Human Dignity in African Thought

Lecture 24 of the  SOAS World Philosophies Lecture Series explores the concept and experience of human dignity in African/Black thought.

In the search for a plausible conception of human dignity, it investigates moral-theoretical possibilities inherent in the tension between the naturalist (capacity-based) and performance-based (merit-based) interpretations of human dignity. The naturalist accounts are patient-centred and impose duties on the moral agent to respect the bearers of dignity.

The performance-based approach is agent-centred, requiring the agent to acquire virtue as the basis for human dignity. The lecture considers the advantages and weaknesses of the naturalist approach in the context of African thought and experience. One advantage of the naturalist approach is that it accounts for human value by tracking certain ontological features of our nature. Two major weaknesses: (a) it is a nightmare to identify the relevant ontological feature that accounts for human dignity, and (b) the experience of colonization, racism and slavery belies the naturalist approach for black-bodied human beings.

The performative approach to human dignity has two advantages: (a) it associates human dignity with other-regarding duties (responsibilities) and virtue (dignity is what we do), and (b) it also helps us to unmask the dehumanizing systematic conditions that deny conditions and experiences of true dignity for some human beings in the world. The lecture proposes a synthesis, a plausible account of human dignity ought to appreciate both the naturalist and performative aspects of human dignity, i.e., human dignity is at once what we are as human beings, and at the same, it is what we do as we struggle against dehumanizing socio-political systems.

About the speaker

Motsamai Molefe is an Associate Professor at the University of South Africa, Graduate School of Business Leadership. He is the discipline leader of Ethics and Governance. He is the Chair of Department: Intra-Africa Trade and Investment. He is the Director of the Centre for African Phenomenology.

He is the Editor-in-Chief of the South African Journal of Philosophy. He has published in prestigious journals in philosophy and ethics, such as the Journal of Value Inquiry, The Monist, Religious Studies, among others.

His recent books are: ‘African Philosophy of Religion in Conversation with the Anglo-American Philosophy of Religion’ (CUP, 2024), ‘Ubuntu Ethics’ (Routledge, 2024); ‘African Ethics and Death’ (2023, Routledge), ‘Human Dignity in an African Context’ (Palgrave, 2023).

Contact

Email: cgcp@soas.ac.uk

This event is online and can be joined via Zoom.

Image: Photo by Jason W on Unsplash.