). However, it would seem, reading from these proverbs and from their emphasis on achievement as the basis for dignity, that there is some tension between the Igbo ethics of relativism and what appears to qualify for relevance in some terms of what can be called Igbo exhibitionism (Achebe,  1983). By Igbo relativism, I mean the fact that everything is relative to a particular time and to the agent in Igbo thought. On the other hand, Igbo exhibitionism implies an extravagant display or show of achievement among the Igbo. It is very likely that the Igbo would prefer a celebrated (festive) achievement to an achievement that is unsung or one that is remarkably unassuming. For people who uphold that all of reality, including achievement, is relative, how can this seeming contradiction be explained? There are probably two ways to explain this. The first is to appeal to Igbo environmental sociology. For people whose environmental sociology enforces the virtues of tenacity and hard work for survival, exhibitionism probably serves as a form of leisure and recreation such that celebrating achievement becomes a way of overcoming the tensions and troubles of labour. The second is probably that through this exhibitionism, an effort is made to rise above the egalitarian/relative world of the Igbo, which the individual would fail at, and the acceptance of what defines and alienates the achievement in search of greater and higher achievement. The implication of this is that dignity itself re-enforces its meaning and value through Igbo life, as can be read through Igbo proverbs. It would also seem that dignity in Igbo thought incorporates the concept of beauty. If this is the case, then the concept of beauty, or what can be called Igbo metaphysical aesthetics, could be brought to bear on discussions about the concept of dignity. For example, proverb (vi) emphasises how the concept of beauty adds to the concept of beauty. In these proverbs, there is an emphasis on the fact that once beauty is there, dignity could be associated with the object, although beauty alone is not adequate to the object. After the effort to capture the idea of dignity, I proceeded to engage the notion of dignity through what can be called the micro-principles of values through which the idea of dignity is constituted in Igbo thought. By these principles, I refer to dignity through the virtues of greatness,

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nobility and honour. Although these principles and values are strong norms on their own, I suggest that the notion of dignity (ọgọ) would usually incorporate acts or actions that mirror these principles. Proverbs on Greatness (Ukwu) in Igbo Thought Here, I outline some proverbs that emphasise greatness, which in my estimation can assist in bringing out the notion of greatness in Igbo thought. I do not claim that these are all the proverbs that can be applied to capture the meaning of greatness, but I suggest that they provide strong intuitions on the meaning of greatness. (i) Ofeke adi ̣ghị aga n’ụlọ dibi ̣a akpa akwụkwọ ọgwụ—“A foolish person does not go to the house of a medicine man to take herbal drugs”. This means that the art of medicine is such a great art that it cannot permit folly. This proverb elaborates the art of medicine and how it invites the best of brains and people. An interpretation of this proverb is that great art demands great virtue. (ii) Ọ nụ ọma gbuo mkpụrụọhịọ, ọ di ̣ ka ọ kpụ ọsụkwụ n’ọnụ “When goodness brings fortune, it takes the shape of a strange achievement”. This proverb says that it is often easy to forget the source of fortune or success or to take it for granted. (iii) Kịtịkpa gbaa eke, o wee awọrọ. “When the python is besieged by chicken pox, it submits its shame and sorrow”. This means that when greatness is punctured, it dwarfs the agent. This proverb suggests that, however great an item or a person is, there is a possible counter force or person. (iv) Nwaanyị rijuo afọ, o were ụkwụ sonyere ibe ya nkụ n’ọkụ—“When a woman is well fed, she uses her leg to put, for her colleague, firewood into the fire”.

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This proverb means that greatness could lead to pride. It is a caution on how to manage achievement and to ensure that greatness does not lead to one’s doom. (v) Onye amaghị mmadụ na-akpọ ya onye nịị.—“One who does not know a person refers to him as that person”. This means that others must be approached with caution because greatness can be hidden. This proverb is often used in cases of surprise—that is, when there are reasons to explain a shock received from another person, especially what can be considered to be a positive shock. After an outline of these proverbs, a possible question arises: how do they suggest an idea of greatness and ultimately an idea of dignity of the human person in Igbo thought? To address this question, I attempt to locate who can be called a great person or what can be called a great act in Igbo thought, and how or whether these proverbs mirror them. Many studies on the Igbo worldview defend the view that one of the strongest principles that drive Igbo life is the principle of achievement (Achebe 1958, 1983). The desire or belief in achievement is such that age is not strictly the basis for honour or respect but achievement. An Igbo proverb succinctly captures this. It holds that nwata kwụọ aka o soro ndị okenye rie nri—when a child washes his hands, he eats with the elders. This probably explains why hard work is a strong principle among the Igbo. It is not easy to explain how and why this virtue is a strong belief for the Igbo, but at least two hypotheses can be considered in this regard. The first is the strongly held view that the Igbo have Jewish ethnic origin and probably qualify to be considered to be Jews in Africa (Ilona 2007). Now, it will be wrong to totally identify an ethnic group with a singular trait or virtue considering the fact that many interethnic marriages occur within the group—which means that the offspring of a group may not have just one biological/racial origin—but it is also proper to suggest that some virtues could be strongly observable within a group, apparently because their culture approves such a virtue. In the case of the Jews, it will not be wrong to associate them with the virtue of hard work, creativity and ingenuity judging at least from the number of Nobel prize winners that have emerged from the ethnic group. The second reason is that the Igbo inhabit the least fertile portion of Nigeria and that their environment demands certain resilience and hard work to survive. This latter view probably explains why they are the highest migrant group within Nigeria. However,

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if it is approved that achievement built on hard work and tenacity of purpose is a core Igbo value—the question might be what type of work? In this instance, it can be suggested that the type of hard work desired is what can be called socially positive work—work that supports the individual and enables him or her to support the community. By this, it means the kind of work that defends the vitality of both the individual and the community—the work that defends the community and protects it from any force that could affect her asset to corporate satiability and greatness. Thus, work in this instance must be such as can lead to cautionary greatness since the egalitarian nature of the Igbo life would always mean that there are other great persons and that all forms of greatness are relative. In this instance, it must be recalled that in the Igbo world, “nothing is totally anything in Igbo thinking; everything is a question of measure or degree” (ibid 69). Thus, the Igbo notion of greatness, or what can be called vigilant greatness, is what is implicated by proverbs (iii), (iv) and (v), which suggest that even the anaconda popularly held in the Igbo world as the owner of the forest could be besieged by chicken pox. Greatness cannot be an expansion of the clan or the community. Thus, while proverb (ii) explains the strangeness of greatness, the expectation that provokes and sustains the urge for greatness, proverbs (iii) and (iv) suggest that greatness must function with caution against the forces that limit it. In other words, no form of greatness should turn the achiever into a tin god. Even the gods in Igbo thought also need humans to function, and if onye na-amaghị mmadụ na-akpọ ya onye nịị (he, who does not know the other person, takes the person for granted), then the self-assured greatness may be encountering other gods as well. The claim here is that while the Igbo world suggests fierce egalitarianism, in its focus on achievement, the succeeding agent must have a cautionary focus while relating with others. After a reflection on the proverbs on greatness, I next outline the Igbo proverbs on nobility. Proverbs on Nobility (Izu-oke) (i) Onye na-etiri onye ọrịa i ̣gba abụghị onye ahụ zuru oke “The drummer for the sick cannot be the healthy” (ii) Ji mee na ọ tọkaa, e gbuo ede awaị—“If the yam thinks that it is extraordinary, the coco-yam takes its place”.

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This proverb means that when one overestimates his/her relevance, another force or fortune overtakes the person. It is used to remind a person of the relative importance of any item or person in Igbo thought. (iii) Di na nwunye rijuo afọ lụwa ọgụ ndị bu ọnụ akara ha mma—“When a contented couple begins to fight, those besieged by wants are better off”. This means that nobility has to be managed with care. It emphasises the ethical dimension of dignity. (iv) A naghị eji mkpume elele isi kara aka. “One does not use a stone to test a strong head”. This means that every strength has its limit. The emphasis here is on the cautionary principle that shapes nobility. An analysis of the outlined proverbs on nobility suggests that there is a considerable ethical dimension to dignity, and the proverbs emphasise this. This suggests that achievement alone (greatness) does not amount to dignity until it is guided by ethical vigilance. The Igbo expression inwe ntụpọ (to have a dent) is usually applied to characterise someone with a questionable character. Ntụpọ translates to dot or a spot! The term is applied to locate someone who is not totally clean. The watchword here is that the noble person defends the integrity of both himself/herself and the integrity of his or her personality. If the Igbo were to translate the word “noble” in relation to the human person, it would translate to Oke mmadụ or great person. Similarly, if the word completeness were to be rendered in Igbo, it would translate to izu oke. The word oke, which shares the same meaning as nwoke, is probably assigned to the concept in terms of that which is capable of defying any negative expectation. It is an expression that suggests the ability to defy any negative force or item that seems to serve the whole. Thus, an extended reading of it may also seem that it could lead to the concept izu oke. Thus, we have an interpretation that suggests that by being oke mmadụ, a person can be described with the expression izu oke. The noble person in this instance would probably be a person with the same quality of inner peace that would locate the distinction between things and items.

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After a brief engagement with the concept of nobility through the proverbs outlined, let me next outline and discuss the proverbs that reflect the concept of honour and explain the concept of dignity in Igbo thought. Proverbs on Honour (i) Onye kpọọ ọba ya mkpọkọrọ, agbata obi ya ewere ya kpoo ntụ—“If one denigrates his/her utensil as useless, his neighbour uses same to pack refuse.” He/she who treats his asset as worthless permits the neighbours to use for a trash can. This means that we endow dignity to ourselves by our choice of words. It emphasises self-worth and contentment. (ii) A na-ekechi nki ̣ta ihu were egbu ya—“The face of a dog is tied before it is killed”. This relates to respect, especially in favour of a harmless and beneficial pet before acting treacherously against it. (iii) Ọ nwụ gburu ọkwa egbuole onye be ya—“The death that has befallen a partridge has also befallen the household”. This means that when a calamity befalls someone, it befalls all those around the person. The imagery of the partridge is applied because partridges go in pairs or in groups. If an effort is made to interpret these proverbs, it would be shown that the basis of/for honour is about a thing being/respecting/honouring what it is and recognising its limit. It reflects the age-long adage of the Igbo that Ugwu bụ nkwanye nkwanye—that respect is reciprocal or/and that every item has its own place and respect in the world. The implication of this is that honour basically arises from the honourable or the honoured. Thus, we are presented with a worldview that emphasises the egalitarianism of reality, where allowing each thing to be what it is endowed to be—animals, human beings, spirits—becomes a way of defending the ethics of existence. While proverb (i) emphasises self-worth, proverb (iii) emphasises how the mother (symbolising the protective agent of the household) should function to protect the household. From the reading of these proverbs, it can be held that, whether in action or inaction, honour in Igbo thought demands that one should defend one’s status and should act to preserve one’s status to avoid shame.

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In summary, then, it can be said, from the proverbs outlined and discussed, that dignity in Igbo thought revolves around certain virtues that are upheld to be great within the Igbo worldview. A cursory reading of these proverbs suggests that they rotate around the virtues of wealth, power, relativism, humility, spotless nobility and egalitarianism. What they suggest in my estimation is that dignity, in the Igbo imagination, must be that which can influence the community while subjecting the agent to an awareness that he or she is functioning among equals, who might ascribe a higher status of honour and dignity only to the extent of his or her hard work. This does not undermine respect for the life of the human being as an entity, but basically, it advances the view that the same life can only be valued differently if applied differently. Thus, in the Igbo thought scheme, it might be held that one is considered to be dignified because the work/achievement done is influential but subjects the achiever to an understanding of the sameness and equality of the human person who makes the agent see how the achievements are just relative to the achiever and the community concerned. The implication of this is that greatness in Igbo thought must subject itself to a higher realm of evaluation that determines the merit of its aura, worth and influence. In the next part of the work, I will engage the concept of dignity in relation to the ontological foundation of the idea of a person in Igbo thought. To do this, I relate dignity to the ontology of the individual in Igbo thought. I do so because the ontological grounding of anything is fundamental to the item, and as it relates to person in Igbo thought the achievement of a dignified status is intimately related to the ontological forces guiding or guarding the individual.

Relating the Concept of Dignity in Igbo Thought to Igbo Existentialist Ontology Ontologies are often hidden aspects of life that are read through the practical beliefs, actions, thoughts and assumptions of a people. They are known through abstractions of notions of existence found through the thought schemes of a people. Ontologies are foundational to other aspects of any item or thing. In relating the concept of dignity to Igbo ontology, I shall limit the work to the principle of Chi—the central ontological principle in Igbo thought. I do so because the successes and failures of a

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person in Igbo life is determined by person’s V One who denigrates his/ her drinking cup has permitted the neighbours to apply it for a trash can Chi. Igbo ontology is held to be the same or similar to Igbo cosmology, and there is often a thin line that demarcates them. Thus, it is common to read discourses on Igbo cosmology, which end up addressing concepts that could be said to fall within Igbo ontology. This could be seen in Achebe (1983), Nwoga (1984), Opata (1998), Okafor (1992), etc. The reason for this may arise from the nature of the Igbo world, where there is a form of duality or “intrinsic dualities” of things (Nwoga 1984, 23). This duality is such that the material is believed to have a spiritual counterpart. As it relates to the human being, the dual nature of the Igbo worldview holds that a person may have a dual identity of material being and spirit being, with the “spirit being complementing his terrestrial human being” (Achebe, cited in Eze, 1998: 67). However, this is just one form of duality that characterises the Igbo notion of being. There is another form of duality. This second form is a form of supplementary duality through which, by its nature, a thing attracts its supplement. In the Igbo world, “nothing can stand alone, there must always be another thing standing beside it” (ibid, 67), and “nothing is totally anything in Igbo thinking; everything is a question of measure or degree” (ibid, 69). This is probably because the spirit being is always manifesting the being of the individual, and the other is always inviting or demanding a supplement. The wider implication of applying dignity to locate the Igbo ontology is that dignity itself has both physical and spiritual forms and dignity in the physical realm must appeal to the form of dignity that could be approved in the spiritual realm. In addition, dignity is held to be relative (to the dignified person—that is, the person to whom the reference to dignity is made) because in Igbo thought, nothing is absolute in-itself and anything is relative to another to a degree. Here, I look at dignity from the point of view of what I call Igbo existentialist ontology. By Igbo existentialist ontology, I mean the idea of being in relation to humans and the manifestation of being in Igbo life. I also refer to specific ways these obtain, where these fundamental beliefs and assumptions are translated into action, and I refer to how these provide clear measurable instances of why the Igbo think and act the way they do that could lead to the application of dignity to characterise their action. By this, I refer to the meaning of existence, as it shapes human thought and action, and how this meaning influences the realisation of the individual in Igbo thought.

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There are at least five principles that characterise Igbo existentialist ontology. The first of these is the principle of Chi. The second is the principle of Okike, which can be called the creation principle. The third is Ikenga, which can be called the principle of success. The fourth is the Aka principle, which means the principle of Destiny. The fifth is ịchawapụta, the principle of achievement or manifestation therefrom. These principles, which can be generally captured as “being as action” (Nwoga ibid, 10.), explain the fundamental assumptions of human action in Igbo thought and how the spiritual aspect of existence is manifested in the physical. I focus on engaging Chi to discuss dignity because “without understanding the nature of Chi, one would not make sense of the Igbo worldview” (Eze 1998, 67). Chi is also applied to this study, as Nwoga puts it: “the ontological status of things in Igbo thought is determined and recognised not by a static characteristic that the objects might have but by the action that the object performs” (Nwoga 1984, 10) and in aiding another person to manifest fully other principles outlined. All these principles are achieved through Chi. Thus, without a reading of Chi, one would not understand why one person has achieved more dignity than the other in Igbo life. In Igbo thought, Chi is seen as the force, spirit or being through which the possibilities of the individual can be determined or measured. It is equivalent to what can be called individual vital force. Chi is directly connected to God or the Supreme being and is believed to have descended directly from Him, yet it commands a measure of independence and power that even to recognise Chineke would depend on the ability of one’s Chi to direct one’s life in this direction. Because of the place of Chi in one’s life, in Igbo thought, a number of proverbs bear the concept of Chi. For instance, the Igbo say that: Ọ chị a chi ̣rị onye bụ Chi ya ka a chi ̣rị ya (4)— When someone is laughed at, the guardian spirit is also laughed at. Here, laughter is linked with the ontology of the individual and is applied as an art with a commemorative ontological force. Chi explains what a person was, is, becomes will be, was not, is not and will not become, in Igbo thought—that is, what one may attain or would not attain. Hence, it is variously captured as one’s personal spirit, the protective spirit of the individual, the guardian spirit of the individual, the spiritual aspect of the individual, the creator of the individual, the author of a person’s destiny and the force behind one’s life on earth. Chi is a concept that explains existence in Igbo thought such that it is from Chi that one can begin to explore the individual. The belief is that each person has his Chi, although

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it can also be held that a group also has a Chi. For this reason, Chi can sometimes be understood as the Okike principle—that which brings about the being of the individual. One would often hear the expression—“it is what he concluded with his Chi”—from the Igbo when discussions are made about the success or failure of an individual. After an elaboration of the principle of Chi, the question that follows is how does it explain dignity in Igbo thought and what reading of dignity can be made through the principle of Chi? A possible reading of Chi that can be made here is that the Igbo notion of dignity as is revealed through Chi. Chi suggests that dignity is founded or rooted in the individual. One’s capacity or spiritual force to attain some level of dignity is different from the other, and permitting this is the hallmark of existential wisdom in Igbo thought. Chi thus provides the metaphysical paradigm through which everything about a person may be approved in the Igbo world. What is implied here is that since a person has a double Chi, and has Chi on the spiritual side—when the Igbo is celebrating an individual in the material realm, they are also celebrating the Chi at the spiritual realm. I sum, dignity may then be considered a force that activates the spiritual wave of the positive action that Chi carries. A popular Igbo wisdom that captures this is the saying that Onye kwe chi ya ekwe—when a person says yes, his or her Chi also says yes. Chi is concerned and connected with the success of the individual. Because of this, a connection that is made between Chi and the destiny of the individual, in which Chi plays a strong role in its activation, actuation and realisation, the Igbo could warn the other to desist from laughing at the being-in-the-world of another. Acknowledgment  Gratitude is hereby expressed to Professor M.B.  Mbah, Professor of Igbo Language at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, for editing the Igbo orthography and for his useful editorial comment on a draft of this work.

References Achebe, C. 1958. Things fall apart. Ibadan: Heinemann. ———. 1983. The trouble with Nigeria. Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers. ———. 1998. Chi in Igbo Cosmology In African Philosophy: An Anthology, ed. Emmanuel Eze. USA: Blackwell Publishers. Acholonu, C. 2007. The Igbo roots of Olauda Equiano. Abuja: AFA Publications. Ake, Claude. 1987. The African Context of Human Rights. Africa Today 34: 5–12.

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Ananyo, Basu. 1998. Communitarianism and individual in African thought. International Studies in Philosophy 30 (4): 1–10. Cobbah, J. 1987. African values and the human rights debate: An African perspective. Human Rights Quarterly 9: 309–331. Equiano, O. 1794. The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the Africian. Norwich, The author. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/44015764/. Eze, Emmanuel. 1998. African philosophy: An anthology. Blackwell Publishers. Henderson, Richard. 1971. The king in every man. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ilona, R. 2007. The Igbos: Jews in Africa. Abuja: Counsellor International. Isiguzo, A.I., G. Ukagba, and N. Otakpor. 2004. Igbo concept of a person. Africa 59: 231–243. Korieh, C. 2009. Olaudah Equiano and the Igbo world. New Jersey: Africa World Press. Menkiti, Ifeanyi. 1984. Person and community in African traditional thought. In African philosophy: An introduction, ed. Richard Wright, 171–181. Lanham: University Press of America. Nwala, T. 1985. Igbo philosophy. Lagos: Abuja: Niger books and Publishing Company. Nwoga, D. 1984. Nka na nzere—Focus on Igbo worldview English. Owerri: Culture Division, Ministry of Information, Culture, Youth and Sports. Oguejiofor, J.  O. 1996. The influence of Igbo traditional religion on the socio-­ political character of the Igbo. Nsukka: Fulladu Publishing Co. Okafor, F. 1992. Igbo philosophy of law. Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers. Okoye, Chuka. 2011. Onwe: An inquiry into the Igbo concept of the self. Ogirisi: A New Journal of African Studies 8: 51–66. Olisa, M.  S. 1972. Taboos in Igbo religion and society. West African Religion. Nsukka 2: 1–18. Opata, D. 1998. Essays on Igbo worldview. Nsukka: AP Express Publishers in Association with Autocentury Publishing Company Ltd.

