The Common Moral Position as Conversational: Re-interpreting the Hunhu/Ubuntu Moral Theory

This chapter argues that Ubuntu as a philosophy and an ethic and a Bantu language expression of African Communitarianism, necessarily bears the traits of conversational thinking and that these traits are made manifest through the idea of the Common Moral Position (CMP), an Ubuntu moral imperative, which holds that the end result of any moral process is reaching a common moral position. This chapter argues that if conversational philosophy is a philosophy that necessarily pits two critical protagonists against each other, namely the nwa-nju (inquirers) and the nwa-sa (respondents), with a view to understand phenomena, then Ubuntu is foundational to this process given that the CMP is packaged in folklore, proverbs and rites of passage, and conversational thinking seeks to, among other things, unpack these folklores, proverbs and rites of passage in pursuit of the truth. The chapter notes that during these conversations, some elders ask critical questions directed to the spirit world, while the spirit world responds to these questions, and as this happens, the elders discover the moral truths that should guide human behaviour and because they maybe disagreements at the discovery level on what should constitute the moral truths, elders then engage in a thought process that leads to a compromise position known as the CMP. The point is that the CMP is foundational to any genuine or authentic conversational project and subsequently any genuine or authentic intercultural dialogue/philosophy.