CHAPTER I
APPLIED ETHICS AND THE EXPERIENTIAL DIMENSION
IN AFRICAN
PHILOSOPHY
This paper sets out from what appears to be a
diffused uneasiness over the gradual loss of the ethical or moral fiber in
contemporary society.[i]
Such loss seems to be felt particularly within the family and in the exercise of
public office. It is viewed by many as the problem underlying most of the
contemporary challenges presently faced by society. Beyond the various instances
given to illustrate this ethical decline, a double issue seems to emerge,
namely, the weakening of the communal and of the practical dimensions of ethics.
This ethical weakness bearing on communal and practical ethics is deeply
disturbing. It is actually felt by some as a contradiction in the sense that
ethics is, by its very nature, social, such that an individualistic ethics
cannot really exist. Moreover, ethics also, by its very nature, is a practical
branch of philosophy and its inability to apply theory to practice runs counter
to its nature.
Over 2000 years ago, Aristotle wrote in his Politics
that one who does not need to live in society or who is unable to do so must be
either a beast or a god.[ii]
And yet, notwithstanding this obvious social condition of human beings, ethics
has been extensively considered to be ultimately an individualistic affair. The
history and culture of many societies testify to this perspective. For instance,
the Western tradition has known individualistic ethics
since the time immediately after the golden age of Greek thought in the ethical
schools of Epicureanism, Hedonism, Scepticism, Stoicism, and Cynism.
African
traditional culture has always had the communal dimension of life and ethics as
a strong and healthy asset. Today, however, one needs to reckon with an
intensive and relentless influence of individualism brought about by
contemporary social change emerging, for instance, in urban life, job
competition, economic management, and privatization policies. The ongoing
process of acculturation made intensively pervasive by the present
globalization, exposes the entire globe to the individualism that characterizes
Western society and culture.[iii]
Individual
tendencies restrict ethical and moral behaviour within the sphere of individual
conscience. This is seen, for instance, in ordinary discussions relating to
human behaviour that often run up against the wall of the undisputed authority
of individual conscience considering ethics ultimately subjective, personal, and
individual. For many people it has become an undisputed assumption that one's
conduct and ethics are ultimately one's personal or private concern. Within such
vision, social ethics is practically what overflows into society from one’s
individual ethics as governed by personal expectations and interests. Hence,
social ethics becomes a mere appendix of individual ethics. Such privatization
of ethics and morality empties communal life of its moral fiber and undermines
the very foundation of society. Individual ethics may help individuals somehow
to survive, but it will not bring them together as a community. It may even be
asked whether individual survival itself is not jeopardized by individualistic
ethics because human beings can survive only in society. The answer can probably
be found in the fact that, even in the case of extreme individualism, human
beings cannot altogether shed their social dimension. Namely, there always will
remain a minimum of communal sensitivity to guarantee human survival, although
it will be a survival more like an agglomeration of persons living on each
other, rather than a community of persons living for each other.
People,
in fact, seem to perceive, though sometimes vaguely, that ethics is not only
needed to attain psychological fulfillment as individual or social beings.
Ethics is felt to go beyond mere psychology and also beyond the need of the mind
and heart of humans. It actually bears on the very existence of human beings and
of their societies. In other words, neither individuals nor societies would be
able to exist without the ethical dimension. Hence, the demand for ethics is not
merely for a supplement to improve one’s life. It is actually for the
possibility to live one’s life and to exist as human beings. It is important
to notice here that such life and existence are communal and, therefore, ethics
itself is communal. There cannot be an ethics that is merely personal, as
already mentioned above.
The
ethical component essential to society can be explained and provide motivation
along the line of thought traced by P. Devlin. Both the political and the
ethical dimensions of society are essential to its existence. The two aspects
are actually to be considered as one entity. This oneness is explained as
referring to the same set of fundamental ideas that a group of persons needs to
share in order to be together as a community. This “ideological” set is the
real “constitution constituting” a human group into being a given human
community. A community is not merely a physical assembly of people. Before being
that it has to be a community of ideas among its members. Such ideas are
political in the sense that they concern the manner in which people want and
need to organize themselves. But the political aspect is not enough. It is
necessary to have shared ideas concerning mutual behaviour in the community,
namely, to share a set of ethical or moral ideas. Hence, every society has a
political and a moral structure. The two aspects, however, should not be
considered as independent structures. They actually need to penetrate each other
to form one system consisting of both the political and the moral dimensions.
What
makes a society of any sort is a community of ideas, not only political ideas
but also ideas about the way its members should behave and govern their lives;
these latter ideas are its morals. Every society has a moral structure as well
as a political one: or rather, since that might suggest two independent systems,
I should say that the structure of every society is made up both of politics and
morals.[iv]
This emphasis on social
ethics does not imply that the person’s conscience, as the sanctuary of
ethics, is ignored. Ethics stems from, and refers to, the human person. It bears
on society because the latter consists of human beings, and not because it is an
organism different from, and independent of, individual human beings. Stressing
that the human being is essentially social does not entail refuting
individuality, namely, the fact of existing as individuals, from which the human
personality derives. It means simply opposing individualism, the self-centred
attitude that neglects the others, from which isolationism derives.
Finally,
individualistic tendencies in ethics and behaviour penetrate to the point of
affecting human freedom itself which is the foundation of ethics, thus
compounding the ethical issue being considered here. As a result of this,
freedom itself becomes basically individualistic in the way it is understood and
administered. Today it is widely believed that freedom concerns basically the
individual, the social dimension is secondary. Yet a human being always has a
neighbour and always is a neighbour. The values, the norms and the choices freedom deals
with are essentially intersubjective. The administration of freedom needs a basic orientation to
others.
