| dc.description.abstract | The aim of this study is to construct a theory of just health according to Confucian theory of justice. Health care is an important social goods for human beings to maintain and restore their healthy lives. As all countries around the world face the heavy burden of increasing health care needs, the problem of justice in distributing health care resources becomes one of the main concerns in academic circles. Among various philosophical approaches in addressing this problem, one of the most prominent approach would be the work of Norman Daniels in constructing his just health theory based on Rawlsian theory of justice as fairness. Two of the main elements in Daniels’ theory are his explanation on the objective and importance of health care and his formulation of a group of benchmarks for health care reform. For him, the objective of health care is to maintain or to restore our normal human species functioning in order to protect our normal range of opportunity. Since Rawls’ justice as fairness requires protecting opportunity, it gives special importance to meeting health care needs. Though Daniels’ theory may be more comprehensive and persuasive than other approaches in dealing with distributive justice in health care, as I argue in this work, his own approach is limited by contractarian and individualist perspectives.
In this study, I clarify first the ultimate end of justice in Confucianism through an analysis on its classics and argue that for Confucian justice requires equality in fulfilling all kinds of beings, whether human or non-human, their own hsing feng, that is, requirements derived from their own essence. For human, it means that justice requires to protect all human beings their positive and negative rights to autonomy, to let and help them to realize their moral capacities and natural talents, to be healthy and to enjoy a happy familial life as far as possible. Confucian thinks that these requirements of justice are also the ultimate concern of health care, so that it should not be limited to maintain or restore normal human species functioning and should be extended to enhance human moral and other capacities through possible medical methods. Hence, I construct the basic principles of just health care in Confucianism according to its perspective on the ultimate concern of health care, as well as its views on the duty of a family to its members and a society to its worst off group regarding to their health care needs. Moreover, I offer a critical examination on Daniels’ theory of just health according to these principles and revise his benchmarks of fairness to formulate Confucian own version of benchmarks, in order to complete the construction on the basic structure of Confucian theory of just health.
| en_US |