Leonard Tumaini Chuwa

2014

Advancing Global Bioethics Volume 1

Interpreting Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a worldview and a way of life shared by most Africans south of Sahara. Basically Ubuntu underlines the often unrecognized role of relatedness and dependence of human individuality to other humans and the cosmos. The importance of relatedness to humanity is summarized by the two maxims of Ubuntu. The first is: a human being is human because of other human beings. The second maxim is an elaboration of the first. It goes; a human being is human because of the otherness of other human beings. John Mbiti combines those two maxims into, “I am because we are, and we are because I am.”