At the same time such administration is not something that a person
automatically knows how to manage. The
person needs to be educated to it, implying that one needs to become aware of one's own
potential, internal and external influences, limits and possibilities.[v]
The ability to manage one’s freedom has to be acquired in an educational exercise which
itself is communal. Freedom has of course a personal dimension, but the
challenge is in balancing this dimension with the social one. This is actually
true of social ethics and of the entire social nature of a human being. Human
beings need to be educated to become what they have been made to become by
nature.
Ethics
is defined as a practical discipline and its history testifies to this aspect of
its nature. The ancient philosophers in the Greek and Roman worlds were
interested in the practical aspects of behaviour. They pondered the concrete
issues and choices of life and also the challenge of death. The Platonic
dialogues contain several instances of such practical concern and the Crito
represents a typical example. In medieval times philosophers continued this
tradition discussing, among others, the possibility of justifying war and the
suppression of human life. In the modern era, David Hume wrote in defense of
suicide, and Immanuel Kant tried to elaborate means to ensure permanent peace.
Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and other Utilitarians wrote at length on
applied ethics. This traditional interest in applied ethics suffered a jolt
in the early part of the 20th
century due to the influence of Logical Positivism, according to which ethical
statements echoed emotive attitudes that could not be the subject matter of
rational considerations. Within such perspective, the task of philosophy
vis-a-vis ethics was simply to analyze the meaning of ethical terms. Hence
philosophical ethics could only be meta-ethical.
During
the second half of the 20th century, applied ethics regained momentum as quickly
as it had lost it half a century earlier. This revival of interest was prompted
by an upsurge of serious issues involving entire communities at both national
and international levels and also the political and religious leadership. Such
issues were found to be ultimately ethical, and the demand for ethical guidance
or applied ethics became compelling. The issues concerned, among others, racial
and sexual equality, human rights and justice, abortion and euthanasia, in vitro
fertilization and gene manipulation, bioethics, conscientious objection to war,
women's liberation, environmental ethics, business ethics, computer ethics, and
similar instances..[vi]
Scientific discoveries were moving ahead of ethics and human beings were loosing
control over the products of their intelligence. Applied ethics was expected to
restore their control of their destiny. For this reason, practical or applied
ethics has become a major topic of teaching and research with a constant demand
for ethical courses relevant to the great issues of the day.
Some
philosophers, however, have reservations concerning the expectations in applied
ethics.[vii] They point out
that the very nature of ethics and the intensive change and progress of today
require a continuous search into ethical matters which in turn postulates a
constant reformulation of normative theories and a constant renewal of their
application to the practical issues of life. Concerning the nature of ethics,
one is dealing with the field of voluntary behaviour which is ever enigmatic and
even contradictory, complex and elusive, polarized in determinism and
indeterminism. It would be presumptuous to think that one can fix ethical theory
and its precise application within the limits of one’s mind and once and for
all.[viii]
With regard to the field of ethics, one faces a continuous change in the new
facts that emerge, like birth control methods, propaganda techniques, control of
the brain and genetic possibilities. Changes occur also in the new understanding
of facts like insanity, criminal responsibility, and environmental influences.
Such novelty prompts new moral appraisals, new theories and new ways to apply
them to practice.[ix]
The
above difficulties from the nature and the field of ethics explain the ongoing
challenge to mold ethical answers, but it does not dispense from trying to find
such answers. In actual fact, the very challenges envisaged above render the
need for answers more compelling, encouraged also by the increasing interest in
applied ethics being experienced at present.[x]
The
issue now is to understand how the need for applied ethics is to be attended to
in order to meet the ethical challenges mentioned at the beginning of this
paper. A pointer in this direction considers what people generally understand by
ethics, because one should discover what kind of ethics people have in mind when
they request it as an answer to
their problems. An answer can be gathered from the Encyclopedia of Philosophy that says, “The term ‘ethics’ is
used in three different but related ways, signifying (1) a general pattern or
‘way of life,’ (2) a set of rules of conduct or ‘moral code,’ and (3)
inquiry about ways of life and rules
of conduct.”[xi]
In
a paper bearing on philosophy, the third meaning would seem to be the obvious
choice, at least as a point of departure. This meaning, in fact, refers to the
philosophical inquiry into ethics or to ethics as a branch of philosophy.[xii]
In order to discern whether this third meaning of ethics provides the needed
answer to the present ethical challenges, one needs to recall briefly what the
“inquiry about ways of life and rules of conduct” entails generally within
philosophy.
From
an historical point of view, ethics is a term introduced into philosophical
language by Aristotle. He was the first to use it, speaking of ethike
theoria to indicate that part of philosophy that studies human conduct and
specifically the criteria for evaluating behaviour and choices.[xiii]
One finds here the two basic components of ethics, namely philosophy as its
general objective (“ethics is a branch of philosophy”) and conduct as its
specific objective (“ethics assesses human conduct”).
Ethics
is within the field of philosophy and as such is studied rationally, critically
and systematically. Rationality implies the discursive exercise of pure reason
that proceeds from premises to conclusions, clearly and distinctly, deductively
or inductively. Critique implies assessing every fact, idea, and assertion to
ensure that their justification is rational and not derived, for instance, from
public opinion, tradition or authority. Systematicity implies ordering the
plurality of elements in their intrinsic and extrinsic relations.
