Exercising vital force need not be volitional

Notice that Molefe and Maraganedzha’s account appears to assume that the exercising of vital force must be volitional.xi In order for premise (4) to be true, it has to be the case that a patient in a vegetative coma, for example, cannot exercise their life force because they cannot form the intent to do so nor act on that intent. But Molefe and Maraganedzha never defend this assumption, and there are good reasons for thinking it is false.

Here is one way to parse the exercising of vital force that does not require volition. Consider that a person can be the subject and/or object of harmonious relationships.15 When an agent is the subject of a harmonious relationship, she has the capacity to identify with and exhibit solidarity with others. She is thus in a mutually cooperative and reciprocal relationship with others. An agent is the object of harmonious relationship when other humans to consider her as part of a ‘we’, and therefore act in ways to benefit her.15 A fully formed, healthy, human adult can be both the subject and object of such relationships. What the argument from vital force does not recognise is that while severely ill patients may not be able to be the subjects of harmonious relationships, they are still able to be the objects of such relationships. A nurse may talk to a terminally ill patient who is unresponsive, administer medication and otherwise look after their physical needs. This patient is the object of a harmonious interaction with the nurse. Indeed, the nurse is literally helping to keep them alive, an important task given vitalism says life itself is the most important value (more on this can be seen in Misunderstanding the nature of vital force: a deontological constraint). This shows that Molefe and Maraganedzha are not entitled to assume exercising vital force is volitional without argument.xii

The nature of other-regarding duties in African thought

The second worry I raise to the argument from vital force also targets premise (4). There is debate in African philosophy as to whether there are self-regarding duties.xiii In Thaddeus Metz’s secular description of vital force, he says that duties of liveliness are not purely self-regarding and may be only other-regarding.15 Metz says his theory is consistent with the claim that there are no self-regarding duties, but that there are numerous ways of understanding self-regarding duties.15 What is uncontested is the highly other-regarding nature of virtually every strand of African thought. An ethic derived from vital force is no different in prescribing strong other-regarding duties. Indeed, just consider the fact that Molefe and Maraganedzha believe the only (or best) way to exercise one’s vital force is by relating well with others. Fulfilling other-regarding duties is an obvious way of interacting positively with others and hence of exercising one’s vital force.

In the above objection (ie, Exercising vital force need not be volitional), I suggested that a patient could be the object of harmonious relationships. Here I suggest that a terminally ill patient may have an other-regarding duty to remain alive in order to remain an object of harmonious relationships. Caring for a patient provides the opportunity for healthcare practitioners, family and friends to practice empathy, self-sacrifice, patience, kindness, generosity, etc, among many other other-regarding virtues. Exercising these other-regarding virtues are ways to exhibit positive relationships, and hence to strengthen vital force and so fulfil the sole purpose of life. In the context of a vital force ethic, a patient may very well have an obligation to remain alive if doing so helps to strengthen the vital force of their community. As counterintuitive as this might sound, personal sacrifice for the good of the community is the norm in African ethics.

Some in the African tradition would deny that an individual can make a genuine sacrifice for their community, but only because they would claim that an individual cannot in fact have different needs or goals from the community. Such differences may appear to exist, but they are merely illusory. The story of the crocodile with two heads pulling in different directions while unknowingly sharing the same stomach is supposed to illustrate the idea that individuals have the same needs at bottom. Elsewhere, Molefe has argued that this is mistaken by appealing to the example that an individual is justified in spending money on their education even if it would not be an obvious benefit to their community.16 I agree with Molefe that individuals can have distinct goals and needs from those of the community. But this does not defeat my basic objection, because instead of saying that the patient actually has the same interests as their community in remaining alive, it only needs to be the case that they ought to make a genuine self-sacrifice for the community in remaining alive. Either way, the strength of this objection rests on observing just how much the community matters on an African ethic of vital force, while also noting the ways in which the community benefits from the patient (ie, by getting to exercise their other-regarding virtues and hence vital force).

A tempting rejoinder is that perhaps someone dying would actually promote the vital force of the rest of their community better than continuing to live. Even if being the object of harmonious interactions can be good, imagine cases where resources are scarce. There may be no way to equally promote everyone’s vital force, such that a terminally ill person being euthanised might be to the communal good by allowing attention and resources to be given elsewhere. Family members and medical practitioners could turn to another ill person who is in need of care. Suppose they could turn to someone able to be both the subject and object of harmony.xiv This line of reasoning might go so far as justifying involuntary euthanasia if a patient’s death really would be best for the community. But as I will explain in the next section, this idea is fundamentally at odds with most understandings of vitalism.

