Human beings are individually distinct, yet socially interdependent. In this two-part essay, I argue that African philosophy has much to contribute to our understanding of this relationship, and to the development of a classical liberalism grounded in the realities of human existence.
During my time as Operations and Advocacy Manager at the Freedom Advocacy Network (FAN), a division of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), I often had the sense that something was missing from the way classical liberalism was being advanced in South Africa.
I could not immediately put my finger on it.
It was not necessarily the principles themselves. Individual liberty, personal responsibility, private property, freedom of association and equality before the law are principles with which many ordinary South Africans might agree, even without identifying themselves as classical liberals.
Yet there appeared to be a disconnect between agreement with particular liberal arguments and identification with the broader intellectual movement advancing them.
For some time, I wondered whether this was primarily a problem of political communication, institutional representation or public perception. I have since come to suspect that the question runs considerably deeper.
Perhaps classical liberalism has not been sufficiently developed through African philosophical, historical, cultural and religious traditions.
This has led me to consider something more fundamental about liberalism itself.
I have increasingly come to understand classical liberalism as an attempt to give political expression to certain enduring realities of human existence.
Every human being possesses an individual identity. We experience the world through our own consciousness, develop particular abilities, form beliefs, pursue ambitions and make decisions for which we may be held responsible.
At the same time, no human being exists entirely independently of others. We are born into families, learn languages we did not invent, inherit cultures we did not create and develop our identities through relationships with other people.
We are individually distinct and socially interdependent.
These are not competing descriptions of human existence. They are simultaneous realities.
The question is how political philosophy should respond to them.
Classical liberalism places particular moral importance on the individual and seeks to protect personal freedom against unjustified interference. African communitarian philosophies place considerable emphasis on the relationships, responsibilities and institutions through which individuals develop.
I do not believe these starting points must necessarily contradict one another.
Indeed, I believe their serious engagement could contribute to the development of a distinctly African classical liberal philosophy.
Such a philosophy would recognise that human beings are socially situated but morally independent: shaped by their communities without deriving their fundamental rights from communal approval.
This is the proposition I wish to advance.
The African individual is not lost in the community
African societies are frequently described as communal, with individuals understood primarily through relationships involving family, ancestry and shared responsibilities.
Ubuntu is commonly invoked to illustrate this understanding.
Motho ke motho ka batho – a person is a person through other people.
The expression captures something important about human existence. Our relationships contribute to who we become. We depend upon others for care, knowledge, language, economic cooperation and emotional belonging.
But does recognising this dependence mean that the individual possesses no identity or moral standing independent of the community?
I would argue that it does not.
One observation, particularly from African religious and spiritual life, has increasingly interested me.
Within many African religious and spiritual traditions, considerable significance is attached to the distinctive gifts, circumstances, responsibilities and personal callings of individuals.
Long before the establishment of African-initiated churches (AICs), traditional healers, diviners and seers were consulted concerning people’s particular circumstances and perceived spiritual responsibilities. Similar attention to individual experiences and callings can be found, in different forms, within AICs and contemporary prophetic Christian movements, including the Zion Christian Church (ZCC), St John’s Apostolic Faith Mission and the Nazareth Baptist Church (iBandla lamaNazaretha)
Although these traditions differ substantially in their beliefs and practices, they illustrate an interesting feature of African communal life: recognition that individuals may possess distinct abilities, experiences and responsibilities, even within societies that place considerable importance on communal belonging.
This observation has philosophical relevance to classical liberalism, which attaches fundamental moral significance to the individual and seeks to protect personal freedom against unjustified interference.
The two positions are not identical. Recognition of a person’s distinctive calling does not necessarily establish their freedom to accept or reject it. Indeed, religious and communal expectations may restrict individual choice.
Nevertheless, these traditions provide one African starting point for examining the relationship between individual identity, moral agency and personal autonomy.
From spiritual calling to individual liberty
Consider three aspects of human existence:
First, individuals are distinctive. They possess particular identities, abilities, beliefs and experiences.
Second, individuals possess moral agency. They can deliberate, make decisions, act upon their intentions and accept responsibility for their conduct, although circumstances may constrain their choices.
Third, individuals live in relationships of social interdependence. Their identities and opportunities are influenced by families, communities and institutions.
These observations concern the human condition. They do not, by themselves, establish a particular political philosophy.
The fact that people possess individual identities does not automatically prove that they possess rights to property, freedom of conscience or protection against political interference.
Such rights require moral justification.
My argument is that individual dignity and moral agency provide reasons for recognising each person’s authority to direct their own life, while social interdependence explains why that freedom is exercised within relationships rather than outside society.
If individuals are morally significant in their own right, their legitimate interests cannot simply disappear whenever they conflict with collective preferences.
And if human beings depend upon social relationships, the protection of liberty should enable voluntary cooperation rather than presume that independence requires isolation.
This leads to a distinction I consider fundamental to an African classical liberalism.
The community may contribute to the formation of an individual’s identity without possessing unlimited authority over that individual’s life.
A person may freely choose to support relatives, participate in religious institutions, contribute to communal projects or accept substantial responsibilities towards others.
Such conduct need not contradict liberty. It may be an expression of it.
The moral question arises when responsibilities are imposed through coercion rather than freely accepted.
Someone who voluntarily contributes towards the welfare of relatives exercises personal agency. Someone compelled to surrender resources through arbitrary authority occupies a different moral position.
Likewise, an individual who freely follows a spiritual calling exercises freedom of conscience. Someone forced to follow that calling does not.
