Reclaiming a Sense of Common Humanity: A Confucian Ethical Vision
Professor Jing-Bao Nie, Bioethics Centre, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand; a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University, UK
Wednesday, 02 October 2019, 11am to 12.30pm
Ethox and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities are based at the Big Data Institute, University of Oxford, Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Information and Discovery, Old Road Campus, Oxford OX3 7FZ. This talk will be held in the Level 1 Ax Meeting Room. Please email admin@ethox.ox.ac.uk if you would like to attend.
Abstract
The idea of a common humanity constitutes a foundational ethical perception across the centuries and geographical boundaries. However, from the first half of twentieth century and in spite of sweeping globalization, such a moral sense has been substantially undermined -- at times totally shattered -- by a series of events of inhumanity, socio-political forces and intellectual movements including wartime medical atrocities, nationalism, postmodernism and multiculturalism. This talk aims to demonstrate how a sense of common humanity should and can be reclaimed, or in the Confucian term, cultivated through engaging with thought of Meng Zi (Mencius, c. 372-289 BCE), a founder of Confucianism, and traditional Chinese medical ethics on moral sentiments and universalism.