Bildung, ubuntu and the problem of difference and unity?

Bildung, ubuntu and the problem of difference and
unity?
A hermeneutic and postcolonial interpretation

Introduction

In this article I describe the African concept ubuntu and the European concept
bildung. The different interpretations and applications of these two concepts
suggest possibilities for to analyze the relationship between different
traditions. Bildung is a deep rooted concept which currently has different
interpretations in Sweden and Europe. In the English language it does not exist
as a word; however the term “liberal education” is commonly used when one is
referring to bildung. An interesting comparison with ubuntu is that it has some
similarities and some differences to bildung. A traditional concept is always
interpreted in new ways and applied and transformed in relation to society and
history. There are conflicts in the interpretation of bildung and there are
different versions of the concept in use. It can be conservative and applied as
an advocate for a particular a western canon, but it can also be used in a
democratic, liberating way. I feel that this is also the case for ubuntu. My
intention is also to give new interpretations of bildung. Today it is mostly a
particular European concept. But there are interpretations which make it
possible to develop it into a more universal concept, related to cultural
globalization. My main concern is the relationship between difference and
unity and the relation between traditions. I have my orientation in
hermeneutics, which I here try to relate to the postcolonial tradition. I find here

1

a fruitful way to further investigate the relation between the particular and the
universal.

Background

The interpretational situation I am in is late‐ or post modernity Sweden. I have
my roots in Swedish popular education and have written a number of books
about bildung, which is an important concept in this tradition. Bildung can be,
and has been an elitist concept, relating to the division of educated and non‐
educated people in society. The intention of popular education is to make it
possible for everybody to study and develop themselves both as human beings
and as citizens. Or more concisely: to democratize bildung. Bildung can simply
be characterized as an attempt to liberate ourselves from the limitations we
are born into in terms of inheritance and environment; to strive for a wider
understanding of the world and search for knowledge of how people from all
cultural and social backgrounds have lived and thought. The interesting relation
to investigate is the one between our identity, our home, locally and nationally
and the traditions we belong to – and our situation as global citizens, or as
members of something transcending the particular i.e. the universal. Bildung
exists in different versions, a classical, liberal education and as a hermeneutic
concept, as excursion and return. Today there are different attempts to relate
this idea of bildung into the education of a world citizen (Kemp, 2005) and
transcend the western tradition in relation to other traditions (Nussbaum,
1997). These attempts bring their ideas from a European tradition and
hermeneutics. When I started to study the postcolonial tradition I saw wider
possibilities of investigating the problem of difference and unity. The
combinations of hermeneutics and postcolonial tradition is fluently used

2

(Chakrabarty, 2000), and the belief in a new form of humanism and
universalism (Fanon, 1952, 1971).

Knowledge and bildung

The main problem in Europe and the west in realizing this possibility to educate
democratic world citizens is the educational policy driven by The European
Union and OECD. This policy reduces education into investment in human
capital, and knowledge into a commodity subject to prevailing economic
conditions. Bildung becomes here a marginalized concept, and the humanistic
and democratic dimensions are diminished. (Gustavsson, 2006) One way to
counter this trend is to present another understanding of knowledge, to widen
the conception of knowledge and show how a rich understanding can
contribute to a more democratically knowledgeable society. One way to
democratize the educational system and society is to give recognition to
different forms of knowledge used in different professions and fields in society.
It is the same ambition as the African attempt and the initiative from the South
to give recognition to indigenous or traditional knowledge (Odora Hoppers,
2002, de Sousa Santos, 2008). The word in South America is Sabiduria. In
Bolivia the traditional form of knowledge in the field of medicine is today
considered fully legitimate and can be an alternative to contemporary Western
Medicine (Magazine, Latinamerika, 2009). When writing about knowledge with
the ambition of widening the concept in the same way within a European
context I use one of the roots in western tradition: the Aristotelian concept of
knowledge (Gustavsson, 2000). The common understanding of knowledge in
the educational system and society is the platonic concept episteme ‐ objective,
scientific knowledge, in relation to doxa ‐ to hold an opinion or to mean
something. In the Aristotelian tradition there are two forms of knowledge

