Eighth Global Ethic Lecture
15 June 2009
Desmond Tutu, Former Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
“Global Ethic and Human Dignity:
An African Perspective”
“In most of Africa the worldview is one that embraces something called Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is the essence of being human, a person. We say: I need you to be all
you can be, so that I can be all that I can be. It is that my humanity is caught
up in your humanity. The solitary human being is a contradiction in terms.
We say: a person is a person through other persons. I have gifts that you don't
have. And you have gifts that I don't have. And then God says: ‘Voilà,
it's exactly so that you know your need of one another, that you are created
to exist in a delicate network of interdependence.’”
