Toward an African Feminist Ethics and the Book of Proverbs

Abstract

This essay posits that a feminist African ethics must be based on different principles than Western Socratic-Aristotelian ethics. A feminist African ethics centers on communitarian notions of care and collective engagement. The female figures in Proverbs 1–9 illustrate the complex ethical situation in which feminist African ethicists find themselves. Woman Wisdom represents the traditional African ethics of care and empathy, whereas the Strange Woman represents the unethical system dominant in post-independent and postcolonial Africa. A feminist African ethics also has to recognize that it always operates in a confluence or amalgam of ethical paradigms. Most importantly, a feminist African ethics needs to deal with the significance of the social location and lived experiences of African women. The discussion of the relationship between Woman Wisdom and the Strange Woman teaches that the African and the Western ethical paradigms promote two antithetical ideologies or ways of life. Both of them exist in contemporary Africa, and the resulting tension challenges African feminist Bible scholars to struggle with the ethical incongruities prevalent within their geopolitical context.