CHAPTER 11

Conceptions of Human Dignity in African and European Legal Systems: Consonance or Dissonance? Rinie Steinmann

Introduction The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted 10 December 1948 (Universal Declaration), judicialised a relatively neglected claim that “all members of the human family” have “inherent human dignity”. In the wake of World War II, human dignity, being the rationale for grounding a global standard of human rights, was seen as the sole universal element connecting pluralistic ideas regarding a feature common in humanity. Sub-Saharan Africa followed suit in 1986 by affirming dignity as an interpretative value in the preamble and postulating the “right to the respect of the dignity inherent in a human being” in article five of the African Charter of Human and Peoples Rights, which entered into force on 21 October 1986, (African Charter). Thereafter, many domestic constitutions in Africa enacted human dignity as either a value or a right or both.

R. Steinmann (*) Steinmann Attorneys, Meyerton, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Molefe, C. Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1_11

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Whereas in the West, human dignity is predominantly conceived of in liberal, individualistic and rights-based terms, the African concept is more often than not regarded as communitarian and-duty-based, rooted in the cultural values and political perceptions of its people, freed from the forced conventions of its former colonial rulers. Human dignity in European constitutionalism1 confers rights on an individual (or a group) to claim respect and protection of its inherent and universal dignity. In constitutional adjudication, individual rights may take preference over community interests, or vice versa. In Afrocentric anthropology, there is a tension between the dignitarian rights of the individual and the collective dignity of its communities, as obligations towards the community tend to take preference over individual considerations. It comes as no surprise then that adjudicating individual rights in a communitarian context might be controversial and novel to African constitutionalism. However, it is significant to note that the African Charter in article five posited human dignity as a rights-protecting principle, initiating the process of developing a so-­ called postcolonial judicial idea of human dignity in African constitutionalism. A new paradigm of human dignity2 (postwar paradigm) was formulated when the Universal Declaration was postulated in 1948, which differs substantially from the prewar concept. The Western pre-WWII paradigm (prewar paradigm) holds that dignity is inherent yet unequal. It is said to be acquired through rationality and the duty to act worthy of this dignity, and it implies a relationship of relativity in human associations. Human dignity in Afro-centric anthropology operates as an analogue to dignity’s prewar paradigm in the West, since dignity is said to be achieved through a life-long process of good deeds towards the community. In contrast, in the postwar paradigm, dignity is an unacquired, a priori, inherent and nonrelational legal value from which legal rights and obligations are derived in current law. 1  The phrase European constitutionalism will be applied in this chapter, in contrast to the usual term “Western civilisation”, which references mostly the American idea. In European constitutionalism individual rights and autonomy can be curtailed in favour of a community, and legal personhood is constituted by a vision of man as an extension of his community, which differs substantially from the American situation where preference is given to individual rights over community rights. 2  See Hannah Arendt (1973, ix): “… human dignity needs a new guarantee which can be found in a new law on earth, whose political validity this time must comprehend the whole of humanity …”.

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In European constitutionalism, the generic idea of human dignity has evolved since the promulgation of the postwar paradigm and now contains three essential elements: first, that everybody has equal inherent dignity, second, that this must be respected and protected, and last, that states have a duty to realise socioeconomic rights within their respective means to endorse a dignified existence. It is productive, in this context, to distinguish between the pre- and postwar paradigms of dignity, as the prewar paradigm is still alive and well in religion, philosophy and anthropology worldwide, whereas generic dignity is applied in jurisprudence in Europe, both on a domestic and international level, as well as in many countries in Africa, in a more or less similar fashion. To establish whether there is a consonance or dissonance in dignity-­ jurisdiction between the European system and that of Africa, it is necessary to consider whether a unique African legal concept of human dignity developed post 1948, distinct from the African cultural view, or whether African dignity-jurisprudence can be synthesised with the generic claim of human dignity. One can ask whether the generic idea of dignity, with its so-called emphasis on individual rights and freedom, is ‘universal’ to such an extent that it can protect the Afro-centric idea that prefers communitarian approaches, as advanced by scholars such as Polycarb Ikuenobe (2016) and Thomas Makwinja (2019). Conversely, is it sensible that generic human dignity in all instances should trump the competing rights of a community against individual liberalism and autonomy? This chapter is grounded on the premise that it is essential to distinguish between the pre- and postwar paradigms of dignity in the theoretical justification of the functions of generic dignity in law, the discussion of which comprises the first section of this chapter. In the following section, the African concepts of human dignity are analysed to point out their differences from and similarities with the prewar paradigm of dignity. To illustrate the universality of human dignity and its origins in Africa, a section is included to draw attention to Africa’s role in the evolution of the postwar paradigm. Since generic dignity evolved from the postwar paradigm, the subsequent discussion focuses on the features of European constitutionalism and its unique view of personhood as an extension of communitarianism, as opposed to the African worldview of personhood that is subsumed by community interests. Thereafter follows an exposition regarding the path generic dignity has taken in African domestic and continental law. Finally, a conclusion is offered that considers whether generic dignity needs to be Africanised and whether there is consonance or

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dissonance between Africa’s application of dignity and the European application in legal practice.

The Pre- and Postwar Paradigms of Human Dignity The Prewar Paradigm of Human Dignity The non-judicialised prewar paradigm of human dignity functioned quite differently from the postwar paradigm in the West. Before World War II, human dignity in religion, anthropology and philosophy was primarily concerned with the superior rank or status of humanity over other earthly creatures, which was said to be rooted in man’s unique faculty of rationality. The universal idea of dignity was formulated by Cicero, who in his pivotal text De Officiis in 44 BC borrowed the term dignitas hominis from Stoic moral anthropology and specifically from Panaetius, a Greek philosopher (Cancik 2002, 21). Cicero claimed that man has dignity because of his modality of rationality, as opposed to other earthly creatures, and argued that we have a moral obligation to realise this dignity by choosing to live a respectful life instead of submitting to our lower desires (Cancik 2002, 21). This recognition of man’s heightened status over animals also implied a moral obligation to realise one’s dignity as an obligation that took preference over the equal status and rights claims of others (Sensen 2011, 75). Similarly, in Christianity, human beings are said to have dignity because they are created in the image of God, ranking below God in the hierarchy, while one also has the duty to denounce sins and perpetuate this dignity. In the prewar paradigm, then, human dignity was formulated as an abstract idea derived from two perceived contexts: on the one hand, from man’s perceived status in nature or elevated position in human society, and on the other hand, from man’s ability to live a life of reason, thus fully realising one’s elevated status (Sensen 2011, 75–76). Hence, the prewar paradigm of human dignity did not exclude the nonjusticiable idea of an unequally distributed rank and was unconcerned with the idea of transgressions upon so-called unequal dignities.

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The Postwar Paradigm of Human Dignity (Generic Human Dignity) Human dignity can be described as an a priori, inherent, inalienable and nonrelational moral value of the human condition, from which legal rights and obligations are derived in current law.3 Human dignity functions as a metaphysical moral value because the ontological status of dignity is conceived of as being antecedent to the obligation to command respect for others, and the rights of those affected are regarded as being prior to the duty of the agent (Sensen 2011, 72). Dignity is moral because dignity imposes a duty on others, individually and collectively, to respect their dignity.4 It is a priori because dignity is present whether granted by the state or not. It is inherent because dignity is universal and equal. It is inalienable since dignity cannot be gained, lost or renounced and finally, dignity is nonrelational since it is not dependent on a particular factual context or contingent on change under varying circumstances. Following dignity’s importation into positive law in the post-World War II era, it has come to display three core elements across jurisdictions, regardless of whether dignity is disapproved or different concepts of dignity are operative, notwithstanding the ubiquitous difficulty in defining dignity (McCrudden 2008, 680; Steinmann 2016b, 159). Thus, dignity has a universal meaning, devoid of religious, ideological or political influences.5 The three elements function as the generic claim of human dignity (Steinmann 2016a, 4–8; 2016b, 160) and consist of the following: • The normative idea that everyone has inherent and inalienable dignity because of their humanness, being the ontological claim of postwar dignitarian constitutionalism. • Every person’s dignity needs to be respected and protected. 3  For example, the second paragraphs of the preambles of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (adopted 16 December 1966), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (adopted 16 December 1966) and Principle VII par 2 of the Helsinki Final Act (adopted 1 August 1975). 4  All moral judgments, including rights-claims, consist directly or indirectly of precepts rooted in the philosophical principle regarding how persons ought to act toward one another. See Alan Gewirth (1979, 1143, 1148). 5  Gerald Neuman (2000, 250) states that dignity, thus defined, may be contrasted with “organic theories of nationalism that submerge the individual, with authoritarian political doctrines that condemn human nature as degraded by sin, with racist doctrines of biological inferiority and with aristocratic doctrines of national hierarchy”.

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• In socioeconomic matters, states are required to progressively provide existential minimum living conditions, as embodied in the second-­generation social and economic human rights, specifically to respect and protect dignity. This element is referred to as the “limited-­state claim” and embodies the Kantian idea that the state should exist for the sake of the individual and not vice versa. In constitutional use, the three elements may overlap and can be conflated by courts. Generic human dignity is context-specific—from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, ideas regarding the ontological claim may differ, and following this divergence, courts may not agree in their understanding as to what treatment is inconsistent with inherent dignity (Steinmann 2016b, 160). These perspectives, in turn, influence the perceptions of courts and state policies regarding the role of states in constitutional interpretation (McCrudden 2008, 680). Different jurisdictions may support opposite conclusions, depending on the constitution’s ethos and historical framework. However, in constitutional adjudication, the first element of generic dignity should function as a principle in terms of the distinction between principles and rules by Dworkin and Alexy, and the second element should function as a rule (Steinmann 2016b, 372). This classification strengthens the operative function of the ontological claim that dignity is inherent and inalienable and at the same time enables judges to limit the second element, namely the right to have one’s dignity respected and protected, in concrete matters in favour of competing constitutional rights, under appropriate circumstances. Inherent dignity as a legal concept, being the first element of the generic idea of human dignity, was initially generated by the key drafters of the Charter of the United Nations (date of adoption 26 June 1945) and of the Universal Declaration. The rationale for the claim of the inherency of dignity in “all members of the human family” is to invoke dignity and the rights flowing from it as independent of political validation and effectively beyond state control (Schachter 1983, 853; Habermas 2010, 464, 469).6 Inherent dignity refers to the dignity of all members of the human species and is seen as inhering in us prior to the right to demand respect from others. Although the Universal Declaration 6  As the South African Constitutional Court held in S v Lawrence 1997 (4) SA 1176, para 168: “Indeed, there is a core to the individual conscience so intrinsic to the dignity of the human personality that it is difficult to imagine any factors whatsoever that could justify it being penetrated by the state”.

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does not specifically prescribe that human dignity must be respected and protected as the second element of generic dignity, it does refer to the “recognition of inherent dignity” in the first preambular paragraph; also, article 1 proclaims that “human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood”. The second element of generic dignity has roots in Kant’s ethical system of moral theory. Kant argued that the content of morality is rooted in a legitimised duty, based on reason and respect for humanity’s dignity,7 which is the utmost status of autonomy and eventually of freedom. Therefore, “humanity itself is a dignity”.8 He connected the Ciceronian idea of rational dignity with the instruction that fellow men have a reciprocal duty to respect one another’s dignities, albeit to realise their own dignity, which engenders a maxim or attitude one should have equally towards all others as members of a species, without arbitrary distinctions (Sensen 2014, 112). Oliver Sensen (2014, 109, 112), quoting Kant, explains that one should hold this attitude toward the dignity of others independently of the merit of others (moral or otherwise): “I cannot deny all respect to even a vicious man as a human being; I cannot withdraw at least the respect that belongs to him in his quality as a human being, even though by his deeds he makes himself unworthy of it”. For Kant, dignity is a quality of “absolute, intrinsic value, above any price, and thus excluding any equivalence” (Sensen 2014, 113), which indicates the intrinsic dignity of the autonomous individual on condition that this dignity is respected. One can deduce that Kant theorised that everybody has equal dignity; therefore, dignity is universal, but this dignity is still not a priori but contingent since the duty to respect is seen as prior to the inherent value of the dignity of the affected persons. Consequently, although Kant’s formulation of dignity is an absolute, intrinsic value, and although the requirement of reciprocal respect is an analogue of the first two elements of generic dignity, his formulation is still relational and therefore accords with the prewar paradigm of dignity.

7  Immanuel Kant, quoted by Jack Donnelly, 2009, “Human dignity and human rights,” www.udhr60.ch/report/donnelly-Human dignity, stating: “Every man has a legitimate claim to respect from his fellow men and is in turn bound to respect every other”. 8  Ibid.

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Human Dignity in Africa Human dignity has a wide and pervasive application in Afro-centric anthropology, religion and philosophy, with various components and concepts to encapsulate its different functions and applications. It not only functions as a self-standing ethical value to strengthen the African ethos of communality but also as an interdependent element of the deeply embedded moral value of ubuntu,9 which is based on mutual respect and obligations between members of the community through practising principles of reciprocity, inclusivity and a sense of shared destiny.10 While it is difficult to describe human dignity in African terms, Makwinja (2019, 19) explains that the phrase means “being human” or “in a human way” in Chichewa, the language spoken in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia. The literal meaning of dignity (isithunzi) in Zulu is “the state or quality of being worthy of honour or respect”.11 Normatively, the existential state of being human is regulated by the principles of African communalism, constituting the basis for personhood, human dignity and relational autonomy (Ikuenobe 2016, 438; Menkiti 1984, 172). Human dignity is but one aspect that informs and enhances the distinctive ontological capacities of being human, such as personhood, vitality and community (Molefe 2022, 40–43; Metz 2012, 21–27). In basic African terms, human dignity has a

9  Ubuntu is synonymous with African humanness and the idea that the essence of being human is to develop one’s personhood through one’s communitarian relationships. Human dignity, however, is not to be equated with ubuntu—see Yvonne Mokhoro and Stu Woolman (2010, 407). 10  See Dikolo v Mokhatla 2006 (6) SA 235 (CC): “In our constitutional democracy the basic institutional value of human dignity relates closely to ubuntu or botho, an idea based on deep respect for the humanity of another”. Additionally, see the explanation of Justice Langa in S v Makwanyane 1995 (3) SA 391 (CC) para 308: “Ubuntu captures, conceptually, a culture which places some emphasis on communality and on the interdependence of the members of a community. It recognises a person’s status as a human being, entitled to unconditional respect, dignity, value and acceptance from the members of the community such a person happens to be part of”. In the Ugandan case of Salvatori Abuki and Richard Abuga v Attorney General [1997] UGCC 10, page 9, the judge referred to S v Makwanyane: “I would gladly associate myself with the view expressed by MADALA J. in the same case (of Makwanyane (ibid) that the African concept [of ubuntu] embodies within itself humaneness, social justice and fairness, and permeates fundamental human rights. LANGA J. in the same case expressed the same ideas when he concluded that the concept carries with it the idea of human dignity and true humanity”. 11  Online Translator and Dictionary, s.v. “Isithunzi”.

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twofold function— community values illuminate the dignity of its members, and vice versa. There are various theoretical accounts for human dignity in current African philosophical debates. For example, Thadeus Metz (2012, 21) sees dignity as a feature of the individual that is inherent, nonrelational and inalienable, a value that generates a demand for respectful treatment. Whilst he sees dignity as individualistic, he favours a communitarian conception where humans have dignity “in virtue of our capacity for loving relationships” (2012, 27). Motsamai Molefe (2022, 40) also holds an individualistic account of human dignity, based on the patient-centred and agent-centred dimensions of personhood. The patient-centred aspect refers to the metaphysical feature in humanity that makes the achievement of personhood possible in the first place and is derived from Ifeyani Menkiti’s claim of human dignity, where humans deserve equal respect (2022, 40, 42). The agent-centred notion refers to the idea of personhood as the “final good” (2022, 40). He observes: As such, to say that of some moral agent that she has achieved personhood is tantamount to the idea that she is characterised by a dignified human existence. The capacity for virtue refers to intrinsic or status dignity, and the acquisition of personhood (moral excellence) refers to extrinsic or achievement dignity (2022, 42).

Makwinja (2019, 130) argues that the African communitarian notion of personhood is critical to the development of any theory of human dignity in the African context. In a similar vein, Ikuenobe (2016, 438, 444, 445) emphasises a communal conception of personhood as the basis for human dignity, where dignity must be achieved through a life-long process of responsibilities towards the community, rather than by the exercising of individual rights against the community: “… Moral dignity is not something that one has inherently and passively; one must play an active part (by one’s actions) in using the material conditions provided by community for achieving dignity” (2016, 45). The relational features of human dignity as articulated by Ikuenobe in African dignity-ism is cause for dignity to be classified as a moral status rather than a moral value. As he argues: “In my view, moral status would come in degrees, and the dignity of the person involves, in part, the gradational attainment of moral status and some types of rights” (2019, 591). Therefore, an individual is not

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born with human dignity, only with its possibilities—it is a quality that needs to be developed over time. Although human dignity in the African tradition does not share the same hermeneutics as dignitas hominis in the Stoic tradition, where dignity is attributed to the individual/humanity as a species pursuant to his modalities of rationality, Ikuenobe’s account can be meaningfully contrasted with the prewar paradigm to illustrate the differences between the African and European applications of human dignity. In the following section, the writer will discuss how personhood, community and human dignity manifest akin to the prewar paradigm of human dignity in African communalism, as articulated by Ikuenobe, and how these applications differ from generic human dignity. Personhood, Community and Human Dignity Ikuenobe advocates a twofold claim of human dignity in African communitarianism. First, he sees human dignity as an earned status, defined by the normative idea of personhood and rooted in rational and cognitive (ontological) capacities, positively exercised, with communal wellbeing overriding individual interest (2016, 442, 447). For him, personhood is inextricably linked with dignity as a capacity to act in ways that enhance personhood under communitarian conditions: “Thus, a plausible African communal conception of moral dignity, which is founded on a moral conception of personhood and community, involves a combination of capacity and agency that is conceptually tied to communal responsibility and respect for self and others” (2016, 437). Here, the community, as sole prescriber of norms, defines the person. The second feature dictates that the obligation to promote communal wellbeing does not necessarily imply a corresponding right for individuals since these obligations do not specifically derive from inherent or inalienable rights or dignity (2016, 452; 2019, 591). In his view, dignity is directly related to the performance of duties towards the community (2019, 592). Obligations derive from actions (expressed as capacities) that cultivate and foster communal dignity, and a person who discards her responsibility towards the community can have her dignity diminished and consequently not achieve absolute personhood (Ikuenobe 2016, 452). The individual earns human dignity and respect through his actions in favour of the community, whereby personhood is first achieved and then accumulated. Ikuenobe (2019, 589) bases this claim on Menkiti’s (1984,

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172, 173) view of personhood: Personhood has a “processual nature” and needs to be realised by way of “ontological progression” into a community “through a long process of social and ritual transformation until it attains the full complement of excellences seen as truly definitive of man”—from birth to old age. Afro-communitarian dignity, in its expression of conditional dignity achieved by way of communal duties, indicates a semblance with the two salient features of the prewar paradigm of human dignity. In the prewar paradigm, dignity first indicates a contingent status or an elevated position over others. Second, dignity must be earned through duties towards oneself, as in Stoicism and Kantianism. In this realm, dignity does not generate rights. Similarly, African dignity-ism indicates a status that is earned through duties, albeit towards one’s community. One can only reach complete personhood in Ikuenobe’s account of African dignity-ism and Kantian autonomy by exercising one’s moral capacities in a communal context; if there is no community, one cannot attain dignity. For Kant, one cannot be completely autonomous unless one respects the dignity of others so that respect for one’s own dignity can be achieved. Consequently, attaining autonomy is interdependent on the existence of others. In a similar vein, Ikuenobe (2016, 460) links dignity with a correlative claim of self-respect, conditional upon communal respect: If one chooses and acts voluntarily to do things that disrespect oneself and others and frustrate communal harmonious living, then one does not deserve ‘absolute respect’ from others. One must choose to act based on communal values that demand one’s respect for oneself, others, and communal harmonious relationship, in order to deserve ‘some degree’ of respect from others.

In contrast, generic human dignity, as applied in European constitutionalism, functions as a sui generis legal principle. As explained elsewhere above, the first element of generic dignity, namely a priori and inviolable dignity, operates as a principle in constitutional adjudication. Thus, inherent dignity cannot be diminished or forfeited,12 meaning that dignity as an ontological value generates a right to have this dignity respected and protected. The second element, namely the obligation to respect and protect 12  Contrary to the prescript of the first element of generic dignity, the South African Constitutional Court found in S v Jordan 2002 6 SA 642 (CC) para 74 that prostitution diminishes human dignity. This view personifies human dignity in the prewar paradigm.

