新冠肺炎病毒疫情中的仁道: 從文化與倫理看病毒疫情之啟示

The Dao of Benevolence in the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Revelation from Cultural and Ethical Perspectives

Abstract

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.

由於新冠病毒的特性和難以防诸，新冠肺炎病毒很快成為全球性的流行病。而在此疫情中，受到感染和死亡的地區與人數急升，不但造成全球性的恐慌，同時產生許多心理、生活和文化上的嚴重問題。本文從倫理與文化，特別是儒家的精神，檢討我們與此病毒共存時，如何調整我們的生活與價值，建立生命共同體的觀念，以減輕或免除由此嚴峻疫情所受到的個人與社會的創傷和後遺症。本文分析了在地球村的緊密關係之下，我們必須保持有效的防疫工作才可以開封和進行經濟生產、物品流通，否則會在目前和日後不斷發生重覆的社區感染。人類必須圑結互助、共同承擔和接受各種不便，互讓互該、助人助己，才能夠平安渡過此一巨大災難。

公共衛生的防疫工作是一涉及個人自由與公共安全的嚴重的道德兩難的課題。在防疫上，我們的個人行動實涉及他人的生命安全與權益，我們必須放棄以個人自由權利為優先的觀點，採取在生活共同體中的仁愛與對他人的苦難所具有的同情共感的自我要求，以共同義務與關懷為主，這實是一「為己為人」的雙重義務，在疫情流行中，更需要發揮「老吾老以及人之老，幼吾幼以及人之幼」之仁愛精神；在工作上必謹守敬慎原則，超前部署防疫工作，防範醫療體崩潰，在疫情的政策要公開、透明、問責、方可望全民共同努力，共渡難關，實現「養生送死無憾」的人生願望。

在疫情中，家人的互相照護不但是生活上也是情感上的最重要的支持和解慰，社會和政府也必須提供必要的生活用品和醫療資源的支助，以及截斷政治干涉，讓專家們進行公開的宣導工作、病情教育、回應疑難等，使社會、家庭和個人都得到 支援和共識。病毒的傷害無國界，是我們的共同敵人，防疫的工作也無國界，人類必須有跨國家和跨民族的一體同仁的意識，實現互愛互助，不但救助社群中的脆弱者，也要救助落後的國家地區的人們。我們要領取這次教訓，建立真確的疫情訊息分享的平台，建立全球的病毒研究的規範、合符嚴格要求的病毒研究室，拒絕利用病毒研究為生化與戰爭的工具。在疫情中可以推進世界和平，最後可以從病毒了解生命，在疫情中發揚倫理與文化的價值。

The special properties of the new Covid-19 virus make it difficult to control, and it very quickly became a pandemic. The numbers of infected and deaths have increased so fast that it has incited a global panic and caused serious worldwide psychological, day-to-day, and cultural problems. This paper adopts a Confucian perspective to analyze the problems of living with the virus and to explore how to adapt our values and way of living to mitigate or eliminate personal and social traumatic experiences during this serious time. In this paper, I point out that as we live in a close-knit global village, we need an effective policy to keep the pandemic at bay before we can remove inter-city and international barriers to the production of materials and the flow of economic products. Otherwise, we may—and in fact have had—continuous repeated infections. People must develop global solidarity based on interpersonal and intersocial love to share our responsibilities and burdens, and to help ourselves as well as others in this terrifying pandemic.

Public health pandemic prevention is a job involving a moral dilemma between personal rights and public safety. Because our preventative actions involve the lives of others, we must abandon prioritizing our personal rights and adopt the principles of benevolence and empathy toward others, taking our common responsibility and care toward others as our main basis of action. This principle also applies to us: benevolence needs to be extended from our family members to everyone else. We have to put precautionary principles into action in our prevention, publicity, transparency, and accountability efforts to overcome the pandemic.

Family members are essential, as they provide both physical and emotional support during the pandemic. Society and governments have to provide the means to live as well as medical support, and political interference must be curbed so that medical professionals can take the lead on public interactions, education, and interviews to enable individuals, families, and society to build a consensus on the issues and policies of prevention. Our common enemy is the virus, which assaults human health indiscriminately. We need to help our people as well as those in other countries, especially society’s most vulnerable. We must learn from this calamity and build a platform to share information, establish norms regulating virus studies, enact rigorous regulations for safety in virus research laboratories, and reject using research results for chemical warfare. We hope this pandemic can bring about world peace as we learn to better our lives and further our ethical and cultural values.

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