UNIDAD RESPONSABLE:

To determine the practical significance of the communitarian-based dignity I propose to situate the human dignity debate within the ‘right-good’ quagmire which runs deep into conceptual differences between liberals and communitarians. The right has to do with one acting in conformance to rules or regulations, while the good has to do with benefits accrued from a decision that is made. For Mark Timmons (2012:7), right and good are the basic moral concepts in addition to moral worth. As evaluative concepts, which frequently appear in debates on ethical issues, the right and the good give an idea or action its ethical force. Precisely, these concepts take centre stage when evaluating ethical claims and in making ethical decisions. Such decisions could be evaluated on the basis of the motive and consequence of human action. Further, they could be evaluated as ethical or not on account of their being good or right. Thus, morality of an action is dependent on whether it is right or wrong. It is one’s duty to perform such actions.

These two concepts are particularly important as they run throughout most of debates between liberalists and communitarians on matters within such domains as politics, law, economics, education or culture among others. The central feature of such debates is their disagreement on the basic principles they each advance as guiding practice in such spheres. Franceso Viola (2004:521) sums up this liberalism-communitarianism disagreement as a debate that substantially consists of a conflict about the way of interpreting the notion of the political community. This is the dilemma concerning whether a political community’s commitment should be towards what is right or what is good. While the liberal camp considers personal autonomy as intrinsic to human rights and dignity, the communitarian group considers group rights as intrinsic to human development and human welfare. Buchanan (1989:860) advises that we might wish to consider the debate between communitarians and political liberals as essentially a disagreement on strategies that can be used to serve the value of community best instead of viewing it as simply a conflict between those who value community and those who do not. Such strategies are rooted

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in different estimates of the relevant risks. Thus, these two camps essentially differ on which between the enforcement of what is right or what is good is most desirable.

For the present study the concern is the examination of what it is that gives the communitarian-based dignity the force of practical relevance. Contrary to the criticism levelled against both its conceptualisation and practical implications, and is mostly constructed from caricatures, communitarianism as a political and social philosophy appears to be logically consistent first in its formulation, and second in its usefulness. For example, the fear that communitarianism always generates a totalitarian vision of society when it is comprehensively developed with all its possible implication as argued by Carlos Santiago Nino (1994:27), is not warranted. Any political system has potential to become totalitarian. Communitarianism appears to have an inherent ability to deal with problems arising from societies founded on communitarian values. Some scholars even go further to suggest that elements of the communitarian theory have the capacity to form the basis of the contemporary theories of international relations since shared norms which spread through moral dialogues are necessary for building supra-nationality (Etzioni, 2010:5).

Thus, the right-good debate is significant for examining specific moral debates in which African communitarianism successfully secures human dignity. This conception of dignity is said to make African communities truly humanistic (see Wiredu, 2003a:338; van den Berg, 1999:203; Kamwangamalu, 1999:26; Mabovula, 2011:43). Concrete situations are said to be the best way of engaging not only the idea of human dignity, but also its relevance. We learn most about human dignity through examination of phenomena or social arrangements that are considered as violating human dignity. Through specific situations one can determine whether there is any violation of human dignity other than simply from the abstract conception of human dignity (Kaufmann et al., 2010:2). Such violations could be physical or emotional. Although there are many forms of violations some of which are regarded as of less magnitude, Stoecker (2010:15) thinks there is a general consensus that the physical represents “extreme case of a violation of the demand of human dignity”. Torture for example, is an extreme violation of human dignity both physically and mentally. In addition, hunger and poverty are today present the most common way in which human dignity is violated since a person’s most basic needs lack sufficient satisfaction.

Although communitarians and liberals argue for different viewpoints, they do not explicitly acknowledge the right-good dilemma. If some do acknowledge, they do not pursue it further to its logical conclusion, where they would examine the extent to which it eventually colours their viewpoints. It passes silently through their respective arguments. Whether they pursue it further or

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not, does not seem to bother them. This notwithstanding, liberalism and communitarianism disagree on some fundamental point, namely, that which between right and good should take precedence, or requires emphasis whenever they engage in some moral dilemma requiring a decision. Thus, some of the questions that philosophers have had to answer in making those decisions include whether emphasis or priority should be laid on what is right or what is good, and reasons offered for the preferred priority. The disagreements that arise from responses to such questions lead to a dilemma that seems to refuse any solution. Subsequently, we have different ethical theories responding to questions of motive or consequence, as well as good or right. Thus this dilemma is at the centre of the disagreements between liberal individualism and communitarianism, both on their theoretical constructs as well as their practical implications.

Philosophical engagement of the right-good dilemma has come mainly through the concepts’ surreptitious appearance in a number of domains, academic or otherwise. Along with George E. Moore’s Principia Ethica (1903) in which he defended the objectivity and multiplicity of values, where the object of ethics is the nature of good conduct, William Ross’ The Right and the Good (2002) originally published in 1930, is arguably one of the most important works in moral philosophy that is exclusively and comprehensively dedicated to the right-good quagmire. In this book, Ross (2002:1) examines the nature, relations and implications of the three conceptions which appear to be fundamental in ethics. These are ‘right’, ‘good’, and ‘morally good’ (c.f. Timmons, 2012:7). This serious work in metaphysics forms the basis of many ethical claims which regularly make use of these three terms.

