Table Of ContentCONFUCIAN BIOETHICS
Philosophy and Medicine
VOLUME 6 1
Editors
H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy,
Baylor College of Medicine and Philosophy Department, Rice University,
Houston, Texas
S. E Spicker, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Sciences,
Boston, Mass.
ASIAN STUDIES IN BIOETHICS AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF MEDICINE 1
Series Editor
Ruiping Fan, Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Baylor College of
Medicine, Houston, USA
Editorial Advisory Board
Kazumasa Hoshino, Kyoto Women’s University, Kyoto, Japan
Shui Chuen Lee, National Central University, Chung-li, Taiwan
Ping-cheung Lo, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Ren-Zong Qiu, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China
CONFUCIAN
BIOETHICS
Editedby
RUIPING FAN
CenterforMedicalEthicsandHealthPolicy
BaylorCollegeofMedicine
Houston,USA
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
RUIPINGFAN/Introduction:TowardsaConfucianBioethics 1
PART I / BODY, HEALTH AND VIRTUE
PEIMINNI/ConfucianVirtuesandPersonalHealth 27
ELLENY.ZHANG/TheNeo-ConfucianConceptofBodyandits
Ethical Sensibility 45
PART II / SUICIDE, EUTHANASIA
AND MEDICAL FUTILITY
PING-CHEUNGLO/ConfucianViewsonSuicideand
Their Implications for Euthanasia 69
GEORGEKHUSHF/ReflectionsontheDignityofGuanZhong:
A Comparison of Confucian and Western Liberal Notions
of Suicide 103
EDWINHUI/AConfucianEthicofMedicalFutility 127
PART III / “HUMAN DRUGS”
AND HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION
JING-BAONIE/“HumanDrugs”inChineseMedicineandthe
Confucian View: An Interpretive Study 167
RONALDA.CARSON/InterpretingStrangePractices 207
XUNWUCHEN/AConfucian Reflection onExperimentingwith
Human Subjects 211
PART IV /JUST HEALTH CARE
AND THE CONFUCIAN TRADITION
QINGJIEWANG/TheConfucianFilialObligationandCarefor
Aged Parents 235
RUIPINGFAN/JustHealthCare,theGoodLife,andConfucianism 257
CHINESE GLOSSARY 285
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 299
INDEX OF CHINESE TERMS 301
INDEX 30 5
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RUIPING FAN
INTRODUCTION:
TOWARDS A CONFUCIAN BIOETHICS
I. “MUSEUM” BIOETHICS OR REAL BIOETHICS?
The title of this volume, Confician Bioethics, may sound odd to some. It
is odd to them not because they find Confucianism has lost its traditional
strength in its homeland. It is odd because they doubt any essential
relevance that Confucianism still has to contemporary society in general
or to bioethical issues in particular. As the world changes, it seems that all
traditional world views have been in retreat before a global cosmopolitan
view. Confucianism is the tradition that seems to have declined most
speedily in the 20th century. Even the so-called “last Confucian” has
passed away (Alitto, 1985). For some, the only appropriate ‘‘ism’’ for the
contemporary world is cosmopolitanism, because it attempts through
reason alone to provide moral guidance to all people in all places.
Confident in the creative power and justifying capacity of human reason,
cosmopolitans hold that all particular traditional moral resources are
rationally irrelevant to contemporary moral regulation. Indeed,
cosmopolitanism intends to be independent from any particular tradition.
This volume illustrates an intellectual picture that differs from the view
of cosmopolitanism. Instead of engaging in cosmopolitan bioethics, it
offers particular Confucian perspectives concerning important bioethical
issues. Specifically, this volume provides the Confucian views regarding
the human body, health, virtue, suffering, suicide, euthanasia, “human
drugs,” human experimentation, and health care justice. These views are
Confucian because they are derived from particular Confucian
metaphysical, cosmological, and moral convictions and assumptions.
They contrast with modem Western liberal perspectives in a number of
important ways. If one is not sympathetic to basic Confucian
metaphysical assumptions and/or moral convictions, one cannot find
these views appealing. Indeed, the major authors for this volume are
Chinese scholars studying or working in North American areas. They
provide bioethical assumptions, arguments, and conclusions that are
peculiarly Confucian, not cosmopolitan. Some, following the academic
tendency of cosmopolitanism in the present time, would wonder why
Ruiping Fan (ed.), Confucian Bioethics, 1-23.
