How Relationality Precedes Thought: Descartes’ Cogito in Light of Ubuntu

Abstract This essay argues that Descartes’ cogito , although a significant contribution to so-called ‘Western’ epistemological and ontological traditions, reveals new insights when tested against an Ubuntu -relational framework. The framework that allows for Descartes’ method of doubt and the conclusions about being that follow is, for us, inadequate, as it fails to address some crucial presumptions that trail a relational perspective. It is in this inadequacy that the cogito loses its promise and bows to what we take to be a more comprehensive foundational truth from the African perspective; that relationality precedes thought and concretises existence. What follows, then, is our attempt to show that this thesis is plausible by re-examining the Cogito in light of the Ubuntu relational framework. To do this, we will provide a brief exposition of Descartes’ journey towards the Cogito , especially as presented in the Meditations and the Discourse on Method . Having done that, we will proceed to outline a metaphysical account of the Ubuntu relational framework, and, finally, place Ubuntu in conversation with Descartes’ cogito . It is in this conversation that new insights on (at least) one foundational truth would be revealed – ‘ Konke kuyikho ngokunye’ ; that is, that ‘all things are, through other things’.