Beyond the margins of metanarrativity: an inquiry on prejudice, decoloniality and cross‐cultural discourse

This paper sets upon the elaboration of two inter-related enquiries: What do being and otherness look like beyond the margins of metanarrativity? What would the crossing of such margins entail? It takes as its basic assumption that prejudice arises from out of the historicity of being. A thesis of prejudice as a pre-reflexive operation or heuristic of the understanding a subject employs in order to arrive upon the conscious inclination to intuit that p is presented. Furthermore, it is posited that human understanding and rational inquiry are a fortiori grounded upon antecedent onto-phenomenological, hermeneutic and epistemic projects of being disclosed in metanarrativity. Metanarrativity, it is here maintained, constrains the horizon of intelligibility and truth in the discursive encounter of being with the “other” of alterity. It precludes the conditions of possibility for a non- prejudiced and value-neutral view in cross-cultural discourse. As such, it may be argued that an understanding of being and otherness cannot ascend the horizon of intelligibility without the sublating operation of prejudice. Prejudice, it is here argued, is sublating in the sense that it prefigures the possibilities for signification, subverting our interrogations from what is the state of affairs to mere intuitends of the form what it is like. Given that metanarrative discourses are invested in prejudice, it is therefore the task of decoloniality, set upon the cross-cultural discursive encounter between being and alterity, to take the physical appearance of an eschatology of liberation enacted in the everyday, performative praxis of non-domination

On De Facto Moral Friends and a Two-Level, Multimodal Account of Moral Considerability: A Critique of Metzian Relationalism

This paper aims to ground an argument for a widened scope in regard to the motivations or reasons accounting for moral considerability. Such a scope, it is here argued, would account not only for human persons but animals, ecosystems, hypothetical artificial moral agents and so-called Martians as well. And it does so by first distinguishing between two categories of entities: members of group X, and entities not of group X. This basic distinction is then employed to articulate the groundwork for a two-level, multimodal account of moral considerability and gives signification to the idea of de facto moral friends. To achieve this, it appropriates much of its central tenets from the affluence of African philosophical, and intellectual heritage, on this occasion, the notion of Ubuntu. Lastly, this paper assumes the viewpoint of metaethical X-centrism, alternatively, metaethical anthropocentrism in constructing moral claims

Autonomy of the child in the South African context: is a 12 year old of sufficient maturity to consent to medical treatment?

CITATION: Ganya, W., Kling, S. & Moodley, K. 2016. Autonomy of the child in the South African context : is a 12 year old of sufficient maturity to consent to medical treatment?. BMC Medical Ethics, 17:66, doi:10.1186/s12910-016-0150-0.The original publication is available at https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.comBackground: A child is a developing person with evolving capacities that include autonomy, mental (decisional) capacity and capacity to assume responsibility. Hence, children are entitled to participatory (autonomy) rights in South Africa as observed in the Children’s Act 38 of 2005. According to section 129 of the Act a child may consent to his or her own medical treatment provided that he or she is over the age of 12 years and is of sufficient maturity and decisional capacity to understand the various implications of the treatment including the risks and benefits thereof. However, the Act does not provide a definition for what qualifies as ‘sufficient maturity’ nor does it stipulate how health professionals ought to assess the decisional capacity of a child. In addition, South Africa is a culturally diverse country. The Western liberal notion of autonomy may not necessarily find equal prominence in the mores of people with a different worldview. Hence we demonstrate a few salient comparisons between legal liberal moral theory and African communitarianism as pertinent to the autonomy of the child. Discussion: Children are rights-holders by virtue of their humanity. Their dignity as individual human persons affords them the entitlement to human rights as contemplated under the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. However, contrary to the traditional Western notion of individual autonomous persons African societies hold a communalistic notion of person hence there is less regard for individual autonomy and rights with more emphasis on the communal good and maintaining the continuity of relationships and interdependencies shared within a community. A child considered in this view is not regarded as a full person. This implies that decisions concerning the child, including consent to medical treatment are discussed and determined by the community to which the child belongs. Lastly, in this article, we draw on the notion of capacity for responsibility to produce a pragmatic definition of sufficient maturity. Conclusion: It seems reasonable to suggest a move away from a general legal age of consent for medical treatment toward more individualised, context-specific approaches in determining the maturity of a child patient to consent to medical treatment. Perhaps, decision-making with respect to consent to the medical treatment of a child belonging to a traditional African community where the notion of a person is embedded in communitarianism ought to involve the child’s parents/guardians/caregivers where possible provided that the best interests of the child are awarded priority.https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12910-016-0150-0Publisher's versio