Fifth Story
“I am because we are”
Introduction
 The post-amble to the transitional constitution
 Assumptions of the contract: “I” prior to the “we”.
Which came first “I” or “We”?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Individual  rational choice -> community.
End of community?
Belief I: individual prior to the social.
Aka “individualism.”
Ethics: Voluntary. Economic: Capitalist. Law:
Retributive.
6. Alternative? Social precedes individual
7. Eg. “Socialism”; ubuntu
8. End of community: “because”.
9. Belief II: social prior to individual.
10.
Ethics: Obligation. Economics: Shared. Law:
Restorative.
Conclusion:
 Belief I: economics (self-interest) valued over ethical
(awareness of the other)
 Belief II: value ethical over the economic.
 Developmentalism: nationalisation.
 Task: how does one argue merits of Belief II?
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The primacy of the ethical over the economic
1. Ambivalence of the economic
2. Needed: an ‘ethical economy’. How to argue for this? In
three steps
 Understand the finality (aim) of the economic
 The relation between economy and ethics and the
priority of the latter
 Deploying the ethical to direct the economic
A. The final end of the economic circuit: profit or
dignity?
3. Economy: main = subsistence (primary needs)
4. Also secondary needs.
5. Danger: consumption loses sight of human dignity;
prioritises having over being.
6. Through manipulation of economic
7. Circuit: production, distribution, commerce, exchange,
consumption.
8. Exploited at national and inter-national level
9. Instead of dignity, they dehumanization: FIFA
B. The primacy of the ethical over the economic
10.
What is ethics: mediation.
11.
Aim: promote the happiness, direct the ‘good life’.
12.
How: by distinguishing between human activity
and co-ordinate them towards the “good life”.
13.
Esp. the economic given its ambivalence.
14.
No “invisible hand”.
15.
The final end of the economic is not profit
(having) but the good life of all people (being).
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C. Deploying the ethical to the final end of the good life
for all (a “few moral obligations to command economic
activity”)
16.
Subject the various moments of the economic
circuit to moral scrutiny: does the proposed production
fulfill a real need? This may sound sentimental but
consider the billions pent on hosting the FIFA world
cup. This logic of moral scrutiny can be extended to
every moment in the economic circuit – as these
examples illustrate. In short, and argument for moral
regulation. Again, it sounds simplistic but are
affirmative action and BEE not examples of this?
17.
The right to employment (the constitution’s socalled socio-economic rights). A nice electioneering
promise or a moral obligation?
18.
Self-development through national and
international collaboration. Sounds naïve but is part of
the argument for trade negotiations favourable to
emerging economies not moral in this sense?
19.
Variation of the same moral imperative to realize
that I this age of globalization we are al connected now.
We are a global “we” whether we like it or not. We
cannot choose rationally. Voluntarily to be art of this
global “we”. We just are.
20.
The responsibility of third-world leaders: to find
ways of re-instating the developmentalist logic that god
side-lined by the rise of the Chicago School of Economic
and Friedman-style free-market.
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Last tutorial
Reading: M.M. Ya-Mona (2002) “Primacy of the ethical order
over the economic order: reflections for an ethical economy”
– particularly p336-339.
In this concluding section of the article, Yo-Mona offers five
ways in which we can mobilize the ethical over the economic
in order to create an economic order that respects the
dignity of people. Are these suggestions viable or are they
just wishful thinking? Describe the five suggestions in your
own language and then critically evaluate their viability.
Incident
Look at the incident quoted for this section. It is taken from
the TRC. Here at our most crucial political moment, we only
managed to avoid civil war and to constitute a national “we”
because of people, like Cynthia Ngewu’s, commitment to the
social and the ethical over the individual, retributive.
Subsequent to this incident and the TRC process, our
Constitutional Court has declared the death penalty
unconstitutional because “it is not in the spirit of ubuntu”,
that is, it is not in line with who we take ourselves to be,
namely an imagined community or nation founded on an
ethical commitment to each other. Why can we not also
invoke this value to regulate the most capricious dimensions
of the economic circuit?
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Fifth story
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