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dignity, functions as a rule and can therefore, in appropriate circumstances, be limited by competing individual/group rights. In Afrocentric anthropology and philosophy, the focus is on the individual’s relative realisation of personhood as member of his community; thus, individual rights rank secondary to obligations towards the community. In this realm, a community’s ethos as lodestar of its values might infringe on the dignitarian rights of marginalised groups within the community. This is because the process of achieving dignity in the prewar paradigm entails that duties are considered prior to the rights of the agent, whereas in the postwar paradigm, inherent dignity is considered prior to the duty of the agent, implying that dignity needs to be respected and protected (also see Sensen 2011, 72). Traces of the Generic Idea of Human Dignity in Africa It is significant to note that the very first traces of the generic idea of human dignity in Western law appeared on African soil during the evolution of the generic idea of human dignity (Steinmann 2016b, 87–99). Notwithstanding, human dignity appeared in African constitutionalism only when the African Charter was adopted in 1986. Additionally, only four African countries out of fifty-eight were represented (Glendon 1999, 1155) when the postwar concept of human dignity was formulated in 1948. In these developments, one can already discern a break not only from the relational, contingent aspect of dignity in the prewar paradigm but also from the claim in African society that personhood, and therefore dignity, must be earned. In this framework, the new formulation of human dignity evolved into a universal and unacquired concept of human dignity post World War II, as per the generic claim. An aspect relevant to the development of the generic idea of human dignity occurred on the African continent as a manifestation of the collective dignity of the oppressed, representing a reaction against unequal treatment rooted in discrimination and colonialism (Steinmann 2016b, 90–100). In the South African context, apartheid “assaulted the human dignity of persons on the grounds of race and colour alone”,13 as they had “no dignity worth protecting”.14 At this time, some African states were 13  S v Makwanyane 1995 (3) SA 391 (CC), para 262; Port Elizabeth Municipality v Various Occupiers 2005 (1) SA 217 (CC), para 10. 14  The Citizen 1978 (Pty) Ltd. v McBride 2011 (4) SA 191 (CC), para 145.

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still struggling to gain their independence from their colonial rulers.15 As a result, the notion of the collective dignity16 of the African people originated long before dignity was institutionalised in the African Charter,17 the Interim Constitution of South Africa and many other constitutions on African soil. Dignity Disambiguated from Dignitas One of the first events relevant to the development of a generic account of human dignity, as that which belongs to all persons equally, occurred in 1934. Acting South African Judge of Appeal, Gardiner, in a minority judgment in Rasool v Minister of Post and Telegraphs,18 held that discrimination based on race infringed on the common law principle that everyone is equal before the law and that the impugned sections in the specific legislation impaired the dignitas of Asiatics and non-Europeans by relegating them to a lower order in society. Here, Gardiner equated the hierarchical and status-based common law notion of dignitas with generic human dignity, which is neither the prewar concept of human dignity nor the common law form of dignitas. Rather, it comports with the current understanding that everyone’s equal and inherent human dignity must be respected and protected. Gardiner’s application of dignitas-as-dignity was radical at the time since it was inconceivable to many that a group of people “belonging to an inferior order of civilisation”19 could claim equal treatment rooted in equal dignitas. Although Gardiner’s minority judgment was delivered 14 years before the Universal Declaration was promulgated and 60  years before the Interim Constitution of South Africa, (adopted 29 January 1994) was enacted, the transformative possibilities of the generic idea of human dignity are clearly evident in this decision.

15  Albert Luthuli referred to this struggle in his Nobel lecture Africa and Freedom on 11 December 1961 after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1960, stating that Africans’ “strivings for nationhood and national dignity have been beaten down by force”. 16  Apartheid itself, rooted in the ontological primacy of race, was a purported collective right. 17  The preamble of the Constitutive Act of the African Union (adopted 11 July 2000) also refers to the “heroic” fight of the African people for their dignity and independence. 18  1934 AD 167. 19  Ibid, 190.

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Human Dignity, Discrimination and Oppression In South Africa, during the 1950s, the theme of the generic idea of dignity started to surface in political documents and open letters from the Catholic Church. The 1959 Manifesto of the Pan Africanist Council (adopted 5 April 1959) was most likely the first South African document that refers to the infringement of generic human dignity experienced by a marginalised group of people. Significantly, the ANC’s Freedom Charter, which was adopted 3 years earlier (26 June 1955), does not refer to human dignity. The Manifesto, inter alia, stipulates that “They [whites] hold the granting of ‘right’ on the basis of ethnological origin to be the entrenching of sectional arrogance and the continued maintenance of contempt for human worth and disregard for human dignity” (para 19). During the 1960s, many political organisations were established in South Africa that promoted the Black Consciousness philosophy, with the primary purpose of raising awareness among Black people of their inherent dignity and inalienable worth. In S v Cooper,20 Judge Boshoff, in the framework of possible offences of terrorism committed by nine accused against state security, cited references to human dignity in various instruments of several Black Consciousness Movements at the time. For example, “The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity”21 (quoted from the SASO policy manifesto 1971 4(b)(ii)). The notion of collective dignity that arose in the pre-constitutional era can thus be described as a subcategory of the generic concept of equal and inherent dignity. In current law, the collective dignity of groups—“shared dignity”—is granted protection as a human right against being infringed upon and violated by certain actions (Neuhaeuser 2011, 21–36).

 (TPD) (unreported) case number CC254/75 of 15 December 1976.  Ibid, 21. This phrase originated from a speech presented by Steve Biko in Cape Town in 1971. See “South African History Online.//www.sahistory.org.za/archive/quotes-steve-­ biko (accessed November 1, 2022)”. 20 21

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Features of European Constitutionalism Communitarian Perceptions It is trite to note that the notion of a global standard of human rights is paradoxical and cannot necessarily represent multicultural values and indigenous notions of cultural practices. This partially stems from the fact that many countries were unrepresented when the Universal Declaration was drafted22 and because of the emphasis on individual rights and freedoms in liberal democracies such as the United States.23 Popular discourse has shown that the Western method of legal interpretation with its emphasis on individual rights is too divergent to account for African communalism, where the individual’s rights are subsumed by family and community interests and the emphasis is on duties rather than on individual rights, vis-à-vis the prosperity of the community (Gelaye 2019, 24, 27; Makwinja 2019, 4, 34; Zongwe and Tjatjara 2022, 137; Murithi 2007, 278).24 However, postwar liberal democracies in Europe and in other countries such as Canada, South Africa and India apply a more communitarian interpretation than the strict rights-based method exemplified by the Warren court in the United States.25 This approach is in line with the pronouncement in article 29(1) of the Universal Declaration that “Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible”. In European constitutionalism, community 22  In the African context, Asmaron Legesse (1980, 129) argues that “if Africans were the sole authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they might have ranked the rights of communities above those of individuals, and they might have used a cultural idiom fundamentally different from the language in which the ideas are now formulated”. 23  Additionally, see Legesse (1980, 124): “The critical difference between African and Western traditions concerns the importance of the human individual. In the liberal democracies of the Western world the ultimate repository of rights is the human person. The individual is held in a virtually sacralised position. There is a perpetual, and in our view obsessive, concern with the dignity of the individual, his worth, personal autonomy and property”. 24  The African Charter has given effect to the wider principle of duties consistent with the African historical tradition and values by incorporating the instruction in para 6 of the Preamble that “the enjoyment of rights and freedoms also implies the performance of duties on the part of everyone”. 25  Additionally, compare Judge Otas’s dictum in African Echo (Pty) Ltd. t/a Times of Swaziland vs Inkhosatana Gelane Simelane (77/2013) SZSC 83 (3 December 2014) at para 34: “It needs also be emphasised that the Bogoshi decision was based on the uniquely liberal Constitution of South Africa, which exhibits some marked difference with our Constitution and should be approached with trepidation”.

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values and respect are the primary sources of dignity, as negative liberty in the United States is regarded to be insufficient for human flourishing (Rao 2011b, 220). In this realm, rights are not absolute and can be constrained in favour of communal interests. Additionally, as per the third element of generic dignity, states have a positive duty to realise human dignity through welfare and socioeconomic rights, which in many ways comports with the African cultural ideas of human dignity and ubuntu. Personhood in European constitutionalism is constituted by the individual having dignity within himself, interlinked with the dignity of his society. Neomi Rao (2011a, 204) explains that human dignity “reflects a particular conception of individual fulfilment within the broader social project of the state. Human dignity supports individual rights, but within a social community. In this context, rights are important, but can be limited by the needs of a democratic society”.26 The German Federal Constitutional Court has been influential in departing from classical individualism by developing a conception of humanity’s legal image vis-à-vis our relationship to and within our community: “citizens are members of and bound to society”.27 In a similar vein, the Federal Constitutional Court held in the Mephisto case28 that man is “an autonomous person who develops freely within the social community”. Limitations on basic rights do not affect human dignity, nor is the individual made to be an object of the state. The Investment Aid Case29 is illustrative: The image of man in the Basic Law is not that of an isolated, sovereign individual. The Basic Law resolves the tension between individual and society by relating and binding the individual to society but without detracting from the intrinsic value of the person. 26  Donald Kommers (2002, 64) shares the same view: “The notion of dignity inherent in the new constitutionalism of the postwar era has a core meaning that seems to differ from the core meaning of what we Americans understand by liberty, and these meanings are often found in the different images of society and personhood that they project”. 27  Eckart Klein, quoting from BVerfGE 27, 344, 351 (1970) and Donald P Kommers and Russel A Miller (2012, 362). 28  30 BVerfGE 173, 193 (1971). In this judgment the Court included in its vision of the community not only the living but also the dead, by finding that the human dignity of the deceased writer Klaus Mann trumped the right to freedom of art and science, as the posthumous publishing of his novel Mephisto impinged on his human dignity. See Donald P Kommers and Russel A Miller (2012, 358, 362). 29  4 BVerfGE 7 (1954).

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In the South African context, Judge Sachs made a similar comment in National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality v Minister of Justice:30 While recognising the intrinsic worth of each person, the Constitution does not presuppose that a holder of rights is an isolated, lonely and abstract figure possessing a disembodied and socially disconnected self. It acknowledges that people live in their bodies, their communities, their cultures …

Therefore, in European constitutionalism, there is a constant interplay between the dignity of the individual and the sometimes-conflicting dignitarian rights of her community,31 and there is no preconceived preference for individual rights over community rights.32 Deryk Beyleveld and Roger Brownsword (2001, 11) argue that the respect component of the generic idea of human dignity can also function as a constraint on free choice, which becomes relevant when the competing values of a community must be weighed against individual rights. In the traditional liberal view, an individual’s rights are often juxtaposed against the demands of the community because a right can serve as “a protective shield against moral demands in the name of the well-being of others”.33 In European constitutionalism, the individual’s freedom and autonomy can be limited in favour of the dignity of one’s community. This phenomenon presented itself in the notorious French Dwarf-tossing and the German Peep Show cases, where the respective courts curtailed autonomy to give preference to community interests.34 In a similar vein, autonomy in artistic freedom was truncated in South Africa in cases of child  1998 (12) SA 1517 (CC), para 117.  South African Police Service v Solidarity obo Barnard 2014 (6) SA 123 (CC). 32  As Donald Kommers (2002, 66) argues: “The other approach—dominant in Europe, Canada, and South Africa—emphasises balance and equilibrium in constitutional interpretation, the harmonisation of conflicting rights and values, and a perspective that envisions the constitution as a unified structure, requiring a holistic approach to interpretation. These differing methodologies are important because they project alternative visions of the human person, society, community, equality, and democracy”. 33  Joseph Raz (1990), as quoted by Neomi Rao (2011b, 223). 34  In the Namibian case of ES v AC 2015 NASC 11, however, the Supreme Court ruled that personal autonomy trumps community interests. In this case, a practising Jehovah’s Witness refused a blood transfusion and opposed her brother’s application to be appointed as her guardian in order to be authorised to request the blood transfusion. Her opposition to the application was dismissed by the High Court but the decision was reversed by the Supreme Court. Judge Shivute held at para 73 that: “moral autonomy is of central importance to the protection of human dignity and liberty in free and open democracies such as ours”. 30 31

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pornography. The Court found in De Reuck v Director of Public Prosecutions35 that laws prohibiting child pornography are constitutional because “Child pornography is universally condemned for good reason. It strikes at the dignity of children”.36 Consequently, state policies can weaken individual liberty and autonomy to accommodate community interest and may trump the obligation to respect and protect human dignity. For example, prohibitions against hate speech and defamation are designed to enforce inclusivity and respect between citizens and groups and to create boundaries of civility. Applying these thoughts to an African setting, one could argue that the generic idea of human dignity that manifests in personhood in the postwar paradigm shares certain resemblances with the Afrocentric ontological dimension of personhood, which dictates that communalism is an essential element of personal identity and human dignity. As the Federal Constitutional Court connected personhood with man’s relationship in his social community,37 which has its roots in Kantian moral ethics, man’s focus is now not only on himself but “on the vindication of the dignity of all humankind”.38 Since everybody is interconnected with everybody else, individual self-determination is reached through familial relationships, communal participation, communication and civility,39 and people are morally bound by duties towards one another40 in accordance with the principles of the Universal Declaration. Socio-economic Rights European constitutionalism is characterised by the enforcement of socio-­ economic rights in accordance with the third element of the generic dignity claim by providing dignified existential conditions. The emphasis here is on the state’s obligation to realise inherent dignity through the recognition and enforcement of socio-economic rights. In the opinion of Judge Arthur Chaskalson (2000, 204), the first President of the South African Constitutional Court,  these rights are “rooted in respect for human  2004 (1) SA 406 (CC).  Ibid, para 61. 37  Edward J. Eberle (1997, 974), Donald P Kommers and Russel A Miller (2012, 362), Henk Botha (2009, 187). 38  George P Fletcher (1984, 176). 39  Edward J Eberle (1997, 974), Donald P Kommers and Russel A Miller (2012, 362). 40  D Kommers and Miller (2012), Eberle (1997, 973), George P Fletcher (1984, 179). 35 36

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dignity, for how can there be dignity in a life lived without access to housing, health care, food, water or, in the case of people unable to look after themselves, without appropriate assistance?” Connecting these social rights with state duties reflects a value-ordered constitution premised on the social-state model, in contrast to the United States Constitution, which is value-neutral, premised on the classical-liberal idea that favours free markets and directs that socio-economic relationships be self-regulated by the community (Eberle 2008, 5). As Erica de Wet (1995, 44) argues: The German Constitution expressly recognizes that the duty of the state is no longer limited to protecting individual liberties. The social law-based state recognizes that human dignity and liberty in the modern era is not only dependent on protection against state intervention, but on comprehensive state participation in community life.

Collective Dignity As discussed elsewhere above, collective dignity is a subcategory of the generic claim of human dignity and a specific feature of European constitutionalism. Collective dignity manifests as an expression of self-­ determination and the right to participate equally in democratic societies. Groups are linked by elements such as gender, language or culture, which constitute the identity of the group and are often formed by defending a certain communal way of life, as opposed to the way of life of the dominant society (Werner 2014, 445; Howard 1995a, 83), although violations of the human rights of individuals and the unequal distribution of rights in the group can still occur. The claim that the inherent dignity of groups needs to be respected and protected, mainly against discrimination and unequal treatment, has brought about many transformations in the areas of gender equality and the rights of children, women, people with disabilities, migrants and people of various religions so that these groups are now completely integrated into society. The collective dignity of marginalised groups in society also manifests in the third element of generic duty, where the state has a positive duty to protect these groups’ socioeconomic rights. However, the Universal Declaration in articles 16 and 29 also acknowledges the collective dignity of other groups, such as families and communities, and includes the protection of these rights as human rights. Therefore, the protection of Africa’s community rights falls within the ambit of the Universal Declaration. Jacques Maritain (1948, 62), a

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member of the drafting committee of the Universal Declaration, explains the rationale for the protection of these rights as follows: Until these guarantees of individual rights have become traditional and certain, colonial peoples and minority groups of various kinds—racial, cultural, religious—will, no doubt, also have to be assured certain basic collective or group rights. These can logically take very much the same forms as those concerned with individual rights and be made subject to the same responsibilities.

The Migration of Judicialised Human Dignity Into African Constitutionalism The Universal Declaration emerged in 1948 as a rights-bearing document connecting the omnipresent values of the fifty-eight signatories from all over the world, containing four-fifths of the world’s population (Glendon 1999, 1155), as well as many other countries who made submissions to the Drafting Committee. The Declaration represents a compilation of responses received from questionnaires sent to statesmen and scholars in many countries, including from Chinese, Islamic, Hindu and customary law perspectives, pertaining to rights that are viewed as implicit in man’s nature as an individual and as a member of society (Glendon 1999, 1156). The Committee was able to conclude that “the lists of basic rights and values they received from their far-flung sources were essentially similar” (Glendon 1999, 1156). The postulation of universal rights in the Universal Declaration led René Cassin, the renowned French delegate and pioneer of comparative law who was a member of the drafting subcommittee, to state in his memoires in 1972 that: The study of comparative law is always useful. However, when one seeks … as in the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights to identify a certain number of common principles concerning the fundamental rights of every human being, comparative law becomes a necessity (Glendon 1999, 1158 note 28).

Since the Universal Declaration was written in the civil tradition, being the “most widely distributed legal tradition in the world”, the claim of human dignity was imported into numerous charters and constitutions and thereafter into many other Latin American, African and Asian

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countries (Glendon 1999, 1159).41 The universal character of human dignity no doubt lends justification to this effort. Africa has fifty-five constitutional states, and many of them have incorporated human dignity in their constitutions in some form or another as either a value or a right, or as both, but adapted to suit their historical and political content and context. After the proclamation of human dignity in the African Charter in 1986, the Namibian Constitution of 1990 (date of adoption 21 March 1990) was most likely the first domestic constitution to incorporate dignity, and thereafter, many countries followed suit. In addition, some constitutions oblige the judiciary to consider international law as a frame of reference when compiling a judgment, such as in South Africa and Zimbabwe, whereas other courts have only the discretion to consider foreign laws. As a result of these provisions, South Africa has the richest human dignity adjudication on the continent, having more freedom to engage with foreign jurisprudence. Other jurisdictions, such as Uganda, lacking express authorisation to consider foreign law, are much more reluctant to refer to foreign precedent, and as a result, human dignity jurisprudence is not properly developed in those jurisdictions.

Capita Selecta of Human Dignity Case Law in Various Jurisdictions It is a tenet of modern-day constitutionalism that the constitution functions as the supreme law and any legislation, administrative act, custom and the like that impairs constitutionally guaranteed rights would be invalid and unconstitutional. In these instances, dignity plays a transformative role. Dignity as a constitutional right can either play an auxiliary role by supporting other constitutional rights or individually compete with other rights, in which event preference may be granted over the competing right. The theory of constitutional rights stipulates that rights can be limited in appropriate circumstances, subject to proportionality analysis. Because of the special status accorded to human dignity as an absolute right in German law, it is subject neither to proportionality nor to limitation, and therefore, its scope is interpreted on a narrow basis (Steinmann 41  Additionally, see Lorraine E.  Weinrib (2002, 15): “The rights-protecting instruments adopted in the aftermath of the Second World War invite comparative reflection and analysis because they rest on a shared constitutional conception that, by design, transcends the history, cultural heritage, and social mores of any particular nation-state”.

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2016b, 238). In other countries, the first two elements of dignity’s generic claim are integrated as one element to justify limitations on the right to dignity (Steinmann 2016b, 368–414).42 As dignity is notoriously difficult to define, judges abstain from elaborating on its meaning; they would rather construe a normative grasp of the notion from the perspective of violations of dignity. Against this perspective, Günther Dürig, the well-­ known German constitutional lawyer, theorised that “naturally one should not claim to interpret the principle of human dignity as positively binding; one can only say what infringes it” (as quoted by Kirste 2013, 69).43 The judgments discussed below were selected to illustrate the diversity in dignity-adjudication in different jurisdictions in Africa and how generic dignity is applied by the courts. Jurisprudence from South Africa is deliberately omitted since its dignity-adjudication is the best developed on the continent. Tyron v Board of Governors Achimota Senior High School and the Attorney-General [2021] DLHC 10297 (High Court of Ghana, Human Rights Division) Suit Nr HR/0055/2021 In this decision, the Applicant was invited to enrol in Achimota Senior High School in Accra, Ghana. The school has a specific policy that “students must keep their hair low, simple and natural”. The Applicant, being a member of the Rastafarian religion, was not willing to adhere to this rule, as it is a tenet of this religion that hair is to be worn in dreadlocks, not to be cut since birth. As a result, and on the first day of school, during the registration process, the Applicant, in full view of other learners, was called out by a teacher to step aside and notified that she did not want to deal with him, based on his religious dreadlocks. He was also informed by the same teacher that he would not be enrolled in the school unless he cut his dreadlocks. The applicant sued for violations of various human rights and freedoms guaranteed under the 1992 Constitution of Ghana. Ruling in the Applicant’s favour, the court held that his rights to human dignity, religious beliefs, culture and education had been violated by the Respondents’ actions.

