Ubuntu and Western Monotheism

An Axiological Investigation

Kirk Lougheed

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367694210
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000435443
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

This book offers a unique comparative study of ubuntu, a dominant ethical theory in African philosophy, and western monotheism. It is the first book to bring ubuntu to bear on the axiology of theism debate in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion.

A large motivating force behind this book is to explore the extent to which there is intersubjective ethical agreement and disagreement between ubuntu and Western worldviews like monotheism and naturalism. First, the author assesses the various arguments for anti-theism and pro-theism on the assumption that ubuntu is true. Ubuntu's communitarian focus might be so different from the Western tradition that it completely changes how we evaluate theism and atheism. Second, the author assesses the advantages and disadvantages of the truth of ubuntu for the world. Third and finally, he assesses the axiological status of faith for both monotheism and ubuntu.

Ubuntu and Western Monotheism will be of interest to scholars and advanced students specializing in philosophy of religion, African religion and philosophy, and religious ethics.

Part I

Setting the Stage

1

Introduction to the Comparative Project

DOI: 10.4324/9781003141747-1

1.1 Introduction

The primary goal of this book is to bring ideas from the analytic philosophy of religion and African philosophy into fruitful dialogue with one another. I will accomplish this with a unique comparative study between ubuntu (a dominant theory in African thought) and monotheism (a dominant view in contemporary philosophy of religion). Any project examining two distinct traditions is bound to be quite ambitious. The terrain in dealing with just one sub-tradition in something like Judeo-Christian conceptions of monotheism is still huge. I have thus chosen to narrow my study to a current subfield in the philosophy of religion known as the axiology of theism.

Contemporary analytic philosophy of religion has been dominated by discussions of monotheism.¹ The specific version of monotheism in question is usually Christianity, even if this is not explicitly acknowledged. Anyone with a tertiary knowledge of the discipline can easily see this to be the case. There have been a number of recent calls from prominent philosophers of religion wanting the discipline to expand its horizons to include non-monotheistic and non-Western traditions (e.g., Draper and Schellenberg 2018). Some of these calls note that over three-quarters of philosophers working in the field are white Christian men and so worry about the pernicious impact that cognitive biases might have on the field (Draper and Nichols 2013; Bourget and Chalmers 2014). Religion is closer to the heart than many other areas of inquiry in which a philosopher might be engaged, and the stakes are particularly high given that one's eternal destiny is (allegedly) on the line. All of this should make one especially suspicious of inappropriate biases in the philosophy of religion. Other calls focus less on the potentially negative aspects of the narrow focus in the philosophy of religion and simply observe that there are additional philosophical insights to be gained from expanding the discipline to include other traditions.

My own view is that a field having a narrow focus isn’t in itself (morally) bad. What is potentially harmful is if there is dogmatism against expanding the field (i.e., no principled reason for keeping it narrowly focused). I won’t argue for this conclusion; I’m simply going to assume that expanding the contemporary analytic philosophy of religion to include other traditions is a good idea because it is extremely likely that there are many philosophical insights to be gained from doing so.² Notice that this is an epistemic reason to expand, not a moral one. This shouldn’t be understood as a call to replace discussion of Judeo-Christian monotheism, but rather as a push to add to the current list of traditions discussed in the philosophy of religion. Furthermore, the only way to discover new insights from other traditions is to undertake the exploratory work itself. This book is an attempt to expand the philosophy of religion by bringing it into conversation with African philosophy. The main way I will accomplish this is by a comparative study between the axiological statuses of ubuntu, Western monotheism, and atheism.³ I will also evaluate other views including Traditional African Religion, ultimism, and pantheism.

This chapter is stage-setting for the rest of the book. The purpose of it is to outline the general framework and motivation for this specific comparative project. For it's one idea to want to expand the philosophy of religion and another to know exactly how to carry out such a project. I’m thus going to offer more details about the nature of the comparative project I plan to pursue. In what follows I briefly introduce the reader to the current debate in the axiology of theism. I then examine the most pressing general objection to this project in the form of ethical disagreement. I argue that there is an important sense in which this objection should really be taken as the motivation to write a book like this one as opposed to a reason to disengage. I conclude by addressing questions about what constitutes African philosophy. In Chapter Two I will introduce the reader to the African communitarian worldview known as ubuntu. After that I will be in a position to begin the axiological comparison between ubuntu, monotheism, and atheism. And finally, I will then evaluate other views including African Traditional Religion, ultimism, and pantheism.

1.2 The Comparative Project

In this section I explain the specific comparative study that I will undertake in this book. This means offering more details about the topics that I will compare with one another.

1.2.1 The Current Comparison: Western Monotheism and Atheism

The axiology of theism generally addresses the following question: what value impact, if any, does (or would) God's existence have on the world? The literature to date has almost exclusively focused on comparisons between Western monotheism (i.e., the Judeo-Christian tradition) and atheism (i.e., metaphysical naturalism). The comparison in question is typically understood to be between two possible worlds differing from each other only with respect to God's existence. In the article credited with starting the axiology of theism literature, Guy Kahane explains the method of worldview comparison as follows:

Which possibilities are we considering or comparing when we ask whether it would be good and better if God exists and bad, and worse, if He does not? We are not asking theists to conceive of God's death – to imagine that God stopped existing. And given that theists believe that God created the universe, when we ask them to consider His inexistence we are not asking them to conceive an empty void […] I will understand the comparison to involve the actual world and the closest possible world where […] has the opposite truth value [with respect to God's existence].

