The Affirmation of Life: A Moral Genealogy Perspective on Life and Its Implications

With the rapid development of modern times, contemporary bioethics increasingly faces various challenges. These include the insufficient grounding of mainstream value theories in universality, and an overly abstract understanding of concepts such as life, suffering, and health. This paper argues that Nietzsche’s moral genealogy can offer valuable insights for contemporary bioethics to reflect on these issues. To better illustrate this point, the first two chapters examine the critiques and stances of moral genealogy. On one hand, they explore the moral genealogy’s critique of traditional morality’s life-denying practices. On the other hand, they summarize the life-affirming viewpoints and stances that emerge in the moral genealogy’s critique. Building on this foundation, the final chapter clarifies that the contributions of moral genealogy to contemporary bioethics are threefold. First, moral genealogy’s dynamic understanding of life’s generative nature offers a counterpoint to contemporary bioethics’ static treatment of life as an abstraction. Second, the moral genealogy’s concept of “pleasing suffering” encourages contemporary bioethics to more openly acknowledge the inevitable suffering associated with life. Third, moral genealogy’s dynamic view of health provides a perspective to reconsider the static view of health in contemporary bioethics.