1. African Ethics

2. The Ethiopian Enlightenment
Crowds gather at the Fasiladas' bath in Gondar, Ethiopia, to celebrate Timket - the Epiphany for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
Source
Original Photograph
Date
January 2002
Author
Jialiang Gao
Permission
(Reusing this image) See licensing below
Other versions A Higher Resolution Version is Available on Request
[edit] Licensing
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses:
GNU head Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

3. Zera Yacob
Zera Yacob ( ) argues that reason, applied to the available evidence, supports the conclusion that the world, God’s creation, is essentially good
Because creation is essentially good, enjoying it is also good

4. Dispositions Zera Yacob calls reason the “light of the heart.”
He uses it to criticize the ethical prescriptions of various religions, which imply that the order of nature itself is wrong
The view from Imet Gogo near Geech camp, Semien Mountains near Ras Dashan.
Taken on August 15, 2005 by Guistino
modified by User:Andro96
Source:
[edit] Licensing
Creative Commons license
Creative Commons Attribution Creative Commons Share Alike This file is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License

5. Dispositions
Rules that restrain our natural dispositions may be acceptable
But those that contradict them cannot be
The Blue Nile Falls fed by Lake Tana near the city of Bahar Dar, Ethiopia forms the upstream of the Blue Nile. It is also known as Tis Issat Falls after the name of the nearby village.
Source
Original Photograph
Date
January 2002
Author
Jialiang Gao
Permission
(Reusing this image) See Licensing Below
Other versions A Higher Resolution Version is Available on Request
[edit] Licensing
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses:
GNU head Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

6. Ethical Test
Reason thus serves as a foundation for morality and as a test for religious beliefs
Any view that teaches that some part of the natural order, or some natural disposition, is wrong cannot be correct

7. Ethics and Religion
Divine command theorists take God’s will as itself making some acts right and others wrong
Many other religious thinkers have believed that God reveals moral truth and that we can know that truth only because God reveals it to us

8. Religion
Defenders of each religion claim that they know the only true way
Obviously, not all can be right
How can we decide who is right?
How can we judge which alleged revelations really come from God?

9. Criterion The only way to tell true revelations from pretenders is
using reason to discover moral truth and
judging the claims of those religions by the light of reason
Ethics must precede religion
It doesn’t depend on it

10. Communitarian Consequentialism
Kwame Gyekye, of the Akan tribe, has written about the Akan view of causality, metaphysics, religion, and ethics
A composed satellite photograph of Africa.
Source
The image is from [1]. I took the two 21600x21600 images, land_shallow_topo_west.tif and land_shallow_topo_east.tif, and composed them. I cropped the resulting image at 8460x
Date
Author
NASA
Permission
(Reusing this image) See below.
Other versions
Cropped image: Sahara
Public domain This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy).

11. Communitarian Consequentialism
Consequentialism: the view that all moral value depends solely on the consequences of actions
Good acts are those that bring about the well-being of society; bad actions work against it

12. Communitarian Consequentialism
Genova - Articoli di artigianato africano e indiano in un mercatino di Natale (dettaglio). I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license:
Creative Commons license
Creative Commons Attribution Creative Commons Share Alike This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License. In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of the file under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one.

13. Individualism
Western consequentialists, who treat the good of a community as the sum of the goods of its members
The Akan maintain that the good of the community cannot be reduced to individual goods

14. Communitarianism According to communitarian consequentialism:
Good acts promote the well-being of society
Social well-being: social welfare, solidarity, harmony, and other features of the social order itself

15. Communitarianism People are essentially social
One can speak of the good of an individual only in terms of the good of the society he or she inhabits
It Takes a Village: People cannot achieve the good on their own; they must rely upon others
Consequently, individual good depends on the good of the community

16. Ordinary and Extraordinary Evils
Extraordinary evils bring suffering to the whole community, not just to individual members of it
Theft, adultery, lying, and backbiting are ordinary evils; they harm specific people, but do little to affect people not immediately connected to the act
Murder, rape, incest, cursing the chief, etc., affect the entire community, undermining a people’s sense of community

17. East African Islamic Ethics
Islam + traditional African beliefs
Sundown/Sunset in Mombasa
Source
Deutsch: Eigenes Foto
English: own work
Date
April 2004
Author
Kolumbusjogger
Permission
(Reusing this image)
GFDL
[edit] Licensing
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license:
GNU head Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

18. East African Islamic Ethics
The key concept is utu, humanity or goodness
Like the English word humanity, utu has descriptive and normative dimensions
Descriptively, it refers to the essence of human beings—what makes us human
Normatively, it refers to what makes us humane

19. “A Human Being is Utu”
Descriptively: tautology—“a human being is human.”
Normatively: we are essentially moral beings
The Tusks in Mombasa, Kenya. Photo taken 2004 by Matthias Krämer.
[edit] Licensing
GNU head
This work is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or any later version. This work is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See version 2 and version 3 of the GNU General Public License for more details.

20. “Utu is Action” Humanity and morality are expressed in what we do
That we are essentially rational and therefore moral beings implies that we deserve moral respect, equally
Moonlight view from Mombasa, Kenya
Source
originally posted to Flickr as Moon Over Mombasa
Date
:21:38
Author
Angelo Juan Ramos
Permission
(Reusing this image)
This image, which was originally posted to Flickr, was uploaded to Commons using Flickr upload bot on 02:40, 3 February 2008 (UTC) by Themightyquill (talk). On that date it was licensed under the license below.
Creative Commons license
Creative Commons Attribution This file is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License

21. “A Human Being is Not a Thing.”
Utu contrasts with kitu (thing)
People must not be used, but must be respected as moral agents
The Shree Swamnarayan Academy in Mombasa, Kenya. Photo taken 2004 by Matthias Krämer.
[edit] Licensing
GNU head
This work is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or any later version. This work is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See version 2 and version 3 of the GNU General Public License for more details.