Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: Beginning from the question “What is the self?” a range of applications of the African concept of ubuntu is shown to be an alternate model of person-in-relation to that of Western views. In its traditional form, ubuntu situated the individual person in a web of relations in which self and world were united and intermingled in reciprocal relations that accentuated the obligations and mutuality of being human. Appearing in South Africa’s 1993 interim Constitution, it lends gravity and concern for justice to all relations to which that document applies, with effects on national laws, programs, and responsibilities of governance. The genealogy, uses, and critiques of ubuntu are investigated, arriving at the conclusion that, as a traditional though reconstructed principle, it remains a viable force, provided its critics’ analyses are accounted for, and it is treated as a force for freedom rather than an icon of the inaccessible past. Keywords: ubuntu, relational being, community, individual, power, freedom, social cohesion, reification, mystification, reconciliation
Author: Brad Breems
Institution: Trinity Christian College
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2598797826