Ubuntu Philosophy: I Am Because We Are
Ubuntu. A Nguni Bantu word from southern Africa that carries in its two syllables an entire philosophy of human existence.
Ubuntu Philosophy: I Am Because We Are
A Word That Contains a World
Ubuntu. A Nguni Bantu word from southern Africa that carries in its two syllables an entire philosophy of human existence. Usually translated as “I am because we are” or “humanity toward others,” ubuntu is not merely a concept. It is an ontology — a theory of being — that places relationship at the center of what it means to be human.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who made ubuntu globally known through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, described it this way: “A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed” (Tutu, 1999).
This is not a sentimental idea about being nice to people. It is a claim about the fundamental nature of reality: personhood is constituted through relationship. You are not first an individual who then enters into relationships. You are a person BECAUSE of your relationships. Without community, you are not merely lonely — you are incomplete. Your humanity itself is diminished.
Mogobe Ramose, the philosopher who has done the most systematic work on ubuntu as philosophy, writes that ubuntu “means humanness — a pervasive spirit of caring and community, harmony and hospitality, respect and responsiveness — that individuals and groups display for one another” (Ramose, 1999). But he stresses that ubuntu is not just an ethic. It is a metaphysics — a way of understanding what exists and what is real. What is most real is not the individual but the relational field from which individuals emerge.
Ubuntu as Ontology
The Person Is Not the Starting Point
Western philosophy, since at least Descartes (“I think, therefore I am”), begins with the individual. The self is the primary reality. Knowledge, morality, and politics are constructed from the individual outward — through social contracts, through rational agreement, through the negotiation of competing individual interests.
Ubuntu begins somewhere entirely different. The community is the primary reality. The individual emerges from the community, is sustained by the community, and finds meaning through the community. The Zulu proverb “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” — a person is a person through other persons — is not a moral prescription. It is a description of how reality works.
This does not mean the individual has no value or no identity. It means that individual identity and value are constituted through relationship. The person who is a good farmer is a good farmer BECAUSE of the community that taught them, the soil that feeds them, the neighbors who help them, and the ancestors whose knowledge they carry. Remove the relationships and the person is not a lesser version of themselves. They are not yet fully themselves.
Comparison With Western Individualism
The difference is profound:
Western individualism says: I am a self-contained being. I own myself. My rights exist prior to and independent of community. Society is a contract I enter for mutual advantage.
Ubuntu says: I am a relational being. I belong to a community that belongs to me. My personhood is constituted through my connections. Society is not a contract — it is the reality from which my selfhood emerges.
Western individualism says: My moral obligations are chosen — I have rights by nature and duties only insofar as I consent to them.
Ubuntu says: My moral obligations are inherent in my relationships — they exist because I exist, because to be a person is to be in relationship, and relationship carries responsibility.
Western individualism says: Freedom means independence from others — the absence of external constraint on my will.
Ubuntu says: Freedom means interdependence with others — the presence of genuine connection and mutual support that allows each person to flourish.
Ubuntu in Practice
Ubuntu in Governance
Traditional African governance, in many regions, operated through ubuntu principles:
Council of elders (indaba/imbizo/pitso): Governance by consultation, not decree. The chief or headman did not rule alone. They presided over a council where community members voiced concerns, debated proposals, and reached collective decisions. The chief’s role was to facilitate consensus, to listen to all voices, and to synthesize the community’s will — not to impose their own.
Decision by consensus, not vote: As with many Indigenous governance systems, traditional African governance sought agreement rather than majority rule. The process continued until a decision emerged that all could accept. The Shona saying “Chara chimwe hachitswanyi inda” — one finger cannot crush a louse — captures the principle: collective action requires collective agreement.
Leaders as servants: The ubuntu understanding of leadership is fundamentally different from the Western understanding. A leader is not someone who commands. A leader is someone who serves — who facilitates the community’s decision-making, who ensures that all are heard, who sacrifices personal interest for communal well-being. The Zulu concept of “isithunzi” — dignity, moral authority, gravitas — is earned through service, not seized through power.
Nelson Mandela, who embodied ubuntu in his political practice, described leadership in these terms: “A leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.” This is not passive leadership. It is leadership that operates through facilitation, trust, and the strategic empowerment of others.
Ubuntu in Justice
Ubuntu provides the philosophical foundation for African approaches to justice that differ fundamentally from Western punitive systems.
