A Moral Theory of Liveliness : A Secular Interpretation of African Life Force

The book is about providing a novel African moral theory; this means it provides a theory about what actions are permissible or impermissible. It does this by mining descriptive works of an African indigenous concept called life force. The book shows that there is a plausible way to secularise life force so the theory does not have to be inherently religious. The author argues that the theory does better at explaining various intuitions and hard cases than utilitarianism and other African moral theories like those that focus on personhood or relational harmony. It also contains a substantial section on metaethics which is about what grounds morality.

A Moral Theory of Liveliness: A Secular Interpretation of African Life ForceAfrican life force or vitalism is the view that literally everything that exists, including both animate and inanimate objects, are imbued with an imperceptible energy that comes from God. This book begins by mining current work on life force, which tends to be descriptive, in order to identify its normative implications. Kirk Lougheed then shows that there is a plausible secular description of life force, that he calls liveliness. This can be understood as a force, not substance, and is associated with health, creativity, reproduction, courage, etc. A lack or decrease of liveliness is represented by disease, weakness, destruction, etc. He appeals to liveliness in order to develop a normative theory with an African pedigree that does not rely on controversial metaphysical assumptions. Lougheed demonstrates how this theory can account for a wide variety of commonly held both African and global moral intuitions. In working out the implications of liveliness as a moral theory, Lougheed compares it extensively to utilitarianism before showing how it better handles some problems for two prominent African normative theories grounded in personhood and harmony. Along the way, he touches on the theory''s implications for human dignity or rights, in addition to what it says about the value of non-human animals and the environment. To conclude he explores possible metaethical grounds of both life force and liveliness. Lougheed believes liveliness as a moral theory should be considered as a plausible contender amongst the current African normative theories, in addition to being considered on a more global scale.