Some Human Values of Ubuntu and an African Philosophical View of Self-Concept and Integration

Abstract

Abstract Defining the features of ubuntu in the context of African philosophy, is basically about the quest for a definitive means of culturally expressing what seems primal, unique, useful, and common to the Africans in relation to the world. Put simply, the quest to clarify the key features of ubuntu is to some extent a search for the African self-concept or identity for effective global interconnectedness of the races. This is to be done in a way that defines and sustains the ontology and essence of the Africans, as a people who know who or what they are, and what they are capable of contributing to the world. A search for the values of ubuntu is the pursuit of a new way of doing things: a quest for a new definition of social justice in which all people, particularly the Africans and their beliefs will be given due recognition and respect in the global order. Legitimizing of ubuntu is in a way the repudiation of the colonial history of the African continent; the aggressive and relentless pursuit of the decolonization of all African spaces-economic, cultural, political, moral, intellectual, and so on. So, in summary, ubuntu is framed philosophically as a platform for liberating the Africans from all manners of peonage, domination, oppression, and exploitation both from within or outside the continent and establishing a basis for interrelations with the world.