How is a Theological Bioethics and Medical Ethics Possible: A Study on Background and Foundation of the "Ethic of Personhood"

Abstract

The core issue in bioethics is how to define humans. Contemporary bioethics is in trouble on many issues because of limitations in principles and methods. Ethics of personhood tries to rethink these issues from a different perspective. The premise of the ethics of personhood is to redefine humans. From the perspective of Christian thought, it introduces the concept of "person" into bioethics and points out that the research object of bioethics is human being as human person. The concept of human person is the basis of the ethics of personhood. Human person possesses both substantiality and relationality. This makes up for the shortcomings of contemporary bioethics that either only value individual interests, or only value collective interests. Although the ethic of personhood is a very good paradigm and framework for studying bioethics, it still faces many fundamental problems in modernity, such as how to be widely accepted.