Ethics
deals with human conduct in connection with which one needs to clarify, first of
all, that not all human conduct is the object of ethical study, but only free or
voluntary conduct. Freedom here is usually meant to imply having alternatives
and having the capacity to choose among them. One who has no alternatives or who
is unable to choose among them is not free. Human conduct which is not free is
amoral, or outside the field of morality. A second clarification related to
human conduct is that ethics deals ultimately with ideal conduct. Ethics is not
like history, sociology, or the other natural sciences which consider facts and
conduct as they are. Also, ethics
considers facts and conduct, but it does not stop at what they are. Ethics
transcends the “reality” of facts and conduct, moving on to their
“ideal.” It does not consider simply what they “are,” but it moves on to
consider what they “ought” to be. Hence ethics is not only descriptive, but
above all normative. It does not focus on the observed facts, which generally
are taken for granted, but on the “required” standards by which such facts
need to be assessed as being good or bad, right or wrong.
As
already mentioned above, the first half of the 20th century witnessed
a keen and almost exclusive interest in analytic ethics. It should, however, be
added that analytic ethics has always been part of the ethical inquiry.
Normative and descriptive ethics need to have meta-ethics to study and to
clarify the very terms used by ethics, like good and evil, right and wrong, and
other terms used in ethical or moral discourse. However, such analysis should
not become the only activity of ethics excluding the possibility of other
approaches to the discipline, as happened some decades ago. The study of ethics
needs to balance the normative, descriptive and analytic approaches.
Several
philosophers consider ethics to be the central branch of philosophy. This has
happened with Socrates, Confucius, Kant and others. It also inspired the ethical
movements of Epicureanism, Hedonism, Stoicism, Skepticism, Eclecticism, and
Cynism. Ethics is considered the climax of philosophy in the sense that it is
seen as its supreme objective culmination, as it deals, with the human being or
human life in a course that begins with metaphysical speculation and ends in
ethical practice. Ethical knowledge becomes practical in the sense that it is
addressed to attaining action, aimed at obtaining the supreme good of the
person. Hence ethics crowns the philosophical activity of a person. But now it
is this very ethical objective that poses the problem in that this objective
does not seem to be presently achieved. Hence,
the demand is to effect an efficient “applied” ethics. One does not query
with the theoretical task of philosophy or of ethics; the problem is not with
the theory, but with the practice.
Hence,
with reference to the above mentioned three understandings of philosophy, it is
not the third meaning that one seems to have in mind as an answer to the present
ethical challenge. It seems to be rather the second meaning, namely ethics as
“a set of rules of conduct or a ‘moral code.’”
The
demand for a set of rules of conduct or a “moral code” apears to be the
usual answer expected of ethics whenever established ethical values and
guidelines fade from public memory and lose authority in public life. Presently,
the term “moral code” or “code of ethics” is generally taken to mean a
specific set of behavioural guidelines, principles and rules bearing on some
specific kind of activity or profession in society. This kind of ethics is
accordingly specified as, for instance, medical ethics, nursing ethics, business
ethics or, generally, professional ethics.
However,
the term “codes of ethics” does not refer exclusively to professional codes.
It is used also in a general sense as referring to the set of ethical principles
and rules that a society in general has developed during its history.[xiv]
“The earliest codes of ethics expressed the basic ethics and law of a
culture. Ancient codes, such as the Code of Hammurabi, did not make a sharp
distinction between the legal and the ethical. They presented in concise fashion
the behavioural norms for the entire societies or for particular professions or
occupations within them.”[xv]
This original and general understanding of “a code of ethics” appears to be
the answer to the demand for concrete guidelines, specific principles and rules
to help society out of the present ethical weakness referred to at the beginning
of this chapter.
The focus on a code implies a
request for concrete measures. The term “code” in fact recalls a systematic
collection of rules, regulations and laws. The fundamental assumptions or
ultimate vision that sustains such rules are not generally enunciated but simply
assumed for a code needs to be specific.
Conceptions of what is right and wrong, and valuations of what is
desirable and what is not . . . are not normally apprehended as constituting
parts of a moral code. They are generally perceived as constituting components
of a broader viewpoint on the nature of things. . . . Institutionalized in the
society at large, such ideas are mediated to the individual through his
particular group-membership. The world so created is thus apprehended as
objectively real. Its fundamental assumptions go normally unquestioned. . . .
The need for its justification is perceived to exist but rarely.[xvi]
The moral code is separate
from such worldviews. Such a code has a broadly interpretative function of
making individual and social experiences meaningful by providing criteria for
their discrimination and evaluation. A code serves also as a precise reference
to live by, namely, it possesses a practical function as a guide to behaviour,
again both for the individual and for others. Finally, a code draws attention to
the fact that moralities consist normally of more or less integrated systems
of precepts and values.
Concerning the
self-consciousness with which the moral code is held and applied, one could
refer to the analogy of one's use of language. Human beings are able to use
language in speech and in writing correctly, but without being aware of the
rules for its legitimate use. They have a natural propensity to the correct use
of language. Likewise with the use of the moral code, human beings draw
distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad without being cognisant
of the criteria, however, conditions under which individuals become
self-conscious of their moral tenets and attempt to justify them. Such
conditions arise in a situation of crisis that elicits self-awareness about
moral principles and rules and the need to justify them.[xvii]
The following session considers this transition to moral self-awareness.
Generally
it is in the very nature of a code of ethics not to be queried, but rather to be
adhered to. A code of ethics develops gradually fixing values that individuals
and society have matured, acquired and relished. As people go through a series
of individual and social experiences, these latter gradually settle in their
memory and tradition constituting their cultural heritage. The elements of
experience that bear on conduct settle in their moral or ethical code. Such a
code preserves the achievements of experience, helping people to meet similar
situations more easily and fruitfully. It constitutes a practical pattern of
rules, a set of norms, to help both the group and the individual to behave
according to the general expectations of their society. It would be practically
impossible for single persons to work out what is expected of them every time
anew. The moral code of a society provides a prompt and sure answer to such
expectations or demands.
