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Difference between ubuntu and dignity 239
which we configure the conditions of the social contract rooted in the
respect for all other human beings, still begins with imagined moral
individuals. It is still individuals who agree to accept some form of
coercion, even if rooted in Kant’s basic understanding of right, which is
that individuals are allowed the greatest possible space for their freedom as
long as it can be harmonised with the freedom of all others in the social
contract. If freedom is inseparable from morality then at least as a
possibility, we can represent ourselves as free human beings who can
harmonise their interests in the Kingdom of Ends.
Ubuntu, alternatively, does not conceive of the social bond through an
imagined social contract undertaken by imagined moral individuals. We are
born into a social bond but it is not as if the social is something outside the
individual. It is the network of relationships in and through which we are
formed and whose formation is ultimately our responsibility. There is a flow,
back and forth, between the individual and others as he or she undertakes the
struggle to become a person, always conceived ethically, which is difficult to
think of in Western philosophy. It is certainly not impossible to think of such
a back and forth, but it is difficult because the social is sedimented as
something outside the individual. Of course, if we add Kant to Hegel and
Marx, we begin to see possibilities for such a dialectic. Am I suggesting that
ubuntu thinking and African humanism are better resources on which to
ground the new law on earth, the new political principle to which Arendt
calls us? I am certainly arguing that a reinvigorated defence of dignity,
whether as the grundnorm of the South African Constitution or as a new
universal political and ethical principle must bring this intellectual heritage
into the debate as an equal partner. Such a dialogue is long overdue, and
necessary for the continuing defence of human dignity in South Africa and the
rest of the world.