(Kahane 2011, 676)⁴

This is the axiological comparison that philosophers of religion have focused on thus far.

1.2.2 Understanding the Current Comparison

Some worry that the axiological question cannot be sensibly asked because on a Lewis-Stalnaker semantics counterpossibles are trivially true (Lewis 1973; Stalnaker 1987). This is thought to be problematic because God is usually understood to be a necessary being, and hence one that exists in every possible world. Thus, any conditional where the antecedent is ‘If God exists’ is trivially true. But there are numerous problems with this worry (Lougheed 2020, 8–17). For example, this worry also represents a challenge for many other comparisons routinely made in the philosophy of religion. Kahane writes that “we see no problem about asking comparative evaluative questions about God's existence and inexistence when we consider Pascal's wager, or when we debate the problem of evil. We do so even though we are aware that, on some views, it might be impossible for God to exist – or not to exist” (Kahane 2011, 36). So, this is not a problem unique to the axiology of theism, though it is rarely raised in other contexts. Additionally, it's worth noting that if one insists on maintaining a Lewis-Stalnaker semantics that the relevant comparison can be plausibly understood as one between epistemically possible worlds, not metaphysically epistemically possible worlds. Provided a theist isn’t epistemically certain that God exists, then ‘for all she knows’ it might turn out that God does not exist. Hence, it's epistemically possible that God does not exist.⁵ This is all that's required for the debate to proceed Finally, I count it as a strike against a Lewis-Stalnaker semantics that it cannot make sense of such comparisons, instead of a reason for thinking that such comparisons themselves are unintelligible.

1.2.3 Axiological Judgements Versus Rational Preference

When making the relevant axiological comparisons, the judgements are typically taken to be ‘objective’ (I will say more about objectivity toward the end of this chapter). However, it's worth observing that such axiological judgements do not always match rational preferences. For instance, “some authors have cautioned that it can be rational, in certain cases, to prefer the worse to the better. If this is possible […] then the debate about rational preference is, after all, distinct from the axiological discussion” (Kraay 2018, 20). I will be attempting to answer questions about value in this book with axiological judgements, not rational preferences. For the sake of simplicity, I will treat axiological judgements and rational preferences as if they align perfectly with each other unless I explicitly state otherwise. I of course do not deny that these can indeed come apart.

1.2.4 Expanding the Contrast Class: The Axiology of Ubuntu

In this book I seek to expand the current contrast class in the axiology of theism to include the African communitarian ethic of ubuntu. A common slogan of this view is, roughly, that ‘there can be no I without we.’ Ubuntu represents a comprehensive worldview, especially with respect to morality. I will explain what I mean by ubuntu in more detail in Chapter Two. For now, it's sufficient to note that I will be comparing three different types of worldviews: ubuntu, Western monotheism, and atheism. Later when I discuss axiological differences between secular and religious conceptions of ubuntu, I will examine the axiological status of Traditional African Religion. There are two primary ways in which I will accomplish this comparative task. First, the axiology of theism has thus far asked whether it is (or would be) good, bad, or neutral if God exists. I am now asking the additional question of whether the current evaluations in the axiology of theism literature will hold on to the assumption that an ubuntu ethic is true. Second, I am also asking about the value impact, if any, the truth of ubuntu has (or would have) on the value of the world.

1.3 The Axiology of Theism: The Current Debate

There are at least five general answers to the axiological question about God's existence that have been identified thus far in the literature. Pro-theism is the view that God's existence does (or would) have a positive value impact on the world. Anti-theism, on the other hand, is the view that God's existence does (or would) have a negative value impact on the world. These are by far the two most common answers to the axiological question about the existence of God discussed by philosophers to date. Recently, Klaas J. Kraay has highlighted three other additional possible answers (Kraay 2018, 13–-14). Agnosticism is the view that the question is in principle answerable, but we currently don’t possess the answer. Kraay explains that “[t]he positive agnostic holds that, at present, there is insufficient evidence and arguments to justify any preference. And the withholding agnostic simply withholds judgement, even about the statement ‘agnosticism about which preferences concerning God's (non)existence are reasonable is the most defensible position’” (Kraay 2018, 20). Neutralism is the view that says God's existence makes no difference to the axiological status of the world.⁶ Either God's existence has no value or maybe the advantages or disadvantages are of equal weight. Finally, quietism is the view that questions about the value of God's existence or non-existence are unintelligible (Kraay 2018, 13). One reason for holding this view is due to worries about incomparability and incommensurability across possible worlds. While my focus will be on arguments for pro-theism and anti-theism, as I proceed, I will make note of these other answers when applicable.

It is also possible to further subdivide these general answers in at least four additional ways. Indeed, these subdivisions have become very relevant to assessments of arguments for both pro-theism and anti-theism. Wide axiological judgements are about overall value impacts. Narrow axiological judgements are about value impacts in some particular respect. An axiological judgement is said to be personal if it concerns the specific value impact on persons. Lastly, impersonal axiological judgements are about value impacts without reference to persons.⁷ Kraay observes that these subdivisions generate 12 different variations of each 5 of the general answers mentioned above, thereby making 60 different answers to the axiological question about God's existence (2018,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Chapter Summaries
• How to Read this Book
• A Note on Style
• PART I Setting the Stage
• PART II Ubuntu and the Axiology of Theism
• PART III The Axiology of Ubuntu
• PART IV Ubuntu and Axiological Explorations Beyond Monotheism
• Index