People
are both producers of ethical codes and the products of them. The experience of
people and their society builds up a code. At the same time, people born in a
society are socialized and educated in the moral code of their respective
society or culture. Hence, a fundamental tenet of a moral code is necessarily
conformity to it. Conformity is the value that guarantees the efficaciousness of
the moral code and the survival of society. As a result of such a value, persons
tend to accept unquestionably the morality of their past and present society.
This morality and the code enshrining it could thus be described as
conventional. Persons are generally reared within such morality to have strong
and clear moral convictions and to live up to them. The conventional moral code
is not to be queried, but to be adhered to. People accept the traditional moral
code convinced that their past experience can meet any challenge of their
present and future life. People generally do not feel the need to develop the
ability to support their conventional morality by rational argument. They rather
develop a strong determination to continue in it.
A conventional code of ethics
develops the ability to manage the normal changes society undergoes. If society
were to experience some abnormal change, then the conventional code of ethics
would face a crisis. Such a crisis refers to the circumstances in which
the integrity, consistency or applicability of ethical standards is called into
question. These circumstances may occur at the level of the individual or of the
community.
When
confronted with such challenging change, a society usually has three kinds of
reactions. The first is that of people who resist any change and hold on to
their conventional moral code. This fundamentalist attitude may result in the
said persons being eventually marginalised as happened, for instance, to Okonkwo
in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
The
second reaction is that of the person who, unable to justify either the
conventional code or the incoming changes to it, simply drifts into
disenchantment, indifference and skepticism concerning the moral code. Such a
person may practically surrender any given moral principle and guideline and opt
for a day-to-day behaviour according to what is generally acceptable at the
moment. Hence, an unconditional surrender to change or the inability to manage
it may lead a person from the firm stand of conventional morality to a kind of
amoral indifference.[xviii]
The
third reaction is that of the person who reflects or ponders over the
conventional code vis-à-vis the challenges coming to it by change. Such
reflection leads one to consider one’s basic principles, that one considers
constant and universal. Such principles previously were taken for granted or in
the form of assumptions. Now, vis-à-vis change, they are examined and, if they
stand the test of rationality, they become firm principles for that person,
perhaps with some adaptations. It has been said earlier that a code -of ethics
assumes rather than expresses its fundamental principles or vision. In the
process of acquiring self-consciousness of one's code, it may obviously be
necessary to ponder on such principles and vision as well.
Besides
considering the principles, one examines also the rules that apply them to
practice relating them to test their consistency (horizontally) and to establish
their hierarchy (vertically). Such relation helps to grasp the various
principles and rules as one whole or as a moral structure. Some persons may even
be able to grasp, at this stage, the philosophical, legal and religious
dimensions of their conventional code.
This
critical or reflective exercise converts conventional morality into intentional
morality. This change is said to occur when the critical exercise involves the
greater part of the conventional moral code, either at the level of the
individual person undertaking this exercise or at the level of society. Hence,
the difference between conventional and intentional morality is not simply a
matter of either assessing or not assessing a morality. A certain amount of
reflection over morality is always present at both individual and social levels.
It is the amount of reflection of the code involved and of the public concerned
that determines whether one can speak of conventional or intentional morality.
When reflection concerns the greater part of a code and of a people, and becomes
systematic, habitual and fairly widespread, then one can say that a morality is
generally reflective or intentional. Morality tends to assess behaviour in the
light of the constant and universal principles one has discovered, and from
inner conviction rather than from outer conformity. Where conformity is the
general trend, then one can say a morality is conventional.
The stress on justification
and the delineation of defensible moral principles is a characteristic of the
present time. One evident reason is the diffusion of scientific reasoning
together with the fact that technical advances have increasingly provided novel
problems for which traditional rules are either inapplicable or in need of
careful reinterpretation. Another set of reasons derives from the fact that
modern societies tend to be pluralistic.[xix]
At
this point, one may conclude that what the present ethical challenge demands is
to pass “reflexively” from a conventional to an intentional code of ethics
that becomes, in turn, a qualified instrument for effecting applied ethics. Such
passage, moreover, will not be confined to individuals because ethics is
essentially communal. Hence, the ethical problem envisaged at the beginning of
this paper would now seem to have an answer. However, at this juncture a further
point needs to be made, namely, that the exercise of making ethics practical and
applicable is not merely a demand from the challenges faced at the present
moment. It is not a transitory need, but ensues from African philosophy itself,
namely from the African mind and life. This point will now be briefly considered
with reference to two African philosophers namely the Kenyan Odera Oruka and the
Togolese N’sougan Agblemagnon.
In
the year 1974, the first issue of the periodical Thought and Practice was published in Nairobi. Its editor was Henry
Odera Oruka. It was the first philosophical journal in Eastern Africa joining
other similar journals in the rest of Africa like Second Order from the University of Ife (Nigeria), African
Philosophical Journal from the National University of Zaire (Lubumbashi) and
Consequence, the journal of the “Inter-African Council for
Philosophy.” These publications indicated the expanding interest in African
philosophy.
In
his first editorial, Odera Oruka delineated the policy of the new periodical
“on philosophy in Africa.”[xx]
This policy extended actually to be a vision of what philosophy in Africa was
supposed to be and to do. The editorial policy was condensed in the very title
of the journal itself, namely, Thought and
Practice, which Odera Oruka explained as follows. “It seems that too often
philosophical reflections have the tendency of getting lost in speculation only.
It must be for that reason that many, even intelligent people, consider
philosophy as a luxury, or as a kind of irrelevant and confusing intellectual
gymnastic.”
Odera
Oruka went on to elaborate what was, in his opinion, authentic philosophy. It
was a second activity, namely a “re-flection,” emphasizing the initial
“re” by relating the word to “re-turn.”
