Hannah Kinoti: African Religion, Community Consciousness, and Virtue Ethics

Hannah Wangeci Kinoti has contributed immensely to African traditional ethics. She argued that the heart of morality is community consciousness since self-centered individuals cannot create a cohesive society. She advanced a communitarianist philosophy emphasizing the connection between the individual and the community. It is a philosophy guided by the belief that community relationships primarily mold a person’s social identity and personality. For Kinoti, morality involves the whole, both corporate and personal, political, economic, cultural, and spiritual. She uses this paradigm in almost all her scholarly works to argue about gender, sexuality, corruption, impunity, environmental degradation, women’s leadership, neo-liberal economies, colonialism, and individualistic absolutist Western morality. This chapter critically analyzes Kinoti’s approach to the individual’s social identity and personality as molded mainly by the community. It will also amplify the moral values framework proposed by Kinoti, which points to virtue ethics and its dedication to the common good of the whole person rather than simply human actions. This will create a pathway to integrate African ethics and embrace Christian ethics for a liberating and life-enhancing ethical framework for the future work of the Circle.