In the 1990s, two ideas have gained prominence in the thinking of most African intellectuals with regard to issues of development: social reconstruction and civil society as the major route along which social reconstruction should be carried out. However, while almost everyone may be in favor of social reconstruction, not many would readily specify what this commits them to. And, while most seem in favor of civil society as the most effective approach to social reconstruction, not many have reflected on the type of principles which ought to guide the functioning of civil society if it is to promote the good of the people of Africa.

At independence, most of the newly independent national governments of Africa were rightly convinced that they held a responsibility to promote the social, political and economic welfare of their people. To fulfil their obligation, the governments chose to take over to a considerable degree the socio-economic planning of their countries and to supervise this through at the national level. It was thought that only in a society where the principal means of production were controlled by the state could socio-economic progress be viable. Hence, during those years, justice and social progress meant socialism. Most African countries tried to set in place strong centralized states with elaborate bureaucratic structures extending from top to bottom, with one political party influencing every sphere of society’s life, etc. These were seen as the requisites for harnessing all energies and resources in order speedily to end Africa’s economic backwardness and solve its formidable ethnic problems.

But after three or more decades of independence, the continent of Africa has remained largely underdeveloped socially, economically and politically. The only form of development that can be asserted undeniably is the development of underdevelopment itself. For the majority of the people of Africa, besides living under dictatorships, lives under poverty in the form of poor health, unemployment, sustained hunger and malnutrition, and today environmental decay. Ethnic violence is a living experience in most parts of Africa; military coups have become a traditional phenomena of changing political power; foreign aid projects have collapsed; and there is widespread evidence of large scale corruption in most of Africa’s social, political and economic institutions.

It is necessary to ask the cause of this. An increasingly common answer to the inquiry is that Africa’s effort at development was built on wrong foundations. The strongly centralized structures adopted at independence, with their elaborate bureaucratic structures extending from top to bottom together with centralized economic direction, were doomed to reach an impasse. This was so because any strong regimentation of society’s activities from the top carries the danger of treating human dignity with disrespect and under estimates the power of democracy, because it reduces individuality to a common standard and suffocates the power of human ingenuity.

Through rigid laws, the state hampered the development of voluntary social groups and associations which would have contributed to the development of their communities. In the long-run, such restrictive policy has proven detrimental to the entire socio-economic fabric in Africa. It is argued that, since Africa’s pursuit of progress was built on the wrong foundations, there is a need to rebuild Africa on a new foundation, and hence a need for social reconstruction. This reconstruction must aim at decentralizing socio-economic planning and management and effectively integrating the people into developmental activities through civil society. But what is civil society?

If one considers the problems of national, religious and ethnic conflicts which have persisted and still pose a serious threat to Africa’s social cohesion, there is a likelihood that with the adoption of civil society people may form groups following national, religious, and ethnic lines. People may develop a tendency to exalt their own groups, while dismissing other groups not only as different but as also inferior. They may carry with them an irrational sense of the superiority of one’s group and an unreasoning contempt for other social groups. Such groups may find themselves pitted against one another and divided by barriers of nationality, religion and language. Struggle between them may turn out to be very bloody and the defense of each may contribute to the insecurity of all. As a consequence, the resulting conflicts between such groups may be so destructive that the survival of a civilization not only human but humane will itself be seriously threatened.

We also need to observe that, at this particular moment of history, most of the people in Africa who seem to have the capacity for organizing civil society are themselves dominated by a gross materialism with its inevitable tendency to individualism and consumerism. Such a people would form voluntary association in order to pursue selfish ends. They would look at other people as existing for their use, regarding others as mere objects to be manipulated and exploited. Such an attitude leads to domination; it is a serious betrayal of everything human and humane, and an obliteration of democracy.

With the above observations, therefore, there is a need for us to bear in mind that while civil society may make possible many of our dreams of development, it may also be instrumental in transforming those dreams into deadly nightmares since some groups and associations in civil society may be places for egotistical pursuits. Thus, if civil society is to function viably and helpfully it is imperative that its groups and associations be motivated by some distinct normative ethical qualities. It is the contention of this paper that the most essential normative factor for civil society ought to be the ethical concept of the human person.

There is a general agreement among people that the promotion of the welfare of human persons is the purpose of civil society, that the welfare of human persons stands as the final cause of civil society. In effecting the realization of this final cause, human persons are themselves the efficient causes since it is they who utilize their brains and hands to realize the common goal (human welfare). At the same time, persons in leadership positions in the civil society groups act as the formal causes, since it is they who direct and coordinate the various activities of members in realizing the general welfare.

