How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

by Michael Schur

The difference, he says, is that in Africa “these values are practiced on a much deeper level. It is about a real passionate living of humanity, as if humanity is the primary reason for living above all other concerns.” Another writer, Mluleki Mnyaka, further interprets ubuntu as an actual ethical system, which plays “a determining factor in… [the] formulation of perceptions… of African society about what is good or bad behavior.” Okay, we might be thinking, it’s the root of an African philosophy, a worldview related to the ways humans are connected to each other, a humanistic ethos that describes values and good behaviors… but what does the word “ubuntu” actually mean? The answer seems like a bit of a cop-out: “ubuntu” means a lot of different things, no one of them directly or easily explicable in translation. In fact, because it encapsulates a community-specific set of ethical guidelines, it may even have different meanings depending on who you are and which African language you’re speaking; Broodryk notes that the word itself varies—in Zulu it’s ubuntu, in Swahili it’s utu, in Shona it’s unhu, and so on. But the central idea remains the same—it’s always related to humanness, or “the ideal of being human.”