Self-governance and Narratives: Forming Leadership Capacities with Stories

Humans are storytelling animals. Whether in the forms of oral storytelling or the use of proverbs, humans have long employed narratives to educate and foster character development through the acquisition of virtues. Such activities were an essential part of the process of informal education in many African traditions. They were tools for self-understanding, self-management, and, consequently, growth in virtues needed for self-governance. MacIntyre’s works describe the role of narratives and stories in understanding human actions and grasping a robust sense of their purpose. This chapter explores an interpretation of the role of narratives in some of MacIntyre’s works, connecting them with the concepts of storytelling geared towards developing one’s character. It proposes that narrativity in the form of storytelling activities employed in character education in many traditional African and non-African settings illustrate some points in the MacIntyrean discourse on the role of narratives in ethical enquiry. It describes the activity’s role in educating for virtues and leadership by enhancing the participants’ capacity for self-understanding within their narrative quest—a quest that is embedded within a moral tradition.