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The 10th Nishan Forum on World Civilisations was held last week in eastern China.
Nishan in Shandong Province is the birthplace of Chinese philosopher Confucius, whose thought has influenced Chinese culture.
Confucianism is thought to be one of the origins of China’s Hehe culture, which means harmony and cooperation. The Ubuntu philosophy in Southern Africa also advocates similar ideas. Some scholars agree that dialogues, exchanges and seeking harmony without uniformity among different civilisations are key to addressing the common challenges of the world.
To help us explore these two concepts and more, China Africa Talk (CAT) interviewed Edwin Etieyibo, (EE) Professor of Philosophy at University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.
(Continued from yesterday)
CAT: Proff Etieyibo, I am from Zimbabwe, and the term Ubuntu is commonly used in South Africa. What exactly is Ubuntu?
EE: The term Ubuntu is a Zulu word, which is South African Zulu ethnic group language. But the idea of Ubuntu is shared across Sub-Saharan Africa. In Zimbabwe there are expressions that are similar to the term Ubuntu, even though they do not use the exact word Ubuntu.
Ubuntu captures a world view or a philosophical idea among the people of Sub-Saharan Africa. It generally means that a person is a person, through other persons, or as the famous Kenyan philosopher John Mbiti put it, “I am because we are. We are, therefore, I am.”
In a sense, Ubuntu is not just a concept but an idea that permits the entire life of the African. It’s a way of life where everything revolves around the idea of persons, only existing only in the context of other persons.
And there are no persons without all that person. I don’t exist in the absence of other persons. The idea Ubuntu is that humans are only humans, only through other humans.
That kind of contrast sharply with, say, the western idea of individualism, of people existing as atomistic floating beings who are independent of other beings.
Ubuntu supports a philosophy of communalism or communalistic philosophy. So I can’t claim to be a human or a person, just because I am a biological being. But I can only really make a claim that I’m a person or so, only because other persons are in existence.
This leads to all kinds of social practices, economic policies, in terms of building relationship, in terms of harmonious being. Ubuntu prizes harmony because the idea is I can’t really stay or exist independent of other beings.
CAT: I’ve picked a common denominator here; harmony, but seems there are different definitions here of what harmony is with Hehe and Ubuntu. In Confucius’ eyes, an individual cannot live without community and society. Is this the same with Ubuntu?
EE: It is the same in a sense, in which one may say that there’s no individual, if there is no community. The idea of Confucius is similar to the idea of Aristotle, perhaps maybe Confucius will probably have provided a deeper sense of the relationship between the individual and community.
Aristotle also talked about humans as social animals. The idea being that one cannot really live outside society as a human. That’s the idea for Aristotle.
CAT: This is a Western perception when we talking about Aristotle
EE: Yes, so it is relatively individualistic. The idea being that, obviously, the individual cannot really flourish. You cannot develop your capacities and all that outside society. So I can’t, for example, speak any human language if I live alone in the forest. So the capacity for language is only possible, for example, in social setting and all that for Aristotle.
Confucius is also saying something similar, but what goes beyond that? For Ubuntu the deeper idea is that the individual is embedded in society, so that there is no individual if there is no society.
CAT: Could you give us some personal experiences, Professor Etieyibo?
EE: When I was in high school, I lived with one of my elder sisters, in Nigeria. We lived in a three-bedroom apartment. I would realise that there were close to between 10 to 15 people in the apartment, which is quite strange because it’s a three-bedroom apartment.
Some people, three or four slept in one room. And a number of these people were really not related to us in terms of blood. So I really didn’t get it, because the idea was why they put them there. I didn’t know this person and where he was from.
My sister and her husband always insisted that these people were part of us. I really get what that meant; we can do all we can to help and make life easy for others who may not be in better sufficient as maybe we are. She would say that we have to be our brothers or sisters’ keeper and all that.
But after all this time, I got to understand what was going on when I started talking about Ubuntu and talking about relationships and talking about harmony, that the idea here is that you don’t make a sharp separation between yourself and others to say these are others … are individuals … I’m an individual, but we are part of the we, right? So it’s not so much about who they were. Sisters or brothers are family members. No, the idea is humans belong to one human family. They were all part of “we”. That’s the idea of harmony. That’s the idea of relationship … how you can exist through other persons.
When I was a bit young, I grew up with mom, but I went home usually during festive periods. When we celebrated Christmas, my mom would buy shoes and clothes for us, and would also buy for neighbours’ kids and others. I didn’t get it because I was young then. It was much more later that my mom kept saying about the importance of relationship, the importance of caring for others beyond material possessions and all that. For me, those are examples of Ubuntu in action, which, of course, you do not see a lot today in our modern societies.
CAT: How would you say it has influenced international relations in Africa?
EE: Ubuntu hasn’t really influenced international relations in the region or the African continent, as much as one would like to, especially considering it’s in the context of different events happening in Africa, especially in South Africa and other countries where there are incidents of xenophobia.
But we do see elements of the influence of Ubuntu in relations on the continent. We see sometimes African governments responding to different conflicts in Africa. They may not have as much resources as Western societies, but they respond to these incidents, whether it is within the South African region or West African region or East African region, the African Union responds in a way that would suggest we cannot be fighting among ourselves. We are all part of one family. So this sort of way of thinking about Ubuntu concept, in this way of talking and representing people within the African continent.
There have also been efforts towards Pan-Africanism, where many African states were talking about one Africa and one continent. It was the idea of African Union, to create one Africa for all African people.
Lack of resources, and some problems from external factors have undermined various efforts to try to create a Pan-African group of people in the continent.
CAT: The Global Civilisation Initiative, proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, calls for upholding the principles of equality, mutual learning, dialogue and inclusiveness among civilisations. Now, what is the mutual learning between Ubuntu and Hehe in terms of building a community with a shared future for mankind?
EE: These values of principle of equality, mutual learning, dialogue, and inclusiveness that the Chinese president called for, are currently lacking today in our world. I mean, there are conflicts, wars, divisions, trade imbalances and friction.
Part of the problem why these values because there are civilisations positioning themselves as superior to others. And that precisely is what Hehe and Ubuntu preaches against.
The idea of Hehe and Ubuntu are aspects of relationship of harmony of communal flourishing of being together.
We need a world that is more inclusive, where there is mutual learning, where there is dialogue, where there is equality among all of us. And that would be a better world order that we all flourish, rather than this world order where we are now, where it’s almost like a zero sum game. Some countries have to win at the aspects of others losing, competition, global capitalism and all of that.
Online Reporter