 This practise is not necessarily legally sound—see: Rinie Steinmann (2016b, 359–360).  Oscar Schachter (1983, 849), shared the same view, stating that dignity must rather be left for “intuitive understanding”. 42 43

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The Ghana Constitution of 1992 (adopted 28 April 1992) holds in article 15.1 that the dignity of all persons shall be inviolable, nor shall any act detract from his dignity or worth as a human being. Here, the first two elements of the generic idea of human dignity are illustrative. The Applicant’s inherent dignity is inalienable and nonrelational, irrespective of his religion, and not only the state but also private institutions need to respect and protect this dignity. Although the court ruled that the Applicant’s dignity had been impaired because he had been subjected to humiliating treatment by having to step aside from the other learners, it also found that the reason for the instruction to step aside was based on his religious beliefs, thereby not respecting and protecting his dignity. The court referred to decisions in two other jurisdictions where Rastafarians’ dignity was also violated because of discrimination on the grounds of religious belief with the courts ruling in the Applicants’ favour, the cases having been heard in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Here, not only was the dignity of the individual violated but also his collective dignity qua a member of the Rastafarian group. African Echo (Pty) Ltd. t/a Times of Swaziland vs Inkhosatana Gelane Simelane (77/2013) SZSC 83 (3 December 2014) This decision was a civil appeal to the Supreme Court by the Appellant to review the decision of the court a quo for damages awarded, based on defamation arising from the publication of wrongful, unreasonable and untrue statements, causing reputational damage to the Respondent and impairing her human dignity. The court had to balance the ever-present competing rights to freedom of expression and human dignity and concluded that dignity trumped free speech. Human dignity is guaranteed in article (18)(1) by the Swaziland Constitution Act 2005 (date of adoption 25 July 2005), which states that “the dignity of each person is inviolable”. In dismissing the Appellant’s appeal, the court referred to the first two elements of generic dignity in para 1, (2)(3): It is universally recognised that human dignity is first the dignity of each human being as a human being. In this encapsulates the viewpoint that human dignity includes the equality of human beings …. It envisages a society predicated on the desire to protect the human dignity of each of its members.

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The court applied proportionality to find that individual dignity takes preference based on the idea that other constitutional rights can be constrained when dignity is infringed upon. Law and Advocacy for Women in Uganda v Attorney-General, Constitutional Petition Nr 08, 2007 In this decision, the Constitutional Court outlawed the longstanding custom of female genital mutilation in accordance with several constitutional provisions that elevate human dignity as a subsidiary right, inter alia to protect the right not to be subjected to inhumane treatment (Article 24) and womens’ right to equality with men (Article 31(1)(b)), as well as Article 32(6): “laws, cultures, customs or traditions which are against the dignity, welfare or interest of women or which undermine their status, are prohibited by this Constitution”. The court found that genital manipulation constitutes “very harmful consequences of the dignity of women and girls” (para 20). Although the court neither conceptualised human dignity nor considered its functions, it did hold that “any person is free to practice any culture, tradition or religion as long as such practice does not constitute disrespect for human dignity of any person …” (para 10). Dignity here manifests as collective dignity, which takes preference over “laws, cultures, customs or traditions” that violate dignity. Against this perspective, the same court found in Mifumi (U) Ltd. and 12 Others v Attorney General [2010] UDCC 2 (26 March 2010) that the payment of a “bride price” in cases of customary marriages is not unconstitutional, thereby not violating the human dignity and equality rights of women entering into marriage, based on the Respondents’ arguments that every person has a voluntary choice to wed according to their cultural tradition. The court argued that the payment of a bride price is no more than a symbolic way of thanking the bride’s parents for her good upbringing. However, the court did find the practice of returning the dowry upon divorce unconstitutional: … customary practice of the husband demanding a refund of the bride price in the event of dissolution of the marriage demeans and undermines the dignity of a woman and is in violation of Article 33 (6) of the Constitution. Moreover, the demand for a refund violates a woman’s entitlement to equal rights with the man in marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. (para 20, 41)

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It is submitted that the court’s application of inherent dignity, not affected by the payment of lobola in this respect is incorrect, notwithstanding the fact that the payment of a bride price is voluntary and not proscribed. Brides have inherent dignity, and paying a price for them is considered to treat them “as a mere means to an end” by disrespecting and not protecting their dignity. This controversial interpretation of lobola interprets the practice in commercial terms as the sale of a bride. As Dürig explains (Botha 2009, 183): Human dignity as such is affected when a concrete human being is reduced to an object, to a mere means, to a dispensable quantity. [Violations of dignity involve] the degradation of the person to a thing, which can, in its entirety, be grasped, disposed of, registered, brainwashed, replaced, used and expelled.

The State v Willard Chokuramba [2019] ZWCC 10 (03 April 2019) Section 51 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, 2013 (date of adoption 22 May 2013) pronounces that “every person has inherent dignity in their private and public life, and the right to have that dignity respected and protected”, which has a wording similar to that of section 10 of the South African Constitution. It is no wonder then that the Constitutional Court in 2019 declared juvenile whipping unconstitutional since it violates the right against cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and, thus, impairs inherent dignity by disrespecting and not protecting dignity as the collective dignity of juveniles. As the court held on page 21: the obligation to respect and protect the inherent dignity of every person means that the inherent dignity of a person being punished for a crime must remain intact or unimpaired notwithstanding the infliction of the punishment. Punishment must be provided in a way that is consistent with and respects the inherent dignity of the offender.

This decision is an exemplary application of the generic idea for African human dignity adjudication, with the court referencing dignity no less than one hundred and thirty times and referring to foreign judgments in the United States, the European Court on Human Rights and South

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Africa. The Court elaborated on the elements and inalienable and nonrelational features of generic dignity on page 19: Human dignity is different. It is a special status that attaches to a person for the reason that he or she is a human being. It is the fact of being human that founds human dignity. Human dignity is therefore inherent in every person all the time and regardless of circumstances or status of the person … It remains a constant factor and does not change as a person goes through the stages of development in life. Human dignity is not created by the State by law. The law can only recognise the inherence of human dignity in a person and provide for equal respect and protection of it. In fact, human dignity demands respect.

Towards an Africanisation of Human Dignity? The generic claim of human dignity dictates that everybody has inherent and egalitarian dignity, which needs to be respected and protected as a right by states and individuals equally (see also Masaka’s “ubuntu-inspired” interpretation in this volume). What is controversial, however, is the question of how this unacquired dignity is to be protected, specifically in the African context, where the idea of human rights, as opposed to duties towards one’s community, might clash with the African worldview that the individual is subordinate to society and that individual rights could erode community interests, thereby diminishing not only the individual’s dignity but also that of the community. Where human rights are applied universally, individually and indivisibly, states have duties to protect human rights (e.g. duties to protect against discrimination and cruel and inhuman punishment and duties to provide a clean environment and water and socioeconomic rights). However, duties are not entitlements, and the traditional human rights model dictates that right-holders have no obligations aside from refraining from acts that will violate the human rights of others. In the African context, duties, in the sense of acquiring personhood, are conceived of as positive actions to advance the interests of the family and the community, or in the context of ubuntu, manifesting in communality, the restoration of offenders, and a criminal justice system centred on victims. In an actual African setting, one would deliberate how a decision would affect an individual’s family and community before considering the rights of the autonomous individual. One may therefore ask whether generic dignity could be protected by the performance of duties solely towards one’s community.

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To synthesise the perceived anomaly in the application of rights and duties, Jack Donnelly (1985, 31, 35) and Rhoda Howard (1995b, 59) argue that human dignity is best interpreted by the constructivist theory, which links human rights to both individual freedom and belonging in a community. The  constructivist theory aligns with the communitarian understanding of human dignity in European constitutionalism, where the individual is not only regarded as an extension of his society but also entitled to personal autonomy qua being a member of the community, actuated by the claim of generic human dignity. Additionally, European constitutionalism provides another compromise to resolve the discord at least partially between the African concept of duties and the second and third elements of generic dignity by requiring states to act positively to implement socioeconomic rights. Applied in an African setting, the “idea that an individual can autonomously realise his dignity by asserting his or her human rights independent of group aspirations appears to be largely in violation of many societies’ cultural beliefs about their lives”, (Howard 1995a, 83). Africa’s application of human dignity in anthropology and philosophy comports with the prewar paradigm of human dignity, since it remains hierarchical, meaning that the dignity of the individual ranks below that of the community and needs to be acquired. Inherent and egalitarian dignity as per the first element of generic dignity, vis-à-vis the rights of the community, cannot be conceptually respected and protected by duties towards the community exclusively, as inequalities in a community may still undermine individual dignity. Theoretically speaking, inherent dignity can only be respected and protected by proffering a right as such for individuals as well as for groups to be adjudicated by applying the process of proportionality. Therefore, generic human dignity cannot be Africanised.

Conclusion Universal human dignity is a social fact. It permeates humanity. Its development evolved on African soil in a legal setting since the early 1930s, although Africa was very late in formalising the generic idea of human dignity. Generic dignity is a sui generis legal principle, irreconcilable with the prewar paradigm, as rights come before duties—the very reason why the rights of both communities and individuals are protected under generic dignity. The communitarian character of European constitutionalism constrains radical individualism but at the same time treats individuals in society not as subordinates but as equals.

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The prewar paradigm of human dignity is still very much alive and well in Africa, but it is not a legal concept. In the prewar paradigm, one is born only with the possibility of attaining human dignity, and there is no legal recourse to protect this dignity. However, generic dignity has been incorporated into African constitutionalism since the late 1980s, and judges from different jurisdictions are applying the elements of generic dignity in their decisions. The constructivist theory of human dignity synthesises the rights of the individual and the community in adjudication, and in some instances, community rights take preference over individual rights, and vice versa. As a result of the application of the principle of proportionality, community rights cannot override individual rights in all instances. Although human dignity adjudication in Africa has only recently entered the courts, it has developed independently from its cultural application; therefore, one can conclude that there is consonance with its European counterpart.

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CHAPTER 12

Motho Ha Se Ntja Ha Lahloe: The Philosophy of Human Dignity in Sesotho Culture Christopher N. Mokolatsie

Introduction In this chapter, I reflect on the concept of human dignity understood in terms of seriti in Sesotho culture as central to Basotho ethics and thereby contributing to the broadening of the discourse on the concept of obotho (personhood) to include reflection on human dignity. The analysis of the meaning of human dignity as expressed by seriti is inseparable from the religious beliefs of the Basotho and their ontological assumptions. Given the religious orientation of the concept of human dignity among the Basotho peoples, the analysis of seriti is located within the range of uses of it clustered around ideas of sanctity of human life, personhood (botho) and the special place motho occupies in the order of creation (Vellem 2013: 315). The analysis that is to follow does not part ways with the common view that dignity [seriti] is a moral property that is connected to the idea of motho (human being) as having an intrinsic and inherent value, which

C. N. Mokolatsie (*) Independent Scholar, Coventry, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Molefe, C. Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1_12

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she has in virtue of her human status that imposes duties of respect on agents (Molefe 2022: 6–7). This chapter contributes to the literature on human dignity drawing from the Basotho culture to add a voice to the salient approach associated with human dignity and human rights, particularly in the context of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Schroeder and Bani-Sadr 2017: 22). This reflection is therefore against the background of current thinking on the concept of human dignity underpinning international norms and standards and is often understood in terms of human rights or the respect of the dignity of the individual (Schachter 1983). However, as others have observed the development of these instruments, the conceptual frame of reference on human dignity that informs them is based on ideas and views from Western value frameworks and European moral thought and traditions. It has thus not been as inclusive of other cultural traditions, especially of ideas and views of cultures from the global south (Murithi 2007). The chapter is therefore a contribution from the perspective of Sesotho speaking culture1 to this process of developing a broader, more inclusive understanding of human dignity as one of the influential concepts in most societies today (Molefe 2022: 3). This African perspective is relevant because views and ideas about human dignity that are grounded in African moral thought and tradition are generally underexplored and underdeveloped in contemporary ethical discourse, including in reflections on the concept of human dignity and in current botho discourse. I am thinking here of the understanding of the dignity of a human being in Sesotho culture as one African perspective2 as expressed in indigenous axiological resources, including narratives such as folktales (lits ó mo), proverbs (maele) and key moral concepts such as botho (personhood) and makhabane (virtues). To my knowledge, this narrative approach to the analysis of the concept of dignity in Sesotho-speaking culture has not been done before. The chapter is divided into two main sections. First, I locate this analysis within the context of current thinking on human dignity. The section is a broad overview of current thinking about human dignity prevalent in Western thinking as reflected in international norms and standards, including declarations on human rights (Andorno 2009: 5; Metz 2012: 20).  This is the culture of the Basotho people of present-day Lesotho in Southern Africa.  I am aware that there is ‘no one single African concept of human dignity because there are many different and often complementary conceptions (ACLARS 2019: para. 1). 1 2

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This usage of human dignity will be used as a background against which the second section analyses the understanding of human dignity in Sesotho culture understood in terms of seriti. This section articulates a religious interpretation of human dignity by appeal to the concept of seriti, a concept central in the ontology and traditional moral thought of the Basotho. Here, I submit two important Sesotho perspectives of dignity: an inwards-­ looking account of dignity and an outwards-looking articulation of dignity as expressed in selected Sesotho proverbs. This section underscores the African perspective on dignity in narratives especially in proverbs.3 Of particular interest are the proverbs “motho ha se ntja ha lahloe” and “O se re ho moroa moroa tooe” (Mahao 2010), which are I argue are quintessential expressions of the concept of human dignity in Sesotho culture. They vividly capture the Sesotho perspective of dignity as something inherent in motho (person) succinctly but also underscore the current decolonisation drive that seeks to give voice to other visions of humans worth currently marginalised voices in conversations on human dignity.

Concept of Human Dignity in Current Thinking It must be stated from the outset that it is not easy to define the concept of human dignity.4 It is used in many different settings with so many different and sometimes contradictory meanings (Schroeder and Bani-Sadr 2017: 11–17; Bedford-Strohm 2013: 212). As such, there is no one concept of human dignity. Rather, there are a number of different conceptions taking their meaning from the settings in which the concept is used (Riley n.d.). In contemporary thinking, the concept is featured in a variety of disciplines and is a central topic of interest in specialist fields such as ethical, legal and political discourses. Despite the many different uses of the concept of human dignity, the prevailing interpretation of this concept, and one that remains the fulcrum around which its meaning is found, remains its use within the context of human rights protections and international norms and standards. This is also the interpretation that many countries 3  The choice of these proverbs is because their interpretation connotes a cluster of uses of human dignity, we find in the literature that are connected to the ideas of inalienability, universality and unconditionality of the status of motho as a human that occupy special places among other created beings as a species (Vellem 2013: 315; Riley n.d.) and the required relationships following from this. 4  In this chapter this concept will be used interchangeable with dignity.

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have incorporated into their laws as the underpinning pillar of local human rights protections and standards (Schroeder and Bani-Sadr 2017: 21–22; Buchanan 2001). In other words, the concept remains the basis for the universal principle safeguarding the rights of individuals and is foundational to norms found in many international instruments5 and standards. Although these instruments do not explicitly define dignity, they postulate the dignity of individual human beings as their foundation (Andorno 2009; Metz 2012). One of the noticeable features of current thinking on dignity as a philosophical and ethical concept is not only its bias towards Western ethical thought with its secular culture but also that the concept itself is interpreted as secular. This is because the concept was given much impetus by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Enlightenment movement in Europe and the United States (Bedford-Strohm 2013: 218) from which it owes its origins. Central to the thinkers of the Enlightenment project in its various forms was to “construct a rational, secular defence of shared moral principles” (MacIntyre 1984: 4) separate and not informed by religious beliefs. This movement saw, among other things, the emergence of secular morality. In other words, one of the key features of the current thinking on human dignity, as found in global norms and standards such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and others, is that the concept is understood essentially in secular terms. The second feature of current thinking on human dignity is that the uses of this concept are closely connected to the notion of intrinsic worth and equal value of each human being and the unconditionality therefore (Schroeder and Bani-Sadr 2017: 20; Molefe 2022: 1). In other words, human dignity is the sort of thing that every human being possesses by virtue of just being human. That is to say human dignity is not conditional on the person’s status or moral standing. This means it is a claim about an inherent worth of a human being commonly interpreted in terms of human rights and by virtue of which motho (person) ought to be treated with respect (Andorno 2009: 5–7; Universal Declaration of human rights—United Nations 2015: 1, 3). According to this then, human dignity is something that cannot be gained or lost, and neither is it something that varies in accordance with a person’s moral goodness or badness because a person has dignity irrespective of their behaviours or traits (Andorno 2009: 5–6; Metz 2012: 21). In 5  I am thinking here of international instruments like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights.

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other words, a human being (motho6) has dignity naturally, i.e. independently of their circumstance or their moral status, or irrespective of how good or bad they are morally. The third insight we learn about the view of human dignity in current thinking is the idea that human dignity calls for a response. It demands a certain type of  treatment of motho (a human being), treatment that is always respectful and recognising that others are just as human as we are (Vellem 2013: 316). Describing this, Metz (2012: 21) explains that “to have a dignity is to be entitled to respectful treatment”, meaning one is “owed respect of the sort currently implied in international human standards such as the international declaration of human rights and other united nations instruments. This interpretation of dignity corresponds with a relational approach to human dignity (Bedford-Strohm 2013: 218; Vellem 2013: 316). In other words, human dignity implies a moral injunction to recognise, in our interpersonal relations, the inherent dignity of motho as a human with dignity that ought to be respected and not violated (Molefe 2022: 8). Of interest in this chapter is the predominant usage and meaning of the concept, especially as found characteristically in current international instruments and norms and standards, including those that are closely connected with international law and human rights (Riley n.d.; Andorno 2009: 1). As already intimated, although these instruments are considered and interpreted as international, the same cannot be said about their development. This is because some argue that their development was not done through a global, broad-based consultation that considers the different values from different cultures7 (Murithi 2007). In other words, the current conceptions of this concept, as found in international norms and standards, reflect ideas and views from a culture that is predominantly Western and Euro-American and Australasian in thinking (Metz 2012: 21). 6  The word motho in Sesotho culture has two meanings, it can mean a human being, i.e., a being that is of human species. This definition of the term has no moral meaning. The second meaning with is moral is where motho describes a human being that shows and displays qualities of botho and good moral character. Here the term is use in its first sense. 7  This means that far from consciously reflecting a truly global articulation of global norms and standards protecting human dignity, current human rights standards, which are one of the key instruments through which human dignity is championed today, reflect the bias towards Western culture and thinking. It is for this reason that for instance, and hence often the emphasis they make reflects conception of self and the values and views of dominant cultures of the West and Global North.

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It is against the background of current thinking that is predominantly Western and secular that this chapter locates the perspective of human dignity from Sesotho cultures as part of the margin voices from the Global South and specifically from Africa, which have largely remained marginal or even ignored on this important topic and the current conversation about dignity (Molefe 2022: 3). This analysis contributes to cross-cultural conversation about dignity and the development of a more inclusive conception of human dignity that transcends the inadequacies and bias of the current Western philosophical and Judaeo-Christian ethical traditions underpinning contemporary conceptions and notions of human dignity (Bedford-Strohm 2013: 215, 218). Here, I am thinking, for example, on the overemphasis on individual autonomy,8 especially its articulation in terms of rights, understood in terms of individual claims from others (ACLARS 2019: 1–2), and under emphases notions of duties and obligations owed to one another, many of which are central to respectful treatment of the dignity of others. The understanding of dignity in Sesotho culture that is analysed below is the counter opposite of this tradition. It is a religious interpretation of human dignity drawn from the moral traditions of African culture and thus representatives of African perspectives of human dignity (Murithi 2007; Metz 2012; ACLARS 2019).

The Concept of Human Dignity in Sesotho Culture The account of dignity characteristic of Sesotho culture as found in its narratives that is analysed here is grossly under researched topic, yet it has so much to offer in terms of other visions of human dignity from the Global South that can enhance and enrich the current thinking on the concept of dignity. This perspective, which I will argue is representative of perspectives of African culture on human dignity, is generally understood in terms of the concept seriti loosely translated as vital force (Molefe 2022: 3–4). The concept seriti is often mentioned in passing in current botho discourse and never truly analysed in its own right in any greater depth, not least from the perspective of Sesotho culture (Prozesky 2016: 10; Shutte 2008: 29; 2001: 21). However, even in these discussions, especially on 8  The paradox of this is with its inherent manipulative relationships, that individuals get involved in, which in turn undermines the rights and dignity of the other, is well argued by MacIntyre in his description of the predicament of that very modern creature, the autonomous moral agent (MacIntyre 2007: 69–70).

