scholarly journals 道、技與自然——現代生物科技的莊子式批判

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-77
Author(s):  
Hongwen LI
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Engineering Technology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Digital Commons ◽  
Modern Biotechnology ◽  
Living Organisms

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.現代生物科技的廣泛應用引發了一系列社會、法律和倫理問題，它帶來的負面效應正如它的正面效果一樣多。現代生物科技的基本邏輯體現在：它採取還原論的思維模式，秉承改善生命的宗旨，以及持有技術樂觀主義的態度。作者運用莊子的哲學思想對現代生物科技展開一般性批評。作者指出，現代生物科技首先表現出強烈的反自然性，它向自然提出過分要求，干擾、阻止事物順其自然、按其本性來展示自己。現代生物科技還表現出異化特徵，主要體現在物質化和資本化兩個方面。物質化將人的活動限制在物的層面，片面追求物的有用性；資本化則導致生物資本主義的發展。用莊子道家的語言，技術的非自然性和異化的直接原因是“道”“技”分離。因此，為了走出現代生物技術的陷阱，應該採取莊子“道技合一”的方式，實現“技不離道”、“以道馭技”、“道法自然”之完美結合。Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses such as engineering, technology, and medical research. This paper highlights the social, legal, and moral issues brought about by modern biotechnology. It is particularly concerned with materialism, capitalism, and commercialism where biotechnological means are explored and exploited without ethical boundaries. The result of biotechnological abuse is that we human beings will become increasingly alienated from our authentic nature and being.Daoism was one of the major philosophical traditions of ancient China, based on the teaching of Laozi and Zhuangzi. This paper focuses on the Daoist view of human life and its relation to the natural world from Zhuangzi’s perspective. It will be contended that we must put “human flourishing” – the Dao – first, before we care about the utility of science and technology – the Ji. According to Daoism, true human self-realization depends on the unity between the Dao and the Ji.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 138 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

scholarly journals 技術生命的“道”“用”之思

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-32
Author(s):  
Jianguang WANG
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Genetically Modified Organisms ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Engineering Technology ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Digital Commons ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
China Today

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.隨著現代科學技術的發展，生命技術已經將人與技術的傳統物化關係和對象化的二元關係變成了一種“技術人”的關係。這種技術人一方面豐富了傳統的“人”的生物學屬性，另一方面也挑戰著人的社會角色和道德的主體屬性。生命的傳統價值內涵及其歷史主體性地位也因之受到弱化、虛化或被改寫。這不僅影響到人的生存方式，而且道德行為的虛幻化也侵蝕了人的責任和義務的道德基石，模糊了人的法律責任和道德自律性。在此基礎上，使人應當承擔的道義責任變成了一種可以進行技術性解讀的智識化命題。這種因技術而改寫的生命形象也挑戰著傳統的應用倫理原則。中國生命倫理學的建設，不應脫離中國歷史文化的語境和社會現實，並在此基礎上對現代生命技術和技術生命的倫理內涵進行創造性的解讀。它要反映中國文化在新的技術作用下對“人”的內涵進行的一種倫理模式的檢討。這種解讀也應當重視那種從當下的“百姓日用”的角度進行的道用之思。這種道用之思不僅要堅持道用一致、體用相即的原則，更是要植根於中國文化的人生觀、價值觀中，以體現出對現代技術與人的關係的倫理把握。在某種意義上，人類社會倫理的發展史就是不斷地否定和放棄一些舊道德而接受和適應新道德及其標準的過程。因此，中國生命倫理學的建構也就必須重視生命倫理內涵和標準的發展性。Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in areas such as engineering, technology, and medicine. This paper discusses the relationship between the Dao (i.e., the essence) of biotechnology and the function of biotechnology. In describing the situation in China today with regard to the exploration and development of biotechnology, this paper explicates the necessity of paying attention to the ethical implications and moral principles of science and technology. It is the author’s contention that we must put “humanity” and “human flourishing” (i.e., the common good of the Dao) first before we talk about the utility of science and technology. As China tries to catch up with the world in biotechnological technology such as stem cell research, xenotransplantation, regenerative medicine, and the use of genetically modified organisms, we need to be careful not to overstep our ethical boundaries.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 49 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

What Theology Should and Should Not Learn from the Social Sciences About the Common Good

