Confucius and the Pope

The Catholic Church has released a new document, "Instructions Dignitas Personae on Certain Bioethical Questions," that applies to a broad range of topics:

In a resounding confirmation that the Catholic church's pro-life concern extends to the brave new world of biotechnology, the Vatican today issued a tough document condemning the freezing of human embryos, genetic engineering, human cloning, animal/human genetic hybrids, and a number of other procedures described as affronts to human dignity. The document also reiterates existing bans on embryonic stem cell research, in-vitro fertilization, and the "morning after pill."

There is much here to think about, but I want to focus for a moment on the opening line of the Instructions:

The dignity of a person must be recognized in every human being from conception to
natural death.

I think a modern Confucianist perspective would reject this statement.  Most fundamentally, "life," for a Confucian, is not simply a biological process, it is a social practice.  We gain our humanity, the unique quality of human life (as opposed to other sorts of biological entities), through our interactions with others.  We might call this "sociality" - the social quality of human life.  For a Confucian, then, the key ethical question would not be when biological life begins but when social life begins.

As a first consideration, sociality would seem to begin at birth, the moment when the new-born is brought out of the womb and placed in the arms of her mother.  Obviously, social interaction is involved in that moment. 

However, we could also say that the anticipation of birth also creates a certain sociality.  This is especially true now with the introduction of various forms of technology.  How many of us put that first hazy sonogram on the refrigerator door in anticipation of a new child?  Thus, it could be said that at some point before birth, perhaps when a pregnancy is made known, sociality begins.

But there is a catch here, for a Confucian, I believe.  What if the parents of a child-to-be truly believe that the introduction of a new person into the family will limit their abilities to carry out their obligations to already present living members of the family? If there were a genuine conflict of obligations, a Confucian would likely prioritize the duties we have toward the living over the duties we might have toward the not-yet-born.  Think about passage 11.12 from the Analects:

When Adept Lu asked about serving ghosts and spirits, the Master said: “You haven’t learned to serve the living, so how could you serve ghosts?”
“Might I ask about death?”
“You don’t understand life,” the Master replied, “so how could you understand death?”     

The key here is the notion of “serving the living,” which implies daily commitment to cultivating social relationships, starting first with family and moving then to friends and acquaintances and even strangers.  “Life,” is the process of serving the living.  Our duties toward those now living around us are more important than worries about death.  Although we have obligations to remember the dead, to venerate the ancestors, we do so because they have already lived and provided for us the social interactions that nurtured our Humanity.   This is different from the not yet living, who have not begun humanizing themselves by adding to the humanization of others around them.

This, then, would limit the absolute statement that begins "Dignitas Personae."  There could be cases, from a Confucian perspective, where an embryo should not be recognized as morally equivalent to a living person.

There are a variety of further qualifications we could consider here (this is a good portion of chapter 2 of the book I am writing), but let me close with one other point.

Confucianism would also resist an absolutist application of a universal statement.  It is impossible to know how the particular circumstances of any given set of parents-to-be might create moral conflicts.  A Confucian would, rather, propound a general guideline in favor of carrying a pregnancy to term, but would not demand that each and every pregnancy be treated in the same manner.  There may be situations where duties toward the living must take precedence over duties to the not yet born.  As Confucius said:

"The noble-minded are all-encompassing, not stuck in doctrines.  Little people are stuck in doctrines".
(Analects 2.14)

To be "all-encompassing" requires a certain sensitivity to context and circumstance, especially when that means action that might contradict a broader doctrine.

Comments

[Chris]

Interesting post, Sam. I've put up some reflections (mostly fast and not thought through, but it's finals week) on it at my place.

[Tammy]

Is is against the Catholic Church to study Tao?

[Donald Goodman]

+AMDG

Doesn't this argument neglect the fact that the unborn child is already in relations---specifically, with his mother and father? The mother in particular has a very deep and intense relationship with the child even before birth. Catholic thought on community stems from Thomistic notions of justice rather than from this Confucian "sociality" (though they do seem to have significant overlap, as I think Matteo Ricci would argue), but those notions make it clear that a mother's relation with a child in her womb is real and significant, creating real obligations on both sides in justice, and clearly excludes deliberately killing that child. Why wouldn't Confucius recognize that relation?

Of course, the entirety of this post assumes a distinction between "unborn child" and "living person," a distinction which I think is unjustified. E.g., "There may be situations where duties toward the living must take precedence over duties to the not yet born." Yet if one understands that the "not yet born" are nevertheless still living, your conclusion doesn't work.

[Sam]

Perhaps the greatest distinction between Confucianism and Christianity is the former's embrace of what might be called a moral immanence. That is, there is no (or very little) recourse to a singular, universal standard of moral judgment, not a rigorously applied one at any rate. Rather, right action is to be determined from within a particular context, a kind of situational ethics. There is, of course, debate about the extent to which Confucianism includes a transcendent (see Tu Wei-Ming) versus an immanent (see Hall and Ames) perspective on ethics. But even if we accept a transcendent interpretation the importance of context in the actual application and performance of moral judgment and action seems undeniable.
Thus, for a Confucian, whether or not a unborn fetus has the moral status as a already born person would depend on the social context in which that determination was being made. That is different from many Christians - I will not say all Christians because there is obviously debate among Christians on the morality of abortion. One can be Christian and be pro-choice...

[Donald Goodman]

+AMDG

Would you carry it to its conclusion, then, that whether a born child has the moral status of an already grown person would depend on the social context in which that determination was being made?

While one can be Christian and pro-abortion, one cannot be Catholic and pro-abortion; and since the posting was about the Pope and Catholicism, that seems an important distinction. Catholics are Christians, but not all Christians are Catholics.