Anton van Niekerk

Last updated

Anton Albert van Niekerk (born 4 December 1953) is a South African bioethicist and academic based at Stellenbosch University.

Contents

Biography

Van Niekerk was born in Brits, in what was then known as Transvaal, South Africa. After matriculating in 1971 from the Paul Roos Gymnasium School in Stellenbosch, [1] he obtained a BA degree (1974), BA Honours in philosophy (1976), MA in philosophy (1980), BTh (1978) and a licentiate in theology (1979), all cum laude, from Stellenbosch University. He obtained his DPhil in 1983. The title of his MA thesis was The Limits of Critical Reason: a Critical Inquiry of the Rationality Model of Critical Rationalism. His doctoral dissertation was entitled Analogy and Theology: A Critical-Philosophical Investigation of Analogy Theories about the Meaning of Theological Language. Both were supervised by Prof Hennie Rossouw.

Van Niekerk was awarded the Chancellor's Medal for the best final year student from Stellenbosch University in 1980 for his MA. [2] In 1980, he was appointed as lecturer in philosophy at the Stellenbosch University. He was promoted to senior lecturer in 1985 and awarded a professorship in 1989. He created the Centre for Applied Ethics, and the Unit for Bioethics within this centre, at the same university and has been director of both since their inception in 1990. He was chair of the Department of Philosophy at Stellenbosch University from 1990 to 2001 and again from 2006 to 2013. In 2014, he was appointed as one of a select group of distinguished professors [3] at Stellenbosch University. In total, he has written 18 books, 140 journal articles and book chapters and approximately 180 popular articles. He has supervised 26 completed doctoral dissertations and 77 master's theses.

Work

His research fields include bioethics, philosophy of religion and philosophy of the social sciences (with an emphasis upon hermeneutic approaches). Van Niekerk is one of the pioneers of the establishment of bioethics as an academic discipline in South Africa. [4] In 1996, he was largely responsible for the introduction of the MPhil degree in applied ethics at Stellenbosch University, a program which was the first and still is the best known of its kind in South Africa. [5] As a young lecturer, he was at the forefront of political and intellectual debate and a vehement critic of the apartheid regime in South Africa. [6] In 2011, he was assaulted in his office at the university by a member of a reactionary right wing movement as a result of an article of his that was published in a national newspaper. The individual in question had, by his own admission, never read the article and thus applied a sensationalised misinformed interpretation of van Niekerk's argument. The attacker was found guilty of assault and the sentencing provoked widespread national and international media interest. [7]

In 1995, van Niekerk was awarded the Stals Prize for Philosophy by the South African Academy for Science and Art. [8] From 1989 to 2000, he was editor of the internationally accredited South African Journal of Philosophy . [9] From 2003 to 2007, he was Senate Representative on the Council of Stellenbosch University. During that time, he was also chairperson of the Language Committee - a position which brought about the necessity of him playing a prominent role in the Stellenbosch language debate which has raged since about 2004. [10] From 2007 to 2012, he was a director of the International Association of Bioethics. He was one of the founding members of the Ethics Institute of South Africa (EthicsSA), initially on its board from 2000 and its chairman since 2003. From 2001 to 2013, van Niekerk was a member of the Ethics Committee of the South African Medical Research Council and has been the chairperson of the Stellenbosch University's Senate's Ethics Committee since 2009. In 2013, he was appointed by the South African Minister of Health as a member of the National Health Research Ethics Council (NHREC), the highest policy making body for research ethics in South Africa. He has a B2 rating ("undisputed international recognition") as a researcher with the National Research Foundation of South Africa and, in 2011 and 2012, was convener of the NRF panel research ratings in philosophy and political science.