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary L. Hirschfeld
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common

There are two ways to answer the question, What can Catholic social thought learn from the social sciences about the common good? A more modern form of Catholic social thought, which primarily thinks of the common good in terms of the equitable distribution of goods like health, education, and opportunity, could benefit from the extensive literature in public policy, economics, and political science, which study the role of institutions and policies in generating desirable social outcomes. A second approach, rooted in pre-Machiavellian Catholic thought, would expand on this modern notion to include concerns about the way the culture shapes our understanding of what genuine human flourishing entails. On that account, the social sciences offer a valuable description of human life; but because they underestimate how human behavior is shaped by institutions, policies, and the discourse of social science itself, their insights need to be treated with caution.

The Measure of Greatness

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Nature ◽  
Complex Trajectory ◽  
The Many ◽  
Human Excellence ◽  
Ethical Perspectives

Magnanimity is a virtue that has led many lives. Foregrounded early on by Plato as the philosophical virtue par excellence, it became one of the crown jewels in Aristotle’s account of human excellence and was accorded an equally salient place by other ancient thinkers. One of the most distinctive elements of the ancient tradition to filter into the medieval Islamic and Christian worlds, it sparked important intellectual engagements there and went on to carve deep tracks through several later philosophies that inherited from this tradition. Under changing names, under reworked forms, it continued to breathe in the thought of Descartes and Hume, Kant and Nietzsche, and their successors. Its many lives have been joined by important continuities. Yet they have also been fragmented by discontinuities—discontinuities reflecting larger shifts in ethical perspectives and competing answers to questions about the nature of the good life, the moral nature of human beings, and their relationship to the social and natural world they inhabit. They have also been punctuated by moments of controversy in which the greatness of this vision of human greatness has itself been called into doubt. This volume provides a window to the complex trajectory of a virtue whose glitter has at times been as heady as it has been divisive. By exploring the many lives it has lived, we will be in a better position to decide whether and why this is a virtue we might still want to make central to our own ethical lives.

scholarly journals The social struggle against death: Human strategies for immortality

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (13-14) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marko Galić
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Biological Part ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Social Struggle ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Human Death

Death is an infallible part of the human life, and what makes humandifferent from all other beings is fact that he knows that he isgoing to die. Knowing this, human beings are spending their wholelife knowing that the day of their end is going to come. It is clear thatdeath has its biological part, also as a huge event in the existenceof all life forms, including human, death has its philosophical pointof view, and finally, unlike some may disagree, death itself is a hugesocial phenomena as well, and as such, the social influence of deathdeserves close attention and its own part in the social science studies.This paper analyzes the presence of the death in human culture, includinginstitutions, rituals and beliefs following the discourse of lateZygmunt Bauman who left huge influence on this field of study. Sincethe earliest forms of communities, humans are trying to overcomethe death, the state of “after-life” and some form of immortality ofthe being is something that is common to all religions and beliefs everknown to mankind, which stands as a evidence that the final void ofnon-existence know to us as death is something that always presentedhorror in the mind of the humans.

3. Animals and the environment

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-47
Author(s):  
Damien Keown
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Meat Eating ◽  
Plant Life ◽  
The World ◽  
The Buddha

Is Buddhism truly an ‘eco-friendly’ religion? ‘Animals and the environment’ examines the implications of Buddhist teachings such as that human beings can be reborn as animals and vice versa. While the Buddhist ‘sublime attitudes’ such as kindness and compassion seem at first to favour animals to a greater degree than we find in Christianity, human life still takes precedence in the hierarchy of living beings. Rules about plant life are unclear, with Buddhist writers acknowledging the beauty of both the wilderness and civilization. Vegetarianism is largely seen as a morally superior diet, but meat-eating was common at the time of the Buddha and is widely practised by monks today. Buddhist attitudes toward the natural world are complex and are to some extent overshadowed by the belief that the world as we know it is fundamentally flawed.

