Presents volume thirteen of a fourteen-volume series on World Religions exploring the origins of Taoism in China, its central beliefs and restoration under China's religious freedom clause, rituals, sacred sites, and more.

Varieties of Ethical Reflection brings together new cultural and religious perspectives—drawn from non-Western, primarily Asian, philosophical sources—to globalize the contemporary discussion of theoretical and applied ethics.

The author explores bioethics and “life enhancing” technology from the perspective of traditional Chinese value systems.

In his introduction to this symposium, “Religions and Cultures of East and West: Perspectives on Bioethics,” Dr. Robert Sade defined its purpose as follows: “The objective of [our] discussions…is to explore the limits of enhancement technologies in light of what makes us essentially human, in the view of world-wide cultures and religions.”These issues would seem to be at the cutting edge of any informed deliberation concerning the merits of “human enhancement” technologies. For instance, the issue of how “what makes us (...) essentially human” affects our reflection on issues of technological “life enhancement” is raised in a 2007 book by Harvard professor Michael J. Sandel, The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering. (shrink)