African moral epistemology and humility

Whereas the previous section addressed respects in which humility is prescribed by an ethic of respect for individuals' capacity for harmonious relationships, the present one considers some ways that humility figures into the African epistemology that is the common companion to this ethic.

Very broadly speaking, the Western tradition encourages an individual to use his own rational powers to evaluate a given subject matter, including morality; methods such as a priori reflection and coherentist justification in the light of one's intuitions are common. In contrast, the African tradition is much less sanguine about what can be known about morality by a typical human being cogitating on his own. Roughly, although the Western tradition has recently acknowl­edged the importance of expert testimony as a source of knowledge, debate is ongoing about the aptness of moral testimony, and the African tradition makes reliance on epistemic authority and collective enquiry more central, and especially for moral matters.

Probably most indigenous African peoples believe in God, such that it is much too narrow to think of monotheism merely in terms of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions.⁵ Whereas the Abrahamic faiths are revelatory, traditional African religion is not (Gyekye 1995: 129—146; Wiredu 1996: 61—77). That is, according to the Abrahamic faiths, God's benevolent and just will has been directly communicated to human beings via certain texts or prophets. If you read a certain book, or hear what a certain person has said, then you can know what God's moral purpose is. In contrast, from a characteristic sub-Saharan perspective, God is ‘too big' or ‘too distant' for us to be able to apprehend His mind, so that we require a mediator in order to con­vey God's intentions to us.

As for the mediator who can become acquainted with God's will, the standard view amongst indigenous sub-Saharan peoples is that it must be an ancestor, a wise founder of a clan who has survived the death of his body, continues to reside on earth in an imperceptible realm, and instructs the clan on how to behave, which includes dishing out penalties for moral infractions. How, then, is a human being to know the mind of an ancestor? Here, again, humility is war­ranted on the part of a typical human person. It is not just any individual who is deemed to have the ability to access the ancestral world, but rather those who have undergone years of training in how to interpret dreams, enter trances, detect reincarnated persons, and the like.

In the African tradition, there are also less ‘spiritual’ mediums through which to access judge­ments about who did wrong and what morally should be done now. Even these more naturalist methods, however, tend to eschew reliance on individual reflection, intuition, etc. Particularly common is the thought that one should defer to the judgement of elders, and especially to con­sensus amongst them, about moral matters, such that moral education ought to center around apprehending, and not particularly questioning, their views (for a robust articulation and defense of this position, see Ikuenobe 2006). A young person challenging a much older one about morality would be viewed as lacking the requisite epistemic humility; specifically, the young person would be viewed as being presumptuous.

Although it is possible for an aged person not to count as an ‘elder’, for evincing poor judge­ment, the default position is that with age comes wisdom and hence the authority to speak about moral matters. The notion that some people in their 20s or 30s could reach the highest stage of moral appraisal, a view advanced by the influential American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1984: 272—273), is quite out of place amongst African philosophers.

‘What an old man sees sitting down, a young man cannot see standing up’.... (A)lthough we would not have a great deal of difficulty talking about an 18-year-old mathematical giant, we would have a great deal of difficulty talking about an 18-year- old moral giant.

(Menkiti 2004: 325)

This view is plausible insofar as an ethic of the sort analyzed in the previous section is accepted; for it takes substantial experience to learn how to navigate the complexities and challenges of interpersonal relationships (for more on the point, see Metz and Gaie 2010: 286).

Furthermore, it is common in the African tradition to maintain that moral knowledge is most likely to emerge from consensus amongst at least a group of elders, if not all those affected by the controversy, and not so much from the pronouncement of a single person. Although many indigenous African societies were led by a monarch, it was routine for him to defer to the collective judgement of a group of elders, or perhaps all those involved, about how to resolve conflicts or otherwise proceed with contentious matters. Part of the reason for being inclusion- ary is practical, e.g., making people more likely to enjoy a sense of togetherness, but another part is clearly epistemic, the rough idea being that two heads are better than one (one finds discussion of both in Bujo 1997: 43-57, 2001: 45-71, 2005: 427-431). If kings deem themselves unqualified to make ethical judgements on their own, so much the worse for a typical individual member of society. Instead, from this standpoint, she must be humble in respect of her own abil­ity to determine what the best course of action is in a relational context.

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