Moral Theory of Liveliness - A Secular Interpretation of African Life Force

The book is about providing a novel African moral theory; this means it provides a theory about what actions are permissible or impermissible. It does this by mining descriptive works of an African indigenous concept called life force. The book shows that there is a plausible way to secularise life force so the theory does not have to be inherently religious. The author argues that the theory does better at explaining various intuitions and hard cases than utilitarianism and other African moral theories like those that focus on personhood or relational harmony. It also contains a substantial section on metaethics which is about what grounds morality.

List of contents

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About the author

Kirk Lougheed is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Faith and Human Flourishing. He is also a Research Associate at the University of Pretoria. He has published over forty journal articles or book chapters in such places as The Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Ratio, and Synthese. He is the author of six monographs, the most recent of which is a co-authored work entitled African Philosophy of Religion and Western Monotheism (2024, Cambridge University Press).

Product details

• Authors: Kirk Lougheed, Kirk (Assistant Professor of Philosophy Lougheed, Kirk (Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Research Associate in Philosophy Lougheed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 08.07.2025
• EAN: 9780197781982
• ISBN: 978-0-19-778198-2
• No. of pages: 256
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Philosophy > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: general, reference works; PHILOSOPHY / Social, PHILOSOPHY / Political, PHILOSOPHY / Ethics & Moral Philosophy, Social & political philosophy, Ethics & moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, Ethics and moral philosophy, African philosophy, PHILOSOPHY / African