The contributors to the journal were expected to “return to the human
experiences and practices in this part of the world, to work on them
philosophically, to examine underlying values, to analyze implicit
thought-patterns and to clarify issues that might be mystifying, alienating or
confusing. We would like to assist
in the systematic philosophical analysis of these realities and motivations and
in the development of the “rationale” in life.”
In
this policy statement, Odera Oruka referred to philosophy as a second order
activity implying a return to a first order activity. It was a distinction that
concluded the discourse on the definition of African philosophy that occupied
African philosophy in the early 1970s. The distinction between first and second
order philosophy would become an undisputed acquisition at the 2nd
Afro-Asian Philosophy Conference held in Nairobi in 1981 and chaired by Odera
Oruka.[xxi]
Having
specified authentic philosophy as second order vis-à-vis first order activity,
Odera Oruka proceeded to deal with another dualism, the one that related to his
editorial policy and, again, to his concept of philosophy. It was the dualism of
thought and practice. The second order activity of reflecting on African reality
was not to be a mere “reflection on reflections.” It was to be an activity
mostly concerned “with life as it is lived in this part of the world and, of
course, in other parts of the world.”[xxii]
This explained the second component in the policy title of the journal, namely practice.
Hence, practice was life as actually
lived by human beings in this world of ours, while thought (the first component in the title) was a reflection, a
return to this same life. Thought and theory had to return to the life it sprang
from and it belonged to, completing their lifecycle.
The
characteristic of life and of practical life in particular is its diversity in
time and space, the diversity in time being seen in change, and that in space in
the cultural context. Life is multifaceted; it needs to be seen from various
angles.
Aware
of this multiple diversity, Odera Oruka opened the new journal to
inter-disciplinary contributions. He solicited the collaboration not only of
established philosophers and learned colleagues in other branches of
science, but also of other thinkers who had contributions to offer in the
academic field and in the world of the common person.
The
conclusive words of the editorial were a clear and firm reassertion of what
Odera Oruka thought had to be the task of the journal and the role of philosophy
in this part of the world. “This journal is not going to be a platform for
some clique or group, it is not going to be a temple in which some philosophical
high-priests are worshipping or worshipped.
This journal will try to witness philosophical reflection and its
application to the practical problems in life.”
A significant
comment on this practical dimension comes from Kwasi Wiredu's Remembering Oruka in which he recalls Odera Oruka's position,
that the
claim by some philosophers of social sciences that the strictly scientific
results of social science were value-free was not only false but also
constituted an abdication of social responsibility. . . .
‘Value-free’ preconceptions, he felt, did often determine the choice of
topics in social science research. In
Africa this was particularly reprehensible, since we are in an era of
post-independence social reconstruction. What use, for example, was it to
African society to research into the sociology of cosmetic fashions (my example)
rather than, say corruption in contemporary Africa (his example)? Oruka's
insistence on the practical responsibilities of scholarship was, in fact, not
restricted to the social sciences. Philosophy
too had an essential duty of social commitment.
It is thus not surprising that one of this earliest books was on a
subject like Punishment and Terrorism in
Africa.[xxiii]
This practical orientation did not imply any shying away from theoretical
issues; what it meant was that the practical motivation was the ultimate
motivation in philosophy, not that it was the only one. . . . This practical
interest was not a latter accretion to his interests in philosophy.
It was with him right from the beginning of his philosophical studies.
His first degree, a B.Sc. (Fil. Kand.) at Uppsala University in Sweden in
1968, was in Philosophy and Earth Sciences with emphasis on practical
philosophy, and his Ph.D. (Fil. Lic.), which he also took at Uppsala in 1970
after an M.A. from Wayne State University, Michigan (USA) in 1969, was in
practical philosophy. . . . Actually, in the matter of the importance of the
practical motivation in philosophy, Oruka and I were at one.
I think also that we were, by and large, at one regarding the role of
reason in both theoretical and practical thinking.[xxiv]
Kai
Kresse, co-editor of Sagacious Reasoning
“in memory of Henry Odera Oruka,” adds:
The
'three obstacles' to philosophy that Odera Oruka sees (“social-economic
deprivation, cultural-racial mythology, and the illusion of appearance”) are
foremost of a practical nature. . . . He strenuously worked on his ‘attempt to
wage philosophic war with factors and values which promote social and economic
disadvantage and oppression to people, and in particular, to African people,’[xxv]
The area of
the “practical” in African philosophy is co-extensive with the entire field
of African philosophy. The practical aspect should be part of its methodology:
It should be the start and the conclusion of philosophical activity or endeavour.
The first step, however, could still be ethics, “applied” ethics.
Odera Oruka
lectured extensively on ethics and wrote a book, Ethics.
A Basic Course for Undergraduates (Nairobi, University of Nairobi Press,
1990). Many of his articles bear on ethics. His posthumous publication has the
significant title, Practical Philosophy.
In Search of an Ethical Minimum.
Oruka's
research on sagacity returns to the source, not only of ethical wisdom and of
philosophy in general, but of the practical dimension of life and philosophy.
That practical dimension of life meant above all behaviour or conduct bearing on
ethics. Oruka was interested in the practical dimension of philosophy and
specifically on applied ethics, an extremely relevant issue at the global level.
Oruka could not have been more local, in one way, and more global in another.
The sagacity Oruka sought was an ethical wisdom in many ways. It was the wisdom
that had to help people live a wiser life.
