tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-100085602007-04-09T01:46:42.619+09:00Masahiro Moriokahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08134046678099736333noreply@blogger.comBlogger185125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10008560.post-1157983693859112992006-09-11T23:07:00.000+09:002006-09-11T23:08:13.863+09:00

Thirdly, they were trying to protect “the fundamental sense of security.” They did not use these words, but what they really had in mind was this. They thought that technology of selective abortion was dangerous because it systematically deprives us of the sense that our existence is being accepted unconditionally. It is a kind of trust in the world and society, and this trust provides us with

lifephilosophyethicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12054598258949715613noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10008560.post-1157983568996306182006-09-11T23:05:00.001+09:002006-09-11T23:07:05.793+09:00

In 1974, the Eugenic Protection Law Revision Bill finally failed to pass the Diet. The clause for selective abortion did not added to the law. A group of physicians in abortion clinics have continuously demanded a clause for selective abortion, but every time they insisted it women and disabled people acted against them. Hence, the Japanese law has not had such a clause up to the present. However

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In the late 1960s, some disabled people with Cerebral Palsy joined “Blue Grass Group (Aoi Shiba no Kai),” a friendship society for people with CP, and started “independent living” in Kanagawa Prefecture. Among them were Koichi Yokotsuka and Hiroshi Yokota, both were the philosophical leaders of the independent living activities at that time. As soon as they joined the group, they began protesting

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Japanese bioethics began in the early 1970s. Most Japanese scholars still think that Japanese bioethics began in 1980s, but it is questionable. My recent book, Life Studies Approaches to Bioethics: A New Perspective on Brain Death, Feminism, and Disability, 2001, demonstrated that. Women’s liberation groups and a disability group brought a new type of thinking into our philosophy and ethics

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I first used the words "life studies" in my book An Invitation to the Study of Life (1988). Strictly speaking, this book was written in Japanese, hence, corresponding words were "Seimeigaku." I started using the English words "life studies" probably in the early 1990s. "Seimeigaku" is now becoming popular now in Japan, but "life studies" are still unfamiliar to an English audience. The word "

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4. Relationship and irreplaceability All beings in the universe, especially all living things on the earth, are incorporated into the fundamental “relationships.” They can not exist without these relationships. At the same time, every being in these relationships is fundamentally “irreplaceable” to each other. In life studies we view everything from the perspective of correlation between "

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Life studies urges us to rethink the whole system of contemporary civilization because it doesn't seem to provide us with sufficient opportunity to live a life without regret both in developed countries and developing countries. The critique of contemporary civilization should be included in life studies. In the book, Painless Civilization: A Philosophical Critique of Desire (2003), I

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What is the aim of life studies? Our ultimate aim is to live in this society without regret. In order to do that, we have to reconsider the meaning of our own life and death seriously. In this materialistic, capitalistic society deeply influenced by scientific technology, we are apt to forget the meaning of life and the value of our existence. We have to fundamentally criticize the negative

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2) Research on images of life among ordinary people. The results were found in the paper "The Concept of Inochi(life)" (1991). Many Japanese (and probably people around the world) grasp the idea of "human life" in relationship with that of "nature." The images of "life," "spirit," and "nature" are overlapping with one another in their worldview. The keyword is "interrelatedness and

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10) Connection of academic research to researcher's own life The most important thing for life studies is that a researcher hem/herself can live his/her own life without regret. In this sense,academic research that will not help transform the researcher's own life should not be called "life studies." Life studies encourages a researcher to rethink his/her actual life and transform it, and after

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6) Relationship and irreplaceability All beings in the universe, especially all living things on the earth, are incorporated into the web of “relationships.” They can not exist without these relationships. At the same time, every being in these relationships is fundamentally “irreplaceable” to each other. Life studies urges us to view everything from the perspective of correlation between "

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With regard to the “safety problem,” the report concluded that present cloning techniques cannot guarantee the safe production of a human clone individual. In the light of these problems, the report concluded that the production of a human clone individual must be legally prohibited. Concerning research on human somatic clone embryos, the report stated that this should be permissible within

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The birth of Dolly, the first mammal cloned from a somatic sell, attracted wide public attention in Japan, and the words “cloned human being” became a popular notion. However, the “public debate” on the ethics of human cloning was considerably less heated than that relating to brain death and organ transplantation. Scientists and commentators repeatedly stated that while the cloning of a sheep

