Theological Ethics, Moral Philosophy, and Natural Law

The article deals with the relationship between theological ethics and moral philosophy. The former is seen as a theoretical reflection on Christian ethics, the latter as one on secular ethics. The main questions asked are: (1) Is there one and only one pre-theoretical knowledge about acting rightly? (2) Does philosophy provide us with the theoretical framework for understanding both Christian and secular ethics? Both questions are answered in the negative. In the course of argument, four positions are presented: theological ‘unificationism’, philosophical ‘unificationism’, theological ‘separationism’ and Lutheran ‘dualism’. It is argued that the latter position is most convincing. It is dual in the sense of being both a theory of Christian ethics and of including a recognition of natural law. Hence, it unites a particularistic and a universalistic point of view. In the last section a reformulation of the Lutheran position is attempted in making use of the ethical theory of Knud E. Løgstrup's The Ethical Demand.     

Saving Them From Yourself: AnInquiry into the South Asian Gift of Fearlessness

This article considers the importance of indigenous classifications in the study of comparative ethics. Specifically, it explores medieval South Asian gift discourses from Jain, Theravada, and Hindu Dharmasastra sources, which list and discuss a variety of prescribed gifts. Such lists generally include a category of gift known as the “gift of fearlessness”(abhayadana), wherein refraining from harming others is considered a species of gift giving. This type of gift and the discussions concerning it unite generosity and nonviolence in a way that is suggestive for understanding how some medieval South Asian theorists conceived of the gift, human nature, and altruism.     

Aquinas and the Natural Law

Recent decades have seen a shift away from the traditional view that Aquinas's theory of the natural law is meant to supply us with normative guidance grounded in a substantive theory of human nature. In the present essay, I argue that this is a mistake. Expanding on the suggestions of Jean Porter and Ralph McInerny, I defend a derivationist reading of ST I‐II, Q. 94, A. 2 according to which Aquinas takes our knowledge of the genuine goods of human life and their proper ordering to one another to be self‐evident only to the wise who are able to discern the truth about our God‐given human nature. I then show that this reading provides a better account of Aquinas's view than two recent alternatives: John Finnis's brand of inclinationism and Daniel Mark Nelson's virtue‐based interpretation.     

The Varied Trajectories of Engaged Buddhism: New Works on Buddhist Environmental Ethics,Interdependence, and Racial Karma

This book discussion reads three works in contemporary Buddhist social ethics alongside one another: Ogyen Trinley Dorje’s Interconnected, David Loy’s Ecodharma, and Larry Ward’s America’s Racial Karma. Each of these works contributes to the subfield of engaged Buddhism, which aims to bring Buddhist value theory to contemporary social and political issues in order to effect social change. The rapid development of engaged Buddhism constitutes a particularly rich moment in the history of Buddhist thought, as Buddhist ethics is showing itself to be actively in process—a tradition in the midst of rapid transformation, revision, and cross-cultural application. This book discussion interrogates these three works with that metaphilosophical and historiographical issue in mind, analyzing the particular ways in which they contribute to challenging and reshaping the traditional contours of Buddhist ethics into a contemporary social and political register. In exemplifying the approaches of translation, extending, and applying, these works demonstrate the creative and experimental moment in which Buddhist social ethics finds itself today. Such adaptations of the Buddhist tradition are historiographically significant as innovations, while also of a piece with Buddhism’s history of intercultural transmission.     

Is Natural Law a Border Concept Between Judaism and Christianity?

With the passing of disputations between Jewish and Christian thinkers as to whose tradition has a more universal ethics, the task of Jewish and Christian ethicists is to constitute a universal horizon for their respective bodies of ethics, both of which are essentially particularistic being rooted in special revelation. This parallel project must avoid relativism that is essentially anti‐ethical, and triumphalism that proposes an imperialist ethos. A retrieval of the idea of natural law in each respective tradition enables the constitution of some intelligent common ground for ethical cooperation in both theory and practice between the traditions. This essay also suggests how the constitution of this common ground could include Muslims as well. The constitution of this common ground enables religious ethicists to present more cogent ethical arguments in secular space, but only of course, when those who now control secular space are open to arguments from members of any religious tradition.     

