Challenging And Responding: The Virtuous Dimension Of Death And Dying In Chinese Discourses

This thesis is intended to discuss an urgent and practical issue, death and dying in Chinese discourse. We show the mutual interpretations between contemporary ethics of death-and-dying and traditional Chinese culture on the basis of the theory of virtue.The total structure of the thesis is that we establish the theoretical foundation i.e. the structure of the virtue in Chapter 1, that we describe the challenging issues about death and dying in Chinese discourse i.e. the definition of death, brain death and euthanasia in Chapter 2, that we discuss the tradition of death virtue in Chinese culture in Chapter 3, that we analyze the ethical reasons responding the challenges based on the ethics of virtue in Chapter 4, and that we require into the virtue of death & dying and end-of-life care or dying care based on psychology of death in Chapter 5.Although we make the thesis a big "system" in logical form, based on the structure of virtue, we don't seek for such "system" in content and we can't yet reach it in this way. Actually Chapter 3-5 respectively consists of an independent and self-consistent subsystem respectively based on some aspect of the structure of virtue.In Chapter 1, we discuss three kinds of contemporary theories of virtue: historicist, empiricist and rationalist. The main disagreements among them are the different understanding of "character", a central term in the theory of virtue. Historicists see "character" of virtue as a kind of goodness shaped historically and culturally, with some "typical" or "representative" traits in a certain society, which does favor to the whole life of people. Empiricists sees it as a kind of steady psychological disposition of an individual, which leads the individual to a certain behavior in a certain situation. And rationalists see it as a capacity for leading an individual to behaving without contradiction according to the ethical rules.Our understanding is mediocre about it, and we see "Character" of virtue as the entirety of moral attributes, which an individual has gotten after he/she creatively accepts the ethical rules in his/her culture and society with his/her intellectual capacity and which leads the individual to the steady tendence to a consistent behavior in a certain situation. Our definition of virtue shows the three aspects of virtue i.e. historical or cultural, of psychological disposition and of the rules.In Chapter 2, we show the challenges of death and dying in contemporary Chinese discourse: definition of death, brain death and euthanasia. In the analysis of the definition of death, based on the "Qi" theory (pneumatology) in traditional Chinese culture especially in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), we discuss the definition of death on four levels-of the form, of the concept, of the locus and of the criteria-according to Robert Veatch's theory of defining death. On the formal level, the statement, "a creature is alive if the Qi is gathered; a creature is dead if the Qi is disappeared"( "Qi ju ze sheng, Qi san ze si"), is a good definition. On the level of concepts, death mainly refers to the irreversible loss of vital fluids and of the capacity for bodily integration. On the level of the locus, there are the doctrines of five viscera (Wuzangshuo) and of brain tissue (Naosuishuo) but the former is leading. As for the criteria, they are pluralist, pulses diagnosis (Maizheri), energy channels (Jinglud) diagnosis and so on.Then in the discussion of brain-death concept we introduce the criteria of brain death and the debates. From the viewpoints of the evolution theory, we point out that the brainstem death means end of human being's life and that the cerebral death means end of person's life.After briefly introduce the history of euthanasia, we divide it into four stages: the custom stage in ancient ages, the banning stage in Medieval Ages, the conceptual stage (1870-1931) in modern ages and the practical stage (1931-present) in contemporary age. During the last stage, the ethicists have tried twice to save the concept of euthanasi...