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African ethics, central features fundamental to the concept can be observed. These include descriptions of seriti often in terms of a life force or force field around a person, a kind of energy that exudes from a person as a human being (Prozesky 2016: 7–8). In other words, it refers to that special quality that inhere to motho (human being) as possessor of a kind power that manifests itself in human life and in the relations between individuals (Shutte 2008: 29). In this sense, seriti has strong connotations of a “special spiritual force that inheres and surrounds a human person” (Molefe 2022). It is thus sometimes referred to as that quality of character of a person, akin to an imposing power of presence. This power is sometimes acutely felt as a profound moment in those rare moments of encounter with another human being, where their seriti evokes an extraordinary and overwhelming feeling akin to being confronted with what Manyeli calls a mysterious numen (1992: 80–81). In other words, seriti expresses an implicit recognition of some inherent divine quality a human being shares (Molefe 2022: 3–4). Again, here, we see the religious and spiritual connotations of seriti, which is connected to the sacredness and sanctity of human life or motho as a creature with special aura (Casalis 1992: 243). Like most African concepts, seriti is not easy to translate and is often difficult to define. Shutte, however, gives a good description of the concept that seriti denotes “the peculiar value or dignity attaching to people as possessors of a kind of force or energy that manifests itself in human life” (2008: 29). Furthermore, quoting Gabriel Setiloane, the African theologian, Shutte elaborates the explanation of seriti as force or energy that exudes from motho as follows: Seriti has often been translated to mean dignity or personality [but] that only describes the end results of the phenomenon. It is derived from the same word-stem rite as moriti, which means ‘shadow’ or ‘shade’. It is a physical phenomenon which expresses itself externally to the human body in a dynamic manner. It is like an aura around the human person, an invisible shadow or. … mist forming something like a magnetic or radar field. It gives forth into the. … Weltering pool of life in the community the uniqueness of each person and each object. While physically its seat is understood to be inside the human body, in the blood, its source is beyond and outside of the human body. (2008: 29)

It shall be observed from this that as a concept, seriti therefore implies a certain quasi-sacredness that inheres to motho (human being). In other

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words, to fully grasp this concept, one needs to understand the religious beliefs of African culture about human existence that underpin this concept and the ontological system associated with seriti, such as the hierarchy of beings and vitality (Kasenene 1994: 140; Manyeli 1992: 30–48). One of the important African religious beliefs that is applicable to Sesotho culture, within which the concept of seriti functions, is that the supreme being (God) is the omnipotent source of all life and that all creation shares in God’s essence or life force in hierarchical order Mkhize (2008: 36–37). In other words, Molimo is at the apex, followed by balimo (the living-dead or ancestors) as God’s intermediaries, then human beings and then the rest of creation (Molefe 2022: 22). This means that in “African societies or cultures emphasis is put on vitality where life is most precious gift of God” (Kasenene 1994: 140). It is in this sense, i.e. of sharing in the life force/essence of supreme being, that human beings can be said to have quasi-sacredness implied in seriti. This interpretation, although religious, is not the same as the traditional Judeo-Christian idea, especially Catholicism, which grounds human dignity in the belief that human beings are formed in the image of God (Schroeder and Bani-Sadr 2017: 46). According to the former human dignity derived from the Supreme being who is the originator of vitality, human beings possess the highest quantity of vitality hence their special status in the natural sphere and in the order of creation, i.e. amongst all other created beings (Molefe 2022: 22; Vellem 2013: 315). In terms of this interpretation, human dignity is something connected to ideas about the vitality and sanctity of human life. In other words, it denotes the special claim and status of motho (human being) as sebupuoa (created being) in the hierarchy of creation and all other created beings. The significance of the religious interpretation of human dignity in African cultures or societies such as that of the Basotho implied in seriti cannot be overemphasised. This is because it marks one of the important differences with contemporary interpretations and uses of human dignity, which is secular. Human dignity is also not fully intelligible in African societies without reference to African ethics, specifically the relational dimension of ethics expressed in the ethical ideal of botho (Vellem 2013: 316). According to this, the right way to relate to the dignity of another human being, i.e. how one ought to treat others, is with thlompho, which can loosely be translated as deep respect, which is one of the important virtues in Sesotho culture (Prozesky 2016: 8). In others by virtue of her dignity, motho is

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owed respect (thlompo). It is important to observe that the giving of thlompho is a requirement irrespective of how good or bad the person’s conduct is or who the person is9 (ACLARS 2019: 2). Seriti can thus be regarded as a regulative moral term that prescribes the expected conduct pertaining to how to treat one another, whether they are members of our own society and community or they are from other communities or societies. This is what others have described as the inwards and outwards understanding of human dignity (ACLARS 2019: 2), and both capture the meaning implied in positive and negative accounts of dignity (Kaufmann et al. 2011). Seriti and its understanding in terms of these dimensions is fundamental in Sesotho culture and shows a long-standing tradition recognising human dignity and its inherent requirement that we “treat humanity” with tlhompho (deep respect) whether it’s one’s own humanity or that of others” (Prozesky 2016: 8; MacIntyre 2007: 46). In Sesotho culture, I have intimated this unconditional inherent dignity of motho, i.e. every person is best expressed in the proverbs ‘motho ha se ntja ha a lahloe’ and ‘o se re ho moroa, moroa tooe’, which I turn to in the next sections. The conception of human dignity implied in these proverbs therefore has strong religious underpinnings chief among which is the belief in the sacredness of human life. This is because, like most African cultures, the Basotho believe that human life is the most sacred and precious gift of God,10 which entails the ethic of beneficence (Kasenene 1994: 140; Bujo 2009: 282). The implication of this belief is that as individuals, we have a duty towards one another to respect the dignity of each person and value their life irrespective of whether one is a stranger, foreigner or known to us. This theme is the core message of the two proverbs whose analyses follow here.

9  I am aware that seriti at another level is used to describes a person who commands respects and is thus regarded as dignified (Vellem 2013: 317) 10  In Sesotho culture, life is understood in deeply religious terms which unlike in the modern western thinking there is no separation between the sacred and profane, or faith and social life, which is influenced by a belief in ancestors. See Kasenene (1994) and Manyeli (1992: 46). Thus, in their spirituality Basotho regard human life as sacred and this is implied in these proverbs.

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Motho Ha Se Ntja Ha A Lahloe: An Inwards-Looking Account of Human Dignity In Sesotho culture, the proverb “motho ha se ntja ha a lahloe” or short form “motho ha lahloe” (MHL) succinctly captures the Bosotho understanding of the unique and intrinsic worth of motho (individual) as a human being. The proverb can loosely be translated as a human being is not a dog that can just be discarded. It means that a human being dead or alive, good or bad, cannot just be treated without due respect owed to a human being and be treated like an animal. The implication here is that because motho is a special being among beings, she ought to be treated differently in terms of respect. The proverb thus echoes the idea of human beings occupying a special place in God’s creation. In other words, human beings are somehow above all other non-human creatures, if actually not better (Vellem 2013: 315). The consciousness of the speciality of human life that results in a quasi-sacredness that inheres in motho implied in this proverb is also observed in the shorter form of this proverb “motho ha a lahloe”. In the seTswana language, this would be “motho gaa latlhwe” (a human being cannot/must never be thrown away) (Mphetolang 2009: 23). A similar expression is also found in the Zulu language, which is “umuntu akalahlwa” (Munyaka and Mothlabi 2009: 72). Before analysing MHL in detail, it is important to recall two important features of proverbs in general and their function in Sesotho culture. First, it should be recalled that proverbs as moral narratives have a cultural function that is to be caretaker of the body of accumulated wisdom of the group. To this end, MHL expresses the norm and the philosophy of Basotho people as a group and their views and ideas about human dignity and treating the other with respect. Like most moral narratives, especially proverbs, it will be observed that MHL is circuitous and uses imagery or metaphor to communicate a message. Second, it is in the nature of proverbs, as Derive explains, that they do not directly express what they convey (Peek and Yankah 2004: 753–754). This is the case with MHL, especially with its reference to dogs as a species, which is a common feature found in some of the Sesotho proverbs to communicate general truths.11 To an outsider unfamiliar with this method of communication and form of 11  This we see in the proverbs like ‘ntja ha e ts é tse molapo ke boraki’ (when a dog has crossed to the other side of the river it becomes a mere puppy) (Mokitimi 1997: 55), meaning in a foreign place one becomes just ordinary and other. See also “Ntja se loma mokhoki” (Sekese 1994: 102).

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speech, it may be difficult to make sense of the meaning of “motho ha a lahloe”. This is because the proverb gives an impression of priority of humans over animals, which to some is regarded as problematic. It is not our interest here to discuss the privilege status of humans in creation in Sesotho culture and African culture in general. This topic has been argued cogently elsewhere by others.12 The focus here is simply to show how in this proverb, the dignity of motho is defined in terms of the hierarchy of the created being and within the context of the whole of creation. We have already explained that in terms of the cosmology and spirituality of the Basotho, human dignity or seriti is understood in religious terms where emphasis is on the hierarchy of beings. This is depicted metaphorically in this proverb in the juxtaposition of “motho” (human being) with “ntja” (dog/animal) as representatives of their respective species. In other words, MHL can be interpreted as designating human dignity as something “typical of individual members of the human species” (Metz 2012: 21). This means that as an attribute of motho, human dignity denotes something that applies in a special and unique way to human beings as a species in comparison to the dignity or seriti of other beings. Thus, in Sesotho culture, MHL must be understood in terms of the logical relationship it creates where the supremacy of humanity within the context of and in unity with other creatures is emphasised (Peek and Yankah 2004: 754). It is in this sense also that in an African world view humans occupy the highest place on the hierarchy of dignity of all beings. This proverb therefore not only underscores the ethical imperative to treat other human beings with respect but also highlights the dignity of motho as the most important, i.e. the most highly ranked kind of value in creation (Metz 2012: 20). This is consistent with the African mythology and spirituality of the Basotho, which postulates the hierarchy of beings in which human beings occupy a special place within the rest of creation, including animals (Mkhize 2008: 36). Thus, we find in Sesotho culture, the idea that motho (a human being) is sometimes described as a creature (sebupuoa) of Molimo (God). The significance of this must not be underestimated.  This is becuase the  description  by extension implies that  a human being therefore has inherent value and worth that is special that 12  The privileged status of human beings in African moral thought and philosophy has been argued better elsewhere by other scholars including Ramose (2009: 309) and Molefe (2021: 6–8).

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inheres in her. It is by virtue of this attribute that human dignity calls for the respectful treatment of each person and payment of proper due regard for their dignity (Ramose 2009: 312). We find this notion of motho as creature with dignity in another common Sesotho expression “sehole13 ho ‘ma-sona ha se lahloe”. The expression loosely translated ‘a cripple to its mother can’t be discarded’. The meaning here is referring to the unconditional love a mother of a disabled child has for the child, and the saying expresses due regard for the dignity of the child as a human being by the mother (Sefotho 2021). Sometimes this expression is rendered “sehole ha se eo motseng” (there is no cripple in the village). Both expressions, which use disability as a metaphor of unconditionality of love and more important respect of the individual’s dignity, underscore the human dignity of motho as unconditional status, whose appropriate response to is respect or thlompho. The first expression locates the imperatives of the inherent dignity of persons within the context of personal relationships in the family using the example of a mother and a child. The second refers to the village and normatively applies the same principle of respect for human dignity in the larger context of the community or village. In both expressions we see that the requirements of respect for dignity of motho  expands outwards from the inner circle of close human relations of the family, to the larger outer circle of relations with others in the community where relations are not as close. The socio-moral significance implied in this will be discussed in detailed when we explore the outwards looking account of dignity in the next section. It is from this way of life characterised by strong family and communal relationships and deeply religious in outlook that the conception of human dignity in African thought expressed in motho has ntja ha lahloe, must be interpreted and understood. It is in this sense that the concept of human dignity submitted here cannot be understood purely as a secular concept. This is because it is rooted in the spirituality of the Basotho and the religious foundation of their world view, in which, like most African cultures, both the individual and the community are religiously determined (Chitando 2008: 47). What this tells us is that MHL, as an account of human dignity, presupposes a traditional belief system where motho (human being) is regarded as the apex of creation. In terms of this understanding, in Sesotho culture, 13  The word ‘sehole’ in Sesotho language refers to a crippled person (adult or child) sometime referred to as “sebupuoa” which denote a creature of God’s creation.

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human dignity understood as seriti is first an affirmation of a belief system in Molimo14 (The Supreme being) as the omnipotent source of human life (Mkhize 2008: 36), and second, that motho (a human being) understood as sebupuoa sa molimo (created creature of the supreme being) shares in some ways in the inherent divine quality (Molefe 2022: 22). It is from this understanding that in Sesotho culture and most African societies human life is regarded as somehow sacred and more precious than that of other beings. This understanding is implied in another Sesotho expression “ha le fete khomo, le je motho,15” where similarly to MHL a juxtaposition of human species and animal species is observed. This expression can be loosely translated as “let the spear not spare the life of a cow and take away that of a human being”. This means that human life must always be made top priority and spared if needed and sacrifice that of animals (Ramose 2009: 309; Sekese 1994: 112). The moral injunction of this proverb is that “if and when faced with a decisive choice between human life and wealth or material possessions, the preservation of human life, must take precedence because of the sacredness that inheres to human life. In other words, the choice should always be to preserve human life (Ramose 2009: 312). This is sometimes referred to as the vitality understanding of dignity (Molefe 2022: 20–22); hence, the moral injunction of “motho has ntja ha a lahloe” does not only means that a human being cannot just be discarded as if they are not human. But more importantly that motho, in whatever circumstance she encountered, her dignity must always be respected because she is just as human as us. The insight we learn about MHL here and other similar Sesotho expressions about human dignity and thus far  discussed in this section is that normatively, the concept of human dignity enjoins society, both in terms of its smaller units at the level of the institution of the family and higher levels of the community, to first acknowledge the inherent dignity of each human being (motho). Second, to have due regard for and respect for motho and her dignity always, irrespective of her status, circumstances or moral conduct (Molefe 2021), is the required moral response of others to the dignity of the other.  For more on Basotho consciousness of deity and the supreme being see (Manyeli 1992).  The proverb depicts a surrendering person in a battle who raises their arms mimicking and the horns of a cow, and in terms of traditional convention this act, evokes a plea to the victors to spare human life. Hence, invocation let your spears not pass over the life of cow metaphorically symbolised by the surrendering person) and take that of a human being by killing the surrender (Sekese 1994: 112). 14 15

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Like most African proverbs, therefore, MHL is to be read as an expression of general truths that are the fruits of the experience of Basotho society as a whole. As such, it is not just a representation of the wisdom of the Basotho as a group but an account of Basotho ethics or their expected way of life, attitudes and values, feelings and emotions expected of their members (Peek and Yinka 2004: 753, 756). MHL can thus be regarded as a prescriptive statement expressing a religiously informed way of seeing the world and a particular preferred way of life that the Basotho espoused as well as their conception of motho and her dignity. It is therefore important to interpret MHL as an account of the worldview of the Basotho and an expression of a norm specifying how a person (motho) must be treated and not be treated.16 It is a theory of right action that instructs us how to treat motho, whoever they may be as a being that has inherent and intrinsic worth and is deserving of respectful treatment of their dignity (Schachter 1983: 849). In other words, according to MHL, it is a moral obligation to treat others with respect irrespective of their lack of botho or good conduct. The analysis of motho ha a lahloe just outline can be regarded as expressing the inwards-looking perspective of the African approach to human dignity. This is because it reiterates human dignity as the inherent value and worth of motho. In other words, MHL is the recognition of human dignity understood in terms of the inherent worth of the motho as the individual. It is in this sense that dignity can be said to be inwards looking or individual focused. However, as will be observed, the African perspective on dignity is typically outwards looking, not just inwards reflecting, because as a concept, human dignity does not only “implicates our most important relationships”, it also implicates understanding of human duties and relationships, not just individual claims against others. There is a natural reciprocal understanding of human dignity. Part of our human dignity is recognizing and respecting the dignity of others. (ACLARS 2019)

In Sesotho culture, this outwards looking understanding of dignity is codified in the doctrine of o se re ho moroa moroa tooe (MMT), which is another important Sesotho proverb about dignity, which I turn to. 16  The premise of this of this injunction is not too dissimilar to that underpinning the Kantian idea of treating every human being as an end not as a means.

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O Se Re Ho Moroa: Moroa Tooe—An Outwards-Looking Account of Human Dignity As is often the case with many African concepts and morally freighted narratives such as proverbs, o se re ho moroa moroa tooe (MMT) is not easy to translate into English. The closest translation can be read as “don’t say to a bushman, you bushman” (Mahao 2010: 334). To an international audience o se re ho moroa moroa tooe doesn’t immediately bring to mind anything prescriptive, not least about human dignity.17 This is because the proverb can easily be read as a descriptive statement about the non-­ discrimination of people. The proverb does have a descriptive sense of the effect that one ought not to be discriminated against, particularly on the basis of one’s ethnicity. However, careful reading of, o se re ho moroa moroa tooe shows it has normative connotations about human dignity. The proverb  can be read in its prescriptive sense to the effect that one ought to always respect the humanity and dignity of others irrespective of their membership status vis-à-vis the predominant social group or community. It directs focus to a specific group symbolised by moroa, that is, foreigners, outsiders or strangers. Often, these constitute the most vulnerable social groups in most communities where violations of human dignity often occur. MMT thus expresses an important perspective about human dignity that is outwards looking, i.e. one directed at our  external relationships with those regarded as not belonging to our social group. It should be recalled that in the previous section, we saw how MHL articulates an inwards-looking perspective of human dignity in terms of underscoring dignity inherent in motho and safeguarding the dignity of persons within the context of internal social relationships of the members of the community (Murithi 2007: 282; Vellem 2013: 316). The same is true of the normative imperatives of MMT. The difference is that with MMT, the emphasis is explicitly on the external interpersonal relationships of individuals in their encounter with those regarded as outsiders or not belonging. Therefore, o se re ho moroa moroa tooe speaks to the relational understanding of human dignity implied in the ethics of botho, which is central to the understanding of human dignity in Sesotho culture. In other words, MMT expresses the moral requirement and duty of respect owed to motho 17  Here I borrow much from the analysis of another Sesotho proverb motho ke motho ka batho ba bang (Metz 2007; Metz and Gaie 2010).

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as a human being, especially those perceived to be “outsiders.18” A closer analysis of the reference to “moroa” as metaphor of the other in this proverb is instructive here. This is not literal, i.e. referring to a person of Khoisan origin as such. Rather, it is a symbolic reference to the humanity of the other and a metaphorical representation of any person, especially one who is regarded as an outsider or not belonging to a particular community or social group. Such persons in most cases are the most vulnerable in society and more likely to have their dignity and humanity violated, as we observed with most incidents of xenophobia, attacks of immigrants or ethnic clashes. This is similar to the negative account of dignity understood in terms of violations of dignity (Kaufmann et al. 2011). I say similar because in MMT, the emphasis is not on violations of dignity only but also on demeaning treatment of the other by exclusion in “us” and “them” (Kim 2015: 151). It speaks to acts of omission with regard to our moral duty, and the dues we owe one another to treat them with respect.19 The proverb prescribes the appropriate treatment of such persons, which is to treat their humanity in the same way as any other person as expressed in MHL. O se re ho moroa, moroa tooe, understood in terms omissions to treat motho with respect, expresses a deeply held belief in Sesotho culture recognising (a) the inherent universal dignity of motho and equality thereof, regardless of who they are and (b)  the moral  obligation and duty thereof  to acknowledge that (Mahao 2010: 334). It is this consciousness that explains in part the great care and regard that precolonial era Sesotho culture is renowned for and is observed in how the ancient Basotho ensured that strangers in their midst were treated with outmost respect and their dignity and property inviolable (Ellenberger 1912: 269, 291). The doctrine of O se re ho moroa moroa toe can thus be regarded as far more radical and prophetic than motho has ntja ha lahloe in terms of its relational prescripts. MMT stipulates that individuals have a duty to respect the dignity of motho, especially strangers or foreigners among our midst, who are in most cases most vulnerable. In this sense, this proverb can also be read as a principle of right action. It prescribes what is right action and what is not. Here, MMT stipulates that it is wrong to treat outsiders, i.e. 18  I use the term outsiders interchangeably with foreigners and in its broadest sense to signify any form of negative exclusion of others from membership of particular social grouping especially where this involves disregarding and undermining the dignity of others. 19  Violations of dignity ordinarily conjures active and direct acts that dehumanises a person and often cause harm including physical. In contrast omissions of respect for dignity, denotes indifference and an attitude that refuses to recognise human dignity of other, such as found in some social attitudes to migrants and foreigners.