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Third, it took “modern civilization based on scientific technology and capitalism” for granted, and sought the methods of regulating the conflicts of interest among us. However, difficult bioethical dilemma are created by the “advancement” of scientific technology, and sometimes they are worsened by the mechanism of capitalism. In contemporary society, our desires are created by technologies

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The idea of life studies can be discovered in all periods or areas. What I am doing is to mould the idea to suit contemporary society. Unfortunately, “American” academic bioethics in the 1980s seemed to lack the insights of life studies; I had to find them in other traditions, that is, feminism and the disability movement in Japan in the early 1970s. But this does not mean that some traditions

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Life studies also deals with human relationships with the environment. I wrote a series of essays from 1995-1998, and published them as a digital book, Life Torn Apart, in 2001 (Morioka 2001b). In these writings, I insisted that humans are imprinted with three natures, “the nature of connectedness (to all living things),” “the nature of self-interest,” and “the nature of mutual support,” These

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In 1995, an unbelievable event occurred. Members of the Japanese cult, Aum Shinrikyo, launched a sarin gas attack in crowded subways in Tokyo, killing 12 people and injuring more than 5,000 people. At first, they were members of a small religious group seriously seeking the “meaning of life.” However, they began to consider our society to be evil place, and planned to destroy the whole world in

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For these reasons, I coined the term “life studies” instead of “bioethics” in 1988. The idea of life studies has gradually developed since then. In 1989, I published Brain Dead Person in which I discussed the topic from the viewpoint of life studies. I distinguished three concepts, namely, “my brain death,” “brain death of intimate others,” and “brain death of strangers.” I made clear the

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Third, it took “modern civilization based on scientific technology and capitalism” for granted, and sought the methods of regulating the conflicts of interest among us. However, difficult bioethical dilemma are created by the “advancement” of scientific technology, and sometimes they are worsened by the mechanism of capitalism. In contemporary society, our desires are created by technologies

lifephilosophyethicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12054598258949715613noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10008560.post-1157815796293151652006-09-10T00:29:00.001+09:002006-09-10T00:29:56.296+09:00

Second, “American” bioethics did not ask questions such as “What is the meaning of life?,” “How can we live in this society without regret?,” and “What is human?” Whenever we think deeply about difficult bioethical problems like selective abortion, euthanasia, manipulation of human genes, and organ transplantation, we come to the above philosophical questions in the end. In addition,

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As I mentioned before, when I first studied “American” bioethics in the 1980s, I was very frustrated because it seemed to me a somewhat narrow and shallow approach to the issues of life. Some of my friends had similar impressions. First, it discussed only medical issues. It did not deal with environmental issues. It is ironical that V.R. Potter who coined the word “bioethics” in 1970 regarded

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Daniel Fu-Chang Tsai writes in his recent paper that Confucius’ concept of person has two dimensions, namely, “the vertical dimension,” which is the autonomous, self-cultivating one, and “the horizontal dimension,” which is the relational, altruistic one (11). He says that “some may argue that there is no vertical dimension at all in the Confucian personhood. This is incorrect.” He concludes

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Even in the USA, so-called “communitarian bioethics” has been discussed by Ezekiel J. Emanuel (1991) and Daniel Callahan (1996) in the 1990s. American feminist bioethics has put a special emphasis on caring and relationships. It seems that current bioethics throughout the world seeks balanced development between “individual freedom” and “the value of community and relationships.” Scholars at

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After opening the country to the world in 1868, the Japanese were very eager to absorb European ideas, such as “human rights,” “freedom,” and “democracy.” Japanese history of the last 100 years could be illustrated as that of a harsh struggle between people who wanted to maintain hierarchical and paternalistic systems, on the one hand, and people who wanted to replace them with more

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Thirdly, they were trying to protect “the fundamental sense of security.” They did not use these words, but what they really had in mind was this. They thought that technology of selective abortion was dangerous because it systematically deprives us of the sense that our existence is being accepted unconditionally. It is a kind of trust in the world and society, and this trust provides us with

lifephilosophyethicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12054598258949715613noreply@blogger.com