African Social Ethics

Extracts from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The notion of the common good features manifestly in African ethics. In Akan
moral thought, the notion is expressed most vividly in an art motif that shows a
‘siamese’ crocodile with two heads but a single (i.e., common) stomach. The
part of the motif relevant to moral thought is the single stomach, and it is to the
significance of this that I wish to pay some attention. The common stomach of
the two crocodiles indicates that at least the basic interests of all the members of
the community are identical. It can therefore be interpreted as symbolizing
the common good, the good of all the individuals within a society.
The common good is not a surrogate for the sum of the various individual
goods. It does not consist of, or derive from, the goods and preferences of
particular individuals. It is that which is essentially good for human beings as
such, embracing the needs that are basic to the enjoyment and fulfillment of the
life of each individual. If the common good were the aggregate(total) of
individual goods, it would only be contingently, not essentially, common and,
on that score, it would not be achieved in a way that will benefit all the
individuals in a society. If the common good is achieved, then the individual
good is also achieved. Thus, there should be no conceptual tension or opposition
between the common good and the good of the individual member of the
community, for the common good embraces the goods—the basic goods—of all
the members of the community. If the common good were understood as the
basic good—as human good—as such, there would be no need to think of it as a
threat to individual liberty as touted by Western liberal (individualist) thinkers,
for, after all, individual liberty is held as one of the basic goods of the members
of the society. The contents of the common stomach, in the symbolic art of the
‘siamese crocodile’, would not conflict with the interests and needs of either of
the crocodiles.
The Common Good:
The good, as discussed in an earlier section, is defined by the traditional thinkers
of the Akan society in terms of peace, happiness or satisfaction (human
flourishing), justice, dignity, respect, and so on. The common good embraces
these goods and more.
There is no human being who does not desire peace, security, freedom, dignity,
respect, justice, equality, and satisfaction. It is such a moral, not a weird, notion
embracive of fundamental goods—goods that are intrinsic to human fulfillment
and to which all individuals desire to have access—that is referred to as the
common good. The unrelenting support by people in a community for such

1
moral values as social justice and equality on the one hand, and the spontaneous,
universal denunciation of acts such as murder and cruelty on the other hand, are
certainly inspired by beliefs in the common good.
Similarly, the institutions of various kinds—legal, political, economic, moral
and others—are set up in pursuit of certain commonly shared values and goals,
that is, a common good which a human society desires to achieve for all of its
members. The institution of government or legal system is surely based on a
common understanding of the need for societal values of social order and social
peace. It is, thus, pretty clear that the common good is that which inspires the
creation of a moral, social, political, or legal system for enhancing the well-
being of people in a community.
The common good is a notion that is conceptually affiliated to the notion of
community and, thus, to the notion of human society as such. The common
good is an essential feature of the ethics espoused by the communitarian
African society. The pursuit of the good of all is the goal of the communitarian
society, which the African society is. A sense of the common good—which is a
core of shared values—is the underlying presupposition of African social
morality.
Social, Not Individualistic, Ethics:
A humanistic morality, whose central focus is the concern for the welfare and
interest of each member of community, would expectably be a social morality
which is enjoined by social life itself. Such is the nature of African morality.
Social life or sociality is natural to the human being because every human being
is born into an existing human society. A traditional Akan thinker asserted in a
previously quoted proverb that says that ‘When a human being descends from
the heavens, he [or she] descends into a human town [or, a human society].’ The
point of the maxim is that the human being is social by nature. This view finds a
variant in Aristotle's celebrated dictum that ‘The human being is by nature a
social animal’, that is, that a human being is by nature a member of a polis, a
human community. [The word politikon used in Aristotle's dictum means
‘social’ rather than ‘political’.] Being a member of the human community by
nature, the individual is naturally related or oriented toward other persons and
must have relationships with them. The natural sociality or relationality of
human beings would—and should—prescribe a social ethic, rather than the ethic
of individualism. Individualistic ethics that focuses on the welfare and interests
of the individual is hardly regarded in African moral thought.
African social ethic is expressed in many maxims (or, proverbs) that emphasize
the importance of the values of mutual helpfulness, collective responsibility,
cooperation, interdependence, and reciprocal obligations. Let me refer to a few
of these, from the Akan repertoire:

