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Addiction in the light of African values: Undermining vitality and community

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Abstract

I address the question of what makes addiction morally problematic, and seek to answer it by drawing on values salient in the sub-Saharan African philosophical tradition. Specifically, I appeal to life-force and communal relationship, each of which African philosophers have at times advanced as a foundational value, and spell out how addiction, or at least salient instances of it, could be viewed as unethical for flouting them. I do not seek to defend either vitality or community as the best explanation of when and why addiction is immoral, instead arguing that each of these characteristically African values grounds an independent and plausible account of that. I conclude that both vitalism and communalism merit consideration as rivals to accounts that western ethicists would typically make, according to which addiction is immoral insofar as it degrades rationality or autonomy, as per Kantianism, or causes pain or dissatisfaction, à la utilitarianism.

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Notes

  1. For discussion of whether and, if so, how to treat addicts as responsible for their condition, or for the harmful effects that have come in the wake of it, see Morse (2000), Husak (2004), the papers in Poland and Graham (2011a), Frank and Nagel (2017), and Pickard (2017).

  2. By “African,” “western,” and similar geographical labels, I mean features that have been salient over a large part of a territory and for a long time that differentiate it from many other territories (on which see Metz 2015a). Hence, there is no “essentialist” suggestions here that these features are exhaustive of, exclusive to, or invariably present in a given region.

  3. As has been pointed out by Morse (2000, pp. 11–12) and Poland and Graham (2011b, pp. 2–3). For some of these debates, see the papers in Levy (2013), Shelby (2016), and the papers in Pickard and Ahmed (2018).

  4. Which is discussed in (but not accepted by) Levy (2011, p. 95), Morse (2011, p. 163), and Pickard (2017).

  5. One could also invoke Hursthouse’s (1999) theory of virtue, according to which the virtues are constituted by settled dispositions of human persons that advance, amongst other things, “characteristic enjoyment” (1999, pp. 197–216). Addictions to cigarettes, gambling, and pornography do not reliably foster characteristic enjoyments of the species, and instead tend to undermine them.

  6. Interestingly, probably the western philosopher whose views most approximate African vitalism is Friedrich Nietzsche.

  7. For a survey of this ethic in the contexts of several sub-Saharan peoples, see Nkulu-N’Sengha (2009).

  8. In the western tradition, the young Karl Marx’s philosophical views most approximate this ethic, more so than the ethic of care (on which see Metz 2013b).

  9. Addiction’s damage to personal relationships is familiar (for a popular piece, see MarieM 2017), but the point is that it is not easily grounded on an individualist moral philosophy ascribing basic value to rationality or pleasure. The communal-relational values salient in the African tradition, in contrast, provide a plausible anchor.

  10. I must credit Ben Smart with the term.

  11. For having commented on a prior draft of this essay, I am grateful to Kevin Behrens, Ademola Fayemi, Neil Levy, and Benjamin Smart.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Johannesburg, B-706, APK, POB 524, Auckland Park, 2006, South Africa

    Thaddeus Metz

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Metz, T. Addiction in the light of African values: Undermining vitality and community. Monash Bioeth. Rev. 36, 36–53 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40592-018-0085-y

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