瘟疫中的道德敘事

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.無論是過去還是現在重大傳染性疾病瘟疫對社會和醫學都構成巨大的挑戰。當代研究已經揭示了醫師的職業倫理責任話語並不足以應對這一挑戰因而需要美德的補充。本文通過對清代江南瘟疫中的醫學道德敘事的研究指出美德倫理的確能發動社會醫療資源以應對瘟疫但其本身依賴於特定的醫學認知、社會組織、倫理關係以及共用價值觀。在當代重建傳統醫學道德需要充分重視這一前提注重於傳統倫理生活世界的重構而非僅僅進行理論的建構。The emergence of deadly infectious diseases usually poses a critical challenge to medicine and medical practice. Many contemporary ethicists maintain that medical ethics today should be supplemented by the language of virtues because what is called “professional ethics” is not sufficient to respond to the challenge of medical crises in a time of epidemic diseases. By examining the moral narrative in the historical context of the deadly plague that occurred during the Qing Dynasty, the author argues that the traditional Chinese virtue ethics played an important role in mobilizing social resources and implementing control strategies to deal with the public health crisis. Nevertheless, the author also shows that virtue ethics are very often conditioned by a particular kind of medical knowledge, a given social organization, and the shared values of a particular community. That is to say, virtue ethics are closely related to the real-world life and its tradition. This must be taken into consideration when we attempt to reconstruct medical ethics today.Meanwhile, professional ethics are also needed to address the outbreak of infectious and communicable disease to deal with issues such as access to treatment, informed consent, mandatory or involuntary screening, and so forth.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 653 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.