3

added, techne and phronesis. Techne is the knowledge used in handicraft and
art, a practical, productive, creative form of knowledge. Since 1980’s this form
of knowledge has been recognized in Sweden as professional knowledge, the
knowledge used in different professions, mostly named as tacit knowledge, or
situated knowledge. Phronesis can be translated as practical wisdom, or
practical judgment. It is mostly related to the social, political, or ethical fields.
Phronesis can be characterized as using our judgment in order to decide upon
the most appropriate action in a particular situation in which we are involved.
This is built on experiences, life experience, and not immediately related to a
level of education. Phronesis can be used in different ways. It can be named as
the knowledge carried by the democratic citizen in relation to the scientific
expert. It can be an alternative in the ethical debate, in relation to a utilitarian
or Kantian form of ethics. In many ways it can be related to the concept of
bildung. It is personal knowledge, from the reference point of us regarded as
ethical and political beings. And it is in hermeneutics formulated as a
relationship between the particular and the universal. I make my interpretation
from a particular situation, and what I try to understand is something general.
Bildung in a hermeneutic sense is to transcend our particular situation to the
universal. To widen the understanding of bildung into a more universal concept
it has to be related to other concepts from other parts of the world.

Ubuntu

The common description of ubuntu is in terms of communality. Communalism
seems to be the most important feature of ubuntu. To be a member of a
community of people is constitutional and considered to be the core of African
life:

4

“Whatever happens to the individual happens to the whole group, and
whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual. The individual
can only say: I am because we are; and since we are, therefore I am”. (Mbiti,
1970)

Tutu explains why people after apartheid were forced to choose forgiveness
and amnesty instead of revenge and nemesis. In his African view the meaning
with being a human being is related to ubuntu. He says: A person with ubuntu
is generous, filled with hospitality, friendly, caring and has sympathy for others.
“My humanity is constituted ….. by yours”. “I am human because I feel I belong
somewhere. I am a part of something I share with others. Social harmony is the
summum bonum, the highest value”. To forgive is not just to be altruistic, it
also to be selfish. Revenge and competition runs in conflict this idea, because if
I devastate another or his or her humanity I am deprived of my own. South
Africa was not the first country to experience ubuntu. After the liberation
ubuntu has been tested in several African countries. Tutu is says that when
ubuntu is present in a society that society is in a state of harmony and peace,
but when ubuntu is absent there is violence and death, as in Rwanda and
Congo where disastrous events have been taken place (Tutu, 2000)

Ubuntu is a multi‐faceted and complex concept. In one way it can be
considered to be the root of African philosophy. In another way it can be used
in a way that is far from any connection with the understanding of being an
African in the universe. “Ubuntu does not mean the same thing to Archbishop
Tutu as it does to the Ubuntu armed response company”. (Higgs, 2009) There is
a warning to romanticize ubuntu and see pre‐colonial African societies as
embodying ubuntu. If that was the case there wouldn’t have been any conflicts.
We have to accommodate the element of contesting opinions and not place

5

too much focus on the actual concept. Ubuntu is interpreted in different ways;
it has been interpreted differently in the past and the present. If we realize that
it is possible to use the concept for contemporary reasons, it is possible to
make selected interpretations in order to find the most emancipating
dimensions (Suttner, 2008)). Tutu’s interpretation of ubuntu is made from a
Christian point of view. We are all equal before God. It is another perspective
on the Bible than that of the Afrikaner settlers. Here, by applying the western
interpretation of the bible, the colonial powers had the right to civilize the
uncivilized. Tutu’s theology is related to theology for liberation and gives a new
narrative to the building of the rainbow nation. This gives rise to a change from
Christian hegemony to religious plurality (Paul, 2009). This powerful metaphor
can be compared with Mandela’s combination of African, Indian and European
traditions. In my interpretation this is a philosophy in practice which transcends
the limits of being a member of just one tradition. The combination of ubuntu,
Gandhi’s struggle for peace, and liberal European thought makes it possible to
create unity within a differentiated society. The prisoners on Robben Island
played the Greek drama Antigone and used it to depict liberation. (Mandela,
1995). By emphasizing the separation of cultures and considering them as
closed units creates limitations for a possible liberation. Hegel (1807) used
Antigone as a means of understanding power, and he created two potentially
liberating concepts ‐ bildung and the postcolonial concept the other.