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those not belonging to the preferred social group, in a way that dehumanises them and disrespects their dignity. As we have observed in the case of the treatment of immigrants and refugees in some communities, it is often the case that their treatment has less dignity than that accorded to those who are regarded as part of the preferred social group (Kim 2015: 150). In other words, o se re ho moroa, moroa toe, as another approach to human dignity, stipulates that respect for human dignity is a norm that obliges respectful treatment of motho or the other as a human being just like us with inherent dignity and that this must be observed unconditionally (Vellem 2013: 316). In other words, we can say that if motho ha a lahloe is the articulation of the inwards conception of dignity, i.e. as it pertains to recognition of the inherent worth of the individual and respect owed to them as an individual, o se re ho moroa moroa tooe expresses the outwards conception of human dignity. The latter affirms the duties and responsibility we owe one another, not just our individual rights that we claim against others (ACLARS 2019). The importance of the emphasis on the latter cannot be overemphasised with respect to unconscious selective human dignity and failure to affirm dignity of others. This is because in regard to human dignity, it will be observed that human beings generally do not have a problem affirming the dignity of others within their own social group but not always the same with those who are different, especially if they come from outside of one’s own social group or community (Kim 2015: 148). It is common knowledge that some of the most horrendous acts of indignity towards other human beings are often experienced most acutely in the contexts of “us” and ‘them) where we fail to affirm the dignity of the other, especially those regarded as on the outside, different or foreign. In other words, the disregard of the dignity of others is often experienced in its most brutal manner in our encounter with those whom we perceive to be different from ourselves or outsiders to us. Such differences could be based on a wide range of attributes, including disability, ethnicity, race or nationality, age, gender,  sexual orientation or religion. This is often observed in the case of growing incidents of xenophobia, attacks on members of the gay and lesbian community, tribal conflicts in different communities and  anti-migrant sentiments now we see in some part of the globe. Thus, at its core, MMT is not only a moral rejection of discrimination in all its forms, but more fundamentally, it is an affirmation of universal dignity of motho and moral duties we owe every person, regardless of who they are, their ethnicity, race or social standing (Mahao 2010: 334).

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This proverb offers much-needed ethical resources for addressing the common attitude often observed today among those who “seem incapable of affirming their own dignity in a manner that does not deny the dignity of those outside the preferred social group” (Kim 2015: 150). The practical implication of this is evident when we give it more specific content by applying it to different contexts like the treatment of immigrants and refugees (Collste 2014) or growing anti lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in some  countries. The rise of xenophobia,20 anti-immigrants’ sentiment in places such as South Africa and Europe, for example, has seen a growing undermining of the dignity of immigrants and conduct showing no proper regard for the intrinsic worth and dignity of the other.  The contribution of these selected proverbs analysed in this paper to current conceptions of human dignity is important because it enriches the current understanding of dignity as found in international instruments and norms (Schachter 1983: 848). It also makes explicit the moral requirement and duty to respect and treat other persons unconditionally with dignity. First, with the inwards-looking perspective implied in “motho ha se ntja ha lahloe” where the principle is applied to members within communities and society whether the person is morally good or bad. Second, in the outwards-looking perspective of “O se re ho moroa, moroa toe”, the same principle of unconditionality of respecting universality of human dignity is applied to the treatment of others irrespective of whether they are foreigners or not or if they do not belong to one’s own social group or community. The significance of this analysis in turn, is its contribution to the greater project of decolonisation of the current conversation on human dignity. It amplifies the growing calls from scholars mainly from the Global South for a more inclusive conversation on human dignity that draws on ideas and views of the concept of human dignity from other perspectives and cultures. In this chapter, I have drawn insights from Sesotho culture as a representative approach to an African conception of  human dignity as found in African narratives, especially proverbs, as important axiological resources in African cultures for the study of this concept. 20  I am thinking here of recent acts of xenophobia in places like South Africa where foreign African nationals were not treated with dignity by the attacks they suffered, including by recent acts targeting other people from most African countries. banner of movement. In Europe we see growing anti-immigrant sentiments and rise of nationalist movements where the dignity of migrants and refugees is often not acknowledged in public discourse.

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Conclusion In this chapter, I examined the concept of human dignity in Sesotho culture and the moral culture of the Basotho people of Southern Africa, understood in terms of seriti and its intrinsic connection to the notion of vitality. I contend that with regard to Sesotho culture, one of the better pathways to understanding its conception of human dignity is through indigenous axiological resources of the Basotho, especially morally freighted narratives such as litśomo (folktales) maele (proverbs). Here, I analysed selected proverbs “motho ha se ntja ha a lahluoe” and “O se re ho moroa moroa tooe” as quintessential expressions of the Basotho understanding of human dignity. Using the vantage point of these proverbs, I argued that a careful analysis of these proverbs and other morally freighted Sesotho narratives demonstrates a long-standing tradition and deep consciousness of the respect for human dignity in Sesotho culture and the society of the Basotho. I analysed seriti, juxtaposing it with contemporary uses of the concept of human dignity, and showed that the former is fundamentally a religious interpretation of human dignity,  while with the latter, the concept of human dignity is used in secular terms with no religious grounding. I therefore argued that to fully understand the Basotho conception of human dignity or seriti similar to most African cultures and societies, one must be aware of the religious beliefs and ontological assumptions of Sesotho culture that inform this understanding, chief among which is the belief in the hierarchy of created beings in which motho occupies a special place. I thus submitted that seriti, although similar to the traditional Judeo-­ Christian account, especially within Catholicism, in that they both express a fundamentally religious account of human dignity, there is a difference in emphasis. The former emphasises the notion of vitality where humanity shares in God’s divine nature, whereas for  the latter emphasis is on  the idea of human beings created in the image of God. I indicated how this is compatible  with the vitality approach as one of the common African approaches to human dignity with its emphasis on the sacredness of human life. The view advanced in this chapter is that motho ha se ntja ha a lahluoe and O se re ho moroa moroa tooe can be read as the Sesotho culture articulation of the inwards-looking and outwards-looking perspectives of human dignity characteristics of most African perspectives on human dignity. I therefore submitted that this conception of dignity is worthy of

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consideration. It offers a fresh perspective of the concept that can enhance and enrich current thinking and conception of human dignity as the foundational principle underpinning current global norms and standards. This is particularly relevant with respect to current international norms and standards in which the concept human dignity  features prominently, and  there are growing  calls for these and corresponding international instruments to be truly inclusive of perspectives from other cultures, especially from the Global South, including Africa. Second, it is representative of African perspectives on human dignity embedded in narratives, which thus far is grossly underexplored and yet has so much to offer. The attractiveness of this account I contended is also that it opens new pathways to the analysis of the concept of dignity in African moral thought and its relationship to current botho (ubuntu) discourse. It shifts focus in the direction of more research into African narratives and morally freighted stories and other African idiomatic sayings as rich deposits of moral ideas and views of Africa, including the concept of human dignity. This avenue has not received as much scholarly attention in spite of its significance as the basis for giving voice to a conception of human dignity rooted in traditional African culture from which the concept botho (ubuntu) originates. I have intimated that with this narrative account, we have another avenue to understanding African approaches to human dignity that has not yet been fully explored. This use of proverbs in this analysis underscores the relevance of a narrative-based approach to researching the concept of human dignity in African moral thought. Narratives, especially proverbs, thus function as an important and much needed African resource for research, which has often remained elusive to African scholars in search of authentic axiological resources to address contemporary social challenges within and outside their communities.

References ACLARS. 2019. African Perspectives on Human Dignity for Everyone Everywhere, an Endorsement and Elaboration of the Punta Del Este Declaration on Dignity for Everyone Everywhere. Accessed 20 March 2022. https://www.dignityforeveryone.org/wp-­content/uploads/sites/5/2019/10/African-­Perspectives-­ on-­Human-­Dignity-­for-­Everyone-­Everywhere-­2019.pdf. Andorno, R. 2009. Human Dignity and Human Rights as a Common Ground for a Global Bioethics. Accessed 20 January 2022. https://doi.org/10.1093/ jmp/jhp023.

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Bedford-Strohm, H. 2013. Human Dignity: A Global Ethical Perspective. Accessed 15 March 2022. https://doi.org/10.7833/104-­0-­181. Buchanan, R. 2001. Human Dignity and Human Rights: Thoughts on the Principles of Human-Centred Design. Accessed 26 May 2021. http://direct. mit.edu/desi/article-­pdf/17/3/c5/1713490/074793601750357178.pdf. Bujo, B. 2009. Ecology and Ethical Responsibility from an African Perspective. In African Ethics, An Anthology of Comparative and Applied Ethics, ed. Felix Murove, 281–297. Scottsville, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Casalis, E. 1992. The Basutos (Vol. Reprint). Morija, Lesotho: Morija Museum archives. Chitando, E. 2008. Religious Ethics, HIV and Aids and Masculinities in Southern Africa. In Persons in Community, African Ethics in a Global Culture, ed. Ronald Nicolson, 45–63. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal. Collste, G. 2014. Human Dignity, Immigration and Refugees. Accessed 17 June 2022. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511979033.057. Ellenberger, F. D. 1912. History of the Basuto, Ancient and Modern. London: Caxton Publishing Company. Kasenene, P. 1994. Ethics in African Theology. In Doing Ethics in Context, South African Perspectives, ed. Charles Gruchy, 138–147. Johannesburg: David Philip. Kaufmann, P., H.  Kuch, C.  Neuhause, and H.  Elaine. 2011. Human Dignity Violated: A Negative Approach—Introduction. In Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization: Human Dignity Violated, ed. Paulus Kaufmann, Hannes Kuch, Christian Neuhauser, and Elaine Webster, vol. 24, 1–5. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy. Springer. Kim, A. 2015. The Dignity of the Human Person. Accessed 9 August 2022. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316026908.013. MacIntyre, A. 1984. The Claims of After Virtue. Accessed 10 June 2021. https:// doi.org/10.1515/auk-­1984-­0101. ———. 2007. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Mahao, N. 2010. O se re ho morwa towe, African Jurisprudence Exhumed. Accessed 8 March 2021. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/4738. Manyeli, L. 1992. Religious Symbols of Basotho. Mazenod, Lesotho: Mazenod Printing Works. Metz, T. 2007. Toward an African Moral Theory. Accessed 20 June 2018. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2007.00280.x ———. 2012. African Conceptions of Human Dignity: Vitality and Community as the Ground of Human Rights. Accessed 14 May 2021. https://doi. org/10.1007/s12142-­011-­0200-­4.

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Metz, T and Gaie, J. 2010. The African Ethic of Ubuntu/Botho: Implications for Research on Morality. Accessed 15 March 2017. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 03057240.2010.497609 Mkhize, N. 2008. Ubuntu and Harmony, An African Approach to Morality and Ethics. In Person in Community, African Ethics in a Global Culture, ed. Ronald Nicolson, 35–44. Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Molefe, Motsamai. 2021. Ubuntu, Human Dignity and a Decent Society. [Unpublished Manuscript], Ubuntu Dialogues Project, Stellenbosch University & Michigan State University. ———. 2022. Human Dignity in African Philosophy, A Very Short Introduction. New York: Springer. Mokitimi, M. 1997. The Voice of the People. Pretoria, South Africa: Unisa Press. Mphetolang, K. 2009. Botho-Sotho-Tswana Ethic. [Masters dissertation, University of the South]. Accessed 25 April 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/11005/293. Munyaka, M and Motlhabi, M. 2009. Ubuntu and its Socio-moral Significance. In African Ethics: An Anthology of Comparative and Applied Ethics, ed. M. F. Murove. Scottsville, South Africa: University of Kwazulu-Natal Press. Murithi, T. 2007. A Local Response to the Global Human Rights Standard: The Ubuntu Perspective on Human Dignity. Accessed 3 July 2022. https://doi. org/10.1080/14767720701661966. Peek, P. and Yankah, K.  Eds. 2004. African Folklore: An Encyclopaedia (1st ed.). Routledge. Accessed 25 June 2022. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203493144. Prozesky, M. 2016. Ethical Leadership Resources in Southern Africa’s Sesotho-­ Speaking Culture and in King Moshoeshoe I.  Accessed 26 February 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2016.1146789. Ramose, M. 2009. Ecology through Ubuntu. In African Ethics, An Anthology of Comparative and Applied Ethics, ed. Felix Murove, 308–314. Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Schachter, O. 1983. Human Dignity as a Normative Concept. Accessed 10 October 2022. https://doi.org/10.2307/2202536. Schroeder, D. and A. Bani-Sadr. 2017. Dignity in the 21st Century: Middle East and West. New York: Springer Nature. Sefotho, M. 2021. Basotho Ontology of Disability: An Afrocentric Onto-­ epistemology. Accessed 17 October 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e06540. Sekese, A. 1994. Mekhoa le Maele a Basotho. Morija, Lesotho: Morija Sesuto Book Depot. Shutte, A. 2001. Ubuntu, An Ethics for a New South Africa. Dorpspruit: Cluster Publications. ———. 2008. African Ethics in a Globalising World. In Persons in Community, African Ethics in a Global Culture, ed. Ronald Nicolson, 15–34. Scottsville, South Africa: University of Kwazulu-Natal Press.

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Riley, S. n.d. Human Dignity. Accessed May 10, 2023. https://iep.utm.edu/ human-­dignity/. Universal Declaration of Human Rights—United Nations (2015). Accessed: 17 October 2021. https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/udhr.pdf. Vellem, V. 2013. Setithi/Isidima: Reflections on Human Dignity in South Africa from a Black African Perspective. Accessed: 10 May 2023. https://www. researchgate.net/publication/274102667.

CHAPTER 13

Wiredu on the Humanistic Orientation of Akan Morality Ada Agada

Introduction While Wiredu does not provide explicit and sustained arguments against the view that God (as a morally perfect being) is the supreme moral authority who decrees what is good and determines what is bad, I will argue in this chapter that his suggestion that human reason (instead of God’s will) grounds morality is informed by his adoption of the limited God view that denies moral perfection to God. Both the traditional theistic view and the limited God view have positive implications for the value attached to human dignity. Specifically, I show that while Wiredu’s rationalism deviates from the traditional African theistic view that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and impartial God is the source of morality, his humanistic moral framework is just as attractive as the traditional theistic moral framework in the context of discourse about human dignity to the extent that this humanistic framework furnishes an elevated

A. Agada (*) Centre for Leadership Ethics in Africa, University of Fort Hare, Alice, South Africa Department of Philosophy, Federal University Otuoke, Otuoke, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Molefe, C. Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1_13

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view of humanity that adequately grounds the notion of human dignity. Despite the humanistic framework dispensing with the idea of an all-good God who seeks the best outcomes and existential conditions for human beings, the framework attests to the capacity of the human mind to determine values that enhance human wellbeing through the harmonisation of the disparate interests that constitute human concerns, for the good of the many that make up the community, or humanity writ large. This capacity, for Wiredu, is effective in a fundamentally physical world that does not require the existence of a morally perfect, omnipotent, and omniscient deity or of a limited God.1 A number of African philosophers have investigated Wiredu’s moral and religious philosophy from perspectives such as quasi-physicalism, decolonisation studies, and human rights (Bewaji 1998; Kwame 2017; Majeed 2017; Molefe 2018, 2022; Attoe 2022). However, the interdependence of the moral and religious dimensions of Wiredu’s thought remains underexplored. This chapter fills the gap in the literature. I employ the term traditional African theism to indicate the conception of God established in the African Traditional Religion (ATR) literature prior to the decolonisation trend in African philosophy of religion and African religious studies. African traditional theism holds that traditional African societies admit the existence of a supreme being that created the world and sustains the moral order. This supreme being is regarded as omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent, impartial, and just (see, for 1  It can be argued that the inherent rational capacity of the human being to discover and pursue moral values does not require the existence of any kind of deity, perfect or limited. The point will now be that it does not make any difference positing the existence of a limited God in the context under consideration since an entirely humanistic moral framework that makes no reference to God adequately accounts for the phenomenon of morality. This is true, and there is, in fact, a sceptical and even atheistic dimension of Wiredu’s limited God perspective, given that Wiredu concedes that the actual existence of the Akan God is a legitimate question for African philosophy (see Wiredu 1996: 54). Nevertheless, he recognises that the Akan generally believe in God and suggests that the practical application of moral principles can be influenced by belief in (a limited) God. In theory, Wiredu’s stance does not require the existence of a God, whether limited or perfect, for morality to be possible, but in practice belief in God can make a difference by providing additional ground for compliance with rational moral principles. That is, belief in a deity can invoke the force of divine authority that compels moral compliance. Wiredu acknowledges this point when he notes that: “The prospect of punishment from God or some lesser being may concentrate the mind on the narrow path of virtue, but it is not this that creates the sense of moral obligation” (Wiredu 2010: 195). Accordingly, the element of divinity does make a difference, at least for those who believe in God.

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example, Danquah 1944; Idowu 1962, 1973; Mbiti 1969, 1975; Awolalu and Dopamu 1979; Metuh 1981). I use the terms ‘morally perfect’ and ‘all-good’ interchangeably to mean a God who so completely exemplifies moral goodness that he can be conceived as the very basis of morality. The limited God view has recently gained traction with a number of scholars rejecting the traditional African theistic stance on the grounds that its proponents merely imported Western religious categories into African religious thought (see, for example, p’Bitek 1971, 2011; Kato 1975; Bewaji 1998; Wiredu 1996, 1998, 2010, 2013; Oladipo 2004; Fayemi 2012; Agada 2022a). The chapter is divided into three sections. Section “Introduction” situates Wiredu’s limited God perspective in the broader African religious philosophy literature and places this perspective side by side with the traditional theistic perspective of scholars such as John S. Mbiti, E. Bolaji Idowu, Kwame Gyekye, and E.I. Metuh who interpret traditional African religion in a way that presents God as the ultimate grounds of morality rather than human reason. Section “Traditional African Theism and Wiredu’s Limited God Perspective” exhibits Wiredu’s moral philosophy and compares his limited God moral framework with the moral framework of traditional African theism. I show that his humanism elevates human reason above the will of God in matters of moral conduct. Section “Wiredu’s Humanistic Moral Framework” demonstrates that the relegation of God to the background, regarding concerns of moral conduct, does not make Wiredu’s moral philosophy any less attractive than an African God-centred morality in the context of discourse about human dignity.

Traditional African Theism and Wiredu’s Limited God Perspective Prior to the emergence of the discipline of traditional African religious studies, European scholarship about African religious phenomena depicted African religion as either polytheist at best or animist at worst (see, for example, Burton 1864; Njoku 2002). European scholars compared traditional African worldviews with the Euro-Christian worldview and speculated that Africans were so primitive that they lacked a basic notion of a supreme being (see, for example, p’Bitek 2011; Njoku 2002). Emergent ATR scholars set out to debunk what they considered race-motivated

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denigration of traditional African culture and belief systems. Their research confirmed that traditional African societies indeed promoted conceptions of God that correspond with Euro-Christian ideas of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent creator of the world who is separate from the world and is the ground of morality, being all-good and perfectly just. The works of Mbiti and Idowu are representative of the traditional African theistic perspective. While Idowu (1973) concedes that there is a multiplicity of deities in the Yoruba and, by extension, African universe, he is quick to add that these deities belong to a lower order of power and knowledge in comparison to the Yoruba supreme being Olodumare, to whom the lesser deities owe their existence. He asserts that ATR is properly a monotheistic religion but qualifies this monotheism as a diffused monotheism to account for the objective functional roles played by the lesser deities that wield considerable power in their spheres of influence. Idowu (1973: 135) notes: I do not know of any place in Africa where the ultimacy is not accorded to God … the religion (ATR) can only be adequately described as monotheistic. I modify the ‘monotheism’ by the adjective ‘diffused’, because here we have a monotheism in which there exists other powers which derive from Deity.

The point then becomes whether the peripheries of powers in the African universe are of the kind that limits Olodumare’s own power rather than whether there are power locations besides Olodumare’s power centre. For, even human beings wield some power in the scheme of things. Idowu’s diffused monotheism implies that God’s power is not limited by the powers of the lesser deities. Indeed, the fact that God is the ultimate power and controls the lesser deities (see Bewaji 1998; Fayemi 2012) implies that his powers may well be unlimited compared to the powers of any other entity in the universe created by Olodumare. Mbiti condenses Idowu’s transcendental standpoint when he asserts that: In the African view, the universe is both visible and invisible, unending and without limits. Since it was created by God, it is subsequently dependent on him for its continuity. God is the sustainer, the keeper and upholder of the universe … The laws of nature are regarded as being controlled by God directly or through his servants. The morals and institutions of society are

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thought to have been given by God or to be sanctioned ultimately by him. Therefore, any breach of such morals is an offence against … God. (Mbiti 1975, 35–36)

Relying on linguistic evidence drawn from various African societies in West, Southern, Eastern, and Central Africa—consisting of names and titles of God in indigenous languages, riddles, proverbs, myths, and wise sayings—Mbiti goes further to explicitly invest the traditional African theistic God with the kind of perfections attributed to the Christian God. These attributes include omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, omnibenevolence, holiness, immutability, self-causation, incomprehensibility, and the power of creatio ex nihilo (1975: 42–53). Naturally, such a God must be conceived as the ground of morality. Mbiti (1975: 175) notes: Morals deal with the question of what is right and good, and what is wrong and evil, in human conduct … It is believed in many African societies that their morals were given to them by God from the very beginning. This provides an unchallenged authority for the morals.