The
Togolese philosopher N'sougan Agblemagnon elaborates on the issue of theory and
practice explaining that it is an essential aspect of the methodological
approach to the study and understanding of African philosophy. “In Africa,
more than anywhere else, philosophy cannot be restricted to theory alone; it is
simultaneously theory and act.” Accordingly, the problem of philosophy in
Africa must be tackled with an open mind and with an intense eagerness to
discover the characteristic approach of African experience on both a theoretical
and a practical level. It is essential to find the methods of research and
reflection, of analysis and critique that reveal the specific approaches of
African experience and the explication of their content.
[xxvi]
In
Africa, Agblemagnon continues studying being linked to experience. He perceives
being in a global manner. It is first of all the being of the world. From the
moment of its inception, the African experience, even the simplest one, appears
in all its complexity, manifesting both its intensity and its global dimensions.
The human being is not placed in opposition to the world. Neither is he
or she put side by side with the world. Human beings are integrated into
the world; they pulsate with it. This dimension of cosmic and total existential
experience is the starting point that must be accepted and analyzed in order to
understand the characteristic of the African philosophical approach in the past
and in the present. This approach does not envisage breaking away from the world
or distancing oneself from it. On the contrary, it implies adhering to it,
penetrating it and throbbing with it. The human being is at the centre of the
world as the vibrating and radiant point through which the world becomes
explicit to itself and by which—and this is the ethical problem—its value is
acquired and possessed. As the African attempts to master the world, he or she
is prompted by the desire for a more intense presence and activity, for a
greater fullness of being, for a more profound life. He or she appears to be
aspiring for plenitude in the world. Human perfection and ethical progress
depend on the degree of intimacy between the person and the world, on the
capacity of resemblance and perhaps of identification, between the human being
and the divine being.[xxvii]
This
constant intermingling of the theoretical and of the practical levels renders
the African philosophical experience impervious to a definition made uniquely by
one pole: the theoretical, conceptual, purely ideal pole; its definition must
comprehend a global approach which involves the totality of being.[xxviii]
The
theoretical and practical levels intermingles; a unity exists between theory and
practice and a dialectical and consequent link between theories and their
practical realizations. In the past, such theories were at the level of myth.
They were applied at the level of social practice with some adaptations and
amendments. The passage from myth to reality, from the perfect form to its
approximate realization, revealed limits, difficulties and contradictions.
Notwithstanding such challenges, African theory seemed to apply and pervade the
various levels of reality. Such an assumption is important to understanding the
methodological approach of African thought to reality at three levels. At the
first level is the concrete reality that surrounded and penetrated the person.
One was bathed in it, carried away by it as in a stream; one was immersed in it.
Such reality was made of contradictions and perceived in a discontinuous and
painful way as rupture, anguish and even struggle between life and death. At a
second level, one discovered points of reference or more stable models. One was
able to perceive reality in a more organized manner with a greater unity of time
and situation. One seemed to perceive the repetitions of past models that
remained actual. One perceived a way to reconcile the past time of stability
with the present time of discontinuity. When one reached the third level, the
level of myth, one discovered central concepts encompassing a theory of the
world. At this level, one found not only the intuition of central essentially
philosophical concepts, but also a specific scenario accompanying or vesting
these concepts and finally giving them particular connotation or connotations.
[xxix]
The present
time questions this traditional approach or, at any rate, has perturbed it
seriously. A first sign is a serious social challenge. The traditional models,
whether the great myths or simply the more concrete aspects of social reality,
have no more the same stability, nor are they found or recovered in their
traditional African cultures. The
time of discontinuity, of conflicts, of crisis follows the time of stability.
Development has had important repercussions upon culture, social models and upon
the global African approach to the world. The most stable concepts of African
society are themselves completely challenged within this new context.
The time of myths is, for many African societies, a time of the past, or
more and more peripheral. Today is a time of change and rupture. It is a time of
juxtaposition, conflict, antagonism and incompatibility. The philosophical
approach can no more be the existential experience transmitted by generations
and supported by the authority of myths. Africans today are torn between their
past and future, attempting to recapture a lost unity that would integrate their
whole being and benefit to society in its entirety.
It is, therefore, not surprising that in this situation of disorder and
disarray, extremely diverse approaches are taken, but without any guarantee of
their validity. Consequently, the great
difference between the traditional approach and the present-day approach is that
while the former gave access to a unified world where models of harmony were
dominant, the latter opens on a deep generalized crisis, on insecurity, rupture
and anxiety.[xxx]
The challenge today is that the past answers
enshrined in myths no longer answer the present problems. New answers must be
found. According to Aristotle, philosophy was born with the stance of reason
against myth which repeated answers without questioning them. Aristotle was not
against attempting answers but against repeating them from one generation to the
next without reflection, passing them on as an unexamined narration.
The old myths have gone; today there are new answers.
Some of these are believed so firmly as to render them immune to further
questioning. They have become the new myths. The old myths have gone but
changing reality is ever querying the new answers substituted for them, answers
that, to be valid, need to encompass both theory and practice. The danger could
be that, because present reality is so discordant with previous answers, one
might withdraw into mere theory.
That is what Odera Oruka and the demand of practical
ethics refute. The problems of life
envisaged by Oruka and the present rupture envisaged by Agblemagnon are
ultimately problems of change at all levels, technological, demographic,
political, economic, sociological, ecological and others.
The
crisis provoked by such change is not from change qua change: change is part of life and people and society have ever
changed. Conventional morality itself envisaged change. It is the exceptional
change that is critical and problematic, namely, that outside the envisaged
paradigms. In other words, the crisis or problem arises when change occurs
outside culture. When culture seems too narrow to accommodate a change that
appears too vast. Change becomes disruptive to culture, and culture needs to
develop ways and means to control change, to bring it into cultural paradigms so
that it may become somewhat “natural” and “manageable” to its members.