Selected works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stellenbosch University</span> University in South Africa

Stellenbosch University is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant university in Sub-Saharan Africa, together with the University of Cape Town - which received full university status on the same day in 1918. Stellenbosch University designed and manufactured Africa's first microsatellite, SUNSAT, launched in 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antjie Krog</span> South African poet, philosopher, academic, and writer (born 1952)

Antjie Krog is a South African writer and academic, best known for her Afrikaans poetry, her reporting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and her 1998 book Country of My Skull. In 2004, she joined the Arts faculty of the University of the Western Cape as Extraordinary Professor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marlene van Niekerk</span> South African poet, writer, and academic

Marlene van Niekerk is a South African poet, writer, and academic. She is best known for her novels, the satirical tragicomedy Triomf (1994) and the Herzog-winning Agaat (2004), which explore themes including the family, the change in power dynamics occasioned by the end of Apartheid, and inequalities of race, gender, and class. Van Niekerk is also an award-winning poet. She writes in her native tongue, Afrikaans, and teaches at Stellenbosch University.

Die Burger is a daily Afrikaans-language newspaper, published by Naspers. By 2008, it had a circulation of 91,665 in the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces of South Africa. Along with Beeld and Volksblad, it is one of three broadsheet dailies in the Media24 stable.

Paul Roos Gymnasium is a public, dual medium high school for boys in the town of Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa, and opened on the 1st of March 1866 as Stellenbosch Gymnasium. It is the 12th oldest school in the country.

Solomon Johannes "Sampie" Terreblanche was a South African academic economist and writer, author of numerous economics books and was most famous for his History of Inequality in South Africa, 1652–2002. He was Professor emeritus of Economics at Stellenbosch University, where he built a reputation as a lecturer in History of economic thought, Economic history, the Economy of South Africa, and economic systems.

Dr. Daniel Hugo is a poet, translator, compiler and editor. He worked a specialist announcer / producer for Radiosondergrense, the national Afrikaans radio service, and was also responsible for the literary programmes "Leeskring" and "Vers en Klank". He is an edit at the publishing house Protea Boekhuis.

Hermann Giliomee is an author of historical and political studies, former Professor of Political Studies at the University of Cape Town (1983–2002), President of the South African Institute of Race Relations (1995–1997) and Extraordinary Professor of History at the Stellenbosch University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hennie Aucamp</span>

Hennie Aucamp was a South African Afrikaans poet, short story writer, cabaretist and academic. He grew up on a farm in the Stormberg highlands and matriculated at Jamestown, Eastern Cape before continuing his higher education at the University of Stellenbosch. He died in Cape Town at age 80 on 20 March 2014 after suffering a stroke.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stellenbosch High School</span> Public & boarding school in Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa

Hoërskool Stellenbosch is a public Afrikaans medium co-educational in the town of Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa. It was founded in 1978 as a business-oriented technical school, located in the center of town, but moved to the suburbs in the 1980s. It was reserved for white students during Apartheid, but was opened to all races in 1992.

Willem Petrus "Willie" Esterhuyse, OLS is an emeritus professor of philosophy and business ethics at the University of Stellenbosch, a columnist and critic of the system of apartheid.


Professor Louis C. Jonker was born in 1962 in Riversdal, Western Cape province, South Africa.

Johannes Jacobus (Johan) Degenaar was a South African philosopher, and Emertitus Professor at the Stellenbosch University, who is considered "one of the most respected and influential philosophers in South Africa."

Daniel Charl Stephanus Oosthuizen was a South African philosopher, and an early Afrikaner voice against Apartheid. The main direction of his philosophical work lay in the field of epistemology and the philosophy of mind. He was more widely known in South Africa for his moral, political and religious essays, and was described by André Brink as a thorn in the flesh of the establishment. He was a confidant of Beyers Naude, who acknowledged him as having been one of the original group whose discussions and thoughts led to the founding of the Christian Institute of Southern Africa, of which he was both a founder member and a member of the Board of Management. He also contributed to the formation of the University Christian Movement.

Frances Rix Ames was a South African neurologist, psychiatrist, and human rights activist, best known for leading the medical ethics inquiry into the death of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, who died from medical neglect after being tortured in police custody. When the South African Medical and Dental Council (SAMDC) declined to discipline the chief district surgeon and his assistant who treated Biko, Ames and a group of five academics and physicians raised funds and fought an eight-year legal battle against the medical establishment. Ames risked her personal safety and academic career in her pursuit of justice, taking the dispute to the South African Supreme Court, where she eventually won the case in 1985.

