Скачать или смотреть Thierry Ngosso on the question "Is there an ‘African’ environmental ethics?"

Thierry Ngosso is a lecturer at the University of Maroua, the Catholic University of Central Africa and the University of St Gallen.

One can wonder if framing this question this way even makes sense in the first place. We tend to consider ethics, i.e., normative or ethical theory, one might argue, in universal terms, not ethnological ones. There is ethics, and the whole point of debating ethics is to discuss principles of moralism that transcend ethnology of every kind. Nevertheless, what has been presented as ethics in ‘universal’ terms, and what is taught as such in universities and departments of philosophy across the African continent, is more often a Western perspective of what ethics should be, in other words, an ethnological perspective of ethics rooted in Western traditions or developed by Western or other academics who consider Western traditions as their cultural background or academic starting point. In this respect, there is an African ethics, and hence an African environmental ethics only insofar as it is understood as a perspective of normative ethics and its application to environmental matters rooted in African traditions or developed in philosophical writings by African and non-African scholars or thinkers embedded or having a deep knowledge of Africans ethos and traditions.

Looking at African (environmental) ethics in this way does not mean there is a monolithic approach to normative and environmental ethics across the African continent. There are some disputes and disagreements, as may happen in all other ethnological areas. However, the emphasis on communal values in African environmental ethics creates a sense of connection and belonging. Some general trends and markers also give reason to that notion of ‘perspective.’ Here, I would like to flesh out such an African perspective by focusing on the Ubuntu philosophy and how it informs an African approach to normative ethics based on the Relational principle, discuss how such perspective approaches environmental and climate change matters from a communal and intrinsic value perspective, highlight areas of divergence with a Western perspective embedded on individualism and instrumentalism, and point to a few places like a post-economic development global agenda where such an African proposition can make a distinctive contribution to our current global climate crisis.

This talk was part of the conference 'The Role of Indigenous African Environmental Ethics in Combatting the Climate Crisis'.

Watch all the talks at the conference in this playlist:
   • The Role of Indigenous African Environment...  

Find more information on the conference:
www.ucsia.org/en/evenementen/the-role-of-indigenous-african-environmental-ethics-in-combatting-the-climate-crisis/