As
culture comes to terms with extraordinary change, it extends its frontiers to
comprehend all that change represents. In fact, the answer to extraordinary
change is in this comprehensiveness that includes every aspect of existence,
combining opposites, harmonizing contrasts and dichotomies like theory and
practice.
Change
impinges on the cohesion and wholeness of the person and of society. At the
personal level, fast and vast change carries away the once stable and basic
terms of reference of one's life and behaviour. In philosophical terms, becoming
is so fast as to undermine being. The person has serious difficulty unifying the
multiple instances of a changing situation and feels psychologically atomized.
This personal fragmentation overflows into one's social dimension and ultimately
into society itself. The reaction to this disarray should be a reintegration of
the person and society. Personal integration is obtained when the elements of
human behaviour, and, particularly, human decisions, are in harmonic dependence
on each other contributing to the fulfillment of the person as a whole. Social
integration follows from a condition of cohesion derived from the consensus
among community members and leading to the attainment of a common purpose.
Cultural integration combines the wholeness of the person and the cohesion of
the community.[xxxi]
This
integration is facilitated by developing the ability and the inclination to
transcend the consideration of single parts and to reach a vision of their
whole. This propensity could be better described as comprehensiveness, which is
more ample in scope than integration. Integration presupposes that the parts
exist in view of the whole, nor apart. It is the whole that gives the parts a
reason for existence. Hence, integration presupposes the existence of the whole
into which its parts naturally convey. According to this understanding,
personal, social and cultural integrations could be described, in Kantian terms,
as categorical imperatives.
Comprehensiveness
brings various elements into a single mental grasp and combines them into a
consistent whole. This wholeness is not postulated per se by its parts that have their own autonomous existence. It is
the ability of the person that blends them, prompted by a kind of Kantian
hypothetical imperative arising from conditions extrinsic to the parts or their
aggregation.
Developing
a culture of comprehensiveness implies acquiring the facility to combine the
multiplicity of existence into wholeness. The sequence of different and
intensive changes call for a comprehensive view of life in order to find one's
sense of bearing in this fleeting situation and to guarantee psychological
survival. But this calling militates against the expanding situational mentality
of concentrating on each moment of existence as change provides it. The same
calling counters also the scientific dimension of contemporary culture that
fosters a deep but exclusive knowledge and competence in specialized areas,
nurturing a fragmentary outlook. Hence, imbuing contemporary culture with a
comprehensive vision needs determined and persistent effort.
Unfortunately,
this effort is partly curtailed by educational structures based on the principle
of specialization. The contemporary system of education is divided into
self-contained disciplines with a view to create experts in chosen fields of
study who may know little about other fields. This fragmentation permeates the
entire society and its educational system. Knowledge is often presented in a
disjointed and unrelated manner. The formation of total concepts from such
fragmented data becomes difficult.
Absent
from such learning is a total concept of the world, a total world-view within
which are located the different disciplines of learning. In this system even philosophy—that mother of sciences
which in earlier epochs brought together all learning to a totality and
attempted to answer some basic questions of being, of the relationship between
mind and matter, etc.,—is now relegated to the realm of a “particular”
discipline whose concerns are limited either to “positivism”, to
“linguistic analysis” or to solving specific problems of “logic.”[xxxii]
At the XXth World Congress of Philosophy held in
Boston in 1998, Professor Alan Olson of Boston University, executive director of
the congress organizing committee, said philosophy had been dominated by dry
analytical works that “are not really concerned with anything outside
itself.” As a result, philosophers were left on the sidelines of human history
and life. Now an increasing number of philosophers are focusing on the issue of
a greater relevance for philosophy. The theme of the World Congress was Paideia:
Philosophy Educating Humanity that underlined the task of philosophy at the
eve of the third millennium, namely, to foster knowledge related to truth,
goodness and beauty. Robert Neville, dean of Boston University’s School of
Theology, said: “What are truth, goodness, and beauty? . . . Only philosophy
can raise our children to address these crises of wisdom.”[xxxiii]
African philosophy and African ethics, existential and practical, can contribute
a leadership role in fulfilling the expectations that emerged in the XXth World
Congress of Philosophy and are raised in by the XXIst World Congress’ theme,
“Philosophy Facing World Problems.”
[1]
The
Greek ethos, from which “ethics”
derives, is rendered in Latin with mores,
from which “morals” derives. The two terms “ethics” and “morals” are
thus etymologically synonymous, and this paper treats them as such. It should be
noted however that some philosophers consider each of these two terms as having
different shade of meanings.
2
Aristotle, Politics, Bk 1, Ch. 2.
3
Acculturation is a process by which one's culture is inexorably interplaying
with other cultures as a result of which it is influenced and modified beyond
human control.
4
P.
Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals
(London, Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 9.
5
V.
Eid, “Freedom”, in B. Stoeckle
(ed.), Concise Dictionary of Christian
Ethics (London, Burns and Oates, 1979).
6
“Ethics,” in The New Encyclopedia
Britannica (Chicago), Vol. 4, 1992, p. 578.
7
P. Singer “Applied Ethics,” in T.
Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to
Philosophy (Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 42-43.
8
After all, it is pointed out, ethics is not alone in such inability to reach a
final answer once for all. “All the studies whose subject matter involves the
voluntary behaviour of human beings are up against the problem of inconsistency
and unpredictability, and ethics shares its difficulties with aesthetics,
economics, psychology and sociology”.
M. Keeling, Morals in a Free Society
(London, S.C.M. Press Ltd., 1970), p. 18
9
M.
Keeling, op.cit., p. 8.
