Summary
Summary Notes on Ubuntu Ethics
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In depth notes on the definition and application of ubuntu ethics
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Lecture 1Tuesday, 12 March 2024 13:57
• Community is key
• Social harmony is upheld as the greatest ultimate or good
• Maximise harmony
• Morality is a function of experience and communal rationality
• What is right and what is wrong is determined by community through elders
• The common moral position is a product of whose moral wisdom?
○ Elders are fountains of wisdom and their ROLE is to set the moral standards or
parameters through dialogue
• Why is Ubuntu ethics referred to as dialogical ethics?
○ In ubuntu cultures, the process of reaching a common moral position about morality is
dialogical activity
○ Exchange of thoughts or ideas = shared meaning
○ Ubuntu is a dialogical Ethics
• What is dialogue?
○ Dialogue is 2 way communication where the persons involved in the dialogue do not
have to hold the same views on a particular subject but must have different points of
view on issues of mutual concern
• Tripartite aspects of Ubuntu Ethics
○ Dialogue involves communication between humans, spirits and God
• Common moral position safeguards the interests of the community
○ Common moral position about right and wrong is negotiated through dialogue
○ Common moral position is a moral position agreed to by the majority of elders-
custodians of moral, epistemological and ontological wisdom
• Sources of the common moral position:
○ Epistemology - knowledge
○ Ontology - Reality
• Individual acts are only important if they conform to?
○ Individual moral acts are only important if they conform to the expectations of the
community
• Role of community in Ubuntu Ethics?
○ The role of community through elders fundamentally defines our common moral
position
• Ubuntu ethics view of an individual in community
○ Does not consider the individual to be an isolated being
○ As long as an individual is born in a community of living people and is in interaction with
people upholding varying moral intuitions the individual cannot universalize their moral
thoughts
• Ubuntu as a dialogical moral theory
○ Places the community at the centre of all moral deliberations
○ Places the opinions of the group at the core of dialogical morality = collectivist morality
counts and not individual
○ Locates the morality of actions within a particular group
• Normative Ethics as instruments of individual morality
• Concepts of justice and happiness may cut across all cultures but the idea of placing an
individual at the centre of this can be problematic
• In communitarian cultures, justice does not reside in an individual but in the community the
individual is a part of
• Reason, spirit and desire exist as assets of the community
Week 4 Ubuntu Page 1
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