Bioethical False Truths: Egoistic and Relativistic Autonomy vs. Christian and Ubuntu Relational Autonomy

By Fr. Leonard Tumaini Chuwa

Autonomy is either relational or it does not exist at all. All life is irreducibly relational and human personhood is helplessly engaging and being engaged by all life. Significant as individual personal consciousness is, consciousness of others as fellow selves is a higher form of consciousness. It is the other selves that define and affirm the autonomous individual. Relationality is the basis of autonomy. This work claims that autonomy should not undermine relationality and that individual good is based on common good. Overemphasizing autonomy may lead to moral relativism, hence ethical anarchism. Veracity ought to be the proto-principle of bioethics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781098094416

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BIOETHICAL FALSE TRUTHS

Egoistic and Relativistic Autonomy vs. Christian and Ubuntu Relational Autonomy

Fr. Leonard Tumaini Chuwa, PhD

ISBN 978-1-0980-9440-9 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-0980-9441-6 (digital)

Copyright © 2021 by Fr. Leonard Tumaini Chuwa, PhD

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

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Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Abstract

Introduction

1.1. Autonomy—Individualistic or Relational

1.2. Self-Conflicted Community

1.3. The Paradox of Ownership of Life

1.4. The Greatest Enemy of the Self and the Community—the Ego

1.5. Precedence of Community over the Self

1.6. Location of Human Life in Its Proper Context

1.7. Life as Relationship

1.8. To Be Is to Relate

Irony of Individualism

2.1. Individualism Described

2.2. Individuation as a Normal, Natural Process of Development

2.3. Individualism and Ethical Egoism

2.4. Ethical Anarchism

2.5. Individualism as an Ideology

Individualism and Relativism

3.1. Meaning of Relativism

3.2. Your Neighbor Is Part of You

3.3. Relativism Is Despair of the Individualist

3.4. Relativism and Extreme Individualism Are Self-Destructive

3.5. Irony of Freedom vs. the Good

3.6. Relativism and the Problem of Objective Evil

Autonomy in Western Bioethics

4.1. Literal and Etymological Meaning of Autonomy

4.2. Autonomy in Relation to Societal Law

4.3. Autonomy Is Only Applicable to Human Beings

4.4. Genesis and Basis of Exaltation of Autonomy in Western Medicine

4.5. Practice of Autonomy in a Clinical Setting

4.6. Modern Concept of Autonomy Needing Regrinding

Autonomy Within the Context of Ubuntu Ethics

5.1. Ubuntu Briefly Described

5.2. Ubuntu Lesson to Bioethics of Individualism

5.3. Ubuntu Holism and Inclusivity

5.4. Ubuntu Relational Autonomy Is Anthropocentric, Theocentric, and Cosmocentric

Significance of the Ubuntu Perspective of Autonomy

6.1. Personal Autonomy Is Not Diminished but Enhanced by Society

6.2. A True Leader Practices Relational Autonomy

6.3. If We Are Not, Then I Am Not

6.4. Finding Oneself by Moving Out of Self to Find the Other

6.5. Personhood and the Community

6.6. To the Extent the Self Is for All It Is for the Self

6.7. Common Good—Common in Christianity and Ubuntu

6.8. The Holy Trinity—Model of Individual and Communal Life

6.9. Why Reveal Trinity and Hypostatic Union

Belonging and Ethical Precedence of Common Good Over Individual Good

7.1. Precedence of Community over Individuality

7.2. Ubuntu Ethical Identification of an Individual with the Community

7.3. Contingency of Autonomy on Community

Holistic Communal and Person-Centered Approach to Reality

8.1. Ubuntu Ethics in Practice and Its Justification

8.2. Participation in the Life of the Community as the Greatest Form of Life Insurance

8.3. Economy at the Service of All Human Life

8.4. Holistic Multidimensional Healing

The Ubuntu Bioethics Has Something to Teach Modern Medicine

9.1. Need for Relational Autonomy in Clinical Setting

9.2. Need for Community in Health Care

