Re-Examination of the Traditional Yoruba Cultural Traditions of Morality and Their Implication for Abundant Life

Abstract

This paper is a critical re-examination of the ways the ancient1 Yoruba conceive of morality and how that conception affects their intersubjective relations and their notion of abundant life. The paper addresses the pertinent questions, such as what does it mean for the Yoruba people to have abundant life? What are those modes of behaviours that constitute for the Yoruba morality and how and where are those notions derived from? How Yoruba cultural society transmits those patterns of moral behaviours such as: generosity/hospitality, kindness, respect for life, truthfulness and, etc. to individuals as a system of inherited conceptions from generation to generation? How have those conceptions changed in modern times? What role can religion play in informing, coordinating, synthesizing and moderating individuals and the collectives to conform to the culturally perceived moral abundant life? The paper uses anthropological and descriptive phenomenological methods of enquiries to argue that in the modern day Yorùbá world, traditional Yoruba conception of moral virtues would still need to be revisited.