African perspectives on just war

Abstract

Most Anglophone just war theory has been written from the point of view of Western philosophy. Nevertheless, other philosophical traditions outside the West have also produced sophisticated and innovative ideas about the morality of war, although they have been largely neglected. In this article, I overview for the first time the literature regarding jus ad bellum in contemporary African thought and contend that there are four kinds of arguments regarding the justification to initiate a war. Namely, these are arguments that justify resourcing war on consequentialist grounds; therapy rationales; rebutting wrong justifications; and arguments based on consensus and negotiation.

African Ethics, Personhood, and War

“…The African ethics of war can be found in political, literary, and philosophical writings. Originally, the contemporary arguments about the ethics of war were mostly found in the discourses and theories of African revolutionaries, like Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, and Julius Nyerere (Nyerere 1969;Nkrumah 2015;Mandela 1967;Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2022). Recent philosophical work has seen several scholars trying to develop an African just war theory (Metz 2019;Badru 2019;Okeja 2019;Akiode 2019;Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2022;2018a;Ugwuanyi 2020;Baker 2016;Cordeiro-Rodrigues and Chimakonam 2022).…”

“…Originally, the contemporary arguments about the ethics of war were mostly found in the discourses and theories of African revolutionaries, like Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, and Julius Nyerere (Nyerere 1969;Nkrumah 2015;Mandela 1967;Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2022). Recent philosophical work has seen several scholars trying to develop an African just war theory (Metz 2019;Badru 2019;Okeja 2019;Akiode 2019;Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2022;2018a;Ugwuanyi 2020;Baker 2016;Cordeiro-Rodrigues and Chimakonam 2022). In broad terms, the arguments defended by these scholars have mostly aimed to tease out the implications of ubuntu or concepts related to the ethics of violence.…”