Now, if the welfare of human persons is the final cause of civil society, and if it is human persons who are both the efficient and formal causes of this welfare, then it is imperative to bear in mind the ethical nature and characteristics of the human person if we are to develop the normative ethical criteria by which to judge and guide the civility of the various groups and associations.

To use the concept of the human person as a basis for renewal, it must be employed in a broad and fundamental sense. In this paper, we shall take the term "human person" as a rational individual, who is a unity of mind and body, co-existing with others, and endowed with the ability of self-transcendence.

But it would be vain to formulate such a definition and end there. Its explanation is necessary if it is to act both as a principle broad enough to pervade human culture and as a normative criterion to motivate social reconstruction.

The Human Person as a Rational Individual. By one’s very nature a person is rational or capable of reasoning. Reason is the power to calculate, reflect and know, to understand relations and universal qualities, to live by rule instead of being swayed by appetite. Reason is an essential human attribute which differentiates a person from other beings.

As a person an individual is not just an idea, but a concrete existing being, clearly observable, undivided in oneself, separated from others and unrepeatable. Based on His rationality and individuality, persons bear an autonomy which demands that they be free from any form of manipulation if they are to actualize the best of their inherent potentialities.

Thus, if social groups and associations in civil society are to work viably, they need to acknowledge the uniqueness and unrepeatability of the human persons they serve and work with for rationality and individuality point to the dignity of human persons, as possessors of rights, who must always be respected as beings of infinite value in themselves. Social groups and associations will be better the more they are guided by the principle of respect for human dignity for by this they will guarantee the opportunity of each human person to develop to the best of their capacity.

The Human Person as a Unity of Body and Spirit. The human person is a unity of body and spirit. Ontologically the person is one, a whole constituted of not just a single, but dual principles. The body is essentially determined by the spirit and vice versa, but of the two primacy belongs to the spirit and not to the body. This is because the spirit is the formal cause of the body; it is the giver of meaning to the whole person.

Although primacy belongs to spirit, meaningful development of each aspect calls for a serious interpenetration of both. Hence, only a philosophy or development policy which does justice to these two ontological aspects of the human person is sufficiently complete and complex to act as a basis for promoting authentic human welfare. To justify the interrelation of body and spirit with regard to development, A.R. Byaruhanga wrote:

This implies then that civil society must acknowledge the human person’s unity of body and spirit if it is to function viably.

Unfortunately, the general tendency of some pioneers of voluntary associations in Africa today is to pay more attention to generating material values to satisfy the person’s bodily nature at the cost of neglecting the spiritual dimension. The basic spiritual values of honesty, truthfulness, trust, restraint and obligation are seen largely as having no significant pay-off. If Africa, in its social reconstruction through civil society, simply promotes material values at the cost of starving spiritual values, it will be promoting a lopsided kind of development. This is lopsided because no human endeavor which ignores the ontological unity of the human person can claim viably to promote the welfare of humanity since any viable progress of the human person essentially implies fulfillment of the whole person.

With regard to the co-existent character of human persons, Martin Buber noted two fundamental attitudes found in all human experience. One is the world of "I-thou" relations, which ought always to be lived; and the other is the world of "I-it" relations, which persons ought always to avoid.

Such an "I-it" tendency toward co-existence dehumanizes; it is an obstacle to, and an enemy of, democracy; and it is a serious threat to the very existence of civilization. Such co-existence is a very likely possibility for civil society, but ought to be guarded against as long as our aim is to reform our society towards higher levels of development.

The Human Person as Endowed with the Ability for Self-Transcendence. Inherent in the human person is the urge to go beyond all previous achievements; one is always unsatisfied with results already acquired. Life is characterized by an essential ‘going beyond’ the factual situation; one can never say that ‘this much and no more is enough of what is required of the person’. In this sense, personhood is self-transcendent. The person has an inward-outward tendency to free oneself from the slavery of ignorance, fear, error and poverty. In one’s search to excel one sometimes errs to a point of crushing oneself, but the general tendency is to transcend toward what one conceives as the good. One struggles not to terminate one’s life, but for a better quality of life; not to avoid work, but to obtain a more meaningful job; not to avoid living a culture, but for a better and more liberating culture.

Where the person chooses to shatter morality and pursue one’s own egotistic ends in order to become a "superman" unrestrained by sympathy, the inevitable consequence is abuse of humanity through rudeness, cruelty and disrespect for human dignity.

It is imperative, therefore, that all voluntary social groups and associations in civil society (if they are viably to promote human welfare and development) choose, and prepare themselves, to have a sympathetic attitude towards others, not only to individual human persons, but also to other similar social groups and associations. Renewal in contemporary Africa calls for such ethical motivation because thereby the efforts of civil society will call forth the highest instincts of altruism, rather than of greed and envy.