2
The well-being of man depends on his fellow man.
(onipa yieye firi onipa)
The point of this proverb is, not that a person should always look to another (or
others) for his well-being and the attainment of his goals, but that there are
occasions when the demonstration by another person (or other persons) of
goodwill, sympathy, compassion, and the willingness to help can be a great
boost to a person's attempts to achieve his goals, to fulfill his life. The
dependency noted in the foregoing proverb is to be put down to the limited
nature of the possibilities of the human individual. Human limitations are in fact
expressed in the following Akan proverb:
Man is not a palm-tree that he should be complete (or, self sufficient).
(onipa nye abe na ne ho ahyia ne ho)
The proverb points up the inadequacies of the human being that make it
impossible for him to fulfill his life, socially, economically, emotionally,
psychologically, and so on. It is evidently true that in the context of the society,
in terms of functioning or flourishing in a human society, the human individual
is not sufficient, for her capacities, talents, and dispositions are not adequate for
the realization of her potential and basic needs. It is only through cooperation
with other human beings that the needs and goals of the individual can be
fulfilled. With his self-sufficiency whittled away by man's natural condition, the
individual requires the succor and relationships of others in order to satisfy his
basic needs. A social ethic that recognizes the importance of the values of
mutual help, goodwill, and reciprocity is the kind of ethic that will counter the
lack of human self-sufficiency in respect of talents and capacities and in many
ways help realize his basic needs.
Reciprocity and interdependence are forthrightly expressed in the following
Akan maxims:
The right arm washes the left arm and the left arm washes the right arm.
(wo nsa nifa hohorow benkum, na benkum nso hohorow nifa)
That the left arm cannot wash itself is of course a matter of everyday experience.
It is when the two arms wash each other that both become clean: thus, the need
for interdependence.
Life is mutual aid.
(Obra ye nnoboa)
The Akan word nnoboa means ‘helping each other to work on the farm’. In the
farming communities of rural Ghana, when a farmer realizes that work on the
farm cannot be completed within a certain time if he did it single-handedly, he
would request the assistance and support of other farmers in the community. The
other farmers would readily lend a helping hand to that farmer, who would, in
3
this way, achieve his productivity goals and do so on time. The same request
would, when necessary, be made by the other farmers on different occasions. It
is this kind of experience that led an Akan traditional thinker to create this
proverb which, because of the word ‘life’ (obra), has been made to cover other
spheres of the human life than the purely economic (or agricultural). Refusing to
offer help to others and consistently seeking one's own good and disregarding
the good of others will result in one's being denied the help and goodwill that
may be necessary to achieve certain ends. Since you refused to help someone
who needed your help or someone who was in distress, you are likely to meet
the same refusal or denial when you need some help—perhaps more help at that.
The morality of a shared life, as in any community, thus demands mutuality or
reciprocity as a moral mandate in a world in which human beings, weak and
limited in many ways, are subject to vulnerable situations. Mutual aid, then,
becomes a moral obligation.
That a human being, due to her limitations, deserved to be helped is expressed in
the following maxim:
A human being needs help.
(onipa hia moa)
The Akan word translated ‘needs’ is hia, which, as used in this maxim, has a
normative connotation; thus, it does more than simply expressing a fact about
human life or the human condition. The real meaning of the maxim, then, is that
a human being deserves, and therefore ought, to be helped. It also means that a
human being must be regarded as an object of moral concern and should
therefore be entitled to help by others in the appropriate circumstances. The
reason why you should help someone in need is also given in the following
maxim, among others:
Your neighbor's situation is [potentially] your situation.
(Wo yonko da ne wo da)
Two important things about this maxim need to be pointed out. One is that the
maxim is uttered in references only to the pitiable, miserable or unfortunate
situation of another person (referred to in the maxim as “your neighbor”—wo
yonko) or other people (your “neighbors”). These unfortunate situations or
circumstances insistently call for the demonstration of sympathy, compassion,
and willingness to offer some help. The other important thing about this maxim
is that the word ‘neighbor’ in the maxim does not necessarily refer to the person
next door or in one's community but to any other person in your community and
beyond: even in far-off places.
The basic or ultimate thrust of the maxim is that you should not show
insensitivity to people who are in pitiable situations, for one day you might be in
that situation too and would need the help of others: thus, your neighbor's

4
situation is potentially your situation; every other person is basically you. Social
morality thus demands mutual reciprocity as a moral mandate in a world in
which human beings can easily be overcome—even overwhelmed—by the
contingencies of the human condition and existence. Altruism is, thus, a
fundamental moral value.
Insensitivity to the needs and hardships or suffering situations of others is
repudiated in Akan morality, as it is, indeed, repudiated in the moralities of all
human cultures. In Akan moral thought and practice, a maxim that rebukes the
lack of feeling for others is put thus:
When it sticks into your neighbor's flesh, it is as if it stuck into a piece of wood.
(etua wo yonko ho a, etua dua mu)
“Sticking into your neighbor's flesh (or, body)” is another way of referring to the
suffering, misfortune, hardship, or pain of another person. When something,
such as a needle, sticks into your own flesh or body, you feel the pain. If it stuck
into another person's—your neighbor's—flesh, you would not directly feel the
pain. Even so, you should not feel insensitive to the pain or suffering of that
person and shrug off your moral shoulders, for the other person's body is
certainly not a piece of wood that cannot feel pain.
The foregoing maxims and many others similar to them in content and purpose
all underline a social morality. There are many African folktales whose
conclusions are intended to affirm the values of social morality—the kind of
morality that is centered on human relations. The social character of morality
requires that the individual member of the society, ever mindful of his interests,
adjust those interests to the interests and needs of others. This requires him to
give due consideration to the interests and welfare of others. Necessarily
embedded in a human community, the individual person has a dual moral
responsibility: for him or herself as an individual and for others as co-members
of the community with whom she shares certain basic needs and interests.