Sociocultural constructs of children and childhood

2019 ◽  
Vol 578 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Joanna Maria Garbula ◽  
Małgorzata Kowalik-Olubińska
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Sociocultural Perspective ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sociocultural Approach ◽  
Universal Feature ◽  
Children And Childhood ◽  
Cultural Component

Interpretations of the concepts of children and childhood have significantly changed over the past centuries. In the eighteenth century childhood was ascribed a status of a separate phase of human life in which human beings learn, grow and develop. Research conducted within the developmental psychology paradigm based on the notion of childhood’s ‘naturalness’ and on the necessity and normality of development has contributed to the emergence of a universal vision of the child and childhood. This vision has been challenged by the research conducted within the sociocultural paradigm in which childhood, understood as a social construction, is neither a natural nor a universal feature of human groups but appears as a specific structural and cultural component of many societies. We focused our attention on the sociocultural interpretations of the concepts of children and childhood. Our aim is, therefore, to show the ways in which children and childhood are understood in a sociocultural perspective. In the introductory part of the paper we briefly describe a universal vision of child development as well as the criticism it met from the supporters of the social childhood studies. In the main part of the article we focus our attention on the issue of social constructing of children and childhood. Sociocultural approach to childhood reveals a multitude and diversity of images of children and childhood constructed by adults in a variety of places, contexts and social spaces.

scholarly journals 大疫當前: 訴諸儒家文明的倫理資源

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-107
Author(s):  
Ruiping FAN
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Digital Commons ◽  
Confucian Virtue ◽  
Human Practices ◽  
Chinese Ethics ◽  
Political Decisions

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.本文論證對於新冠狀病毒疫情只做政治學論證是不夠的，還需要倫理學的反思，因為一個社會的倫理價值承諾才是對其現實政治的一種基礎性指導而不是相反。中華傳統文化的倫理精神同現代西方文化的倫理精神大異其趣。如果突出其不同特點的話，可以分別標識為儒家的天命美德倫理及其家庭主義與和諧主義的特點，針對現代的世俗原則倫理及其原則主義與自由主義的特點。東亞國家對於這次疫情的應對，至少在疫情明顯出現之後，總體上處理得較之西方國家更好，背後實有不同的倫理精神的反應和支撐。本文訴諸儒家美德倫理學的資源，宣導人類進行倫理學的範式轉向：我們需要和諧主義（而不是科學主義）的發展觀、美德主義（而不是原則主義）的決策觀、家庭主義（而不是契約主義）的天下觀。的確，不少人憂慮，這次疫情將會扭轉近些年的全球化發展趨勢，使國際社會進入互相敵對的、封閉的惡性競爭時代。儒家美德倫理學所攜帶的美德、和諧和和平的資訊，應該給予我們深遠的啟示。Why have some countries done better than others in dealing with the coronavirus crisis so far? One popular answer is in terms of politics: everything depends on state capacity, the level of political trust in society, and the quality of leadership. This paper suggests the need to go beyond politics and turn to ethics. If one does not delve into the ethical spirit and substance that underlie tangible political decisions and activities to combat the coronavirus pandemic in a state, one will fail to see the cultural momentum of the people’s responses in that state and miss the moral foundation of the social practices embedded within that state’s civilization in comparison with other civilizations. In particular, this paper argues that the spirit and substance of Chinese ethics differ from those of the contemporary mainstream Western ethics characteristic of secular principlism, which, although they possess important advantages and merits, suffer from a series of defects and failures, including untenable reductionism, a type of dogmatism, and even radicalism. In contrast, Confucian civilization provides the Chinese with a virtue ethics that is not principlism. It is rather an exposition of Confucian virtue (de), as a powerful but peaceful moral force, that is entrenched within the fundamental structures of the universe (as portrayed in the images of yin-yang, the eight trigrams, and the 64 hexagrams in the Classic of Change) and within the ritual activities of human beings (as described in the ceremonial and minute rituals in the three Confucian ritual classics) to shape the Confucian moral character. Confucian virtue principles and rules are implicit in such structures and the rituals to be formulated in connection with them, but they cannot be created through pure reason. They play their roles in human practices along with structures and rituals but can never exhaust their richness and profundity. The paper indicates that this virtue ethics contains a Confucian notion of harmonious freedom (that can counter scientific determinism) and a familist ethic (that can be adopted to check and balance runaway contractualism), which can be fruitfully used to direct political decisions and activities to combat the coronavirus pandemic and to accomplish peaceful and fruitful outcomes in society.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 9 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

scholarly journals Pengetahuan Mahasiswa Biologi Mengenai Penerapan Bioteknologi Rekayasa Genetika Ditinjau Dari Perspektif Islam