Misunderstanding the nature of vital force: a deontological constraint

Interpreting an ethic based on vital force in consequentialist terms raises the intuitive plausibility of euthanasia.17 If a patient remaining alive would maximise the vital force of their community, then they should refrain from euthanasia. However, if ending their life would better promote the vital force of their community, then they should request euthanasia. But any consequentialist principle based on maximising vital force is going to require what might be called a deontological constraint which says that a person’s life should never be intentionally snuffed out.xv If this is thought to be unpalatable, then it is a challenge to the philosophical plausibility of vitalism itself, but not to my rejection of the argument from vital force.

This leads to my next main objection, which is that Molefe and Maraganedzha seem to have fundamentally misunderstood vital force, at least as it is commonly interpreted by contemporary exponents. It is not so much that premises (1) and (2) are false, but that what purports to follow from them does not actually accord with the usual understandings of vital force. The goal of life may well be to exercise one’s vital force, but according to many expositors of vital force, the greatest good is life itself. Iroegbu says “[l]ife is such an important value that it is rightly described as the ultimate rasion de’etre of all other activities of the human person. It is thus most valuable, indeed a mega-value.”14 He says that life is the ‘ultimate value’ and ‘super-value’.14 Sindima agrees that “in African thought, the raison d’Ctre for all creation is life.”18 Ukagba claims that “[f]or the traditional African […] the highest value is life.”19 The worst evil, and the thing to be avoided at all costs, is death. Consider that “all people and activities that diminish life are in all cultures considered as evil, while those that promote it are regarded as good.”14 Likewise, “[i]n ethical terms, any action which increases life or vital force is right, and whatever decreases it is wrong.”10 Finally, “[h]uman life, that is, human persons as the center of creation, is the criterion of good and evil.”12 This implies that any type of existence is better than death.xvi This may well be consistent with the idea that vital force is best exercised within the context of the community. But perhaps the most important moral implication of vital force is that one ought to stay alive.xvii Existence in any form still manifests some degree of force, no matter how faint and this is better than death. This can be understood as a deontological constraint on all actions: it is simply always impermissible to snuff out a life, no matter what sort of suffering or poor medical prognosis might be faced.

Related to this deontological constraint is the further question of when, if at all, passive euthanasia would be permissible. If life is to be preserved at all costs, does vitalism imply that a person must undergo brutal medical treatment in order to extend their life for, say, 1 week? This is a question that warrants more consideration than I can give it here. But briefly, perhaps the distinction between letting die and killing could be relied on to show why passive euthanasia is permissible on vitalism. I remain unsure if there is a principled way to motivate this type of answer. A proponent of vitalism could bite the bullet on this implication, though this is likely unpalatable to many. If there really is no reasonable response to this query, then it constitutes an objection to vitalism; it does not vindicate Molefe and Maraganedzha’s argument.

Now, one final rejoinder to the objection that life is the most important value and can never be snuffed out might come by appealing to a naturalistic version of vital force. Metz was the first person to seek to naturalise vital force, naming it ‘liveliness’. According to Metz, descriptions of vital force:

[T]end to say that human beings are good in some way for exhibiting a superlative degree of health, strength, growth, reproduction, creativity, complexity, vibrancy, activity, self-motion, courage, and confidence. Or they characterize undesirable states as reductions of vitality understood as disease, weakness, decay, barrenness, destruction, disintegration, lethargy, passivity, submission, insecurity, and depression.15

Metz notes that these descriptions of vital force are consistent with metaphysical naturalism and that this is attractive because liveliness can be used as an equivalent without wading into the metaphysical controversies implied by vital force. Now, Molefe and Maraganedzha usually write of ‘liveliness’ instead of ‘vital force’ or ‘vitality’. However, it is clear that they do not think of liveliness in naturalistic terms but instead use it interchangeably with vitality (ie, the metaphysically thick concept).9

The distinction between liveliness and vital force is important if it turns out that they do not agree on life itself as the ultimate value. Perhaps euthanasia is easier to justify on liveliness than on vital force if the primary goal of liveliness differs from vital force. However, I ultimately cannot see a way for this distinction to be helpful in defending the argument from vital force. Consider that if a patient is alive, then they exhibit some degree of liveliness, no matter how faint. The point above about a patient being able to be the object of harmonious relationships, in addition to fulfilling other-regarding duties by remaining alive, are equally powerful on either liveliness or vital force. I leave it up to the proponent of the argument from vital force to explain otherwise.