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  • Suicide, euthanasia and human dignity
    Klampfer, Friderik
    Kant has famously argued that human beings or persons, in virtue of their capacity for rational and autonomous choice and agency, possess dignity, which is an intrinsic, final, unconditional, ... inviolable, incomparable and irreplaceable value. This value, wherever found, commands respect and imposes rather strict moral constraints on our attitudes, deliberations, intentions and actions. This paper deals with the question of whether, as some Kantians have recently argued, certain types of (physician-assisted) suicide and active euthanasia, most notably the intentional destruction of the life of a terminally-ill, but rational and autonomous patient in order to prevent certain serious harms from befalling him (such as enduring or reccuring pain or the loss of the meaning in life) really are inconsistent with respect for the patient's human dignity. I focus on two independent, though interrelated explications of the rather vague initial idea that the patient (as well as the doctor), in intending and bringing about his death, treats his person or rational nature merely as a means and so denigrates his dignity: (i) that in doing what he is doing, he does not act for the sake of his person, but for the sake of something else; (ii) that, by trading his person for pain relief, he engages himself in an irrational and hence immoral exchange. After critically discussing some suggestions about how to undestand this charge, I eventually find Kantian objections to suicide and (active) euthanasia, based on the idea of human dignity, less than compelling. For all the paper proves, suicide and (active) euthanasia may still be morally impermissible, but then this must be so for some other reason than the one given above
    Vir: Acta analytica : philosophy and psychology : [international periodical for philosophy in analytical tradition]. - ISSN 0353-5150 (Vol. 16, iss. 27, 2001, str. 7-34)
    Vrsta gradiva - članek, sestavni del ; neleposlovje za odrasle
    Leto - 2001
    Jezik - angleški
    COBISS.SI-ID - 11456520

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