Toward an African Moral Theory

IN the literature on African ethics, one finds relatively little that consists of normative theorization with regard to right action, that is, the articulation and justification of a comprehensive, basic norm that is intended to account for what all permissible acts have in common as distinct from impermissible ones. By “African ethics” I mean values associated with the largely black and Bantu-speaking peoples residing in the sub-Saharan part of the continent, thereby excluding Islamic Arabs in North Africa and white Afrikaners in South Africa, among others. The field lacks a well-defended general principle grounding particular duties that is informed by such values and that could be compared to dominant Western theories such as Hobbesian egoism or Kantian respect for persons. In this article, I aim to help develop such a principle. Some have approximated this project on occasion, but no one has made it a primary aim that has been pursued in a systematic, analytic way. Furthermore,