Abstract

A number of novel scientific and biotechnological exploits and interventions have been recorded in recent times. Of principal concern is the attempt by certain scientific researchers and practitioners to modify the genetic make-up of the human being at the embryonic stage in order to produce a more advanced form of human life. This attempt is motivated by the desire to enhance the quality of human life to such a degree that it renders us less vulnerable to debilitating diseases in general and other congenital medical disorders in particular. This project, designated the Transgenic Human Embryo (THE) project, not only raises serious ethical questions regarding the justification for the defence of such a radical intervention in the “natural” process of human development: at a more fundamental ontological level, it challenges our very (self-) understanding of what it means to be a human being. From a philosophical perspective, the THE project problematically privileges a Western-Eurocentric epistemological culturalist framework that is driven by “modern” ideas of scientific-technical rationality and progress, whose specific nature and normativity can be traced back to the European philosophical tradition of Enlightenment. From this perspective, the European Enlightenment conceptualization of the human being is (problematically) universalised as the only true and, therefore, “highest” form of human life, to the disregard of “other” (different) non-Western understandings of human life, especially the African philosophical understanding of humanness, which is presented in this study as a counter-discourse and critique of the universalising (hegemonic) Eurocentric assumptions and norms at the core of the THE project.