Technology, Authority and the Loss of Tradition: The Roots of American Bioethics in Comparison with Japanese Bioethics

Abstract

Bioethics as a modem field of study is still, relatively speaking, in its youth, and like most youths it is not disposed to reflect on its roots. When bioethicists do discuss the roots of their endeavor, they typically trace the rise of bioethics to the moral quandaries of modern technological medicine or to the crisis of moral authority that challenged the competence or the right of medical and religious traditions to resolve moral issues raised by medical practice. It is, of course, in the interests of standard bioethicists to find the roots of their movement in the quandaries modern technology presents or in the need for a common morality. If technology presents moral problems that standard bioethics alone can resolve or if standard bioethics alone can claim a public moral authority that traditional moral schemes have lost, then standard bioethics would be not only culturally inevitable but also rationally necessary. Moreover, if similar problems raised by technological medicine or a similar crisis of moral authority are present in other cultures then standard bioethics would supply a culture-transcending morality. In our case, this would mean that American bioethics would provide a more or less perfect match for transplantation into Japanese culture.