EUTHANASIA

Euthanasia



Euthanasia

Introduction

In the early days of the up to date euthanasia debate, philosophical discussion on the moral acceptability of voluntary euthanasia concentrated on the case of the patient with an incurable disease or wound and in the state of suffering. And it was, and usually still is, taken that voluntary euthanasia may anxiety only persons who are suffering because they are incurably hurt or have an incurable disease. Recently, although, some philosophers have suggested that voluntary euthanasia require not presuppose that the person requesting it is sick or hurt and suffering. In this article, I examine the function of illness, wound, and suffering in voluntary euthanasia. I will argue that when we consider the moral acceptability of voluntary euthanasia, we have no good reason to concentrate only on persons who are sick or hurt and suffering.

In voluntary euthanasia the person is intentionally slain at her autonomous request. It could be claimed that it is not reasonable to ask if or not voluntary euthanasia should by delineation presuppose suffering, since only persons who are suffering can be eager to pass away, at least when other things are being equal. If it were the psychological fact that the person can want to pass away only if she is suffering, then it really would be trivially factual that suffering is always present in cases of voluntary euthanasia. However, it is implausible that only persons who are suffering because they have the severe illness or wound can be eager to die. There are persons who have asked for euthanasia, or pledged suicide, because they are exhausted of dwelling, consider their existence as meaningless, and can find no value in anything that their lives have to offer to them, etc.

It has been maintained that since surgery aims to ease suffering, voluntary euthanasia is not ...