9.3. Human Dignity Springs from Relationship with the Creator of All—God

9.4. Ubuntu Ethics of Eschatology—Eternal Dignified Communion

9.5. Autonomous Relationship with God through the Biosphere

Ubuntu Ethics and Theology of Nature

10.1. Holistic Approach to Nature

10.2. Sacramentality of Nature—It Did Not Cause Itself

10.3. Respect for the Sanctity of Nature

10.4. Praise God In, Through, and with Nature

10.5. Indigenous People’s Prayer through Nature

10.6. Indigenous People’s Prayer Explained

The New Testament Validates the Old and Some Indigenous Bioethics

11.1. God Has Always Revealed Himself to All Peoples in Many Ways

11.2. Fundamental Environmental Ethics

11.3. Relationship with the Planet as Basis of All Relationships

11.4. Unity of All Life and Its Ethical Implications

11.5. Hurting the Planet Is Hurting the Self, God, and Humankind

Laudato si’

12.1. Creation Is a Family

12.2. As People Are Marginalized So Is Nature

12.3. Mother Nature Cries Due to Inhumane Treatment

12.4. Egocentrism Is the Greatest Enemy of Its Subject and the Biosphere

12.5. Being Human Means Belonging with Others

12.6. Out of Many One (E Pluribus Unum)

12.7. Relativism and Subjectivism Are Unethical

Three Major Consequences of Egotistic Autonomy Revisited

13.1. Abortion

13.1.1. Beginning of Personhood Argument

13.1.2. Discrimination of the Unborn Argument

13.1.3. Evidenced Public Opinion Argument

13.2. Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide

13.3. I Affirms You and You Affirms I

Altruism, Relational Autonomy, Ubuntu, and Christianity

14.1. Meaning and Etymological Origin of Altruism

14.2. Altruism as a Matter of Necessity

14.3. Altruism and Evolution

14.4. Altruism, Psychology, Ethics, and Religion

14.5. Catholicism and Altruism

14.6. Altruism as Basis of Ethics

14.7. Altruism Is Human Moral Maturity

14.8. Depopulation against Altruism

The Earth Charter, Christianity, and Ubuntu Relational Autonomy

15.1. Humans and Ecological Destruction

15.2. Caring for Our Caregiver—Mother Nature

15.3. Human Behavior against Life Itself

15.4. Divorce Annihilates All

15.5. Autonomy of the Biosphere

15.6. Technology as an Adversary of Life

15.7. Technological Trap Salvaging and Management

Conclusions

16.1. Ethical Unity and Relationship of Reality

16.2. Innate Human Nature Flourishes in a Relational Environment

16.3. Human Relationality Transcends Self-Determination

16.4. Human Ethical Stewardship of Nature

16.5. Respect for the Sanctity of Nature

16.6. Persons Need Fellow Persons

16.7. Relational Autonomous Subject Shouts of God’s Existence

16.8. Self-Determination Is a Recognition of Others’ Existence

16.9. There Cannot Be Freedom from Human Relationality

16.10. The Seed of Christianity in Ubuntu

16.11. Christian Doctrine Is the Highest and Most Realistic Revealed Ethics

16.12. I Cannot Be Without My Neighbor

Bibliography

For all humans and other living beings whose lives have been marginalized or annihilated because of overinflated human egotism and exaggerated individualism; for all lives that make human life possible; for the biosphere—our common home.

Abstract

Autonomy implies self-determination, freedom from external control or influence and independence. However, absolute autonomy, in the sense of total self-determination or total freedom from other persons and the environment, either does not exist at all or it exists as a utopian concept that is unrealizable. Human beings are by nature relational. Their existence is based on relationships with other human beings and the biosphere. Hence, realistic autonomy is relational autonomy. Relational autonomy recognizes both its dependence on, and independence from, other humans and the biosphere. Actually, it is the existence of otherness that helps to discern, determine, and define self-determination, independence, and absence of external influence. Protesting the influence of otherness on the self affirms it. The sheer existence of otherness has influence on the rational subject who perceives it.

