Toward an African Moral Theory*

Here I introduce the symposium issue of the South African Journal of Philos-ophy that is devoted to critically analysing my article “Toward an African Moral Theory. ” In that article, I use the techniques of analytic moral philoso-phy to articulate and defend a moral theory that both is grounded on the val-ues of peoples living in sub-Saharan Africa and differs from what is influen-tial in contemporary Western ethics. Here, I not only present a précis of the article, but also provide a sketch of why I have undertaken the sort of project begun there, what I hope it will help to achieve, and how the contributors to the symposium principally question it. I am deeply grateful to the editors of the South African Journal of Philosophy for sug-gesting the idea of a symposium devoted to “Toward an African Moral Theory” (2007) and for making it happen. To start things off, I present not only a précis of this article, as is customary, but also a sketch of why I have undertaken the sort of project begun, what I hope it will help to achieve, and how the contributors to this symposium