ABSTRACT
The chapter suggests a second original contribution; this presents an interpretation of virtue as a version of eudaimonia ethics. In interpreting the traditional African views of Ubuntu, it builds on insights from analytic metaphysics, semantics, and virtue ethics in general. It corrects the problems in the available developments in Ubuntu and suggests a more comprehensive theory. The chapter demonstrates that ubuntu is a universal quality, hence a virtue. It suggests, as ergon, as the perfect state of human characteristic activities. Going beyond the reductionism of the communitarian versions, it provides a broader conception of the ergon, which refers to relational nature, rationality, and the value of human life (human dignity). Based on these various interpretations of the ergon, the chapter suggests virtues in African thought, self-regarding virtues, other-regarding virtues, intellectual virtues, and moral virtues.
