Ruiping Fan

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.

Confucian Bioethics

A new generation of Confucian scholars is coming of age. China is reawakening to the power and importance of its own culture. This volume provides a unique view of the emerging Confucian vision for China and the world in the 21st century. Unlike the Neo-Confucians sojourning in North America who recast Confucianism in terms of modern Western values, this new generation of Chinese scholars takes the authentic roots of Confucian thought seriously. This collection of essays offers the first critical exploration in English of the emerging Confucian, non-liberal, non-social-democratic, moral and political vision for China’s future. Inspired by the life and scholarship of Jiang Qing who has emerged as China's exemplar contemporary Confucian, this volume allows the English reader access to a moral and cultural vision that seeks to direct China’s political power, social governance, and moral life. For those working in Chinese studies, this collection provides the first access in English to major debates in China concerning a Confucian reconceptualization of governance, a critical Confucian assessment of feminism, Confucianism functioning again as a religion, and the possibility of a moral vision that can fill the cultural vacuum created by the collapse of Marxism.

The Renaissance of Confucianism in Contemporary China

This volume addresses the proper character of patient informed consent to medical treatment and clinical research. The goal is critically to explore the current individually oriented approach to informed consent which grew out of the dominant bioethics movement that arose in the United States in the 1970s. In contrast to that individually oriented approach, this volume explores the importance of family-oriented approaches to informed consent for medical treatment and clinical research. It draws on both East Asian moral resources as well as a critical response to the ways in which the practice of informed consent has developed in the United States

East Asian and American Perspectives

Family-Oriented Informed Consent

David Solomon

Ping-cheung Lo

In the twentieth century, in both China and the West, ritual became marginalized in the face of the growth of secularism and individualism. In China, Confucianism and its essentially ritualistic comportment to the world were vigorously suppressed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) under Mao Zedong. But de-ritualization already took place as a result of the Chinese Revolution of 1911 under Sun Yat-Sen. In the West, while the process of de-ritualization has been generally more gradual, it has been nonetheless drastic. In contrast to this situation, this volume investigates the crucial role ritual plays in constituting the human understanding of their place in the cosmos, the purpose of their lives, and imbues human existence with a more complete sense of meaningfulness. This volume presents the work of philosophers from both China and the West as they reflect upon the constitutive role that ritual plays in human life. They reflect not only on ritual in general but also on specific Confucian and Christian appreciations of ritual. This provocative volume is a beacon of warning to Western philosophers, who think they have graduated from the trappings of ritual, and a beacon of hope for Eastern thinkers, who wish to avoid cultural fragmentation. The Editors, both Eastern and Western, have together created a seamless work that not only introduces ritual, but advances an argument for the contribution that ritual makes to cultural renewal. This volume is a work of philosophical thinking about ritual doing, but challenges those who think to realize that the salvation of philosophical thinking rests in the particularity and contingency of ritual doing. Let us hope this volume is widely read, for it points to that which might renew the West. - Jeffrey P. Bishop, Saint Louis University

Reclaiming the Tradition

Ritual and the Moral Life

Contrasting with conventional Neo-Confucian attempts to recast the Confucian heritage in light of modern Western values, this book offers a Reconstructionist Confucian project to reclaim Confucian resources to meet contemporary moral and public policy challenges. Ruiping Fan argues that popular accounts of human goods and social justice within the dominant individualist culture of the West are too insubstantial to direct a life of virtue and a proper structure of society. Instead, he demonstrates that the moral insights of Confucian thought are precisely those needed to fill the moral vacuum developing in post-communist China and to address similar problems in the West. The book has a depth of reflection on the Confucian tradition through a comparative philosophical strategy and a breadth of contemporary issues addressed unrivaled by any other work on these topics. It is the first in English to explore not only the endeavor to revive Confucianism in contemporary China, but also brings such an endeavor to bear upon the important ethical, social, and political difficulties being faced in 21st century China. The book should be of interest to any philosopher working in application of traditional Chinese philosophy to contemporary issues as well as any reader interested in comparative cultural and ethical studies.

Rethinking Morality after the West

Reconstructionist Confucianism

Mark J. Cherry

This book provides cross-cultural ethical exploration of sex robots and their social impact. What are the implications of sex robots and related technological innovations for society and culture? How should we evaluate the significance of sexual relations with robots that look like women, men or children? Critics argue that sex robots present a clear risk to real persons and a social degradation that will increase sexual violence, objectify women, encourage pedophilia, reinforce negative body images, increase forms of sexual dysfunction, and pass on sexually transmitted disease. Proponents judge robotic sexual companionship as just another step in the exploration of human desire. They see sex robots, and similar technology, such as virtual reality pornography, as providing autonomy affirming companionship for the lonely and a relatively harmless outlet for sexual fantasies that avoids the use of human prostitutes and thus reduces sexual victimization. Some appreciate sex robots as a social evil, others as a positive good, and still others as a harmless pastime. How we come to terms with such conceptual and moral concerns will have significant implications for society and the future of human relations. This book is of great interest to researchers in bioethics, human sexual behavior, AI ethics, and philosophy of sex.

Ruiping Fan

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