The Traditional African Perception of a Person Some Implications for Bioethics

Abstract

Some Implications for Bioethics Western moral philosophy is driven by the attempt to sharply distinguish persons from the rest of the cosmos, and then to identify the ways in which persons must be treated. The traditional African approach is different on both counts. Wir dze wir! (A human being is human being is human being, simply by being human being.) In Lamnso', my natal language, there is the saying, wan dze wan dze lim Nyuy: baby/child is baby/child, handiwork of God. The saying signifies the unconditional acceptance of neonate, irrespective of how it comes about, no matter how it is, no matter what its particularizing and individuating physical and mental attributes. Wan dze wan leads directly to wir dze wir at the level of the adult human Wir dze wir can best be rendered into English as a human being is human being is human being, purely and simply by being human being. The implication of these sayings is that while the Nso', the indigenous speakers of Lamnso', surely recognize various stages in the progressive maturation of human being--babies, infants, children, young persons, adults, or elders--and although Nso' society is very hierarchical one with great respect accorded to titled individuals, to age and experience, and while they can further regroup those who fall within any of these categories according to still other criteria, such categorizations do not carry any moral significance. Moral consideration and desert, in the Nso' conception, are indiscriminately due to all human beings, regardless of their individuating characteristics, status, or social rank. Nso' morality is thus human-centered in the sense that only human beings are deemed to be moral agents, with moral obligations and responsibilities, but not in the sense that moral consideration and concern are limited to human beings. Human beings have various moral obligations, duties, and responsibilities toward God, nonhuman animals, plants, and inanimate nature, but these are not considered in any sense as reciprocal.[1] From the point of view of logic, wan dze wan and wir dze wir may sound like contentless tautologies, but within their linguistic and cultural universe they connote the reverential respect with which anything human is approached. Wan dze wan and Wir dze wir are also plastically loose and flexible rather than cast-iron rigid with regard to exactly what they encompass. The term wir stands indiscriminately for both human being and human person, as typically distinguished in Western discourse, while wan performs the same function indiscriminately for child, baby, or infant (irrespective of age). But this imprecision and plastic flexibility may be exactly what is required. The meaning of the terms is evident without being spelled out in precise detail. It is like big Bamenda gown that is never made to be tight and can fit many different people of greatly differing shapes, sizes, and other particulars--or single individual through many changes in shape, size, and weight. Any attempt to nail either of the terms onto hard analytic frame, by specifying necessary and sufficient criteria, conditions, or capacities for being human or for being child, would make it evaporate into thin air. The moral worth of the entity for which the Bamenda gown is made remains constant and unchanging through whatever physical, mental, and socio-politico-economic changes she or he undergoes. Personhood in the West Western philosophy has perenial obsession with the concept of person, and more importantly with criteria for personhood that would clearly segregate those entities worthy of moral consideration from those without or with less moral worth. There have been great debates, for instance, about the moral status of fetal material, fetuses, human infants, children, mentally defective people, brain-dead patients, animals, and plants, with assumptions and implications about how they can or should be used or treated, and how their treatment differs from that of paradigmatic humans. …