It is necessary to stress, therefore, that the activities, artifacts and organized establishments of all voluntary social groups and associations must "incarnate" the normative ethical concept of the human person if social renewal is ever to respond to authentic human needs and desires.

Significance. The significance of the principle of subsidiarity for civil society can be identified through the duties it imposes on both the state and the intermediate social groups.

Guided by the principle of subsidiarity, the task of the state demands first of all the creation and maintenance of favorable conditions in civil society in order for the voluntary groups and associations to be able to attend to what they can do by themselves. This must be done through special legislation defining the rights and duties of both the individual and intermediate organizations so as to have a clear and peaceful fulfillment of their pursuits. The most important point to note here is that, in legislating for civil society, the principle of subsidiarity demands that the state be guided by the ethical concept of the human person. This guidance enables the state to protect and promote the personal and group rights of its citizens in civil society.

The duty of the state to civil society with regard to subsidiarity is also to set in place some form of monitoring agencies at every level to ensure that abuses are minimized. The principle of subsidiarity is ethically justifiable on the grounds that it calls upon government intervention when small or intermediate groups in society are unable or unwilling to take the steps needed to promote basic justice.

Although the principle of subsidiarity binds the state, it also has obligations on civil society. While it protects personal and group rights, it also calls upon all members of civil society to use their rights and competencies with vigor and responsibility to fulfill their duties. Sound responsibility is an indication of the individual person’s ethical quality; it is inseparable from the acknowledgement of what ought to be done, of what we are bound to do as ethical human persons. Hence, it must be emphasized here that sound responsibility in civil society must necessarily be motivated by the commitment of individual persons and voluntary associations to the normative ethical concept of the human person.

In view of the above, it can be perceived clearly that the principle of subsidiarity stands as one of the most needed ethical elements in Africa’s social reconstruction. It is important because it is essential to limiting the role of the state in society, and thereby protecting society from authoritarian regimes. It is also significant in that it lays the ground for developing a healthy pluralism and harmony in society. It is one of the best ethical guides for a society working on democratization since it fosters a healthy degree of autonomy at various levels of society.

Most of Africa’s intellectuals have warned often that African societies will hardly realize human well-being and development unless these societies choose to end authoritarian approaches and choose civil societies. Such goals as democratization, elimination of poverty and hunger, and conservation of the natural environment must be given utmost priority in the adopted civil societies. But, this paper observes that the mere setting in place of civil society actually fails to generate the desired goals. For civil society to have meaning, it must be tempered essentially by some fundamental ethical principles which ought to guide the activities of both the state and individuals, together with the intermediate social groups. The paper argues in favor of the normative ethical concept of the human person and the principle of subsidiarity as the core ideas for guiding social reform in Africa. When these ethical principles are violated or neglected the results are morally and socially disastrous; if they are acknowledged and fulfilled, however, they enable the best possible and most desirable human fulfillment.

1. In this paper, ethics is taken to mean a set of value principles for guiding both human and institutional conduct towards a desirable individual and social well-being.

2. Jürgen Habermas, "Further Reflections on the Public Sphere", in Habermas and the Public Sphere, Graig Calhoun, ed. (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1992), p. 453.

3. Melvin Rader, Ethics and the Human Community (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), p. 391.

4. Goran Hyden, "The Challenges of Analyzing and Building Civil Society", Africa Insight, 26 (No. 2, 1996), p. 94.

5. Ibid., p. 97.

6. Ibid., p. 95.

7. A.R. Byaruhanga, "The University and Development", in Dialogue: A Journal of Makerere University Convocation.

8. Martin J. Walsh, A History of Philosophy (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1985), p. 536.

9. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Harmondsworth: Penguine Books Ltd., 1980), p. 136.

10. Melvin Rader, op. cit., p. 425.

11. Paulo Freire, op. cit., p. 34.

12. Ibid., p. 35.

13. Melvin Rader, op. cit., p. 300.

14. Kiril Neshev, op. cit., p. 50.

15. E.A. Ruch and K.C. Anyanwu, African Philosophy: An Introduction to the Main Philosophical Trends in Contemporary Africa (Rome: Catholic Book Agency, 1984), p. 371.

16. Ibid., p. 372.

17. Melvin Rader, op. cit., p. 404.

18. John Macquarrie and James Childress (eds.), A New Dictionary of Christian Ethics (London: The Westminster Press, 1992), p. 608.

19. Ibid., p. 431.