Abstract
English-speaking research on morally right decisions in a healthcare context over the past few decades has been dominated by two major perspectives, namely, the four principles, of which the principle of respect for autonomy has been most salient, and the ethic of care, often presented as a rival to not only a focus on autonomy but also a reliance on principles more generally. In my contribution, I present a novel ethic applicable to bioethical issues in general, and human procreation in particular, that I argue is a promising alternative to these two approaches. According to this moral theory, an act is right just insofar as it treats people’s capacity to commune with respect, where communing is a matter of identifying with others and exhibiting solidarity with them. This ethic is inspired by relational ideals from the African philosophical tradition, but is shown to be of interest to a broad, global audience with regard to its implications for the morality of reproduction.
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Notes
- 1.
My main reason for drawing on the African tradition is that there are under-explored ideas salient in it that are philosophically promising. For additional reasons to develop African ideas, see Behrens (2013).
- 2.
For a different approach to an African bioethics, which focuses more on vitality as a basic value to be promoted, see Tangwa (2010).
- 3.
A view that starkly differs from some other interpretations of African moral thought, e.g., Tangwa (2007).
- 4.
This explanation differs from a more common, traditional one in the African context, which Segun Gbadegesin has articulated: ‘The use of genetic knowledge for choice of sex is not looked upon favorably because it is considered tampering with the work of God’ (1998, 193).
- 5.
One might suspect that the fourth principle, of justice, could account for the discrimination, but this principle is usually interpreted as a macro-level account of how to allocate medical benefits.
- 6.
I am open to the idea that part of what makes rape wrong is the more ‘general’ or ‘group’ consideration of sexism, of targeting women because they are women, but am suggesting that a necessary condition for prioritization with respect to criminal justice is the presence of a more specific, immediate victim.
- 7.
With degrees of moral status below dignity being based on large differences of ability to be communed with, e.g., between a human baby, a cow, and a fish (on which see Metz 2012a, 399–400).
- 8.
Much of this section borrows ideas and phrasings from Metz (2014).
- 9.
As recent evidence suggests, cited in Metz (2014, 35).
- 10.
This is another place where my reconstruction of African ethics might have implications that differ from the intuitions of traditional sub-Saharan peoples. Segun Gbadegesin remarks that they ‘will not entertain any counsel against natural reproduction because of the belief that one should bear one’s children’ (1998, 188). However, later in the same text he suggests, ‘Surrogate parenthood is not all that strange’ for Africans since it is present in a way in polygamous marriages, in which African women have often helped to rear one another’s biological children (1998, 193).
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Metz, T. (2018). Chapter 4 A Bioethic of Communion: Beyond Care and the Four Principles with Regard to Reproduction. In: Soniewicka, M. (eds) The Ethics of Reproductive Genetics. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 128. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60684-2_4
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