Bildung in transformation

Bildung is a European concept with roots dating back to classical Greek culture
400 BCE. It has become a central concept in modernity, mostly used in the neo‐
humanistic tradition to widen and develop “the hard Enlightenment”. Still a
belief rooted in reason, but wider than instrumental reason to include values

6

and ethics. It is in this version we find an individualistic concept ‐ the bildung of
the personality. Today the classical concept of bildung is used in many ways in
the educational system, mostly as a mean to widen the understanding of
knowledge and education. The classical is rooted in the humanistic tradition
with the development of the personality as the aim i.e. relating knowledge to
personal and human growth. Vilhelm von Humboldt used it as a tool in the
development of universities into research institutions from previously being
mainly career oriented institutions. Free search for knowledge had free
institutions as a prerequisite, free from the market and the state. In the
development it became elitist and in the school system with a strong emphasis
on classical and cultural heritage, originating from the classical Greek and
western traditions. Today it is expressed in the canon tradition, with great
works here again with the focus on western classics. The opposition is
expressed in terms of identity politics in terms of class, gender, race, ethnicity
and sexuality. Expressed in Foucaudian terms it is the white, middle class,
heterosexual male who holds power while marginalizing other identities. In a
book of mine published in 2007 there were contributions that transformed
bildung in both high tech‐cultural and postcolonial terms. Here, the humanistic
subject does not exist; cyberspace and the internet stand in focus. The
postcolonial interpretation of Goethe’s concept world literature is formulated
in terms of different literature from different parts of the world mirroring each
other(Gustavsson, 2007) Liberal education, mostly existing in English and
American colleges, is today being transformed from a classical concept with
great books and a core in curriculum into possibilities for studying other
cultures (Nussbaum, 1997) A critical scrutiny of one’s own culture, opening for
the other, and narrative imagination, is formulated in opposition to a
instrumentalized educational system. In Sweden this is the main tool in the

7

ambition to enrich higher education, which lies in contrast to the stand point of
the EU and OECD which allows knowledge and education to be strongly
influenced by economic conditions

So, what we can see is that a classical, deep rooted concept is transformed in
relation to the transformation of society. Still, it can be applied to humanize
and democratize a commodity based system. But humanism and democracy
become something else ‐ it is not the Cartesian subject ‐ it is not mainly
parliamentary democracy (Gustavsson, 2009). Looking one step further we see
the formulation of a world citizen, taking the point of departure in bildung as
excursion and return. The first to formulate it in terms of interpretation and
understanding is Gadamer, with a quote from Hegel: “To find your own in the
foreign and the foreign in your own” (Gadamer, 1985)

The idea of bildung in the version I use has the same source. Phenomenology of
spirit can be interpreted as a journey, an excursion and return. Humanity
(limited to the west) makes an excursion from its origins in Athens 400 BCE,
however becomes alienated in its relationship with bildung, and the search for
its return home in the reconciliation between the individual, the civil society
and the state. It has to do with alienation, how we from our own
interpretations, the acquainted, open ourselves up to the unknown and
foreign. In terms of experience we leave our familiar “home”, go out into the
world and meet new experiences, and we come back to a new home, making
new interpretations since we have encountered something new out there. This
relation between the known and the unknown is a crucial question. From an
ordinary hermeneutic point of view we widen our horizons when we assimilate
the foreign and unknown into what is already understood. The too often
misunderstood metaphor Gadamer uses for opening, to set the former

8

interpretation in play, is simply, play (Spiel). To take a step further, we have to
make the already acquainted foreign to us in order to take in a new
interpretation. Here lies the transformation of the hermeneutics which opens
for the postcolonial horizon. It is in the space between where a new
interpretation is made, in the translation, where creativity and imagination
opens for new possibilities. The German and Swedish word for experience is
erfahrung, erfarenhet, the root of which “fahr”/ “far” means to go out, to
travel. The story of excursion and return can be multi‐faceted and rich. In
western tradition we have them in the Odyssey and in the Bible. The Odyssey
can today be interpreted critically, in terms of gender and in postcolonial
transformations. It is a story told and retold again. The lost son in the Bible is
can refer to gain understanding of oneself by initially loosing oneself. The
classical story from the last century, Ulysses by James Joyce, is a story of an
antihero, loosing himself during a day in Dublin in colonized Ireland. In
postcolonial literature the stories are other stories, treating the problem of
belonging to an unstable, ambivalent world, the enigma of the arrival, to be
hybridized. This double experience adds richness to these narratives. We can
find the story of excursion and return in stories from the Andes, from African
legends and from India. Is it a universal way to tell the story of the human
being?

