Abstract

The Socratic shift in philosophical thinking from nature to the human person marked the birth of ethical thinking in the history of Western philosophy. It was also the starting point of anthropocentric ethics. African philosophy, on the other hand, has developed a relational conception of human beings in intimate and permanent interaction with the natural environment. It is from this interconnected and interdependent outlook that a cosmo-anthropocentric ethic, which consists considering human well-beings only in relation with other constituent elements of the cosmos, has emerged. In this chapter, I critically explore the (African) Mandingo agrarian environmental ethics. Anchoring my reflection on medieval and pre-colonial Mandingo oral and written texts such as the Mandingo hunters’ Oath and the Charter of Kouroukan Fuga, I show that the Mandingos included the natural environment in their moral conception of the universe.