Here’s a proverb that I think comes close to encapsulating the whole idea: A person is a person through other people. Ubuntu is Scanlon’s contractualism, but supercharged. It’s not just that we owe things to other people—ubuntu says we exist through them. Their health is our health, their happiness is our happiness, their interests are our interests, when they are hurt or diminished we are hurt or diminished. The virtues that political scientist Michael Onyebuchi Eze cites as being characteristic of ubuntu ring an Aristotelian bell—“magnanimity, sharing, kindness”—but the emphasis is now on
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