How can can Ubuntu fight social challenges?
Answers
Answer:
Twenty years after the end of apartheid rule, the claim that democratic South Africa is founded on the ‘spirit of law’ (nomos) of our shared humanity is questionable, to say the least.
Some would argue that all talk of Ubuntu (or African humanism) should be dismissed as a passing fad of an exhausted nationalism. But a different response to the present is possible, one that proceeds from a temporary suspension (epoché) of the nationalist matrix and all the dead-end questions that have resulted from it, in order to reposition Ubuntu in the more cosmopolitan terms of a critical humanism that must always remain irreducible to the politics of the day. This is a project that has to return to, in order to retrace, the founding claim that a politics premised on our shared humanity is, after all, perhaps possible.
Explanation:
Firstly, the African value system Ubuntu is examined, with a special focus on its core social values, which are: survival, solidarity spirit, compassion and respect/dignity as outlined in Mbigi's collective finger's theory.
The key distinctive qualities/features of this traditional philosophy were clearly spelt out as humaneness, gentleness, hospitality and generosity. This philosophy was also discussed within the context of its three main components, namely; Hunhu/Ubuntu metaphysics, Hunhu/Ubuntu ethics, and Hunhu/Ubuntu epistemology.