Whose Ethics? Which Priority? Dilemmas of Long-term Care for Older Persons

Submitted by Julia Tao

City University of Hong Kong

This paper examines two major ethical frameworks and explores their implications as the normative basis for grounding a bioethics of long-term care for older persons in contemporary society. The first is the framework based on a moral ideal of autonomy grounded in Western liberal right-based ethics. The second is based on a moral ideal of dignity grounded in Confucian virtue-based ethics. Using Hong Kong as a case illustration, the paper explores some of the tensions between these two ethics and argues in favour of a Confucian virtue-based ethics of dignity as a more ample normative basis for grounding a bioethics of long-term care for older persons than a Liberal right-based ethics of autonomy.