Marthinus Versfeld was a South African philosopher. From 1937 to 1972 he taught at the University of Cape Town. He was celebrated as researcher, enjoyed the recognition of the South African literary community and was known as an opponent of the Apartheid system. His work ranged from scholarly books to playful essays on issues like ethics, anthropology, the meaning of life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henk A. M. J. ten Have</span> Ethicist

Henk Antonius Maria Johannes ten Have is Professor emeritus at the Center for Healthcare Ethics at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, U.S.A. where he has been Director since 2010. Previously, he served in UNESCO as Director of the Division of Ethics of Science and Technology (2003–2010). His recent works are: Global Bioethics—An Introduction (2016), Vulnerability—Challenging Bioethics (2016), Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics (2016), and Wounded Planet (2019).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucas Malan</span> South African Afrikaans poet and academic

Lucas Cornelis Malan was a South African academic and writer of poetry, prose, plays, text books, literary reviews and other articles, principally in Afrikaans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conrad J. Wethmar</span>

Conrad Johannes Wethmar is a systematic theologian, reformed theologian and emeritus professor at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. He is guest editor of Verbum et Ecclesia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephanus Muller</span> South African music scholar (b. 1971)

Stephanus Muller is a South African music scholar and writer who has written about South African twentieth-century composition, exile, archiving, language politics, music and apartheid and university institutional transformation. As the last chairman of the Musicological Society of Southern Africa, he was a founding member of the South African Society for Research in Music (SASRIM) in 2006. He also founded the Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS) in 2005 at Stellenbosch University, and the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation (AOI) at the same university in 2016. He received his BMus (performance) from Pretoria University in 1992, MMus (musicology) from the University of South Africa in 1998, and DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2001. Having studied with the writer Marlene van Niekerk, he also holds a MA in Creative Afrikaans writing from Stellenbosch University (2007).

References

  1. ↑ Breuer, Rosemarie. "Anton van Niekerk". Stellenbosch Writers. Retrieved 27 October 2017.
  2. ↑ Yearbook of Stellenbosch University, 2014, p. 11
  3. ↑ "Distinguished professors appointed". Stellenbosch University. Archived from the original on 13 August 2014. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  4. ↑ Van Niekerk, AA & Benatar, SR., "The social functions of bioethics in South Africa" (with SR Benatar) in Catherine Myser (ed.), Bioethics around the globe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011: 134-151; Van Niekerk, AA., "South African Bioethics" in H ten Have & B Gordijn, Handbook of Global Bioethics, Amsterdam: Springer, 2013: 1475-1493.
  5. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 14 August 2014. Retrieved 14 August 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)[ dead link ]
  6. ↑ For a publication in which his views were argued, see Landman, JP, Nel, PR & Van Niekerk, AA: Wat kom na Apartheid?, Johannesburg: Southern Books, 1988, pp. 1-22; 85-96 [What comes after apartheid?]
  7. ↑ Jan Gerber (15 July 2011). "Right-wingers praise attack on prof". News24. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
    - "Attack on Prof Anton van Niekerk reprehensible – Rector". News from Stellenbosch University. 14 July 2011. Archived from the original on 13 August 2014. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  8. ↑ List of Stals prize winners, SA Academy for Science and Art
  9. ↑ All editions of the South African Journal of Philosophy from 1989 to 2000, i.e. volumes 7-19.
  10. ↑ David Beresford (13 November 2009). "Afrikaans 'in retreat' on campus". The Guardian Weekly. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
    - For the story of Van Niekerk’s involvement in the language debate, see Van Niekerk AA, "Op soek na identiteit – Die taaldebat op Stellenbosch", in: H Ester, CN van der Merwe en E Mulder (reds.): Woordeloos tot verhaal: Trauma en narratief in Nederlands en Afrikaans, Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2012: 215-229. [In search of identity in the aftermath of the trauma of the Stellenbosch language debate]. See also Kapp, P: Maties en Afrikaans (Pretoria: Protea Boekhuis, 2013), pp. 74, 121, 133, 151, 159, 179 and 208.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.