An Exploration of the Parallels between Ubuntu-ism and Process Metaphysics
IBIYEMI, Sheriff Olasunkanmi
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5290-5835
Department of Philosophy, Lagos State University, Ojo, Lagos, Nigeria.
+2348022507079, +2347031999537
Abstract
Ubuntu is an indigenous African neologism that encompasses brotherhood, individuality, community, personhood, and even moral character. When it is a way of valuing the individual, it is also a yard stick for evaluating the community and even reality as a whole. Hence, there is the endless fusion of the self with the other. The implication is that there is an inherent connection among all things, even God, which makes Ubuntu suggestive of a process underpinning. This connection however has yet to be codified since it is almost consensual for scholars to distance Ubuntu from Cartesian dualism and similar speculative schemes that propose the distinction between the self and the other; the substance and the accident. If this is the case, it is not invalid to propose that Ubuntu rejects substance metaphysics, a tradition deriving from Aristotle, owing to its inadequacies. Through the method of hermeneutical interpretation and critical analysis, the essence of this paper therefore is to disinter the Process-metaphysical groundwork latent in Ubuntu by disclosing the place[s] of convergence between Process Metaphysics and Ubuntu.
Keywords: Process Metaphysics, Ubuntu, African Philosophy, Substance, MetaphysicsÂ