5.4.1 |
THE REASONS FOR CHOOSING OR RISKING DEATH |
Those voluntarily asking for euthanasia by not continuing
medical treatment, or by being killed painlessly, presumably
have a good reason to choose death. They have a fatal illness or
injury, or, under exceptional circumstances, they are bound to
be killed or fatally wounded, or to suffer in some other,
horrible way. It is by definition only in such relatively
well-defined cases that the term euthanasia is used.
Some say that the difference between active voluntary euthanasia
and assisted suicide is merely that the very last act is
performed by someone else. Suicide is then employed without a
connotation, merely meaning intentional self-killing or
voluntary intentional self-killing. However, if 'suicide' is
disapproved of by people, they will only call an act of self-killing
"suicide" when it incurs their disapproval. It then depends,
for example, on the reason or motive for taking one's
own life intentionally (or voluntarily and intentionally) whether
it is called "suicidal" or "sacrificial". It has been
suggested that an act of self-killing is a 'suicide' if it
is self-regarding, that is, performed to relieve oneself, and a
'sacrifice' if other-regarding, that is, performed to relieve
others.
Altho such a
difference could be created by stipulative definition, it would not be one
in moral status, for in itself there is nothing wrong in relieving oneself
--on the contrary.
(There may be something wrong in relieving oneself in spite of
the harm done to others, but it is then the harm done to others
which is wrong, not relieving oneself. ) In order to prevent all
confusion and question-begging it is probably better not to use
the term suicide at all, and only to speak of "the different
forms of self-killing". A very important aspect of self-killing
is indeed the reason or motive for causing one's own death, but
relieving others is just one kind of reason which may be
legitimate. (Assuming that relieving is not used in an
overextended, self-defeating sense. It cannot be applied, for
example, to the grief of those who would be terribly distressed,
if a widow did not kill herself so that she might be cremated
with her husband's body; this to show her religious devotion to
him.)
Given that one causes one's own death of one's own free will,
there is no significant difference with allowing one's death.
Since we hold the view that a person owns the body
'e has --as explained in
section 9.4.1 of the Book of Instruments--
causing the death of this body makes no difference on the
metadoctrinal level with
allowing to die. It is only when one does not own a personal body that
there is an important difference. Even on the neutralistic,
doctrinal level there is
no difference in principle, because in the event of an omission,
the death is caused by certain changes anyhow.
Causing death is only a limiting case of risking it, and in
this sense the difference between self-killing and risking death
is merely gradual. Self-killing is an act in which a person
drastically shortens
'er life, but there are numerous
other ways in which people less drastically shorten their lives, the most
notorious ways being, probably, the addictive use of tobacco,
alcohol and other drugs, hard drugs in particular. Yet, not only
the addictive use, any (more than minimal?) use of artificial
aids, and just eating too much while exercising too little, will
shorten a person's life on the average. There are also those who
participate in dangerous sports or take on dangerous jobs. Are
they not self-killers because they are not sure that their
sport or job will kill them? Moreover, there are people (called
"suicides" too by some) who only attempt to kill themselves
without making it absolutely certain that they will die. There
is a whole range of acts on the border of self-killing which are
attempts at self-killing and which do not succeed. In all these
cases it does not seem to be in the first place the probability
of death which counts. The question is therefore whether it is,
perhaps, the intention or the motive of the act or omission
which makes the difference.
When an apparent attempt at self-killing is not intended to
succeed, it is not an attempt at self-killing but a cry for help.
Or --as has been pointed out-- the situation may also be a mixed
one in which 'a gamble is taken with some risk of death and some
chance of survival followed by help'. Gambling with their own
lives (if not other people's lives as well) is what many people
do, however, who would never be called "suicides": those
partaking in a war or revolution, those off on a dangerous job,
those playing a perilous game, those on hard drugs, those
driving under the influence of alcohol, and so on and so forth.
All of them may kill themselves, or be killed, yet none of them
presumably have the intention of killing themselves or of being
killed. The reason for risking death may be to defend or overthrow
a government, to save (other) lives, to amass wealth or to
get high; the reason may be to escape boredom, to find a way
out for their aggressions and frustrations, or to liberate
themselves from the shackles of an exclusionist milieu.
