Overview

Ubuntu, a Bantu word that became the first term from an Indigenous language to enter a political constitution, is host to many meanings: 'humanity', 'fraternity', 'compassion', and even ‘'orming a community'. According to Souleymane Bachir Diagne, all these conceptions come together in the art of making the community better and in the understanding of humanity as a task to be fulfilled. Ubuntu dissolves tribalism, leaving in its stead an embrace of the plural within universality. In this book Diagne recounts how Ubuntu became a dynamic philosophical concept whose humanist potential would rise to the urgent challenge of dismantling apartheid and healing its ravages. This theme is also an opportunity for Diagne to retrace his own intellectual trajectory and venerablecareer, from his childhood in Saint-Louis in West Africa to his present life in New York. The discussion ranges over diverse topics such as postcolonialism, the defence of humanism, the rejection of identity politics, existentialism, and African philosophies. An intellectual autobiography in the form of an engrossing conversation with the historian Françoise Blum, this slim volume is a fascinating portrait of one of our foremost contemporary philosophers and distinguished thinkers in black or Africana studies.

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9781509570898

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Reviews

""In Ubuntu, readers accompany the inspirational figure of a Global African intellectual who navigates a planet in constant mutation and highlights the entangled histories, ideological networks, and intercultural connections that define humanity."" Dominic Thomas, University of California Los Angeles ""There is a joy one experiences in reading good philosophy. The arguments, the clarity of claims, and the heaviness of warrants excite the mind. On the other hand, there is an entirely different delight to be had in the retelling of the lives of great thinkers. Ubuntu excites both affects within the reader. Part philosophical argument, part autobiographical reflection, and part historical retelling, Ubuntu recounts Souleymane Bachir Diagne's life as a philosopher, his career in the United States, and his youth. Not only is it a deep contemplation upon Africa's presence being central to an accurate understanding of the history of philosophy, but it also exemplifies the nuance and variety found in African philosophy. In short, Ubuntu is a fantastic read and a tremendous insight into the philosophy of Souleymane Diagne."" Tommy Curry, University of Edinburgh

Author Information

Souleymane Bachir Diagne is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University.

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