The other

There is a common source of bildung and the other; Hegel’s The
phenomenology of the spirit (1807). Hegel was totally caught up in a western
tradition, for instance he counted out Africa in the development of the world
spirit. But on the other hand he created the concept of the other, which serves
as a theme throughout history to give voice to the oppressed. The other is

9

formulated by Hegel in terms of lordship and bondage. The context is the
creation of our self‐consciousness, which is created when it is being
acknowledged by another. This is the whole story of recognition. When a “self‐
consciousness is faced by another self‐consciousness; it has come out of itself.
This has a two‐fold significance: first, it has lost itself, for it finds itself as
another being; secondly, in doing so it has superseded the other, for it does not
see the other as an essential being, but in the other sees its own self”. (Hegel,
p.111)

This relationship is necessary both for the lord and the bondsman, they hold
each other in chains, both in struggle to death, and mediated in recognition.
This idea is continued in the Marxist relationship between the capitalist and the
worker, to the feminist relationship between man and woman (Beauvoir) and
into the postcolonial relationship between the colonizer and the colonized
(Fanon). The common solutions to the problem of oppression, emancipation or
liberation, are, as we know, revolution, or eternal historical struggle. Hegel
regarded the possibility of liberation as being the bondsman realizing him‐or
herself in the material world, through work using physical exertion. The master
is dependent on that and is for this reason more dependent on the bondsman
than vice versa. Paris in the 1930’s‐ and 40’s, is said to have experienced the
first postcolonial wave. Through Kojevé’s re‐interpretation of Hegel, both
Beauvoir, Le deuxieme sex, and Fanon create their versions of the reason for
and the liberation from oppression. This is the first time Africa is recognized
from a postcolonial perspective in Europe. Here Fanon is writing his Peau Noir,
masques blancs. What he is saying here is that he believes in a new form of
humanism, beyond the categories put forward by colonial powers. At the same
moment the colonizer sees himself as the owner of the true humanism he is
denying it, because to be true it has to be for every human being. At the same

10

moment when the colonizer demands “western” universal values, he has
revealed them as particular. Fanon believes in a true humanism and a new
form of universalism. The way to achieve it is not to deny the other, but to
recreate the inter‐subjective relations. To deny the humanness of the colonizer
is to deny oneself. The means of achieving this is by using dialogue and
diplomacy, the re‐codification of established values. And as Spivak later
formulated “a never‐ending critique of what you cannot deny Human rights”.
(Spivak, 1988).

Studying other traditions

There are some attempts to relate bildung to the education of a world citizen.
The attempt is made by the Danish philosopher Peter Kemp. He takes this
hermeneutic idea as a point of departure (Kemp, 2005, 2010). Two ideas from
Paul Ricoeur are important here, mimesis and oneself as another. For Ricoeur
the narrative is the main mean for us in creating our identity and the
understanding of oneself as another. We understand ourselves in our attempts
to understand the world, the interpretations of ourselves and the world are
interrelated. One phase in our understanding is the pre‐narrated life ‐ life
before we have told our stories. That is mimesis 1. The narrative we tell or
read, all the narratives we have, is mimesis 2. When we listen to, or read the
narratives, we make reinterpretations of our life and self‐understanding – we
think and act in another way. That is mimesis 3 (Ricoeur, 1988). The main idea
in educating a world citizen in this sense is to critically study ourselves and our
traditions, and from that point study other traditions. The meaning is that we
understand ourselves in another way when we meet what is foreign. In order
to do this we need narrative imagination. Oneself as another (Ricoeur, 1992) is
11

an attempt to formulate identity in relation to the other, and build an ethics in
relation to the good (the particular), and the right (the universal). The vision is
a good life, with and for others, in just institutions. This is a democratic vision.
It also has a democratic tendency in the view of the human being as narrating
events. We are narrative creatures, creating our identities and understanding
of others through narratives. A central question is whose narrative; that every
human being has a life‐story to tell is self‐evident. However when it comes to
literature nearly all examples in the hermeneutic traditions are derived from
the western canon. Here postcolonial literature is outstanding. Here we learn
about the double experiences from two worlds, or traditions and the third
space ‐ the space “in between”. The third space can be the ambivalence of this
“in between”, which allows room for a politics of difference (Bahba). In
hermeneutic terms it is the space between the acquainted and the
unacquainted, the space for imagination, creativity and opening to new
perspectives. (Cavalcante‐Schuback, 2008). Let me briefly give two examples,
from Africa and India respectively. Tayeb Salih Season of migration to the north,
and Salman Rushdie The satanic verses. Salih’s novel is an alternative or
contrasting story to Conrad’s Heart of darkness. In Chakrabarty’s terms the
boat going down the river Congo is described as going back in time, into the
horror and darkness. (Chakrabarty, 2000) In Salih’s novel the man is travelling
from a village in Sudan, to Cairo, and from there to London. In London he
becomes his own master, within education through his intellect, and with
women by applying his charm and charisma. It ends in disaster as he becomes
increasingly estranged from his Sudanese roots his life finally ending in despair
– the reader is reminded of Kurtz final words “Horror, horror” in The Heart of
Darkness. Rushdie’s novel begins with Gibreel and Saladin’s fall from a hi‐
jacked airplane and the two main characters see everything falling apart,

12

nation, home, community. Back in London they are reborn, one as an angel and
one as a devil. They have lost themselves but are transformed. The common
term is hybridity. Rushdie’s alternative to go back to a lost passed time is to
recover everything, both in India and in England, defending the right to be a
secularized Muslim in both countries.

