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228 Chapter 9
conceived, then, is too narrow in its reach. It fails to assert the dignity of all
human beings. 9
Next, the Kantian notion of autonomy is sometimes critiqued as too
individualistic. Yet this criticism fails to grasp how human beings belong
together in primordial ways. Critics claim that even the hypothetical
imagined social contract, imagining us as capable of acting morally and
building a new world together, still begins with individuals. A version of
this criticism is that human beings are never truly self-determining and
thus autonomy is not a possible representation of ourselves as moral
creatures: It is a fantasy, a dangerous one that can end up justifying selfrighteous
moralism. Feminists have emphasised another aspect of this
criticism, which is that autonomy denies human fragility and our need for
care and support. 10 This feminist emphasis on human fragility argues that
Kantian autonomy is a male myth that bolsters a sexist view of the human.
Another related criticism is that Kant grounds our dignity in a mystical
noumenal otherness outside our actual phenomenal lives. Thus, our
dignity seems to pit itself against both individual happiness and a collective
promise of the common good.
To be fair to Kant, some of these criticisms are based on misreadings
of Kant’s critical idealism. As I have already suggested, autonomy is not
self- determination for Kant but rather our determination by a law, albeit a
law that we lay down to ourselves. Thus, Kant is not an individualist, at
least not in the common English understanding of the word. To the degree
that we are creatures of intrinsic worth, we have autonomy because of a
sameness that we share. Dignity does not turn on individual characteristics
or even some essential idea of our singularity. Autonomy is not a fact of our
individuality. Nor does Kant argue that we can know for sure that we are
acting rightly. As phenomenal creatures we can always get it wrong even as
we try to abide by the moral law. In the Critique of practical reason, Kant
himself powerfully argues against the dangers of self-righteousness. This
said, Kant does argue that our dignity is inextricably associated with our
capacity for reason. The social bond, even if it aspires to our acting together
under the guidance of the great ideal of the Kingdom of Ends, still begins
with imagined individuals.
4 The alliance between African humanism and Kantian
ethics
As we will see, ubuntu does not defend dignity through our capacity for reason
and does not think that the social bond is an experiment that begins with
imagined moral individuals. And yet, there is an alliance of a Kantian notion
of dignity with the intellectual heritage of African Humanism. The connection
I am drawing with African humanism should not be taken to mean that there is
9
E Feder Love’s labour: Essays on women, equality and dependency (1999).
10 As above.