Elements of African Bioethics in a Western Frame

7. MORALITY AND CULTURE: ARE ETHICS CULTURE- DEPENDENT?

~ 83 ~ CHAPTER SEVEN MORALITY AND CULTURE: ARE ETHICS CULTURE-DEPENDENT? [A version of this paper is published in the journal Turkiye Klinikleri: Journal of Medical Ethics, Law and History, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 92-97, 2004, and another version in] ABSTRACT In this chapter, it is my contention that cultural diversity is a value akin to biological diversity. As such, it is desirable or at least unobjectionable for a thousand and one cultural flowers to bloom. Moreover, no culture qua culture is either superior or inferior to any other culture. Moral diversity, however, is not a desirable value and universalizability remains the chief identification mark of a genuine moral imperative. Divergence of moral opinion, both within and between cultures is, nevertheless, a palpable fact. Such divergence in my opinion is attributable to human limitations, ego-centrism and fallibility. Moreover, moral divergence over particular issues in no way cancels the broad moral consensus, evident across all human cultures, over fundamental and general moral imperatives. Genuine moral progress at the global level would, no doubt, seem capable of leading to a narrowing in the gaps of moral divergence, although divergence itself may never completely be eliminated. Ethics, therefore, may tend to be culture-dependent but ought not to be culture-dependent; rather should cultures be ethicsdependent , in the sense that every culture or particular aspects thereof, like all other things human, is justifiable only when not in flagrant violation of morality. ~ 84 ~ MORALITY AND CULTURE: ARE ETHICS CULTUREDEPENDENT ?8 Wisdom is scattered in tinny little morsels throughout the world - African adage INTRODUCTION Culture is basically a way of life of a group of people, underpinned by adaptation to a common environment, similar ways of thinking and acting and doing, similar attitudes and expectations, similar ideas, beliefs and practices, etc. There is a remarkable diversity and variety in the human cultures of the world and in the ecological niches in which cultures flourish. This diversity, an observable fact, is analogous to the equally remarkable diversity of the biological world, of the different biological species that populate the earth. Cultures and sub-cultures are like concentric circles (Tangwa 1992, pp. 142143 ) and there is no human being who does not fall within at least more than one such circle, as the nuclear family or, more ideally, the extended family in its African conception, could, in fact, be considered as delimiting the smallest of such cultural circles. Like biological diversity, cultural diversity is thus a datum of our existence with which we may tinker in the hope or with the aim of giving it a particular shape, color or direction. Such tinkering is as liable to achieve satisfactory beneficial results as unbeneficial or harmful ones. For this reason, cultures, like living things, may, over time, flourish or atrophy. But to attempt introducing biological or cultural changes that are too sudden or too drastic is to run the risk of achieving more disastrous than beneficial results. Unlike culture, morality is grounded on human rationality and common biological nature, and on human basic needs which, being common to all, irrespective of culture, may be considered as defining what it is to be human. For this reason, divergence of moral opinion, both within and across cultures, is a descriptive fact which is a shortfalling from the prescriptive ideal. Moral imperatives are necessarily universal. But moral thinking and practices may differ from culture to 8 The original version of this paper was presented at the Europaische Akademie Spring Conference on Bioethics in a Small World, Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Bonn, Germany, 10-12 April, 2003. ~ 85 ~ culture and even from person to person within the same culture, because of human limitations, including the impossibility of perceiving from more than a single point of view, the impossibility of being an experiential participant of all human existential situations, coupled with human ego-centrism and human fallibility. NO HUMAN CULTURE IS PERFECT Human ego-centrism naturally leads individuals to perceive their own culture as the culture, but critical observation and reflection can help to correct such mistaken perception. Professor Michael Novak in his book, The Experience of Nothingness (1970, p.16) remarks that every culture differs from others according to the ‘constellation of myths’ which shapes its attention, attitudes and practices. In his view, it is impossible for any one culture to perceive human experience in a universal, direct way. ...each culture selects from the overwhelming experience of being human...