Plumbing the Depths: A Recovery of Natural Law and Natural Wisdom in the Context of Debates about Evolutionary Purpose

I argue that the theological traditions of natural law and wisdom offer helpful meeting points in discussions about evolutionary “purpose” and contingency in relation to theological purpose, and serve to form the basis for a theology of nature. Natural law offers a way of describing the ordered action of God toward complexity in a contingent world without using the language of either “design” or “progress.” The theological tradition of wisdom as implicit in the natural world, learned in the human community, and received as gift of grace offers a further means of interconnecting biological reality with spiritual experience, while retaining distinctions. Wisdom and natural law intersect inasmuch as natural law is participation in Eternal Wisdom, although the latter makes sense only from the prior perspective of faith.     

Buddhist Perspectives for Addressing Values Conflicts in Counseling: Possibilities From Practice

In recent years, the issue of value conflicts in counseling has become more salient, whereas equitably working with such conflicts has been increasingly contested. Interest in the confluence of counseling and spirituality has also grown. Using relevant Buddhist principles, the authors offer a spiritual framework that is illustrated through clinical case studies. These are used to conceptualize concerns, understand the conflict, and find ways to be responsive to the disjunction between client and counselor.     

Questions in the Making: A Review Essay on Zen and Buddhist Ethics in the Context of Buddhist and Comparative Ethics

In reviewing four works from the 1990s—monographs by Christopher Ives and Phillip Olson on Zen Buddhist ethics, Damien Keown's treatment of Indian Buddhist ethics, and an edited collection on Buddhism and human rights—this article examines recent scholarship on Zen Buddhist ethics in light of issues of Buddhist and comparative ethics. Its highlights selected themes in the notional and real encounter of Zen Buddhism with Western thought and culture as presented in the reviewed works and identifies issues and problems for further consideration, in particular, problems of comparative and cross-cultural understanding and the articulation and redefinition of Zen Buddhist tradition.     

The Ethics of Sex: A Call to the Gay Community

Addresses the gay community and suggests three principles to govern contemporary sexual behavior: first, the presumed goodness of homosexual relationships; second, an updated version of natural law, that one do what is healthy and wholesome, as determined by the best available opinion of the day, which scientific research provides; third, a developmental principle, that all are not capable of the same level of interpersonal and sexual relationships. Discussion proposes both negative and positive guidelines for sexual practice.     

God,Mixed Modes,and Natural Law: An Intellectualist Interpretation of Locke's Moral Philosophy

The goal of this paper is to explicate the theological and epistemological elements of John Locke's moral philosophy as presented in the ‘Essay Concerning Human Understanding’ and ‘The Reasonableness of Christianity’. Many detractors hold that Locke's moral philosophy is internally inconsistent due to his seeming commitment to both the intellectualist position that divinely instituted morality admits of pure rational demonstration and the competing voluntarist claim that we must rely for our moral knowledge upon divine revelation. In this paper I argue that Locke is guilty of no such contradiction. In doing so, I attempt to accommodate Locke's position in the ‘Essay’ that moral principles are demonstrable a priori with his views on the sanctity of Christian revelation. I then consider Locke's conception of moral ideas as a species of mixed modes, or arbitrarily constructed complex ideas, and attempt to navigate the mechanism whereby human understanding can recognize these ideas as conforming to, or straying from, divinely appointed natural law. I conclude that despite Locke's failure to actually provide a full-fledged moral theory, he lays a rationally coherent groundwork for the fulfilment of such a project that accommodates a-priori rational reflection and divine revelation as complementary paths to moral understanding.     

