INTRODUCTION

In China, medical ethics, or deliberation on moral issues in medicine, dates back to what the German philosopher, Karl Jaspers, called the “Axial Age” (800–200 BCE). This period produced the earliest Chinese works on disease and healing, from which paradigmatic classics of traditional Chinese medicine such as Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine) (1995) – still a must read for today's traditional-style practitioners – were compiled in the later centuries. In the Axial Age, the fundamental orientations and basic vocabulary of Chinese cultural life were established by the teachings of such masters as Confucius, Lao Zi, Mo Zi, Yang Zhu, Mencius, Zhuang Zi, Zou Yan, Xun Zi, and Han Fei Zi. The medical and nonmedical literature of this period included fragmented discussions on the topics that are defined today as medical ethics: the moral character of physicians; the nature of life and illness; the management of dying and death; and the nature of medicine as an art and science. From the intellectual and spiritual innovations of the Axial Age (and earlier), China has developed its healing systems, moral traditions, and medical moralities.

This chapter provides an overview of the moral discourses of medical practitioners in China from the Axial Age to the end of twentieth century, with emphasis given to the great diversity – a basic but somehow ignored feature – of culture and medical morality in China.