Ethical claims concerning some human actions presuppose a metaphysical basis. Some would say an act is good to the extent that its consequence is good (Ross, 2002:2). Others think that what is morally good is that which is right (Ross, 2002:3). For example, one may ask whether paying back one’s debts is a right or a good thing to do. However, Ross (2002:6) argues that these concepts are very distinct. Rightness and goodness are completely distinct concepts as they refer to totally different things. As a matter of principle, it could be the right thing to do, but not my duty. In addition, right does not have the same meaning as morally good. Although we usually say it is our duty to do certain things, it does not mean we do them because of our sense of duty. Doing things out of duty is not internally binding because the motive does not arise from within. But when it is our duty to do certain things, the motive seems to be originating from within. In his political liberalism, Rawls (1988:251) prioritises the idea of the right although he anticipates some would interpret his position as suggesting his disregard for the notion of the good. Hence, he immediately clarifies his position. As a champions liberalism, the good must according to him be

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viewed as a matter of individual choice. That is how he shows the goodness of right. Of course some have objected to his teleological/deontological distinction which is clearly based on the priority of the right as misleading. Aysel Doğan (2011:316-334) for example contends that since there is lack of consensus in terms of interpretation, we cannot have a plausible ethical theory which can determine what is right prior to the good.

The problem of priority of values is further exacerbated by the heterogeneous nature of modern societies. On account of this heterogeneity, it appears there exists an inescapable need for both the good and the right. Since such societies are pluralistic, some for example Michel Rosenfeld (2011:60-61), argue that comprehensive pluralism very much and clearly depends on the priority of the good over the right. They add that comprehensive pluralism very much shares characteristics of some version of utilitarianism which resolves all normative questions by reference to the notion of good, and dispensing altogether with the right. However, since there exist so many competing conceptions of the good, the individual who is competing naturally seeks to reach her own perceived good. In this case, the right is about what ought to be done and the good is about what is of value to a person, group or society. What this implies is that whether one prioritises the right or the good, there always seems to be a legitimate reason for doing so. For example, equality may entail one’s freedom to pursue individual interests in the liberal sense, or being subjected to the social common good in the communitarian sense.

In their value orientation, modern societies which can generally be classified into two, namely those that subscribe to the liberal values and those that subscribe to the communitarian ideals, seem to be oblivious or simply indifferent to the confusion between the right and the good. Although both regard the concept of human person as central to their arguments, they significantly differ on how such a central concept is constructed and understood. In this conceptual conflict, liberalism places emphasis on the ontological aspects while communitarianism prioritises the normative aspects of personhood. Consequently, and on account of their differing conceptions of personhood, liberalism and communitarianism have become very important schools of thought in contemporary social and political philosophy, in the sense that scholars often subscribe to any one of them, or at least something akin to a synthesis between the two. Since there seems to be no end in sight with regard to this conceptual conflict, it has become a normal thing that the liberal conception of personhood prioritises the right, while communitarian conception the good. This disagreement has profound implications on how these thought systems interpret and evaluate human actions, especially as they relate to the promotion or violation of human dignity.

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Since the idea of human dignity cannot fit easily into a single evaluative framework, it is instructive to think how the same idea has been articulated not only in the liberal tradition, but also in the communitarian tradition, regarded as illustrative of the African traditional thought system. In this study the interest has been in how the African communitarian thought through its normative account of personhood succeeds in promoting human dignity. In a way, it responds to some of the claims made by liberal account concerning the ability of African communitarianism to secure human dignity. Although I have tried to demonstrate this at a conceptual level in the preceding chapters, the proposal here is to situate this communitarian response within some concrete situations or life experiences. The idea is to demonstrate by way of giving further evidence, how in such concrete situations, the communitarian principles fare better in terms of promoting human dignity than has often been portrayed by critics.

Before proceeding with a consideration of instances that demonstrate the value of communitarian principles in the concreteness of life situations and experiences with respect to the promotion of human dignity, I propose a glance at another pair of evaluative concepts related to the right-good dilemma. These are individual interest and common good. My interest is to explore their relation to the question of human dignity. The promotion of these ideas is often considered to be synonymous with the promotion of human dignity in the liberal as well communitarian thought systems respectively. Human dignity is a question of prioritising either private or public interest. Thus the dilemma reappears and permeates our attempt to understand human dignity as either rights-based or duty-based. Both the liberalists and communitarians maintain that their respective conceptions of personhood, which derived from their thought systems and practices, are consistent with their respective conceptions of personhood, and subsequently promote human dignity better than the other. The extent to which this is true is a matter of how we engage with the respective value systems, which can best be regarded as perspectival and contextual. Barak (2015:6) recently underscored this when he wrote that human dignity is a contextually dependent value. It keeps on changing as the world changes. Human dignity could change from religious to secular perspectives, depending on the society’s conception of personhood. The religious view sees a human person as the image of God, while the secular perspective modelled on Kant sees a human person as a rational being who legislates and obeys own laws. Thus, the conception of personhood of a given society reflects its own history, culture and human experience.