The goal of justice is restoration of relationship. When someone causes harm, the ubuntu response is not “How should they be punished?” but “How can the relationship be restored?” Because personhood is relational, harming another person harms yourself — you have diminished your own ubuntu. The path to healing is not punishment but repair: acknowledging the harm, making restitution, and restoring the relational bond.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission. When South Africa transitioned from apartheid to democracy, the question was: how do you address decades of systematic violence without descending into revenge? The answer was ubuntu. The TRC, guided by Tutu’s ubuntu philosophy, chose truth and reconciliation over prosecution and punishment. Perpetrators who fully disclosed their actions received amnesty. Victims received public acknowledgment of their suffering.
The TRC was not perfect. Many victims felt that truth without material reparations was insufficient justice. But it demonstrated that ubuntu could operate at national scale — that a society could face atrocity through relationship rather than retribution.
Connection to restorative justice: The entire restorative justice movement — Howard Zehr’s work, Kay Pranis’s circle process, the shift from punishment to repair — is philosophically grounded in principles that ubuntu has articulated for centuries. The idea that crime is a violation of relationships rather than a violation of law, that justice means repairing those relationships, and that the community has a role in both accountability and healing — these are ubuntu principles.
Ubuntu in Economics
Ubuntu implies an economics of sharing rather than accumulation:
Communal responsibility for welfare. In ubuntu economics, the community ensures that all members have their basic needs met — not through charity but through the structural recognition that individual well-being depends on communal well-being. When one family’s harvest fails, other families share — not from generosity alone but from the understanding that if one suffers, all are diminished.
Against hoarding. Accumulation of wealth while others lack is, in ubuntu terms, a failure of personhood. The wealthy person who does not share has diminished their own humanity. This does not mean there is no personal property. It means that property carries social obligation — what you have in excess of your needs belongs, in some sense, to the community.
Labor as contribution, not commodity. In ubuntu economics, work is a way of contributing to the community — not a commodity to be sold on a market. The person who works is not selling their time but fulfilling their responsibility to the community that sustains them.
Ubuntu and Vietnamese Tinh Cam
The Vietnamese concept of tinh cam — deep feeling, emotional connection, the bond of affection that ties people together — resonates profoundly with ubuntu. Both concepts:
- Place relationship at the center of human identity
- Understand that personhood is constituted through connection
- Value emotional attunement as a primary social skill
- See community as the context in which individual meaning is found
- Recognize that harming others harms yourself because you are connected
Vietnamese culture operates on a web of tinh cam relationships — family bonds, neighborhood bonds, friendship bonds, teacher-student bonds — that create obligation, provide support, and give life meaning. The Vietnamese person who is “nhieu tinh cam” (rich in feeling/connection) is considered a good person — someone whose humanity is fully realized through their depth of relationship.
The Vietnamese proverb “Thuong nguoi nhu the thuong than” — love others as you love yourself — is not a commandment imposed from outside. It is a recognition of what ubuntu and Vietnamese wisdom both understand: the other IS part of yourself. Loving them IS loving yourself, because your humanity is constituted through your relationship with them.
Ubuntu and Buddhist Interdependence
Buddhist philosophy arrives at remarkably similar conclusions through different reasoning:
Dependent origination (pratityasamutpada): Nothing has independent existence. All phenomena arise in dependence on conditions, which include other phenomena. The self is not a substance but a process — constantly arising in dependence on body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness, all of which are themselves dependently arising.
Thich Nhat Hanh’s interbeing: “If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper.” This is the Buddhist version of ubuntu: everything is constituted through its relationships with everything else. Nothing exists alone.
Karuna (compassion): In Buddhist ethics, compassion is not a duty imposed from outside. It is the natural response of a being who understands interdependence. When you realize that the other person’s suffering is connected to your own — because you are not separate — compassion arises spontaneously.
Ubuntu, Vietnamese tinh cam, and Buddhist interdependence are not identical concepts. They emerge from different cultural contexts, carry different nuances, and are expressed through different practices. But they converge on a shared insight that Western individualism has systematically denied: the human being is fundamentally relational. Personhood is constituted through connection. And a good society is one that nurtures, protects, and deepens those connections.
