Ubuntu
Etymology
From the Nguni Bantu languages (such as Zulu and Xhosa), where umuntu means "a person" and ubuntu is the abstract quality of "personhood" or "humanity." It is often summed up by the maxim umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, "a person is a person through other people." The word is ancient in these languages, but its prominence as a stated philosophy grew sharply in post-apartheid South Africa, championed by figures like Desmond Tutu and invoked in the reconciliation era.
noun · /uu-BOON-too/
A Southern African ethical concept holding that a person becomes fully human only through their relationships and community with others.
What it names
The idea that your humanity is not a private possession but something realized through and reflected back by other people.
Example
She ran the shop on a kind of ubuntu, treating a customer’s hard month as partly the whole neighborhood’s business.
Related idea
Individualism locates worth and identity in the self-contained person; ubuntu locates them in the web of relationships that person belongs to.