© 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in Great Britain.
2 RUIPING FAN
these authors cannot simply explore bioethical issues from a reasonable
neutral stance, i.e., from a stance that is only based on reason and is not
based on any particular tradition like Confucianism? Why is it necessary
to pursue Confucian bioethics? And what is the epistemic status of
Confucian bioethics?
These questions are not new. In fact, as early as the 1960s, historian
Joseph Levenson already vividly described the triumph of cosmopolitan
culture over the Confucian tradition. He predicted that the fate of
Confucianism was inevitably decline:
[t]he sageliness of Confucius may still be felt in China (or felt again),
like Socrates’ in Europe. But Confucian civilization would be as
“historical” as Greek, and modem Chinese culture as cosmopolitan as
any, like the western culture that reaches now, in paper-back
catholicity, to “The Wisdom of Confucius.” In a true world history,
when all past achievements are in the museum without walls,
everyone’s past would be everyone else’s; which implies that quite un-
Confucian thing, the loss of the sense of tradition (1968, Part Three, p.
123).
The sense of tradition is lost in contemporary society because, from
Levenson’s historical perspective, no tradition can still stand as a whole.
World civilizations are placed in “the museum without walls” only for
visiting, not for living. When traditions are unavoidably fragmented in
“the museum,” cosmopolitanism arises in life.
The bits and pieces of valuable items left from each tradition may be
incorporated into the melting pot of cosmopolitanism in the expectation
of forming a unified moral system that can be justified by reason alone
and be accepted by everyone alike. Accordingly, cosmopolitanism strictly
speaking does not attempt to go without any traditional trappings; instead,
it attempts to mix all and only rationally justifiable items from all
traditions to shape a new comprehensive doctrine. The content of this
doctrine is expected to cover only that which can pass the tribunal of
reason. It is hoped that the “truth” from this doctrine is similarly
presented, wherever people find themselves in the world, Beijing or New
York, London or Singapore. Moreover, from this doctrine, people should
have changed to “cosmopolitans” from traditional “communitarians.”
Consequently, to cosmopolitans, to do Confucian bioethics in the
contemporary age is only to do “museum” bioethics. It may offer some
useful bioethical bricks and tiles to the general building of cosmopolitan
INTRODUCTION: TOWARDS A CONFUCIAN BIOETHICS 3
bioethics, but it cannot establish a real bioethics that people should follow
as a particular way of life in preference to cosmopolitan bioethics.
Apparently, any attempt to engage in Confucian bioethics as a real living
moral system reflects only a nostalgic yearning for the good old days that
will never return again. It seems that contemporary Confucian bioethics
can only exist as “museum” bioethics.
This volume, however, offers a real Confucian bioethics. The authors
of this volume are not interested in a “museum” Confucian bioethics
because a “museum” bioethics is not real. It is not real because it is only
to be visited, while a real bioethics is to be lived. For the authors of this
volume, bioethics cannot find its significance except in a close tie to the
real lives of individuals and their communities. The views they offer in
the volume are a real bioethics because these views are lived by the
people committed to the Confucian tradition. There are, after all, still
Confucians in the contemporary world.
Confucian views are certainly not neutral views. The essays in this
volume do not start from a neutral stance. Such a stance does not exist.
Any moral view is from somewhere and is held by somebody. Attempting
to derive a substantive stance solely from pure reason is illusory because
pure reason is not substantive. Reason can play a constructive role in a
moral system only through close combination with certain fundamental,
content-full moral assumptions and premises, from which concrete
bioethical views and visions are deduced, induced, or stimulated. Such
fundamental, content-full assumptions and premises can only be found in
particular moral traditions, such as Confucianism. However, it is
impossible to unite basic assumptions from different traditions to make a
coherent moral doctrine as cosmopolitans expect. These assumptions are
mutually incommensurable.
It is necessary to pursue Confucian bioethics because its fundamental
assumptions and premises are still in practice. Confucian values are still
at home in East Asian areas such as Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan,
and mainland China. Although many people in these areas no longer
describe themselves as Confucians, Confucian teachings continue to be
deeply involved in their lives. Moreover, as people move and emigrate
from their motherlands to other countries, non-geographically-isolated
moral communities have formed in the contemporary world. Just as we
can find Christian communities in East Asian areas, we can find
Confucian communities in North American areas. Levenson was too
pessimistic when he predicted that world traditions would exist only in
