Lecture 46 of the Keke Forum: Professor Li Ruiquan of Taiwan on the Ethical Distinction Between Reproductive Cloning and Therapeutic Cloning

**Lecture 46 of the KeKe Forum: Professor Li Ruiquan of Taiwan on the Ethical Distinction between Reproductive Cloning and Therapeutic Cloning**

**Lecture 46 of the Peking University Forum on the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology**

**Time:** Wednesday, December 19, 2007, 3:00–5:00 p.m.

**Venue:** Meeting Room, First Floor, Department of Philosophy, Peking University (Fourth Courtyard)

**Speaker:** Professor Li Ruiquan (Director, Institute of Philosophy, National Central University, Taiwan)

**Topic:** The Ethical Distinction between Reproductive Copying and Therapeutic Copying

Today’s lecture was quite interesting. I have read some books on bioethical topics like cloned humans before, and what Mr. Li introduced today was not unfamiliar to me. What was somewhat special was that although today’s lecture did not cite sources, Mr. Li’s discussion was developed on the basis of a Confucian stance and line of thought; reportedly, Mr. Li is also a disciple of Mou Zongsan?

Mr. Li’s attitude toward cloned humans is very permissive. He believes that therapeutic cloning not only need not be prohibited, but is even worth encouraging; reproductive cloning likewise has no forbidden zone in scientific research (that is my wording), and the key lies in being cautious when applying the technology.

Regarding the issue of reproductive cloning, Mr. Li emphasized the individual’s “right to reproduce.” After discussing some related views, Mr. Li pointed out: “If everyone has the right to reproduce, then provided that no other people’s rights and the resulting consequences are harmed and are immoral (for example, producing lives that are seriously disabled and unfortunate, or resulting consequences that seriously harm the parties concerned and society, etc.), the right to reproduce can allow people to use all kinds of ways of having children, including asexual reproduction, to achieve their wish to reproduce. As research that provides one possible way of reproduction, research into copy (i.e. cloning) reproduction does not contain immoral elements.” In other words, Mr. Li is trying to invoke the “right to reproduce” to offer a limited defense of reproductive cloning.

Of course, there are still many questions here. For example, as Wu laoshi pointed out, perhaps when the technology is fully mature we may discuss using it cautiously and in a limited way, but the problem is that it cannot even get past the first hurdle. Research into cloning technology necessarily requires experiments, and in the end it must be tested on human beings, which means that the first cloned human must surely be an experimental subject. In response, Mr. Li brought up examples such as “test-tube babies” and other assisted reproductive methods, dissolving the experimental problem of cloned humans, or rather, arguing that here the issues surrounding cloned humans are no more special than those involving test-tube babies; it is still an old problem.

Liu laoshi, on the other hand, pointed out that only the research stage can be controlled, while the application of technology cannot be controlled. Liu laoshi raised the issue of using ultrasound to check the sex of the fetus, saying that once ultrasound technology is mature and widespread, people using it to screen fetal sex will become something impossible to stop. What is very interesting is that Mr. Li actually endorsed sex selection. He believed that sex selection may be for the sake of building a happy family; some people prefer boys, others prefer girls, and the existence of technology that can choose a child’s sex is not itself a bad thing. Sex discrimination is of course bad, but that is another issue, and it needs to be treated and corrected independently. If there were no technology for screening a fetus’s sex, then families that discriminate against girls would either keep having child after child until they had a boy; or abandon or kill the girl after she was born; or let the girl who was born grow up in an unfortunate environment of discrimination, and so on. In that case, it would actually be better to screen the sex at the outset.

Mr. Li’s way of putting it does make some sense. Technologies like ultrasound do not themselves seem to have fostered the atmosphere of sex discrimination, and one cannot lay the problem of sex discrimination at the door of ultrasound. Although I do not agree with Mr. Li’s certain theory of technological neutrality, I also strongly emphasize that many problems that ought originally to be borne by people should not be blamed on technology; after all, science and technology are not subjects capable of being “responsible.”

I will not comment much on other matters for the time being; let me end with a few words on Confucian bioethics.

Later, Wu laoshi raised another question, saying that after introducing Confucian thinking, would there be some kind of hierarchical difference formed between different people or forms of life? If, for instance, embryonic life is “lower” than a healthy person, and thus the embryo’s life can be sacrificed in service of human beings, then would there be even more levels between them? For example, is a “disabled person” regarded as lower than a healthy person, and could the disabled be sacrificed for the sake of the healthy, and so on?

Mr. Li’s reply mainly cited classical texts and emphasized that Confucianism would never require sacrificing anyone’s life for the benefit of others; even killing one person for the sake of the entire world is not permissible. But here I would still like to offer some defense of Confucian ethics in a broader sense.

