Human nature/identity: constant or changing in Ubuntu worldview concept and beyond Ubuntu.

Abstract

This paper is about the understanding of human nature and identity in the African context called Ubuntu. In the Introduction I explain the meaning of Ubuntu worldview. Following this I present the notion of Nature, and Human Nature, as can be culled from the mythologies of origin of the Bantu people of Eastern Africa. Kenya has been particularly chosen because ‘the philosopher must begin her reflections with her own life experience’. My experience is Kenyan. The fourth attempts to identify commonalities and divergences between the African, Ubuntu understanding of human nature and those of classic and contemporary realism in Philosophical Anthropology in the belief that “a ‘philosophy of man’ is something altogether distinct from an expression of merely personal standpoint or value system”.1 Hence Seneca’s saying: “The truth is no one’s property”2. I conclude by highlighting the need for common ground regarding the essentials of human nature for any possible moral discourse within the whole idea of the common good, human dignity, and the respect of human rights