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Difference between ubuntu and dignity 223
Mokgoro’s important judgments are discussed at length in ‘The recognition
of ubuntu’. Famously, ubuntu remains in the final Constitution of
South Africa as merely the shadow that justifies a Truth and Reconciliation
Commission. However, in a series of interviews and lectures, Justice
Mokgoro has argued that, even if this is the case, ubuntu can and should be
interpreted as the ethical law of the entire Constitution.
If one were to interpret ubuntu as the ethical law of the new South
Africa, then it would be ubuntu that would ground the constitutional
grundnorm of dignity and not dignity that calls for the re-cognition of
African humanist principles such as ubuntu. Note that I have used the word
African because ubuntu or ubuntu/botho, even as they are words in South
African languages, should be understood as part of the rich intellectual
heritage of African humanism.
2 Kantian dignity
But let us first turn to the most sophisticated European defender of dignity,
Immanuel Kant, so that we can contrast the Kantian justification of dignity
with a rethinking of ubuntu, remembering also that in South Africa, Kant
has been explicitly incorporated into constitutional jurisprudence. Former
Constitutional Court justice, Justice Ackermann, has powerfully defended
Kantianism as one important secular justification for the understanding of
dignity as an ideal attribution of persons such that all persons have intrinsic
worth. His constitutional judgments boldly suggest that the new South
Africa should be understood to aspire to the great Kantian ideal of the
Kingdom of Ends.
For Kant, a human being is of incalculable worth and has dignity
precisely because through our practical reason we can potentially exercise
our autonomy and lay down a law unto ourselves, which for Kant is the
moral law or the categorical imperative. Kant is not arguing that we
actually do exercise our autonomy most of the time in our daily lives. Nor
is he defending autonomy as some kind of truth about how we actually
are – a common misreading of his argument. Kant argues instead that we
are creatures who live our desires and our needs as do all other animals, and
yet we are creatures who have the possibility – and let me emphasise the
word possibility, because it can neither be theoretically demonstrated nor
theoretically refuted as a fact about ourselves – that we can act other to the
mechanics of those desires and needs.
Kant is often accused of being a prude because Kantian negative
freedom is mistakenly identified with not doing what you want to do. But
that is not the case. For Kant, a human life is purposive, and when we take
ourselves seriously as creatures who can set ends for themselves as longterm
directions in life, we should also find ourselves capable of coordinating
our purposes and ends with the ends of others. Indeed, the idea of humanity,