10
At this point, some readers
may expect that the individualistic trend in ethics and the need of applied
ethics so far considered be brought to bear on some practical problems vexing
present society. Although this expectation is both natural and legitimate, it
needs nevertheless to be clarified that this paper is indeed trying to consider
issues of contemporary relevance, but it is doing so within a general conceptual
framework that would hopefully serve later as a basis for a specific analysis of
particular cases. Entering into such detailed consideration of issues at this
moment would require a reorientation of the paper with substantial additions to
it that would alter and extend it beyond its present scope.
11
R.
Abelson and K. Nielsen, “Ethics, History of,” in P. Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York, Macmillan Publishing Co.,
Inc. & The Free Press, London, Collier Macmillan Publishers, Vol. 3, 1967),
p. 81.
12
The first meaning is so general as appearing to extend beyond philosophy itself
and tallying with the meaning of culture. This meaning will not be considered in
this paper. The second meaning instead deals specifically with the conduct of a
limited group of people, the professionals, and will be referred to in the next
section.
13 Analitici Posteriori 89b 9. G. Vattimo, “Etica,” in Enciclopedia
Garzanti di Filosofia (Milano, Garzanti Editore s.p.a., 1991), p. 279.
14
This comprehensive meaning of a code of ethics resembles the first of the three
meanings given in the Encyclopedia of
Philosophy and referred to above, namely ethics as “a general pattern or
‘way of life.’” The difference between this general pattern (first
meaning) and the moral code (second meaning) is in the specificity of the latter
vis-a-vis the generality of the former. According to the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the second meaning refers to
professional codes, while the first one refers to a general way of life. For the
purpose of this paper, the second meaning is too restricted and a wider
understanding of the code of ethics will be adopted here. The first meaning is
too general to the point that it seems to tally with that of culture and thus it
would not be able to offer the practical and specific solution to the ethical
problem being considered in this paper. This first meaning will not be
considered in this paper.
15
R.M. Veatch, “Codes of Ethics,” in J. Macquarrie and J. Childress (eds.), A
New Dictionary of Christian Ethics (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1986), p. 97.
16
J.H. Barnsley, The Social Reality of Ethic
(London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), pp. 7-8.
17
J.H. Barnsley, op. cit., pp. 8-11.
18 P.W. Taylor, Principles
of Ethics (Encino, California: Dickenson, 1975), p. 8.
19
J.H. Barnsley, op. cit., pp. 8-11.
20
Africa, Thought and Practice (Nairobi,
East African Literature Bureau, 1974), Vol. 1, No. 1, 1974.
21 “Any
group of human beings will have to have some world outlook, that is, some
general conceptions about the world in which they live and about themselves both
as individuals and members of society. Implied here is a contrast between two
senses of the word ‘philosophy,’ one narrow and the other broad. In the
first sense, philosophy is a technical discipline in which the human world
outlook is subjected to systematic scrutiny by rigorous ratiocinative methods
(at least ideally). In the second sense, philosophy is that way of viewing man
and the world that results in a world outlook in the first place. It might be
said, then, that philosophy in the first sense is a second order enterprise, for
it is a reflection on philosophy in the second sense. If so, philosophy in the
first sense is of a doubly second order character. For that on which it
reflects, namely, our world outlook, is itself a reflection on the more
particularistic, more episodic judgments of ordinary, day-to-day, living.” (K.
Wiredu, “Philosophy in Africa Today,” March, 1981 (mimeo), quoted by L.
Outlaw, “Philosophy and Culture: Critical Hermeneutics and Social
Transformation,” in H.O. Oruka and D.A. Masolo (eds.), Philosophy
and Cultures (Nairobi, Bookwise Limited, 1983), p. 28. The
proceedings of the 2nd Afro-Asian Philosophy Conference are in this
publication Philosophy and Cultures.
22 A point to be noticed here is
Odera Oruka's specification of life “in this part of the world and in other
parts of the world” which implies attention to both “localization” and
“globalization.” As the philosopher is concerned with the multifaceted
aspects of life lived by the ordinary person in ordinary life, the philosopher
extends the same concern to the multifaceted aspects of life as lived by the
entire humanity.
23
H. Odera Oruka, Punishment and Terrorism
in Africa (Nairobi, East
Africa Literature Bureau, 1976), 2nd Edition, 1985.
24
K. Wiredu, “Remembering Oruka,” in A. Graness and K. Kresse (eds.), Sagacious
Reasoning (Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 1997), pp. 141-142. The quotation
is long but it seems to be penetratingly significant to motivate it in full.
25
K. Kresse, “Sagacious Reasoning. A Prologue,” in A. Graness and K. Kresse
(eds.), Sagacious Reasoning (Frankfurt
am Main, Peter Lang, 1997), pp. 17-18-142. Reference to H. Odera Oruka, “My
Strange Way to Philosophy” in “International Institute of Philosophy”
(ed.), Philosophers on Their Own Works,
Vol. 14 (Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 1990), pp. 174-176, 179.
26
N. Agblemagnon “Philosophy in the
Past and in the Present,” in Journal of
African Religion and Philosophy, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1990, p. 27
27
N. Agblemagnon, op. cit., p. 28. Here
the issue of unity touches on the transcendental. This topic needs a separate
consideration as there are African thinkers who argue for a vision of reality
and of ethics that is not so obviously theocentric. They suggest caution in
generalizing to the whole of Africa the findings of a specific African people.
28
N. Agblemagnon, op. cit., p. 27.
29
N. Agblemagnon, op. cit., p. 28.
30
N. Agblemagnon, op. cit., p. 29.
31
According
to T. Parsons cultural integration is given by the consistency of norms. This is
a narrower meaning than the one I have adopted in this paper.
32
Y. Tandon, Militarism and Peace Education in Africa (Nairobi, African
Association for Literacy and Adul Education, 1989), p. 59.