Abstract
In recent years, Confucian ethics has been considered as an alternative to the individual-oriented model of medical decision-making that is dominating in the modern West.
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Notes
- 1.
This paragraph from The Book of Changes is summarized in Ban Gu (32–92 A.D.) the History of Han Dynasty as “The Book of Changes said, ‘As there are husband and wife, father and son, ruler and minister, superior and junior, propriety and rightness have a basis.” In this summary it is made very clear that human relationships are the source of human morality.
- 2.
This is a characterization made by Thomas Nagel in his book Equality and Partiality (1991). Western philosophers such as Kant, Hare and Rawls fit this characterization very well.
- 3.
Some writers refer to the Confucian morality as a role-based morality. See Hansen (1993, 72). In discussing the Confucian concept of the person, Henry Rosemont emphasizes the importance of roles: “If we reject the view of human beings as free, autonomous, rights-bearing individuals, what are the alternatives?… For the early Confucians there can be no me in isolation, to be considered only abstractly: I am the totality of the roles I live in relation to specific others” (1991, 71–72).
- 4.
- 5.
“Liyun,” The Book of Rites. My translation. For Legge’s translation, see Legge 1885, vol. 1, 379–380.
- 6.
In his paper, Beecher gave more than twenty real examples of unethical research whose results have been published in established journals.
- 7.
Zuozhuan, Year 20 of the Duke of Zhao.
- 8.
- 9.
Sun Simiao (581–682), Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand Pieces of Gold, 1.2, “Sincere Attitudes of a Great Physician.” My translation.
- 10.
Yang Quan of the Southern Qi period (479–503), Wuli lun, Quoted in Lin 1993, 34.
- 11.
Xu Dachun 徐大椿 (1693–1771), Yixue Yuanliu Lun. Cf. Xu 2002, vol. 2, 57.
- 12.
Translation mine.
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Yu, KP. (2015). The Confucian Alternative to the Individual-Oriented Model of Informed Consent: Family and Beyond. In: Fan, R. (eds) Family-Oriented Informed Consent. Philosophy and Medicine(), vol 121. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12120-8_6
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