An Anger-Based Contextualist Account of Justifiable Violence: An African Case Study

In this chapter, I defend an anger-based contextualist account of justifiable violence, using the African context as a case study. To set the stage, I characterize a decolonization-based consequentialist view, explain that it is implicitly held by many African philosophers, and raise some problems with the view. Chief among these problems is the observation that, on one interpretation, decolonization entails a return to pre-colonial times, wherein, among many other things, Western modern technology, which has come to define our everyday lives, is absent. Since it is possible that no one wants this outcome, the outcome does not justify the means, so decolonization does not justify the violence that has come to characterize many democratic African societies. As a way out, I argue that anger is central to violence and that the approbation or condemnation of violence in democratic African societies rests on the type of anger that underwrites the violence. This anger-based contextualist account avoids the problems its decolonization-based consequentialist counterpart faces.