An African Communitarian View of Epistemic Responsibility

ABSTRACT

In this article, I venture into a fairly underexplored area of African epistemic normativity. I seek to consider how the question of responsibility might be approached differently if values salient in African communitarian thinking are critically explored. I argue that while one may find almost a uniform framework for the determination of epistemic responsibility in different philosophical traditions based on the rational scheme, in the dominant African communitarian tradition, there is more to responsibility than just individualistic traits like rationality. My argument is based on the premise that, responsibility in African epistemological thinking is viewed from a communitarian perspective. According to this view, despite most of African communitarian knowledge conforming to the consciousness and control tests of the rational scheme, communitarian philosophy still remains cardinal in defining the aspect of responsibility on the part of both the individual and the community. I, therefore, partly make critical comparisons between a Western and African concept of responsibility as I seek to justify the plausibility of an African model of responsibility based on communitarian habits and culture.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Munamato Chemhuru http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9371-4605

Notes

1. I consider the universalist standpoint to be a view-point that considers philosophical issues from a common stand-point or view, such that any human being will ultimately have a similar conception of a fundamental issue.

2. By this, I mean a view of ethical responsibility that is mainly informed by the community to which the individual person is immersed. This Afro-communitarian view is in contrast to the Western conception of responsibility that mainly focuses on the autonomy of the person without considering the person’s communitarian relationships.

3. Author’s insertion.

4. The word anthropocentric here could be understood within the context in which human beings are thought to exist with other non-human beings around them, such as God, other gods, non-human nature and all reality around. However, the general anthropocentric view ignores all these in terms of approaching fundamental questions about reality. Only the human being is thought to be the central and most important being in the universe. This is why it is referred to as the anthropocentric view because its main focus is on the human being as opposed to other non-anthropocentric views like the eco-centric approach which takes on board, the entire ecosystem.

5. I use the phrase ‘hypothetical imperative’ with an extended meaning, to capture the way a common view of responsibility boils down to individuality traits like reason, and not necessarily the same way it is used by Immanuel Kant to denote the morality of an action on the basis of one’s desires or the practical necessity of an action. A similarly extended interpretation is also necessary when I characterise the African communitarian view of responsibility as a categorical imperative in the next section. I deliberately overstate the way an African communitarian view of responsibility could be referred to as a ‘categorical imperative’, because of the significance and value of communitarian knowledge of the individual.

6. It is not my intention here to get into the debate of what traditional knowledge is within the African context. However, I use it here to denote the kind of knowledge that is passed from one generation to the other orally. In this regard see also, Dzobo 2010, 71–82.