ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the relationship between dignity and ubuntu, and shows how people might rethink this relationship in some crucial court cases and activist projects in South Africa. The notion of dignity comes from Immanuel Kant's distinction between who and how people are as sensible beings in the world, subjected to determination by the causal laws of nature in their lives as sensual creatures. In the context of South Africa, the remembrance of the postulation of dignity as an ideal that people can never lose is particularly important, for dignity simply is at the level of the ideal. Ultimately a jurisprudence rich enough for the South African Constitution will have to reach beyond the ethical individualism of Ronald Dworkin, and even the radical egalitarian Kantianism of John Rawls. The Judge Yvonne Mokgoro has summarized the many notions of what ubuntu may be as follows: Generally, ubuntutranslates as humaneness.