Two inferences can be drawn from Mbiti’s discourse on God and morality. First, there is the explicit reference to God as the ground of morality. Second, one may infer that human beings decide among themselves what is right and what is good for individuals and society (cf. Ani 2019: 230–231), with God’s role being approval or disapproval of man-made morality grounded in human reason. The second inference is supported by Mbiti’s view that traditional African societies appeal to God to enforce compliance with man-made laws, which may be disregarded by careless individuals in the absence of the invocation of God’s authority. Both inferences confirm the view that God’s will is the ultimate basis of morality since human reason is considered merely playing an organising or instrumental role while deferring to God’s supreme authority. The traditional African theistic perspective described above has been recently endorsed by a number of African philosophers, thereby adding weight to the conclusion of early pro-theism ATR scholars (see, for example, Gyekye 1995; Njoku 2002; Igboin 2014; Agada 2017, 2023; Metz and Molefe 2021). Gyekye’s philosophical exploration of Akan traditional religion persuades him of the rootedness of belief in the traditional theistic God. He identifies superlative names and titles of God such as Onyankopōn ̄ ̄ (the supreme being), Obōadee ̄ (creator), Odomankoma (the absolute, the

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eternal), Brekyirihunuade (the omniscient), Enyiasombea (the omnipotent), and Atoapem (the unsurpassable, the ultimate one). He summarises his transcendental stance as follows: Onyame is the Absolute Reality, the origin of all things, the absolute ground, the sole and whole explanation of the universe, the source of all existence … Onyame transcends time and is thus free from the limitation of time, an eternity without beginning, without an end … While containing space, Onyame is not held to be spatial. He is not bound or limited to any particular region of space. He is omnipresent (enyiasombea), all-pervading. (1995: 70)

By describing God as the ultimate being, Gyekye endorses Idowu’s ultimacy thesis. If God is the ultimate being, powers wielded by lesser deities do not constrain his supreme powers, as he can overrule, or even destroy, the lesser deities if such action becomes necessary (see Gyekye 1995: 75). In the moral dimension, Gyekye concedes goodness to God. According to him, the Akan regard God as a father and see human beings as God’s children (2010: 115). A father normally exhibits an attitude of benevolence towards his children. If the father is morally perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, and the maker of his children, he will be the lawgiver, and his laws will be absolutely binding on his children regardless of the children possessing their own (limited) reason. While Gyekye does not stress God’s omnibenevolence as much as his omnipotence and omniscience, he implies that God possesses the attribute. Now, a being can be all-good or all-evil if it is omnipotent and omniscient. If it is all-evil, badness so completely defines his being that it is contradictory to call him a father as Gyekye does. The notion of fatherhood involves benevolence, although not necessarily omnibenevolence, as earlier suggested. If God is a father, he is good. However, since he already possesses omnipotence and omniscience, his goodness will be of a superlative kind consistent with perfection. Therefore, Gyekye’s God is the God of Mbiti, Idowu, and other traditional African theists. This God is the ultimate basis of morality, being morally perfect and the creator of human beings. His will thus overrides human reason, and what he commands will stand as an absolute moral imperative. The traditional theistic stance has been promoted by other scholars, such as Peter Paris (1995), Paul Boaheng (2012), and Thaddeus Metz and Motsamai Molefe (2021). Molefe (2018) has attempted to develop religious ethics, although he does not explicitly locate his thought in the

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traditional theistic camp. His innovative discussion of the idea of vital force gives the impression that he is aligning with traditional theists since he makes God the source of the vital force that animates all entities in the universe. Molefe’s God is a supreme being in the universe he delineates, as the ultimate source and giver of vitality. He notes, “Therefore, the system of morality defended here is riveted on God and his vital force; and, God is essential in this moral scheme—it is impossible to abandon God, at least, in this system and still talk meaningfully about reality and morality”. Metz and Molefe (2021), while noting the basic monotheistic orientation of ATR, do not fail to point out that scholars such as Mbiti, Idowu, Gyekye, and other traditional theists may have been influenced by Christianity.2 There can be found in African theology a different conception of God as a limited being (see p’Bitek 1971, 2011; Sogolo 1993: Bewaji 1998; Oladipo 2004; Balogun 2009; Attoe 2022). The limited God view broadly proposes that linguistic, cultural, and religious phenomena such as riddles, myths, proverbs, names and titles of God, and worship practices confirm that traditional African societies conceive God as basically a high deity lacking in the perfections of omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, and omnipresence. Instructively, proponents of the limited God view rely on the same oral sources depended on defenders of traditional theism. This absence of agreement in the interpretations of traditional African conceptions of God is glaring in the works of Gyekye and Wiredu, who both supply compelling philosophical analysis of traditional Akan religion. I have already discussed Gyekye’s stance. In the paragraphs that follow, I will exhibit Wiredu’s limited God view, which is the focus of this chapter. Wiredu’s commitment to quasi-physicalism, which he purports to deduce from the traditional Akan understanding of what it means for a thing to exist, compels him to deny God’s immateriality and, consequently, God’s transcendence and his possession of the attributes of omnipotence and omnibenevolence. The quasi-physicalist view regards everything in the universe as ultimately reducible to matter, although certain entities such as God may possess the ability to act anomalously, that is, contrary to 2  While it can be argued that these African theistic scholars were not simply transplanting Christian theistic categories into African thought and that they were, to some extent, struggling to philosophically capture a certain transcendental conception of God embedded in traditional African worldviews (see Agada 2022a), the suggestion of foreign Christian influence has some merit as a number of the traditional African theistic scholars were Christian theologians.

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the behavioural pattern of physical objects. He defines existence in a simple manner that casts suspicion on the abstract to be. According to Wiredu (1996: 49): [E]verything that exists exists [sic] in exactly the same sense as everything else. This sense is empirical, broadly speaking. In the Akan language to exist is to wo ho, which in literal translation means “to be at some place.” There is no equivalent, in Akan, of the existential “to be” or “is” of English, and there is no way of pretending in that medium to be speaking of the existence of something that is not in space.

God is, therefore, part of the universe and creates not ex nihilo but rather from preexisting materials that are only definable in spatiotemporal terms. As the designer of the world from preexisting materials, God is powerful indeed but not all-powerful, being limited by the materials he works with. For added emphasis, Wiredu says his position is the Akan standpoint: [The Akan] seem to operate with the notion of the power of God implying rather less than absolute omnipotence. That power is still unique in its extent, but it is conceptually not altogether unlike that of a human potentate. Indeed, correspondingly, God himself comes to be thought of on the model of a father who has laid well-intentioned plans for his children, which are, however, sometimes impeded not only by their refractory wills but also by the grossness of the raw materials he has to work with. (Wiredu 1998: 41)

With Wiredu rejecting the category of omnipotence, the category of omnibenevolence is called into question and discarded. Wiredu (2010: 195) writes: “On the Akan understanding of things, indeed, God is good in the highest; but his goodness is conceptually of a type with a just and benevolent ancestor”. The rejection of the categories of omnipotence and omnibenevolence means the untenability of the category of omniscience since the conception of God as a perfect being means that the non-­ possession of one perfection or superlative attribute implies non-­possession of all superlative attributes (cf. Agada 2022a). With Wiredu establishing that God is limited in perfection, he naturally looks to a more visible entity, the human being, for the source of morality and shuns reference to the supernatural sphere.

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Wiredu’s Humanistic Moral Framework Humanism in the broad sense captures attitudes and beliefs that privilege the human being and elevate the welfare of this being to the status of an absolute good. In this sense, Wiredu’s morality can be described as humanistic. However, Wiredu is also dealing with African humanism if humanism is more narrowly conceived in a way that completely rejects the supernatural. As Molefe (2018) has pointed out in his critique of Wiredu’s humanism and, indeed, any possible African humanism, Wiredu’s interpretation of traditional Akan thought acknowledges the place of God in the Akan belief system. Wiredu toes the line of thought drawn by a number of African philosophers who assert that traditional African worldview and ethics are human-centred (see, for example, Senghor 1964; Nyerere 1968; Gyekye 1995, 2010; Chuwa 2014). However, Wiredu goes further to suggest that the Akan overlook God in regard to discourse about the basis of morality. According to Wiredu, the Akan fully locate moral worth in human beings. What constitutes morality is what promotes human well-being. Morality depends, in fact, upon the harmonisation of human interests. Since human interests are numerous and may often be in conflict, harmonisation of interests becomes a great good that benefits both the individual and the group or community, with each individual recognising their privileges as well as the privileges of others. The human mind facilitates this harmonisation process by proposing and imposing moral rules that stipulate what is good and what is wrong. There is no appeal to the will of God. The principles of sympathetic impartiality, which determine how one should behave in practical situations, are rules supplied by reason and exist independent of the will of God. Wiredu (2010: 197–197) writes: “Morality … is intellectual, by Akan lights … Recognition of the intellectual dimension of right conduct is evidenced in the Akan description of a person of ethical maturity as an obadwenma. This word means one possessed of high thinking powers” The role of reason in determining moral conduct, therefore, cannot be overemphasised. Wiredu believes that the principle of sympathetic impartiality, when phrased as an imperative, is equivalent to the Golden Rule that invites individuals to do to others what they would wish others do to them (1996: 29). Aware that the principle of sympathetic impartiality animates the morality of cultures from around the world, Wiredu distinguishes his own formulation from the Christian variant, which relies on divine authority,

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and Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, which Wiredu considers non-humanistic on account of its severity. Wiredu thinks that Kant’s moral severity disregards the element of sympathy while upholding the component of impartiality. For Wiredu, morality consists of a theoretical set of rules that tell us what is good and bad as well as a pattern of actual behaviour that follows from these rules. The one without the other is incomplete. He notes, “Sympathetic impartiality represents a fusion of the two conceptions: the impartiality is what the moral rules embody, and the sympathy is what the moral motivation evinces” (1996: 31). In this moral system, one can tell a lie if doing so is absolutely necessary to save a human life. For instance, it is moral to tell an assassin a lie if the assassin demands to know the whereabouts of their target. While telling a lie in this situation may breach the strict moral demand of the ought instituted by reason, not telling a lie to save a human life compromises the entire moral edifice instituted by reason, which, in the humanistic context, must promote human wellbeing. Thus, for Wiredu, morality is the fusion of justice and empathy. Both justice and empathy are principles endorsed by human reason. In the next section, I will explore the implication of Wiredu’s humanistic morality for human dignity and argue that this moral framework is as conducive to the promotion of human dignity as the African theistic framework. However, before proceeding to the next section, it is fit to make an observation on the kind of philosophical issue that Wiredu would have faced if he had held a perfect God conception. I noted above that his conception of God as a limited and spatiotemporally located entity motivates recourse to a humanistic framework that grounds morality because of the visible human entity that makes human wellbeing the goal of morality rather than the will of a morally imperfect being that is not empirically accessible despite being a spatiotemporal, or quasi-physical, entity. If Wiredu had endorsed a view of God as a perfect being, his claim that human reason is the basis of morality would have become untenable. It will appear that the reason of a perfect God, who created the human being and animated the human mind, will promote human wellbeing better than the comparatively limited reason of a morally imperfect human entity. The idea of omnibenevolence involves perfect love. A God that loves his creation perfectly and has the power to do all (logically possible) things cannot err and will have unimpeachable intentions for human beings. Accordingly, Wiredu would be compelled to admit that the will of a perfect God can define what is good, something not applicable to the limited God who may prescribe rules that enhance his own wellbeing at the

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expense of human wellbeing. Consequently, Wiredu may be inclined to think that a perfect God ethical framework is preferable to a humanistic ethical framework because the former will promote human dignity better than the latter. It then only remains for human beings to discover the will of the perfect God and choose freely to obey the divine will that is by definition a good will. The objection of moral arbitrariness commonly raised against divine command theory (DCT)3 is overcome once it is asserted that the divine will in question is a good one. While a God limited in goodness can prescribe arbitrary moral laws that may be contrary to human reason, a perfectly good God will only prescribe rationally justifiable laws in accordance with his morally perfect nature. I concede that Wiredu would be at his wit’s end trying to fathom how the will of the perfect African God could be discovered in practice given that ATR is not a revealed religion. In theory, one can assume that God is perfect and that humans should strive to discover his will and act accordingly. In Christianity, for example, God’s will is assumed to be revealed in the Bible. Acting in accordance with the divine will is not a problem for the morally inclined Christian. In ATR, the practical problem persists. Wiredu would be compelled to jettison his humanistic framework in favour of the kind of supernaturalist moral framework suggested by Molefe (2018) without being able to sufficiently resolve the question of how to discover the will of a God that does not reveal his mind to humanity. The main problem for Wiredu, if he held a perfect God view, would be how to reconcile a humanistic ethics with a supernaturalist ethics. This problem is not insurmountable, in my opinion. Wiredu could achieve the reconciliation by arguing that the humanistic principle of sympathetic impartiality, which human reason informs, expresses God’s will, which is never contrary to human reason, the divine reason being the ultimate ground of human reason.

On Human Dignity: The Attractiveness of Wiredu’s Humanistic Framework Wiredu’s preference for an African morality based on human wellbeing has been called into question because it overlooks the spiritual dimension of traditional ethics (see, for example, Molefe 2015, 2018; Ani 2019). While 3  For indepth analysis of DCT and its problems and prospects, see, for example, Alston (1990), Murphy (1998), Audi (2007), Harrison (2015).

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Molefe argues that Wiredu’s human-centred morality fails to take adequate cognisance of the vitalistic dimension of traditional African thought that defines harmony in terms of an interactive stability of the supernatural environment (the sphere of God, divinities, and ancestors) and the human and physical environments, Ani submits that traditional Akan morality may not be as radically human-centred as Wiredu assumes since supernaturalism plays a strong role in traditional Akan life. While Ani (2019: 231) tends to agree with Wiredu that the rules of morality are set by human reason, his proposal that “[i]f reason discovers moral ideas, and God gives reason, then the human origin of morality does not subtract anything from the Supreme Being, from being religious, and from worship” (2019: 231) suggests a possible interpretation that makes God the basis of morality.4 Notwithstanding the observations of the two scholars mentioned above, I have endeavoured all along to show that Wiredu’s human-­centred morality follows from his rejection of traditional African theism (see Section “Introduction”). In this section, I argue that his human-centred morality, no less than a God-centred morality, does a good job defending the idea of human dignity. A conception of God as a perfect being furnishes one with the idea of an all-loving being who has the best intentions for human beings and prescribes moral rules that promote human wellbeing better than rules prescribed by the fallible reason of human beings that do not love perfectly. Notwithstanding the advantage of the perfect-God ethical framework, Wiredu’s humanistic framework offers a positive perspective on dignity. The distinction between two views of God articulated in this chapter instigates, or potentially instigates, tension between the African supernaturalist and the African humanist. The African supernaturalist may point out that a system of morality founded on the conception of God as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent will better support the idea that the human being has intrinsic value than a moral system such as Wiredu’s that grounds morality in human reason. An infallible reason belonging to a perfect God, conceived as the ground of morality, is certainly preferable 4  Ani is arguing that the human origin of moral rules does not necessarily imply that the Akan are nonreligious, as Wiredu asserts. However, since Ani concedes that God is the author or giver of reason and since he conceives religiosity in terms of obedience, awe, and adoration of God, it is possible for the religious to disregard the human factor in the constitution of moral rules and ground morality in God’s will. See Section “Introduction” of this chapter.

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to a fallible reason, such as humans possess, when this fallible human reason is conceived as the basis of morality, given that a perfect God is supremely just while the reason of an imperfect human being can be biased (both deliberately and ignorantly). An all-good God who knows everything and can do every logically possible thing is, by definition, perfectly placed to reproduce a measure of his perfection in a being like the human being that he created and endowed with the reason that Wiredu advances. This intuition has been promoted by an African theistic scholar such as Gyekye in his notion of human beings as children of God (1995). A human being conceived as a child of a perfect God automatically counts as an intrinsic value that demands the utmost respect from other human beings to which it also owes respect by the very fact that the latter too are children of God. Unfortunately, for the supernaturalist, Wiredu has already undermined traditional African theism. This renders the supernaturalist’s point moot. The concept of human dignity is a contested one. While some scholars consider the concept philosophically incoherent and not at all useful, others regard it as important (see, for example, Metz 2012a; Sangiovanni 2017: Molefe 2022) to the extent that it heightens our awareness of human worth. The idea of dignity involves the possession of value, the degradation of which constitutes a problematic violation but by no means its eradication. The dignity of a person is said to follow from the possession of intrinsic and ineradicable value by virtue of her relationship with other human beings (that is, being human) (see Baumann 2007; Donnelly 2007; Metz 2012b; Barak 2015). The concept of human dignity has evolved over the centuries. The religious sense of human dignity locates intrinsic value in the human being by virtue of this being’s status as an imago Dei (God’s image), thus giving the human being a value dependent on God as an absolute value. The secularisation trend that followed the Enlightenment removed God from the big picture and affirmed the human being as a politically situated entity possessing intrinsic value by virtue of having and expressing autonomy, which is dependent on rationality (see Metz 2012b). In recent times, the idea of human dignity has been closely associated with the idea of rights or inalienable privileges due to human beings. The culmination of this political dimension of the understanding of human dignity is the 1948 adoption of the United Nations instrument, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, it has been observed that conceptions of rights differ from culture to culture, if not in basic details, then in the structure of rights. Thus,

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one culture’s understanding of human dignity may differ from how another culture understands the notion. While Western culture may regard polygyny, for instance, as taking something away from the worth of the female human being, such a practice may fit perfectly into the African communitarian understanding of the human person and dignity. Consequently, human dignity as a concept is illuminated by how the concept of the person is understood. African philosophers have broadly identified conceptions of human dignity based on African ideas of vitality, community, and personhood (see, for example, Ikuenobe 2016; Molefe 2022). Vitality emphasises the comprehensive interconnectedness of everything in the world, including humans (see, for example, Tempels 1959; Nalwamba and Buitendag 2017; Agada 2022b). The traditional African holistic conception of reality ensures that it is difficult to exclude God from an African account of human dignity, the bone of contention in Molefe’s intriguing critique of African human-centred ethics (see Molefe 2015). The communal understanding of human dignity closely links dignity with the promotion of things conducive to social harmony and human wellbeing (see, for example, Metz 2012b). The personhood dimension of human dignity regards dignity as something that arises in the process of human beings acquiring moral excellence or simply that which accompanies the human capacity for virtue (see Molefe 2022; cf. Menkiti 1984; Wiredu 1996; Ikuenobe 2016). Wiredu’s secularistic inclination encourages him to endorse the limited God view and to de-emphasise the vitalistic conception of human dignity in favour of the communal conception primarily and the personhood approach to a lesser extent. However, both the vitalistic and communal conceptions of dignity are dependent on the African idea of personhood since the latter construes a person as an ontological entity situated in a value-conferring community, consisting of material and spiritual components, with God as the ultimate cause of the human being. Thus, the African vision of reality is holistic. As already noted, Wiredu’s African humanism does not deny that God is a creator. He asserts only that the Akan conceives of God as a limited deity. Thus, what is decisive in Wiredu’s moral philosophy is his rejection of the proposition that God has an absolute value as a morally perfect being and is, therefore, the ground of morality. Keen awareness of this state of affairs will remove any confusion that may creep into one’s mind as one contemplates Wiredu’s understanding of human dignity from the Akan standpoint. Once again, he does not reject God’s reality, in fidelity

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to Akan traditional thought, but he finds the basis of human dignity in the sociality of the person. Having created the human being and endowed it with a blood principle (mogya), life principle (okra), and personality principle (sunsum) (1996: 157), God ceases to actively intervene in the affairs of the individual. The possession of mogya makes the individual a bona fide member of the primary family group and secondary groups with inalienable rights and inescapable obligations within a community that encompasses the family, clan, and humanity writ large in fidelity to the universal principle of sympathetic impartiality. The possession of okra makes humans living creatures with the ability to feel, think, and actively participate in a social life. This being, according to Wiredu, has an intrinsic value that demands respect even as this being’s intrinsic value requires that it offers respect for other beings like it. The possession of sunsum makes the human being a creature capable of acting morally and promoting the well-being of other human beings in the community of humankind in accordance with the principle of sympathetic impartiality. Like Ikuenobe, Wiredu suggests that the individual gains dignity in the process of using the capacity for moral excellence or virtue, which its sunsum dimension makes possible. It is not enough to have the capacity for moral behaviour without using it (cf. Molefe 2022). As the individual grows in moral stature and renders help to their dependents and the community, they gain dignity. Thus, morality and social status are involved in the making of dignity. The foregoing analysis is buttressed by the following quote from Wiredu (1996: 158): By virtue of possessing an okra, a divine element, all persons have an intrinsic value, the same in each, which they do not owe to any earthly circumstance. Associated with this value is a concept of human dignity, which implies that every human being is entitled in an equal measure to a certain basic respect. In support of this, the Akans say, “Everyone is the offspring of God; no one is the offspring of the earth.” … everyone has the right to do his own thing, with the understanding, of course, that ultimately one must bear the consequences of one’s own choices … Through the possession of an okra, mogya, and sunsum, a person is situated in a network of kinship relations that generate a system of rights and obligations.

