Introduction
The word ‘ubuntu comes from the Nguni language group mainly in South Africa, and it literally means humanness, where humanness is something for a person to realize through certain positive relationships with other persons.
Although the word is local, the relational approach to ethics that it signifies is much broader, being salient in many philosophies produced from the sub-Saharan African region.This chapter explores prominent respects in which humility figures into not just the relational ethic of ubuntu, but also the epistemic perspectives that are usually associated with it in regard to moral knowledge.The African philosophical tradition, although long-standing, is only in its third generation when it comes to literate contributors and interpreters. Until the 1960s, sub-Saharan philosophers by and large lived in oral cultures. Whereas those in the Judeo-Christian tradition can invoke passages about humility that are at least 2000 years old (e.g., Proverbs 11.1—3, 16.5, 16.18— 19, 18.12), as can those in the Confucian tradition (e.g., Analects 1.14, 14.20), there are no aged, venerable written texts to consult by those working in African philosophy.
To deal with this lack, one strategy would be to interview sages for accepted views of humility and to look for commonalities amongst indigenous African peoples (cf. Oruka 1991), or to consult proverbs about humility that can be shown to have had widespread appeal (one could consider Ibekwe 1998: 14-15, 150-151, 197; Kuzwayo 1998: 32, 34, 45, 49, 52). However, the approach of this chapter is to draw on philosophical ideas that have been published in academic fora over the past 50 years or so.They were substantially informed by the cultures of the philosophers who advanced them, and, even setting that point aside, these philosophies in themselves provide rich approaches to morality and epistemology that differ from what is salient in many other intellectual traditions and merit engagement.
Although the concept of humility has not often been explicitly invoked to make sense of African morality and epistemology in academic works, this chapter shows that it is a useful lens through which to consider key facets of these literate philosophies.
In many ways, by ubuntu we are to be humble in respect of what an individual should claim from others and what an individual may claim to know, although no claim is made here that it is some kind of ‘master virtue' for the tradition (a view often ascribed to St.Augustine in respect of Christianity).The chapter begins by spelling out what is arguably characteristic of humility as such, whether it is a feature of how we treat others or how we come to know about the world (Section 22.2). Next, it articulates some ethical ideas associated with ubuntu and considers humility in the light of them (Section 22.3), after which it does so in the context of moral epistemology (Section 22.4). The chapter concludes by sketching some prominent African philosophies other than what has been advanced as ubuntu, and by suggesting ways in which the analyses offered here could be plausibly extended to them (Section 22.5).
22.2