Mogobe Ramose

Mogobe Ramose is a South African philosopher, best known for his systematic account of ubuntu. Exiled under apartheid, he earned his doctorate at the Catholic University of Leuven and taught in Belgium, the Netherlands, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia before returning to South Africa, where he became professor of philosophy at the University of South Africa. His African Philosophy through Ubuntu presents ubuntu as the root of African philosophy and applies it to questions of law, justice, politics and religion.

Key ideas

• Ubuntu, expressed in the maxim 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu', holds that a person is a person through other persons.
• Being is understood as be-ing: a continuous flow of motion rather than a fixed, static substance.
• The community includes the living, the living dead and the yet to be born.
• Ubuntu ethics favours harmony and restorative justice over retribution.
• Justice after colonial conquest requires facing historical wrongs, including those concerning land and sovereignty.

Major works

• African Philosophy through Ubuntu (1999)
• Hegel's Twilight (2013)

In the Book corner

• African Philosophy through Ubuntu 1999 · Advanced
  A systematic study by a South African philosopher who presents ubuntu as the root of African philosophy among Bantu-speaking peoples. Ramose begins…

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