In practise
several of such reasons may play a role at the same time,
possibly in addition to increasing the risk of death itself. It
is not 'er death which is the motive of a person who aspires to a
better society, for instance; that is not even the motive of
a person who wants to destroy it.
But are the reasons or motives of those risking their
own deaths fundamentally different from those causing them?
People kill themselves also to escape suffering when they cannot
improve their situation in another way, and because they do not
want to be a burden on society or on people they know. So the
reasons of a person choosing 'er own death may be much more
praiseworthy than those of a person only risking 'er own death.
To be sure, it may be the other way round too. The normative
significant difference is accordingly not really between causing
and risking one's own death when one's life is on balance worth
living but rather between taking and not taking too high a
risk. (Compare the difference between taking a risk when
driving, and taking too high a risk when speeding or being
intoxicated.)
Taking too high a risk with respect to one's own life, for
whatever reason or lack of reason, is everyone's
right of personhood, if, and insofar
as, one does not risk another person's life (and assuming that one does
not take this risk while using another person's property without 'er
permission). Yet, as regards taking the 'risk of certainty' it has been
claimed by one philosopher that 'man has duties to himself as an
animal being' and that 'he cannot renounce his personality so
long as he is a subject of duty, hence so long as he lives'.
However, if a man or other animal being may never kill himself
so long as he lives, then he may never kill himself. And indeed,
killing oneself was self-murder on this construction, surpassed
in its 'viciousness' perhaps solely by masturbation or some such
'unnatural vice of carnal self-defilement'. (It is historically
not justifiable to conclude that self-killing was believed to be
as innocent as, or even more innocent than, masturbation in the
eyes of the theoretician concerned.) Even 'depriving oneself of
an integral organic part' was professed to be an instance of
'partial self-murder', unless the organ was already dead or
diseased, or unless the bodily 'part' was not an organ. (Cutting
one's hair, fortunately, was not partial self-murder, except when
done to sell it.) This hilarious ethical theory of 'perfect
duties to oneself' has one important thing going for it, namely
that it is true that every person is 'a subject of duty' and
that 'to dispose of oneself as a mere means to an arbitrary end
is to abase' personhood (not 'humanity') 'in one's own person'.
But it is, then,
intrinsic duty one is
talking about. So far as a person's relationship to 'er own body
is concerned, it is intrinsic duty to oneself as a
happiness-catenal and living
being.
It is everyone's right as a person (not as a happiness-catenal,
animal or living being) to do with 'er life as 'e pleases, even to use
'imself, that is, 'er own body,
as a mere means to an arbitrary end. On the metadoctrinal model the major
problem is not self-killing but the criminalization of self-killing
and 'suicide' intervention. Those pleading for intervention are but too
ready to assume that 'an attempt to commit suicide is the act of a
mentally sick person' and that 'suicidal persons are under the strain
of temporary crises or under the influence of drugs' and 'beset with
considerable ambivalence'. This would be the equivalent of assuming that
loving a nonnatural god and/or hating a nonnatural demon is a mental
illness, and that
theodemonists are often under
the strain of extreme or queer emotions while constantly being beset by
existential anxieties. It may all be true, but merely believing
that it is, does not make it so, and relevance requires that it
not be equally true of nonmembers of the class in question.
When people are asleep or temporarily unconscious their
bodies may be protected for their own good. Similarly, when they
do act under the strain of a temporary crisis, or are
under the influence of alcohol or other drugs (without having decided
beforehand that they wanted to die), their bodies may also be
protected, supposedly for their own good. Both when people are
temporarily unconscious and when they are temporarily under
stress, not taking the risk of interfering with their autonomy
at that moment might indicate a serious lack of concern. The
interference must not be permanent tho, but may only be
temporary. The person concerned must be able to undo it at any
point in time, for example, by giving reasons for 'er conduct.
And if those reasons are not good or consistent ones, this is no
sign of absence of personhood. It is only with respect to one's
own life that terminating it requires reasons which are good
and consistent from the standpoint of one's own normative
convictions.
If the reasons in favor of one's own life outweigh those
against it, then one should stay alive, or save one's life, and
then one is allowed to do so. On the other hand, if the reasons
against one's own life outweigh those in favor of it, then one
should take the risk of death, altho one is not obliged to do
so. But it is implicit in a person's posing the question whether
'e should or should not risk 'er life, that 'e has already chosen.