Fayemi Ademola Kazeem, Macaulay-Adeyelure O C
Department of Philosophy, University of Lagos, Akoka, Nigeria.
Department of Philosophy, Lagos State University Ojo, Nigeria.
BEOnline. 2016;3(4):68-90. doi: 10.20541/beonline.2016.0009. Epub 2016 Nov 22.
The global spread of bioethics from its North-American and European provenance to non-Western societies is currently raising some concerns. Part of the concern has to do with whether or not the exportation of bioethics in its full Western sense to developing non-Western states is an instance of ethical imperialism or bioethical neocolonialism. This paper attempts an exploration of this debate in the context of bioethics in sub-Saharan Africa. Rather than conceding that bioethics has a colonial agenda in Africa, this paper defends the position that the current bioethics trend in sub-Saharan Africa is an unintended imperialistic project. It argues that its colonizing character is not entirely a product of the Western programmed goals of training and institution building; rather, it is a structural consequence of many receptive African minds and institutions. Though bioethics in Africa is turning out as a colonizing project, one serious implication of such trend, if unchecked urgently, is that bioethics' invaluable relevance to Africa is being incapacitated. This paper, therefore, attempts a decolonizing trajectory of bioethics in Africa. Contrary to the pretense of 'African bioethics,' which some African scholars are now defending, this paper through the logic of decolonization makes case for 'bioethics in Africa'. In such logic, the principle of existential needs is prioritized over the principle of identity and authenticity that define African voice in bioethics.
生物伦理学从其北美和欧洲起源地向非西方社会的全球传播目前引发了一些担忧。部分担忧涉及将完全西方意义上的生物伦理学输出到发展中的非西方国家是否属于伦理帝国主义或生物伦理新殖民主义的实例。本文试图在撒哈拉以南非洲地区生物伦理学的背景下探讨这场辩论。本文并不认同生物伦理学在非洲有殖民议程这一观点，而是捍卫这样一种立场，即撒哈拉以南非洲地区当前的生物伦理学趋势是一个无意为之的帝国主义项目。它认为，其殖民性质并不完全是西方在培训和机构建设方面既定目标的产物；相反，它是许多接受它的非洲思想和机构的结构性后果。尽管非洲的生物伦理学正演变成一个殖民项目，但如果不紧急加以遏制，这种趋势的一个严重后果是，生物伦理学对非洲的巨大相关性正被削弱。因此，本文尝试为非洲生物伦理学开辟一条非殖民化的道路。与一些非洲学者现在所捍卫的“非洲生物伦理学”的托词相反，本文通过非殖民化的逻辑论证了“非洲的生物伦理学”。在这种逻辑中，生存需求原则优先于在生物伦理学中界定非洲声音的身份认同和本真性原则。