Autonomy cannot be realistically understood as self against others. It is more realistically understood as self in relationship with others. Egoistic or disproportionately individualistic autonomy makes one feel that s/he has to fight for his identity in the midst of many other individuals. The self, therefore, is opposed to the other and competes with otherness. Such existence is one of antagonism, conflict, and tension. However apparently real that concept may be, the self stands in need of the other for its very existence and comprehension. It is the other who helps the self to claim selfhood. The self, therefore, is indebted to the other (the other includes the whole of biosphere) and needs the other for its own survival.

In any of its framings, the Ubuntu maxim—I am because you are; I am because we are; I am who I am because you are who you are; a human being is human because of other human beings; a human being is human because of the otherness of other human beings—is the most real way of conceptualizing and comprehending selfhood in its relationality with otherness. Human beings’ existence and realization in relational setting is confirmed both by verifiable facts and by scriptural revelation. It cannot be disputed. Personal need for otherness and for personal relationship is summarized both in the great commandment—Love your neighbor as yourself—and in the Golden Rule—Do unto others what you would have them do unto you. Both statements, which belong to the kernel of the Christian message, indicate self’s needfulness of the other—the neighbor. In other words, loving the other is loving the self and doing good to the neighbor is doing good to the self and vice versa. The self cannot survive in isolation from the other.

The undeniable dependence of the self on the other is almost the most real fact about selfhood but the most ignored and trivialized. This fact is confirmed not just by the primal cultures and philosophies, such as Ubuntu; it is substantiated by the message of Christianity. The summit of Christian teaching, the Paschal Mystery, reveals the right conception of mature selfhood. The mature self is an agapeic loving self. Christ’s death for us is a reminder that selfhood is completely mature and fully realized when it realizes that it exists for the other because its very existence is meant for the other and that the other is inseparable from the self. Hence giving of the self for the other, which Christ taught in deed by the Paschal Mystery, is the ultimate realization of selfhood. The self finds itself in the other and losing oneself into the other and for the other is the ultimate finding of the self.

The demand for separateness, total independence, and seclusion from the other (other includes the entire biosphere) is actually futile because the other is part of the self just as the self is part of the other. The same baby who is totally dependent on its mother in whose womb s/he is at conception is the same adult who is in the womb of the universe, totally dependent on it for his/her survival. His/her very claim of independence from the universe is an affirmation of the fact of his/her dependence on it—especially because it is the unity with the rest of reality which sustains and enables individuality. Claim for autonomy as independence from otherness is ironic confirmation of dependence and unity of reality. Hence, being, whether divine as in the Sacred Trinity or finite as is ours, is relational. Autonomy has to be relational if it is real. The great commandment—Love your neighbor as yourself—and the Golden Rule—Do unto others what you would have them do unto you—are not just optional propositions or requirements. They are expressive conditions of existence as mature, free, and rational beings. The Ubuntu maxim cannot be disputed. Unlike René Descartes’s cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am), Ubuntu proves self-existence by affirmation of otherness and by inclusive relationality: You are therefore I am; We are, therefore I am. You, therefore me; we therefore I. By this work I submit to you that the Ubuntu philosophical and religious point of view is anonymous Christianity. Christ does not abolish it but fulfills it.

1

Introduction

1.1. Autonomy—Individualistic or Relational

Individualism is one of the most basic moral, political, economic, and social constructs which splits the human community into two: those who believe it is a virtue and those who believe it is a vice or depravity. Based on these two schools of thought, ethicists and moral philosophers either seek to promote or demote individualistic perspective of reality. For the individualist school of thought, autonomy is the most important principle of ethics. For non-individualists, exaggerated autonomy may be considered morally harmful, and hence unethical. This work does not seek to promote either school of thought. It seeks truth. The truth is the fact that individuals basically subsist in the community. It is the community that functions as a premise that makes the very concept of individualism possible. In other words, any theory of ethics that undermines or overrides the community is baseless. It fails in veracity. However, community exists thanks to the individuals who constitute it. While community results from related individuals, no individual could exist without a relationship. Actually, the genesis of life itself happens through a relationship. Consequently, exulting individual freedom and independence at the expense of community and relatedness is fallacious. It is obscurum per obscurius.