The distinction becomes clearest when an individual disagrees with the community.
A person who accepts communal expectations may experience little conflict between personal freedom and social belonging.
But what happens when someone rejects a spiritual calling, questions customary authority, changes religious beliefs or chooses an occupation their family disapproves of?
A philosophy of liberty must protect not only the person whose decisions the community celebrates, but also the person whose choices the community rejects.
This does not require dismissing the importance of culture, religion or social responsibility.
It requires recognising that belonging to a community does not eliminate one’s moral independence.
Nor does the argument depend upon accepting prophecy or ancestral guidance as objectively true. The rights it seeks to justify must apply equally to believers, non-believers and those who understand African traditions differently.
The religious example is therefore not proof that African societies are inherently liberal.
It is a starting point for examining the relationship between individual identity, personal responsibility and the legitimate limits of authority.
African philosophy and the question of personhood
The relationship between individuality and community has already received substantial attention in African philosophy.
The Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye is an important starting point.
Through his conception of moderate communitarianism, Gyekye sought to reconcile the moral significance of community with the dignity and rights of individuals.
He rejected the suggestion that people are so completely constituted by their communities that they cannot critically examine inherited beliefs and practices.
His work recognises the importance of communal relationships while maintaining that individuals possess capacities for independent judgement.
Yet the debate does not end with Gyekye.
South African philosopher Bernard Matolino has challenged strongly communitarian accounts of personhood and developed what he calls limited communitarianism, placing greater emphasis on the individual and the protection of rights.
Jonathan Chimakonam has approached the question through an African logic of complementarity.
In his examination of whether individual autonomy and rights can be defended within African communitarianism, Chimakonam argues that recognising individual identity can provide a basis for communal values such as solidarity and the common good.
His contribution is particularly relevant because it does not simply assume that individuality and community must be competing philosophical commitments.
Motsamai Molefe has explored different possibilities through African moral theories that place considerable weight on duties, personhood and communal well-being.
These scholars disagree about how individual rights, moral responsibility and communal values should relate to one another.
Their disagreements are precisely what make the conversation intellectually significant.
African philosophy does not speak with one voice.
Nor should an African classical liberalism proceed by selecting only those thinkers whose arguments resemble established liberal positions.
It must confront competing interpretations directly.
For example, if communal well-being is morally important, when may it justify restrictions upon individuals?
If moral duties are central to personhood, can individuals legitimately refuse duties attributed to them by their communities?
And if individuals develop through social relationships, does their moral worth depend upon how successfully they fulfil communal expectations?
My proposed response begins with the distinction between the social formation of identity and the moral foundation of rights.
People may learn language, acquire values and develop their sense of responsibility through their communities.
But their fundamental rights should not depend upon successfully meeting communal expectations.
A person does not lose moral standing because they disagree with traditional leaders, reject religious teachings or refuse to conform to social expectations.
The community remains important. But its importance does not establish an unlimited right to command.
This is where I believe African philosophy can make an important contribution to classical liberal thought.
It can help develop an understanding of liberty that takes social relationships seriously without treating those relationships as a justification for arbitrary power.
What African socialism can teach classical liberals
There is a historical precedent for developing political philosophy through African intellectual traditions.
African socialism provides an instructive example, not necessarily because of its conclusions, but because of the intellectual undertaking involved.
During the struggle against apartheid, the Soviet Union and other communist-aligned states provided substantial assistance to liberation movements.
The African National Congress (ANC), particularly through its relationship with the South African Communist Party (SACP), developed important ties with the Soviet Union. China established relationships with the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), although the PAC’s political philosophy remained rooted principally in African nationalism.
These relationships helped shape the circumstances in which socialist ideas acquired influence. Historical experiences and international solidarity can influence how political ideologies are received, alongside the strength of their theoretical arguments.
But the development of African socialist thought was not simply a consequence of international political assistance.
African intellectuals also produced distinctive philosophical arguments.
Kwame Nkrumah’s Consciencism sought to develop a political philosophy responsive to the competing intellectual traditions and historical circumstances of postcolonial African society.
Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa drew upon African understandings of family, cooperation and communal responsibility.
Nyerere’s 1962 essay, Ujamaa: The Basis of African Socialism, is particularly relevant.
He did not merely translate European socialism into culturally familiar expressions. He attempted to locate a moral foundation for socialism within his understanding of African social relationships.
His conception of the extended family became central to that argument.
Nyerere’s idealisation of communal relationships has been criticised, while the coercive villagisation programmes associated with Ujamaa demonstrate the dangers of subordinating individual choice to state-directed conceptions of the common good.
Nevertheless, the distinction between his intellectual undertaking and the consequences of his political programme remains important.
He approached African social experience as a source of philosophical reasoning.
Other African intellectuals contributed different approaches. Bernard Magubane examined colonialism, capitalism, race and class. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o challenged the cultural and linguistic consequences of colonial domination. Alex La Guma explored oppression and economic inequality through literature.
Es’kia Mphahlele’s African humanism contributed to debates about African identity and personhood through a distinct intellectual tradition.
These thinkers were not all socialists, nor were they advancing one unified philosophy.
What they illustrate is the capacity of African thinkers to develop, challenge and reinterpret political ideas through African historical experience.
Classical liberalism should be equally open to that process.
The lesson is not that African liberals should imitate the policies of African socialism.
It is that we should recognise the importance of treating Africa as a source of philosophical development rather than merely an audience for ideas formulated elsewhere.
[Image: James Wiseman on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend