Abstract
Death with dignity is a significant issue in modern bioethics. In modern healthcare, the wide use of new technologies at the end of life has caused heated debate on how to protect human dignity. The key point of contention lies in the different understandings of human dignity and the dignity of death. Human dignity has never been a clear concept in Western ethical explorations, and the dignity of death has given rise to more confusions. Although there is no such term as “dignity” in Confucian ethics, there are discussions of a number of ideas related to human dignity and the dignity of death. Therefore, Confucian bioethics can offer a new perspective for understanding the theoretical difficulties associated with the dignity of death and new methods for solving them. In this article, we attempt to reconstruct Confucian views on human dignity and the dignity of death and, based on those views, to analyze the following issues: the relationship between the dignity of death and biological life, the relationship between the dignity of death and suffering, the relationship between the dignity of death and the autonomy of human beings, and the relationship between the dignity of death and social justice. This article will also compare the Confucian views on these issues with the views of Western philosophers. Confucian ethics can offer distinct answers to the above issues and help resolve some confusions concerning concepts and theories in Western research on the dignity of death.
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Acknowledgments
We are very grateful to two anonymous reviewers of this journal for their good suggestions. We also thank the National Foundation of Social Science of China for funding support for this research. We also thank Marcus Düwell for inviting us to take part in the joint research project Human Dignity in the Context of Bioethics—China and the West. This China Exchange Programme is jointly organized by the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) and the Ministry of Education of China. Marcus Düwell and Jianhui Li are the leaders of the project on the Netherlands and Chinese sides, respectively.
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Li, Y., Li, J. Death with dignity from the Confucian perspective. Theor Med Bioeth 38, 63–81 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-016-9383-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-016-9383-7