Addressing South Africa's Moral Crisis

This book attempts to understand and address the psycho-social dynamics behind South Africa's moral crisis. It describes South Africa as afflicted by state capture, violence, corruption, and the looting of state infrastructure thirty years after the establishment of democracy. It then provides a holistic, social diagnosis of this problem that integrates the findings of different disciplines into an overall picture of the forces at work in South Africa's collective moral decline. Ultimately, this book engages with the deeper psycho-social phenomena behind South Africa's moral decline, arguing that the diagnostic question of why this moral decline has taken place must be answered before turning to the normative question of what ought to happen in this situation. Accordingly, this book explores themes regarding the innate moral capacities of the human person, the effects of need pressures and systemic pressures on ethical decision-making, and the phenomena of distorted motivational drives and distorted behavioral responses. It shows how the framing of virtue-centered moral identities might act as buffers against moral disengagement strategies and assist in promoting pro-social behavior. It then specifies the macro-social changes required to create such an ethical-social climate. The book is of interest to social scientists, ethicists, behavioral scientists, educators, theologians, and moral philosophers. In the end, this case study of South Africa shows us more broadly how maintaining public morality and social cohesion is a challenge that most modern societies face.