Abstract
Compared with the legal concept of Informed Consent (IC), IC as an ethical concept has not yet been scrutinized sufficiently. The IC concept based upon an unrealistic assumption of the "Liberal Individual" as a rationalistic life-planner is criticized not only from the communitarian or care-ethics point of view, but also from the multicultural point of view. Some critiqued points, for instance, detachment from cultural context and lack of virtue ethics, should be drawn out also from East Asian Confucian values. It is necessary to turn back from the Rights-based discussion to a virtue-based discussion to find a more universally acceptable IC model. I propose a Communicative Consent model that lays stress on the interpersonal communication between doctors and patients.
