Part of the School of Law PhD Seminar Series
Tshepo Mosaka (Evidence, Jurisprudence, Legal Argumentation and African Studies)
Abstract
The central focus on this presentation is the question, How shall we live? In the face of the tragic existence of the human condition identified by Nietzsche, Montaigne, Du Bois and others, we are left with little choice but to confront and overcome the polyvalent tragedy that forms a core part of human life.
To this end, we have constructed a variety of social constructs such as: religion, law, music, art and sports to enable us to cope with this tragedy. The insight of Nietzsche, however, is that to sanitise our existence with hollow aesthetics that purport to ignore our tragedy is a big mistake. The primary condition of truth must be to allow suffering and tragedy some room.
Therefore, if the social construct called witchcraft, in Africa, is considered to be representative of all that is negative and evil about our existence, it must be confronted, particularly in the forensic context, with as much zeal as constructs such as justice, virtue, happiness and reasonableness are. This presentation will be concerned with precisely how to go about this in the forensic context.