Abstract
This paper explores a Confucian perspective on two ethical issues centered around newly emerging assisted human reproduction technology (ART), namely prenatal testing (or preimplantation genetic diagnosis) and maternal surrogacy. The purpose of this paper is to sketch out the critical features of Confucian reasoning about issues of reproduction, which shed light on the current discussion that is dominated by liberal ethics.
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Notes
- 1.
In this paper, I will root my discussion of ART in some of mainland China’s social conditions.
- 2.
In bioethics, principlism commonly refers to a doctrine founded by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress in the late 70s. Beauchamp and Childress (2013) proposed four principles: respect for autonomy, beneficence, maleficence, and justice, which they think can be derived from a background of common morality that is shared produce of human experience history (4). The principles track norms of obligations and inform the rights of the different parties. They are supposed to function as an analytic framework of general norms derived from the common morality and further informs more detailed rules and judgments (13–14).
- 3.
The translations of the Analects are my own with some reference to James Legges’ translation (Legge 1960).
- 4.
In the later stage of Lu-Wang school’s development, there have been cases where the importance of ritual (li 禮) has been significantly downplayed. Some of these thinkers might even argue that virtues do not need to be cultivated throughout time but can be immediately grasped and realized. I will not go into the details of the later Lu-Wang school development in this paper.
- 5.
Confucians seldom draw a sharp line between moral and non-moral considerations. I adhere to this tendency and use moral considerations to highlight that these are considerations that contribute to a good life.
- 6.
The translations of the Mencius are my own with reference to D. C. Lau’s translations (Lau 2003).
- 7.
Parts of this discussion are taken from a paper that I wrote with Owen Flanagan. See Flanagan O., Zhao W. (2017) The Self and Its Good Vary Cross-Culturally: A Dozen Self-variations and Chinese Familial Selves. In: Menon S., Nagaraj N., Binoy V. (eds) Self, Culture and Consciousness. Springer, Singapore
- 8.
Some contemporary scholars such as Philip J Ivanhoe and Richard Kim understand Quan 權 as weighing the consequences in the Mencius. This understanding is specific to Mencius. Both Jing 經 and Quan 權 can take into account the weighing of consequences. Quan 權, more broadly, means anything that goes against the norm that also complies with the Dao. For instance, Cheng Yi 程颐, think that Quan is just part of the Jing.
- 9.
and does not distinguish moral life from non-moral life that is familiar to the Western tradition.
- 10.
See some discussions of the relation between virtue and ritual in the second section of this paper.
References
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Zhao, W. (2021). A Confucian Reasoning on Two Controversial Issues in Reproduction. In: Tham, J., Garcia Gómez, A., Lunstroth, J. (eds) Multicultural and Interreligious Perspectives on the Ethics of Human Reproduction. Religion and Human Rights, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86938-0_8
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