What I want to say is that when understanding Confucian ethics, one must by no means simply transplant the framework of modern ethics into it. Confucian ethics, like ancient Greek ethics and other traditional forms of ethics, possesses a “paradigm” quite different from that of modern ethics. Modern mainstream ethics is the so-called “normative ethics,” with “value” as its keyword and the establishment of behavioral norms as its goal; its entire line of thought and method can be said to be quite “modern.” Almost every aspect of modernity is vividly reflected in modern ethics (such as norms, order, rigor, precision, quantification, effectiveness, control, operationalism, the splitting apart of what is and what ought to be, and so on). But older forms of ethics such as Confucianism are not like this. For them, the core issue of ethics is not “What should one do?” but “What kind of person should one become?”

To be specific, for example, Confucianism of course pays attention to “hierarchy,” but the confirmation of this “hierarchy” is not mainly for weighing options and making trade-offs; it is not saying that the lower can be sacrificed to serve the higher. In fact, that is not the issue Confucianism is concerned with. The hierarchical distinctions emphasized by Confucianism, like Confucianism as a whole, are directed not at the word “value,” nor at things like “power,” but at “ritual.” “Ritual” is undoubtedly the core concept of Confucian ethics.

So what is “ritual”? Ritual comes from “reverence” and is the expression of “reverence.” By “reverence,” I mean “Reverence,” “awe” (for details, see: http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=138)

Nowadays people often talk about “reverence for nature” and “reverence for life,” but most of it is rather superficial. That is because discussants often cannot break free of the constraints of normative ethics, nor do they realize the enormous upheaval that the introduction of the word “reverence” would bring. Yet the key point is that this thing called “reverence” has no place in normative ethics, whose theme is “what should one do?” Although modern mainstream ethics is certainly not devoid of merit, nor has it achieved nothing, if one wants to resist modernity within a discipline that is itself already the culmination of modernity, that seems to be a dead end. I have noticed that when some Western scholars interpret Schweitzer, they mention a turn toward “virtue ethics.” Indeed, once the word “reverence” is truly brought into a central position, it is bound to lead to the reform of the entire ethical paradigm.

I seem to have gone a bit off topic. What I want to say is that to understand Confucian ethics, one must be aware of the difference in basic ethical paradigms and notice that Confucian ethics and mainstream modern ethics differ not only in viewpoints and attitudes, but also in the issues they care about and the ways they discuss those issues.

Finally, let me mention one more point in passing. During the discussion I heard Liu laoshi say privately, “The good things all go to Confucianism…” and the like, which seemed to carry a somewhat dismissive tone. What I want to suggest is that “the good things all go to Confucianism” is precisely the best way to do Confucian studies.

Perhaps we would prefer to give Confucianism an objective evaluation, noting its good aspects and bad aspects, and then removing the dross and retaining the essence. But this way of thinking is extremely naïve and superficial.

The key is that modern Chinese people doing Confucian studies are not “second-order researchers”; they are not studying “Confucianism” as an “object.” If it is merely treated as a research object, then studying Confucianism is not essentially different from studying the local wisdom of some primitive tribe. We can stand from the perspective of an outsider and pass comments and judgments. The premise here is that we have our own standard—when we want to say what is “good” and what is “bad” in Confucianism, we need to rely on our own standards of “good” and “bad.” But where is the problem—why are we studying Confucianism in the first place?

The purpose of doing Confucian studies, on the one hand, may be that of an heir to a long and continuous tradition; that is to say, in this situation, Confucianism is not an other external to “me,” but part of my own flesh and blood or beliefs, and I myself am also part of the whole of “Confucianism.” Then our standards of good and bad, right and wrong, are at the same time internal to Confucianism. We may have different opinions on some specific issues, but as for the entire “Confucianism” that makes us who we are, we do not have a transcendent standard by which to judge it. So of course I must assign all the “good” to Confucianism, because of course I must insist that what I advocate is “good”; I cannot contradict myself by saying that I insist on something bad.

There is another possibility in doing Confucian studies, namely that to a certain extent we have already “broken” with tradition, and this too is part of the crisis of modernity: we have left our homeland, lost ourselves, and do not know where we came from or where we are going. At the same time, along with the predicaments of modernity such as nihilism and relativism, we no longer know what “truth and falsehood,” “good and evil,” or “good and bad” really mean. We need to overcome modernity, we need to get out of this predicament, and so we return to “tradition” to seek guidance. Whether we go into Confucian studies, Western learning, or ancient Greek thought to seek enlightenment, our purpose is to re-establish ourselves, to find ourselves in tradition. If that is the case, then we are even less qualified to point fingers at Confucianism and critique its good and bad, right and wrong. What standard are we relying on? Is it not precisely to recover ourselves that we delve into tradition? In that case, one ought to listen with a sense of reverence. This of course does not mean mechanically copying dogma, because “reverence” is not the same as “obedience.”

December 19, 2007

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.