Mogobe Ramose

Works

• 1999African Philosophy through Ubuntu

  Ubuntu as the root of African philosophy: being is becoming, and a person is a person through others.

Position

Ramose made Ubuntu, the southern African idea that “a person is a person through other persons,” into the basis of a systematic philosophy. He reads it not as a fixed set of values but as an ontology of motion: being is always be-ing becoming, a never-finished process in which humans, the living dead and nature are bound together. From this follow an ethics of mutual care and a demand for justice. In post-apartheid South Africa he argued that true reconciliation is impossible without restitution, above all the return of land taken through conquest. His work is central to debates on decolonizing philosophy in Africa.

Life & context

Ramose grew up in South Africa under apartheid and spent many years in exile. He studied philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, where he earned his doctorate, and taught abroad before returning home after the end of apartheid. He became professor of philosophy at the University of South Africa (UNISA) in Pretoria, where ubuntu was then shaping debates about reconciliation.

Further main works

• The Philosophy of Ubuntu and Ubuntu as a Philosophy (2002)