Difference and unity

One of the main problems in contemporary research and discussion is the
relationship between “the politics of difference”, and different attempts to
unify and focus on aspects that people have in common. Most salient in the
west is the discussion on democracy, where Jurgen Habermas and Antony
Giddens are searching for universal forms and Chantal Mouffe oppose from a
agonistic point of view (Mouffe,2005) In the postcolonial tradition Fanon
believes in a re‐codification of established values and a reformulation of inter‐
subjective relationships, to reach a new form of humanism and a true
universalism (Fanon, 1971). Bhabha writes about difference and considers the
discourses about cultural wholeness (unity), to encourage power of one over
another. The immigrants are in a situation of marginality and third space, with
an identity which is characterized by instability. It is in the third space the
possibility of change is found. The hybridity is created in translation and
creativity where new combinations arise. In the translation of well established
cultural forms into something altogether less tangible Rushdie openly provoked
the fundamentalists.

In the hermeneutic tradition Gadamer’s fusion of horizons is usually taken as
an example of unifying thinking. This is true only if we believe that he thought it
was possible, or if it is an ideal after which we strive. The problem is the
relationship between the acquainted and unacquainted. A traditional

13

interpretation has been that the home is stable and safe to relate the new and
foreign to. In my interpretation this takes place in the space between the
acquainted and unacquainted, where the place is to imagine something foreign
and create something new. This is the true dialogue Fanons was asking for, and
can be related to the third space. Cultural difference is something else than
diversity (kulturell mångfald). It is a changeable and equal representation of
cultural difference. Third space can either be interpreted as two points which
give rise to a third, or that there exists a third space, giving rise to two
positions. To understand difference translation and hybridity are central.
Creation of diversity can limit cultural difference, since norms values and
particular interests are hidden. All cultures exist in relation to each other,
creating symbols and different subjects. Meaning is created in the gap between
what is different; hybridity is a border or an “in between” space in which
negotiations between differences take place. Third space is a way to describe
and articulate a productive room in which new possibilities can take place. This
space problematizes existing borders for culture and identity. The production
made here disrupts established borders. We do not really know what will come
out from the third space, it is unpredictable, but opens to new interpretations
both from yourself and the other. This is always critical to essential
descriptions, in which the source, the original is taken for granted. (Bhabha,
1994)

Exchanging contexts

At the moment of liberation in the 1990’s when I had my first experience with
South Africa, I could see that concepts like lifelong learning and knowledge
could be used in many different ways. The intention with the concept here was
to give equality to education and training, theoretical and practical knowledge.

14

From this viewpoint I fully realized the European trend which had lead to a
transformation of lifelong learning from a social and democratic concept into a
human capital concept. From that point my ambition was to criticize these
restrictive tendencies and try to formulate humanistic and democratic
alternatives, in a new way. This relationship between being critical and being
creative is important. From a postcolonial perspective it is important both to
deconstruct and reconstruct, in the ambition to ethically and politically achieve
something better. In doing this the postcolonial insight that western modernity
is the yardstick for other contexts for not being “there yet” is crucial. The
critique of the European monopoly of human rights, democracy and universal
values is important.

In the South African‐ Swedish cooperation on democratizing education I tried
to treat the problem in terms of the particular and the universal. With the
particular I mean different life‐worlds, formulated in hermeneutical terms, or
different identities or communities (Chakrabarty, 2000). With the universal I
mean the right, in terms of human rights and criteria for justice, for instance in
terms of every human beings right to develop one’s capabilities, whilst
preserving respect for the integrity for different life‐worlds. The right to tell,
the right to our narratives is included, the enunciative right – the right to
dialogue, to create meaning, to be interpreted, to tell and be heard (Bhahba,
1994). It is in the intermediated relation; in the space between the particular
and the universal we can search for a possibility to transcend the differences.
Or, which is the alternative, to stay in difference, in which respect for different
life‐worlds is encouraged. The problem of being a citizen in both a local, a
national and a world citizen is still there. In other words, we are different parts
of a common humanity, both divided and in unity. The experience of the South‐
African truth commission is an outstanding example of testing the politics of

15

difference and the right to tell, with the intention to unite a country in all its
differences. According to the initiator of the commission Desmond Tutu, this
could not have been possible without the African concept ubuntu.