Practical Application: Building Ubuntu in Community
Daily Practices
Greeting as recognition. In many African cultures, the greeting is not casual. It is an act of recognition — acknowledging the other person’s humanity, their presence, their belonging. The Zulu greeting “Sawubona” means “I see you” — not your appearance but your being. The response, “Ngikhona,” means “I am here” — I exist because you have seen me. Make greeting in your community meaningful — not a perfunctory “hey” but a genuine moment of recognition.
Shared meals. Eating together is one of the most powerful ubuntu practices. The shared meal is a material expression of interdependence — we share food because we share life. Regular communal meals build the relational fabric that ubuntu describes.
Story sharing. Regular gatherings where community members share stories of their lives — their origins, their struggles, their joys — build the mutual knowledge that transforms a group of individuals into a community of persons who are part of each other.
Collective grief and celebration. When one family grieves, the community grieves with them. When one family celebrates, the community celebrates with them. The refusal to grieve or celebrate alone is a practice of ubuntu — an enactment of the principle that individual experience is communal experience.
Governance Practices
Indaba (community dialogue). Regular community dialogues where anyone can raise concerns, share perspectives, and participate in shaping collective decisions. Not just for crisis management — for ongoing community self-knowledge.
Consensus-seeking. Governance processes that seek agreement rather than simply counting votes. When decisions are made by consent, the community’s ubuntu is strengthened because no one has been overruled.
Leadership as service. Select leaders based on their capacity to serve and facilitate, not on their ambition or charisma. The ubuntu leader asks: “What does the community need from me?” — not “What can the community give me?”
Justice Practices
Restorative rather than punitive responses to harm. When someone causes harm, the community response is: “How do we restore the relationship?” — not “How do we punish the wrongdoer?” This is ubuntu justice in action.
Reintegration after accountability. After a person has been held accountable and made repair, they are welcomed back fully. Their ubuntu is restored. They are not permanently marked as an outsider.
Ubuntu for a New World
If we are building a new society after collapse, ubuntu offers a philosophical foundation as solid as any in human history. It has sustained communities across southern Africa for centuries. It has inspired one of the most remarkable political transitions in modern history (South Africa’s peaceful transition from apartheid). It provides clear principles for governance, justice, economics, and daily life.
More than this: ubuntu addresses the deepest wound of the civilization that collapsed — the wound of separation. Industrial civilization was built on the premise that human beings are separate — from each other, from nature, from meaning. This separation produced extraordinary technological power and extraordinary suffering. It produced wealth for some and misery for many. It produced a global economy and global ecological destruction.
Ubuntu heals this wound by restoring what was denied: the fundamental connectedness of human existence. “I am because we are” is not just an African philosophy. It is a universal truth that every culture has articulated in its own way — through Vietnamese tinh cam, through Buddhist interdependence, through Indigenous kinship systems, through the ethics of care. The fact that this truth must be rediscovered is itself evidence of how deeply the old civilization lost its way.
In the polyvagal framework: ubuntu describes the ideal neurobiological state — ventral vagal social engagement at the community level. When people genuinely experience themselves as part of each other, the chronic activation of threat systems (sympathetic fight-or-flight, dorsal vagal freeze) that characterizes individualistic, competitive societies gives way to the calm, connected, creative state in which human beings are most healthy, most productive, and most humane.
In the Four Directions: ubuntu is the center — the place where all four directions meet. It is the vision of interconnection (East), the practice of relationship (South), the deep understanding of relational ontology (West), and the practical wisdom of communal governance and economics (North). Ubuntu is not one principle among many. It is the ground from which a fair, kind, compassionate, and wise society grows.
Tutu wrote: “We are made for goodness. We are made for love. We are made for friendliness. We are made for togetherness. We are made for all the beautiful things that you and I know. We are made to tell the world that there are no outsiders. All are welcome.” This is not naive optimism. It is the deepest wisdom of the human species, tested across millennia and across continents: we are because we belong to each other. And a society built on this understanding is a society that can endure.
References
- Battle, M. (1997). Reconciliation: The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu. Pilgrim Press.
- Metz, T. (2007). Toward an African moral theory. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 15(3), 321-341.
- Ramose, M. B. (1999). African Philosophy Through Ubuntu. Mond Books.
- Shutte, A. (2001). Ubuntu: An Ethic for a New South Africa. Cluster Publications.
- Tutu, D. (1999). No Future Without Forgiveness. Doubleday.
- Tutu, D. (2004). God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time. Doubleday.