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-224
Author(s):  
Abdul Hadi
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Medical Problems ◽  
Biology Students ◽  
Islamic Perspective ◽  
Modern Biotechnology ◽  
Students Attitudes ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Biotechnology Products ◽  
Relationship Of

Advances in science and technology encourage the economic, industrial, and health sectors to develop rapidly through diagnostic and therapeutic treatments. Therapeutic-based health research encourages the advancement of modern biotechnology to answer all medical problems. However, not infrequently, advances in modern biotechnology are often considered contrary to moral, ethical, social, legal, psychological and religious values. The presence of biotechnology is considered to dominate human life and has great power to change the development of living organisms and creates an interesting condition to study and analyze when it is associated with the management of medical biotechnology products that are safe for the environment, people's lives and religion. This study aims to determine the level of knowledge of Biology students at X & Y universities regarding the application of genetic engineering biotechnology when viewed from an Islamic perspective and the relationship of knowledge to Biology students' attitudes about genetic engineering using qualitative data research through planning (antecedents), processes (transactions), and results (outcomes). The results of the study of 60 biology students from universities X and Y obtained 8 students X and 7 students Y had knowledge of genetic engineering in an Islamic perspective. Meanwhile, after all students participated in the discussion session and were given articles on genetic engineering in an Islamic perspective, all students agreed that the application of genetic engineering must be based on religious knowledge so that research was carried out in accordance with the rules contained in the MUI fatwa No. 35 of 2013.

墮胎——道家和道教的觀點

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-147
Author(s):  
Linchun QUAN
Keyword(s):  
Medical Technology ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
One Child Policy ◽  
Child Policy ◽  
Digital Commons ◽  
Bioethical Issues ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.道家思想尊重人性、堅持貴生輕物、生命至上，維護人的發展。道家對待生死的態度是遵循自然本性，主張順其自然。從這一觀點出發，墮胎不是自然而然，而是通過人為的手段達到其他的目的。道教除了順其自然的思想外，還強調陰陽平衡、尊道積德。道教認為，胎兒具有靈性，因此是有生命的，殺死胎兒屬於殺生惡行。道家和道教對待墮胎的態度無疑對於當今審視中國墮胎政策，富有一定的啟示意義。雖然，道家和道教沒有使用“權利”這樣的倫理語言，但卻反映了對生命的尊重。Daoism, one of China’s major philosophical and religioustraditions, emphasizes such notions as holism, organicism, andnaturalness, promoting the idea of living in line with the rulesand patterns of nature. This essay examines the Daoist ethics ofliving naturally with special attention given to abortion. It pointsout that for philosophical Daoism, abortion is not acceptablebecause it is considered an “artificial” action for a self-servingpurpose, such as aborting an unwanted baby girl after a sex teston a fetus. For religious Daoism, abortion is not acceptable because the fetus has a spirit and a soul. Both traditions maintain the importance of the sacredness of all life. Yet the language of rights and choices is absent in Daoism, and the aim of the essay is to present the basic teaching of Daoism and show that it is relevant to contemporary bioethical issues. With the increasing use of modern medical technology that makes the control or manipulation of the human body much easier, it is utterly important for humanity to think about the nature of human beings and the relationship between itself and the natural world. The essay also contends that Daoism offers a perspective to reflect on the one-child policy in China that has been practiced in the past few decades.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 1355 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Karen Stohr
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Improvement ◽  
Moral Ideals ◽  
Practical Project ◽  
The Social ◽  
Aims And Scope

This short introductory chapter sets out the aims and scope of the book as a whole, with the goal of orienting the reader. It explains the motivation for the project and the philosophical inspirations for the approach, as well as the limitations. The chapter begins by explaining the gap referenced in the title in terms of a gap between moral ideals and the reality of human beings and human life. Moral improvement is the practical project of trying to narrow that gap as far as possible. Understood as a practical project, it is fundamentally first-personal. It is also, however, fundamentally social. Moral improvement is something we do together. The social aspect of moral improvement consists in constructing joint normative spaces in which we can make ourselves better. The chapter concludes with brief summaries of individual chapters.

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