In the search for a possible transition of and a dialogue between traditions we
have used ubuntu and bildung as examples. I am at home in a European
concept of bildung and try to use it with the ambition to humanize and
democratize the society in which I live and work. With these insights I realize
that it is not possible in a globalized world to stay in just one tradition. By
maintaining a critical point of view of our own tradition, we become open to
other traditions. When I read about ubuntu and the use of it in an African
context I can see both differences and similarities. Exactly in the same sense as
is said about ubuntu, to search for the most liberating interpretations, we have
to when it comes to bildung. The classical concept of bildung in the sense of
Vilhelm von Humboldt is an individual concept, in the sense that the
communality of ubuntu is an alternative to. But in the hermeneutic concept of
bildung in Gadamer’s sense there is a concept of community, that our
interpretations are communal (sensus communis). This can be used as and also
receive criticism for being communitarian and creating a “tribal society” of
closed entities. It is in the (third) space between the acquainted and the
unacquainted, between traditions, between the particular and the universal we
can search for new possibilities.

References

Bhahba, H. 1994. The location of culture, London

Battle, M. 2009. Ubuntu, I in you and you in me, Seabury books, New York

Cavalcante‐Schuback, M. 2006. Eulogy on nothingness, Essays on hermeneutics

16

Chacrabarty, D. 2000, Provincializing Europe, Postcolonial thought and
Historical difference, Princeton university press

Conrad, J. 1902. Heart of darkness

Fanon, F. 1971. Peau Noir, masques blancs, Editions du Seuil

Gadamer, H.G. 1985 Truth and Method, Sheed and Ward

Gustavsson, B. (2004). Revisiting the philosophical roots of practical knowledge.
In J. Higgs, B. Richardson, & M. Abrandt Dahlgren (Eds.), Developing practice
knowledge for health professionals (pp. 35‐51). Edinburgh: Butterworth
Heinemann.
Gustavsson, B. (2008). Knowledge and ethics in a democratic society.
Symposium conducted at 4th International Barcelona conference on higher
education. Guni Newsletter Global University Network for Inno‐vation, 40.
Retrieved January 15, 2009, from http://www/guni‐rmies.net/news/detail

Gustavsson, B. (2009) in Swedish (The new conditions of education: new
perspectives on knowledge, bildung and democracy, WW
Hegel, F. 1977, 1807. Phenomenology of Spirit, Oxford university press
Higgs, P. 2009, Response to my paper on the seminar Bildung and ubuntu,
plurality and Reciprocity: What possibilities for transcending Western
understandings in a Democratic and Globalized world. UNISA, 2009

Hoppers Odora, C. 2002. Ed. Indigenous Knowledge and the integration of
knowledge systems, Towards a philosophy of articulation, New Africa books

Jonsson, S. 2007. Essay on a novel by Kafka, in Gustavsson, B. ed. The
transformation of bildung, Daidalos

Joyce, J. Ulysses

Kemp, P. 2010. Citizen of the world, Cosmopolitan ideals for the 21 century,
Humanity Books

17

Mouffe, C. 2005. On the political, Routledge

Paul, S.A. 2009. The Ubuntu God, Deconstructing a South African Narrative of
Oppression, Princeton Theological Monograph

Mandela, N. 1994 The long walk to freedom Little, Brown and company

Nussbaum, M.C. 1997. Cultivating Humanity, A classical defense of reform in
liberal education

Ricoeur, P. 1988. Time and Narrative, The university of Chicago Press

           1992. Oneself as another, The university of Chicago Press

Rushdie, S. 1988, The satanic verses

Salih, T. 1966. Season of migration to the north

Serequeberhan, T. ed. 1991. African philosophy, The essential readings,
Paragon issues in philosophy

Sousa Santos, B de. Ed. 2007. Another knowledge is possible, Beyond Northern
Epistemolgogies. Verson books

Suttner W. 1994. Africanisation: African identities and emancipation in

contemporary South Africa,

Tutu D. 2000. No future without forgiveness, London, Rider

Vervliet C 2009. The human person, African ubuntu and the dialogue of
civilizations, Adonis and Abbeys publishers

18

19