The Critique of Bioethical Principlism in Contrast to an African Approach to Bioethics

Though some argue that bioethics in the Black African world is simply a reflection of the Western approach to bioethics, this work suggests otherwise. While the Western approach (bioethical principlism) claims to offer an absolute approach to bioethics in a universalized common morality, this book argues that bioethical principlism can be complemented with African approaches to bioethics. Western principlism, as primarily presented by Thomas L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, can hardly be incarnated in the African context of bioethical problems unless it is complemented by a contextual normative understanding of African social realities, realities that themselves must be enriched by bioethical principlism. Without claiming to offer the last word on intercultural bioethics or disputing which bioethical approaches deserve prioritization, the work interactively relies on ordinary moral experiences that are practically visible in lived social realities, as well as the community realities surrounding Africans south of the Sahara. Prescriptively, in order to not simply promote life but to do so fully, the African ethical system supports an integral community life by continuously promoting the norm of solidarity, continued vitality, and the hierarchization of life within the corporate community, which the individual must not blindly follow but responsibly interact with, without her identity, freedom, and conscience being crushed.