  After the reflective activities of the individual moral thinkers, the beliefs and presuppositions of a people about right and wrong conduct, good and bad character—all of which featured in the moral life of the people prior to the activities of moral thinkers—remain substantially or generally unscathed; they continue to constitute the moral framework within which the members of the society function. Thus, even though a theoretical (or, academic) distinction can be made between morality as constituted by the moral beliefs and principles that a group of people abides by in their daily lives (let us refer to this kind of morality as morality1) and morality or ethics as comprising the reflections of moral thinkers on human conduct, on morality1 (let us refer to the reflective enterprise regarding morality as morality2), nevertheless, to the extent that morality2 provides a clarification and better explanation and understanding of morality1, it can be said that the two terms, morality and ethics, refer essentially to the same moral phenomenon—human conduct—and, thus, can be used interchangeably. Thus, in this entry, the term ‘African ethics’ is used to refer both to the moral beliefs and presuppositions of the sub-Saharan African people and the philosophical clarification and interpretation of those beliefs and presuppositions.