黄老之学天道环周与《黄帝内经》营卫运行理论的建构

通过对黄老之学中“天道环周”思想的内涵及其萌芽、发展和成熟的表述,以及《黄帝内经》中有关营卫运行的概括,分析两者在思维方式和理论构建等方面的相似性,“天道环周”对《黄帝内经》中营卫运行理论的形成具有重要影响。     

Ethics and Relationship: From Risk Management to Relational Engagement

In this article, the underlying assumptions of the current ACA Code of Ethics ( 2014a ) are examined as they are embedded in historical and cultural contexts. A relational ethic situated within relational‐cultural theory that provides an alternative framework for understanding ethics in a relational and compassionate way is presented.     

From principles to principals: The new direction in medical ethics

Many alternatives or supplements to principalism seek to reconnect medical ethics with the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of the persons directly involved in ethically troublesome situations. This shift of attention, from deeds to doers, from principles to principals, acknowledges the importance of the moral agents involved in the situation — particular practitioners, patients, and families. Taking into account the subjective, lived experience of moral decision-making parallels recent efforts in the teaching of medicine to give the patient's subjectivity — his or her personal experience of being sick or disabled — epistemological parity with scientific medicine's objective, biomedically-oriented view of the person's sickness or disability.Moreover, the shift from principalism to principals signals a growing realization that ethical problems in the profession of medicine are inseparable from its practice. Philosophers and other humanists working in medicine should resist the temptation to institutionalize a professional role as solver of ethical problems, clarifier of values, or mediator of disputes and work instead to help practitioners practice medicine reflectively.     

血管介入治疗与自然力再平衡：从扶持到掣肘

自然力是组织维持稳态的自愈能力,完善的内皮及平滑肌功能构成血管自然力基础。损伤力为打破组织稳态的破坏力。自然力弱于损伤力时,负平衡形成,疾病发生发展,需外援医疗干预扶持恢复自然力平衡。经数代技术革新,介入治疗后的血管事件发生率显著下降,但异物引起慢性炎症及再狭窄问题凸显,介入治疗与血管自然力陷入再狭窄-再介入的"对抗平衡",如何避免这种"掣肘"状态成为血管介入治疗后续的核心问题。生物可吸收支架及可回收支架为适度干预介入理念的新生产物,有望在干预成功后恢复血管自然状态,真正意义上实现自然力再平衡。     

Aquinas on Natural Law and the Virtues in Biblical Context Homosexuality as a Test Case

Marriagelike homosexual relationships expose a division among ethicists following Aquinas. Those emphasizing natural law may call such relationships unnatural; those emphasizing the virtues may approve of relationships fostering love and justice. Natural law, the virtues, and homosexuality all show up in Aquinas's Commentary on Romans —untranslated and hardly cited. Romans 1:18 opens a discussion of justice. Verse 20 provides Aquinas's chief warrant for natural law. Verse 26 applies virtue and law to the vice against nature. But Aquinas's account also depends on Paul as an exemplar of virtue and on Aquinas's high regard for the Bible. Aquinas deploys natural law as a mode of biblical exegesis, not an alternative to it. In the De potentia , Aquinas considers how to proceed when nature and Scripture seem to conflict. The account does not settle, but rather makes more room for, dispute.     

Letters, Notes, and Comments

Letter: Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the World's Religions
Commenting on Leaping into the Boundless: A Daoist Reading of Comparative Religious Ethics by Francisca Cho, Moral Reason, Risk, and Comparative Inquiry by Robin W. Lovin, Heuristic Power as the Test of Theory by Ronald M. Green, and The Author Replies by Francisca Cho     

法律的道德审视:当代中国卫生法伦理学研究的使命

卫生法伦理学是由医学、法学和伦理学三大学科相互交融、渗透而结合的产物。卫生法伦理学作为一门独立的学科有着独特的研究对象。法律的道德审视,不仅是法伦理学研究的基础途径,更是当代中国卫生法伦理学研究的使命。