He notes, in accordance with the principle of sympathetic impartiality, that “when a human being descends upon the earth from above, s/he lands in a town. Membership in town and state brings with it a wider set

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of rights and obligations embracing the whole race of humankind” (1996: 159). Thus, Wiredu’s conception of human dignity is humanistic, consistent with his broader moral philosophy. The wellbeing of the human being is his focus. The place of God in the scheme of things is acknowledged, but this God is a limited deity and cannot be the ground of morality. Personhood is an achievement that is not dependent on obedience to divine commands; it is rather dependent on conformity to socially approved norms that are informed by human reason and aimed at promoting human wellbeing. The African supernaturalist and their humanist counterpart may jostle with each other for supremacy. The African supernaturalist may object to my thesis in this chapter and assert that either Wiredu’s interpretation of Akan religious notions of God is incorrect or he runs into a contradiction by positing a limited God who is not the basis of morality and then articulates a theory of human dignity that suggests that human beings have an intrinsic value because they come from God. The supernaturalist will press on with the claim that if God is the ultimate ground of human dignity, morality may also be ultimately dependent on him. The misinterpretation objection may have merit given the dispute among Akan philosophers concerning the question of God (see Wiredu 1998), but it is beyond the scope of this chapter to argue the matter of misinterpretation. As I have previously argued, Wiredu’s moral philosophy is consistent with his religious philosophy. Making human reason the basis of morality is, logically, in line with a conception of God as a limited deity. There is no contradiction in Wiredu’s understanding of human dignity since God does not play an active role in the life of the human being after creating it. God allows human beings to act as they deem fit while bearing responsibility for their actions. Consequently, human dignity is abstracted from the social context. The African humanist may insist that a humanistic account of morality and human dignity is better since such an account is more respectful of the relevance of human agency. This objection does not seem to me correct. A supernaturalist account of morality and human dignity articulated in the African theistic tradition may be preferable to Wiredu’s humanistic account since the theistic tradition posits God as a perfect being. As an omnibenevolent deity, the perfect God will only seek what is good for human beings, as I have previously argued. The commands he issues will be just and well-intentioned commands that human beings will be happy to obey since they promote human wellbeing. A perfectly moral

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God will be committed to upholding human dignity given the absence of evil in his nature and his responsibility to beings that he freely created as vitalistic entities from his own vitalistic essence.5 Therefore, while the traditional African theistic view and Wiredu’s limited God view clash in the context of discourse about the ultimate ground of morality, both views support an elevated conception of humanity that promotes human dignity. If the perfect-God framework is preferable because it introduces the idea of an all-loving entity, the humanistic framework is no less attractive given its focus on an elevated view of humanity as captured by the principle of sympathetic impartiality.

Conclusion In this chapter, I explored two schools of thought that furnish information about traditional African conceptions of God, namely traditional African theism and the limited God schools. Having located Wiredu’s religious philosophy in the limited God school, I showed how his conception of God as a limited deity influences his preference for a human-centred morality. I supplied a concise discussion of Wiredu’s moral philosophy and proceeded to show that his relegation of God to the background does not make his idea of human dignity any less attractive than the conception of human dignity sustained by the moral framework of traditional African theism, even if the latter is preferable because it furnishes the idea of an all-loving entity.

References Agada, Ada. 2017. The apparent conflict of transcendentalism and immanentism in Kwame Gyekye and Kwasi Wiredu’s interpretation of the Akan concept of god. Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture, and Religions 6: 23–38. https://doi.org/10.4314/ft.v6i1.2.

5  The world is conceived as the manifestation of divine vitality by African philosophers of the vitalistic orientation (see Tempels 1959; Gyekye 1995; Molefe 2018; Agada 2022b). God is the source of this vitality. The possession of this quality makes the human being an image or fragment of God that deserves dignified treatment. Wiredu seems to endorse this point when he observes that for the Akan human beings are unique by reason of their possession of the God-endowed okra.

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Index1

A Abortion, 66, 77 Achievement, 134, 136, 144, 210, 214–219, 221 Achievement dignity, 72–76, 83 Actionism, 211 African Charter, 227, 228, 238, 239, 241n24, 247 African Charter of Human and Peoples Rights, 227 African communalism, 234, 236, 241 African communitarian accounts of dignity, 192 African communitarianism, 137, 138, 236 African conceptions of dignity, 190, 201 African concept of personhood, 4, 10 African constitutionalism, 19, 228 African contexts, 2, 7 African ethics, 128, 132, 133, 138, 139, 145, 146

African God-centred morality, 283 African history, 3 African humanism, 289 African languages, 3, 6n1 African National Congress, 9 African personhood, 156–182 African philosophers, 191, 201 African philosophy, 99, 107–110, 113, 114, 117n1, 118, 119, 205–207, 212, 282, 282n1 African political life, 3 African psychology, 206 African religious studies, 282, 283 African social practices, 8 African society, 191, 195, 197, 199 African spiritual traditions, 10 African studies, 3 African theology, 287 African Union, 9 Africentric conception of human dignity, 133 Afro-communitarian, 113, 114

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Molefe, C. Allsobrook (eds.), Human Dignity in an African Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37341-1

301

302 

INDEX

Afro-communitarianism, 107–109, 112, 113 Afro-communitarian polities, 3 Agency, 43, 45, 48, 51, 52, 61, 62, 111, 120, 236 Agent, 66, 67, 70–77, 79, 80, 83 Ahụ, 214, 218 Aka, 223 Akan, 3, 127, 134, 139, 141, 282n1, 285–289, 292, 292n4, 294, 296, 297n5 Animal ethics, 69, 77, 79, 80, 82, 83 Anthropology, 228–230, 234, 238, 253 Atoapem, 286 Authentic intercultural engagements, 101 Autonomous rationality, 145 Autonomy, 5, 11, 12, 19, 28, 43, 45, 48, 50, 56, 61–63, 88, 91–93, 95–97, 102, 103, 110, 112–114, 127, 134, 141, 143, 151, 228n1, 229, 233, 234, 237, 241n23, 243, 243n34, 253, 293 B Basotho, 257–259, 264–268, 270, 272, 275 Sesotho culture, 258, 259, 261, 262, 264–272, 274, 275 Beingness together, 53, 54 Black Consciousness, 150, 240 Botho, 257, 258, 261n6, 262, 264, 270, 271, 276 Brekyirihunuade, 286 C Capacity-based, 68, 71, 75, 77, 79, 82, 83 Capacity-based concept of a person, 118

Capacity for virtue, 136 Capital punishment, 57 Caring capacity, 25 Charter of the United Nations, 232 Chi, 214, 221, 223, 224 Christian, 114–116 Christian culture, 114 Christian ethics, 114 Cicero, 230 Citizenry, 111 Collective dignity, 52, 228, 238, 240, 245, 249–251 Collectivist community, 54 Colonialism, 114, 140, 150 Common good, 111, 112, 121 Communal, 189, 191, 192, 194–201 Communal dignity, 192, 197, 200 Communal harmony, 8 Communalism, 44, 46, 53, 55, 60, 62 Communality, 28, 234, 234n10, 252 Communal relationality, 28 Communal relationship, 26–28, 30, 33, 39, 135, 143, 144 Communitarian conception of dignity, 87 Communitarianism, 229 Community, 7, 8, 10, 17, 19, 44, 45, 49–60, 62, 65, 67, 70, 71, 75, 78, 107, 108, 110–112, 116, 120, 121, 126, 127, 134, 136, 137, 140–142, 144, 149, 189–201 Community of ancestors, 10 Completeness, 209 Comportment, 16 Conceptual decolonisation, 3, 6 Conditional respect, 78 Consciousness, 66, 67, 70, 77 Constitutionalism, 228, 228n1, 229, 231, 237, 238, 241–247, 242n26, 253, 254 Constraints, 17 Creatio ex nihilo, 285 Creature with special aura, 263

 INDEX 

Cultural community, 110 Cultural identity, 110 Customary law, 246 D Decolonisation, 282 Decolonisation studies, 282 Dehumanisation, 188 De Officiis, 230 Diffused monotheism, 284 Dignitas hominis, 230, 236 Dignity, 23–25, 24n1, 25n2, 27, 29–33, 35, 37–39, 43–58, 60–63, 65, 66, 68, 72–77, 79–83, 87–91, 93–98, 101–103, 187–201, 205–215, 217, 219–224 Disharmony, 44, 56, 57 Divine authority, 282n1, 289 Divine nature, 113 E Egalitarian, 157, 164, 168, 169 Egalitarian human dignity, 19 Egalitarianism, 54, 59, 77, 80–82, 210, 214, 218, 220, 221 Egalitarian society, 2 Enyiasombea, 286 Essentialism, 8, 9 Ethics, 3, 4, 7, 9–11, 13–16 Euro-Christian worldview, 283 European constitutionalism, 228n1, 229, 253 Euthanasia, 116 Extrinsic, 190, 193, 194, 200 Extrinsic value, 66 Extrinsic, worth, 98 F Factual capacities, 76 Factual dignity, 76

303

Family, 9–11 Feminist ethics, 114 Freedom Charter, 240 Friendliness, 26, 144 G Gender inequality, 162 Gender neutrality, 162, 164, 166, 167 Generic dignity, 229, 232, 233, 237, 237n12, 242, 244, 248, 249, 252–254 Geneva Convention, 132 The German Federal Constitutional Court, 242 Global justice, 88–91, 93, 98–100, 102, 103 Global North, 99, 100, 102, 103 Global South, 99, 100, 102, 103 Gobodo-Madikizela, P., 175, 176 God, 23, 27, 28, 31, 113–116 Golden Rule, 142, 144 Greatness, 208–210, 212, 213, 215–219, 221 Grundnorm, 128, 133, 142–146, 148, 150, 151 Gyekye, K., 3–5, 14–16 H Harmonious relationships, 44, 52, 56, 63 Harmony, 44, 54, 56–58, 63, 88, 90, 95, 101, 135, 144, 145 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 134, 135 Hierarchy of beings, 264, 267 Honour, 209, 210, 212, 216, 217, 220, 221 Human agency, 296 Human autonomy, 199, 200 Human-centred morality, 292

304 

INDEX

Human dignity, 1–8, 6n1, 10–19, 23–25, 24n1, 28, 30n3, 31–33, 36–38, 40, 65, 66, 68, 72, 73, 75–77, 79–83, 87–91, 93–98, 101–103, 108–121, 125, 127–145, 147, 149–151, 227–240, 228n2, 234n9, 234n10, 237n12, 242–254, 242n28, 243n34, 257–276, 281, 283, 290–297 inherent dignity, 261, 265, 269, 273 Humanism, 283, 289, 294 Human nature, 112, 113, 115, 120n2 Human rights, 3, 5, 11, 16–18, 24n1, 25, 28, 30, 31, 33, 39, 108, 112, 119–121, 125, 126, 128, 130–133, 135, 136, 138, 139, 142–145, 147–151, 227, 231n4, 232, 234n10, 241, 245, 248, 252, 253, 282 Hunhu, 4 I Ichawapụta, 223 Identity, 244, 245 Igbo, 4 Igbo existentialist ontology, 207, 222, 223 Igbo notion of dignity, 209, 224 Igbo relativism, 210, 215 Igbo thought scheme, 206, 207, 209, 212, 221 Ikenga, 223 Imafidon, Elvis, 156, 168–173, 179 Image of God, 264, 275 Imaginary origins, 8 Imago Dei, 5, 293 Inclusivity, 234, 244 Individual autonomy, 87 Individual freedom, 43

Individualism, 110, 114, 126, 141, 242, 253 Individualistic, 114, 120, 121, 228, 235 Inflorescent, 14, 15 Inflorescent dignity, 188, 193, 194 Informed choice, 36 Informed consent, 25, 31, 34–36 Inherent dignity, 229, 232, 237, 240, 244, 245, 249, 251, 253 Inherent moral worth, 47, 48 Instrumental value, 188, 190, 193–195, 199–201 Interdependence, 137, 142 Interim Constitution of South Africa, 239 Intrinsic, 187–190, 193–195, 199–201 Intrinsic dignity, 14–17, 72–75, 81, 83 Intrinsic sociality, 139, 140, 142 Intrinsic sociality of the human status, 139 Intrinsic value, 14, 15, 66, 74, 76, 77, 79, 81–83, 87, 101, 102, 131, 132 Intrinsic virtue, 194 Intrinsic worth, 89, 97, 102, 112, 157, 171, 173–175, 177–179, 181 Inwards-looking, 270 Isidima, 4 Isithunzi, 4 J Jurisprudence, 3, 10 Justice, 89, 94, 98–100, 102, 103, 205, 206 K Kant, I., 5, 11, 16, 70, 73, 77, 79, 131–133, 145, 233, 237

 INDEX 

Kantianism, 88 Kantian moral ethics, 244 Kantians, 30 L Liberal, 228, 241, 241n23, 241n25, 243, 245 Life force, 23–25, 31, 35, 37, 115, 121, 263, 264 Life-giving force, 214 Limited God view, 281, 283, 287, 294, 297 Limited-state claim, 232 Liveliness, 32, 35, 37 M Macro ethical levels, 112 Manifesto, 240 Manzini, N., 156, 164, 171, 174, 179 Maximalist, 66, 68, 72 Maximalist conception of personhood, 66, 69 Menkiti, I., 24, 32, 126, 127, 134–138, 141, 151, 209–211 Mental features, 112 Micro ethical level, 112 Minimalist, 66–68 Minimalist conception of personhood, 66 Mkpụrụ obi, 214 Mmụọ, 213, 214 Moderate communitarianism, 107–114, 116–118, 120, 121 Mogya, 295 Molefe, M., 156, 157, 165n4, 166, 168, 172–176, 178–181 Monotheism, 284 Moral agents, 71, 72 Moral dignity, 44–52, 54–57, 60–63, 126, 134, 143, 144 Moral excellence, 33

305

Morality, 192, 281, 282n1, 283–292, 292n4, 294, 296, 297 Moral personhood, 118, 119 Moral philosophy, 69 Moral status, 13, 14, 17, 66, 68–72, 77, 156, 173, 174 Moral worth, 72, 73, 76, 78, 108 Motho, 257 Motho has ntja ha lahloe, 267, 268, 272 Mutual recognition, 87, 102, 128, 138, 140, 141, 144–148, 150, 151 N Ndụ, 214 Nobility, 208–210, 212, 213, 216, 218–221 Non-relational legal value, 228 Normative criteria, 135 Normative personhood, 46, 161n2, 169, 171, 175 O ̄ adee,̄ 285 Obō ̄ Odomankoma, 285 ọgọ, 208–210, 216 Okike, 223, 224 Okra, 115, 120, 121, 295, 297n5 Olodumare, 284 Omnibenevolence, 285–288, 290 Omnipotence, 285–288 Omnipotent, 281, 282, 284, 286, 292 Omniscience, 285–288 Onipa, 3 Ontological relationships, 53 Onyame, 286 Onyankopōn, 285 O se re ho Moroa, Moroa Tooe, 259, 265, 270–273, 275 Other-regarding duties, 96

306 

INDEX

Outwards-looking, 259, 270, 271 Oyowe, O., 156, 162–165 P Panaetius, 230 Patient-centred notion, 70, 83 Patient-centred view, 119 Performance-based concept of a person, 118, 119 Performance-based concepts, 68 Personal dignity, 52, 196 Personal identity, 110 Personhood, 25, 32–39, 43–58, 60, 62, 63, 65–72, 75, 76, 79, 82, 83, 126, 127, 134, 136, 137, 140, 142, 146, 155–182, 228n1, 229, 234–238, 234n9, 242n26, 244, 252, 257, 258 Political theory, 1 Politics of gender, 8 Polygyny, 294 Positive law, 231 Pre-war paradigm of dignity, 229, 233 Pre-war paradigm of human dignity, 230, 253 A priori moral status, 17 Pro-social duties, 112 Proverbs, 206, 207, 212–221, 223 Punishment, 44, 49, 53–63 Q Quasi-physicalism, 282, 287 R Racial identity, 8 Radical communitarianism, 108 Rationalism, 281 Rationality, 43, 48, 63, 66, 67, 70, 77, 89, 91, 93, 94, 96, 99, 293

Reciprocity, 127, 134, 141, 197, 199, 234 Recognition, 2, 3, 7, 8, 12, 14, 17, 125, 127, 128, 130, 134, 136–138, 140, 143, 147, 149–151 Reductionist essentialism, 102 Relational autonomy, 114 Relationality, 87, 93, 95, 97, 103, 135, 143, 145, 191, 194 Religion, 229, 230, 234, 248–250 Respect, 72, 74, 76, 78, 80, 126, 127, 129, 130, 132–145, 147–151, 206–209, 211, 212, 217, 220, 221, 258, 260, 261, 264–276 Respect by others, 44, 45, 48–50, 60, 63 Rights, 126–128, 130–139, 142, 143, 145, 147–149, 151, 205, 205n1, 206 Rights, personhood, 205 S Sacred(ness), 263, 265, 266, 269, 275 Sanctity, 257, 263, 264 Self-actualisation, 96, 150 Self-containing/Contentment, 209 Self-respect, 209 Seriti, 257, 259, 262–265, 267, 269, 275 Setiloane, Gabriel, 263 Shared destiny, 234 Sirithi, 4 Social harmony, 144 Socialism, 107 Social justice, 65, 79, 80, 107, 108, 110, 112–114, 119–121 Social ontology, 128, 138, 139, 142, 144, 145, 148 Social relationships, 134, 137 Sociology, 206, 207, 215

 INDEX 

Solidarity, 44, 45, 53–55, 58, 60, 63, 135, 142, 143, 149 Soul, 43, 58 South African Constitutional Court, 127–129 Status, 129, 135–138, 140, 142, 144, 145, 151 Suffocating immanentism, 159, 162, 166, 178 Sunsum, 295 Superior achievements, 33 Sympathetic impartiality, 289, 291, 295, 297 Sympathy, 174, 176, 180 T Togetherness, 26, 28 Torture, 25, 37–39 Traditional African culture, 284 Traditional African theism, 282, 283, 292, 293, 297 U Ubuntu, 4, 8, 10, 19, 87–91, 94–98, 101–103, 128, 141, 146, 147, 157, 165–168, 172, 173, 177, 178, 180, 181, 234, 234n9, 234n10, 242, 252, 276 ubuntu-do, 157, 165, 166, 168, 169, 173, 177, 181 ubuntu-talk, 157, 165, 166, 168, 169, 172, 173, 177, 181 Ubuntu law, 147 Ugwu, 207–209 Ujamaa, 54, 59 Ukwu, 208, 209 Ultimacy thesis, 286

307

Unconditional respect, 78, 79 UN Declaration of Human Rights, 130 Universal, 157, 167–169, 173, 175, 177 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 11, 227, 241n22, 258, 260, 293 Universalist desideratum, 187 Utilitarianism, 70, 79 V Values, 188–196, 200, 201 Violence, 155, 156, 158, 159, 164, 165, 176, 177, 182 gender-based violence, 165 Virtue, 13–17 Vitalist, 31, 32, 35, 37 Vitality, 32, 34, 35, 37, 39, 43, 45, 63, 115, 116, 120, 121, 234, 264, 269, 275, 294 Vulnerability desideratum, 188 W Welfare, 60, 62, 63 Welfarist, 26 Western communitarianism, 139 Western theories of human dignity, 6 Will of God, 283, 289 Wiredu, K., 163, 164, 166, 174, 179, 281–297, 282n1, 292n4, 297n5 World War II, 227, 230, 231, 238 Y Yoruba, 139 Yurkivska, O., 156, 162–165