Confucian Bioethics

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-v

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2. Introduction: Towards a Confucian Bioethics

   1. Introduction: Towards a Confucian Bioethics

      • Ruiping Fan

      Pages 1-23

3. Body, Health and Virtue

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 27-27

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   2. Confucian Virtues and Personal Health

      • Peimin Ni

      Pages 27-44

   3. The Neo-Confucian Concept of Body and its Ethical Sensibility

      • Ellen Y Zhang

      Pages 45-65

4. Suicide, Euthanasia and Medical Futility

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 67-67

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   2. Confucian Views on Suicide and Their Implications for Euthanasia

      • Ping-Cheung Lo

      Pages 69-101

   3. Reflections on the Dignity of Guan Zhong: A Comparison of Confucian and Western Liberal Notions of Suicide

      • George Khushf

      Pages 103-125

   4. A Confucian Ethic of Medical Futility

      • Edwin Hui

      Pages 127-163

5. “Human Drugs” and Human Experimentation

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 165-165

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   2. “Human Drugs” in Chinese Medicine and the Confucian View: An Interpretive Study

      • Jing-Bao Nie

      Pages 167-206

   3. Interpreting Strange Practices

      • Ronald A. Carson

      Pages 207-210

   4. A Confucian Reflection on Experimenting with Human Subjects

      • Xunwu Chen

      Pages 211-232

6. Just Health Care and the Confucian Tradition

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 233-233

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   2. The Confucian Filial Obligation and Care for Aged Parents

      • Qingjie Wang

      Pages 235-256

   3. Just Health Care, the Good Life, and Confucianism

      • Ruiping Fan

      Pages 257-284

7. Back Matter

   Pages 285-320

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This volume explores Confucian views regarding the human body, health, virtue, suffering, suicide, euthanasia, `human drugs,' human experimentation, and justice in health care distribution. These views are rooted in Confucian metaphysical, cosmological, and moral convictions, which stand in contrast to modern Western liberal perspectives in a number of important ways. In the contemporary world, a wide variety of different moral traditions flourish; there is real moral diversity. Given this circumstance, difficult and even painful ethical conflicts often occur between the East and the West with regard to the issues of life, birth, reproduction, and death. The essays in this volume analyze the ways in which Confucian bioethics can clarify important moral concepts, provide arguments, and offer ethical guidance. The volume should be of interest to both general readers coming afresh to the study of bioethics, ethics, and Confucianism, as well as for philosophers, ethicists, and other scholars already familiar with the subject.

• Confucianism
• Ethics
• bioethics
• death
• health
• morality

`In an era when health care is a hotly contested topic of discussion, Fan's book as an invaluable resource that has much to teach us.'
David S. Blix in Second Opinion, September 2000

• Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, USA

  Ruiping Fan

Policies and ethics