Ontologized Ethics

New Essays in African Meta-Ethics

Elvis Imafidon, John Ayotunde Isola Bewaji

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2013
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780739185049
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Ontologized Ethics: New Essays in African Meta-Ethics examines an often neglected meta-ethical issue in African philosophical discourse: the extent to which one's orientation of being, or idea of what-is – as an individual or as a group of persons – does, or should, determine one's concept of the good. To what extent is ethics, or our idea of what is permissible or impermissible, grounded on ideas of what fundamentally exists or what it means to be? The aim of this collection of essays, with emphasis on an African philosophical context, will be to establish more firmly and vigorously whether there is an intrinsic link between ontology and morality – that is, whether, and, if so, how the proper norms for human actions can be explained and validated once we make lucid ideas about metaphysical topics such as human nature, community, relationality and spirituality. The essays included in this volume focus rigorously on ethical issues such as communalism, adultery, environmental ethics, and bioethics with the primary aim of showing whether the link between such issues and metaphysical beliefs is trivial or intrinsic.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Moral Traditions and Moral Revolution: A Conceptual Analysis
• The Universality of Morality—Myth or Reality
• On the Ontological Foundation of a Social Ethics in African Traditions
• Toward an African Relational Environmentalism
• The Ethical Import in African Metaphysics: A Critical Discourse in Shona Environmental Ethics
• A Reinterpretation of Gender Power Play in the Metaphysics of Adultery and Moral Exclusionism of Married Males in an African Culture
• Beyond Culpability: Approaching Male Impotency Through Legitimated Adultery in Esan Metaphysics
• Finding Common Grounds for a Dialogue Between African and Chinese Ethics
• Critical Reflections on Gyekye’s Humanism: Defending Supernaturalism
• Life’s Origin in Bioethics: Implications of Three Ontological Perspectives: Judeo-Christianity, Western Secularism, and the African Worldview
• A Critical Analysis of Eldership-Based Ethics in African (Yoruba) Thought
• Moral Values in African Development
• Neo-Ontological Challenge to Negative Atheism: Feuerbach’s God of Secularism
• Questioning African Attempts to Ground Ethics on Metaphysics
• Conclusion
• Selected Bibliography
• Notes on Contributors
• Index