An Ubuntu Philosophy of Higher Education as Justice

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This chapter proposes a conceptualisation of ubuntu philosophy of higher education as justice. A case is made for the necessity of a philosophy of higher education given the normative problems that the assumed aim, context, epistemologies, policies and practices of higher education raise. Meaningfully addressing and averting such problems inevitably requires a philosophical approach and a philosophy of education, respectively. At a minimum, education arguably aims at equipping people with certain universal knowledge and skills, irrespective of the social situatedness of the people. However, education conceptualisation and practice are indisputably context-embedded. This entails that the philosophical perspectives through which to imagine ideal education should be grounded in the metaphysical or ethical outlook of the social context without necessarily reproducing the society. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect philosophy of education to be relatable to people’s experiences. This chapter thus argues that an ubuntu philosophy of education demands that higher education should aim to achieve humanness or human well-being. Since the means to attain humanness in ubuntu is to act in accordance with the inseparable self-regarding and other-regarding virtues, higher education should promote self-actualisation and broader human well-being in its study programmes and research endeavours. Ultimately the chapter argues that an ubuntu philosophy of higher education is, in principle, a demand that all forms of higher education should conscientise its students and research endeavours to achieve social justice and ameliorate especially man-made human suffering. Furthermore, drawing from the deliberative feature of ubuntu, it is submitted in this chapter that ubuntu higher education should engage different epistemological traditions without being prejudiced against any other. Ubuntu higher education should not tolerate knowledge provincialism. The chapter also advances the argument that the deliberative feature of ubuntu, aimed at concretely engaging the other, entails that what constitutes a human community is no longer limited by geographical or ethnic boundedness. Thus, ubuntu education is global in outlook yet simultaneously recognises the differences that concretely particularise individuals and societies.