1.2. Self-Conflicted Community

Modern systems of communication reflect the tension between individualism and communitarianism; egoistic autonomy and relational autonomy. They serve to facilitate communication, hence enabling community building, while in fact they simultaneously pull people apart by functioning as an artificial barrier keeping people separated from one another. This simple analogy is an indication of the antagonizing role of science and technology in modern society. When social media become agents of separation, their function cannot be justified because it is self-contradictory to do so. Attempting to justify it leads to fallacy, specifically, ignotum per ignotius. Since human beings are relational, communication is essential. Keeping persons as monads destroys not just the community. It destroys each individual in the community. Apparently, the means of communication have become the means of separation so that the purpose of communication contradicts itself, thereby becoming self-defeating. One simple example is the way people nowadays tend to feel physically closer to their smartphones and tablets than to the people they actually communicate with using those gadgets.

Personal communication engages persons much more deeply than technologized modes of communication. Personal communication involves all senses in a way that is natural and direct. Personal communication is on the realm of "I-Thou rather than I-through-it-Thou. Once there is an it in between I and Thou," there essentially is a separation. Direct personal communication is hampered by the personal relationship individuals have with such gadgets. There becomes a closeness and intimacy between persons and smartphones, for example, rather than between persons and other persons. This being the case, deep personal communication is hampered by technology. This mode of obstructive communication is expressive of a deeper ongoing destruction of the human community and its persons. Unfortunately, this self-destructive tendency is gradually and more increasingly being accepted and justified as the norm. It has become a modus operandi in our technologized and sophisticated society. Is it ethical though? This work seeks to explore and respond to this posed question from the perspective of veracity or reality, contemplating the ethical principle of autonomy.

1.3. The Paradox of Ownership of Life

This work dwells on the Ubuntu concept of shared autonomy as distinguished from individualistic or egotistic autonomy. I believe one of the main pathologies of our modern society is prioritization of self-interest, self-determination, and self-rule at the expense of the common good. Unfortunately, personal ego has become the determinant of right and wrong, good and bad, of reality. This kind of morality is essentially suicidal to persons and to the community in general. It simultaneously seeks to defend what it seeks to destroy. Unfortunately, our society has become so addicted to selfishness, it fails to see objective truth. This work is a wake-up call and search for truth—a truth that will set us free.¹ There is more to human life than individual gain and interest. Although human life belongs to the one who possesses it, ownership of life is not exclusive of its origin and its purpose. I promise you that there is purpose to human life above and beyond individualistic ends. No one lives solely for oneself; no one dies simply for oneself.² Human life results in and from the community. It grows and flourishes in the community, it serves the community, and it finds its fulfillment and meaning within the community. It is in giving of itself to the community and in overcoming its self-centeredness (dying to itself) that it finds itself in a fuller and deeper way. There is, therefore, more joy in self-giving than in receiving.³

1.4. The Greatest Enemy of the Self and the Community—the Ego

Individualism has taken over society and threatens to annihilate it. Scientific and technological individualism have influenced our style of thinking and decision-making as well. Human beings are clearly becoming increasingly and falsely independent of one another and of the community as a whole. Unfortunately, bioethics has become so infected by individualism that the principle of autonomy tends to be viewed as though it were the only principle of bioethics. I would contend, however, that the modern and ever increasingly individualistic idea of autonomy is unrealistic, unsustainable, and false. The work argues that extricating an individual from the community as though s/he were independent of the community is a false paradigm. If unchecked, technology is dehumanizing. It tends to estrange us from our nature. In my view, the desocialization of the human person is among humanity’s greatest problems of our time. Ubuntu relationality is the remedy.

1.5. Precedence of Community over the Self

As we have discovered, there is an unrealistic exaggeration of autonomy in today’s society. This extreme tendency has penetrated all aspects human life; it is