The Decision To Die
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In healthcare, the decision whether or not to allow a patient to die can present the most acute of moral dilemmas. In many instances, the patient expressly declares his wish to refuse medical treatmentùto be allowed to dieùin the event that his or her breathing or heart stop. In these cases, the ailing party can ascribe ôDurable Medical Power of Attorneyö to a loved one, entrusting that person to act in his or her stead and ensure that the hospital staff withholds the specified treatment(s) (Hospice Patients Alliance (HPA)). Is this right? In liberal societies, the right of every individual to act autonomously is highly valued. In this, each of us enjoys a sphere of non-interference in which we are thought to be safe from those that would encroach upon our autonomous right to do with our lives as we wish, provided that our wishes do not involve causing harm to others. However, when our wishes involve causing harm or death to ourselves, the issue over autonomy becomes challenging. Do we not have a duty to preserve our own lives? Do othersùhealthcare specialists in particularùnot have a duty to prevent death wherever possible? Are we morally bound to accept that anotherÆs wishes to die must be respected? Does the right to die trump the right to spare death? For the terminally ill, the desire to be happy can become conflated with the need to be released from life. In such cases, the ethics of death are immediately brought to the fore.
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When moral obligations appear to pull in opposite ways, we must appeal to our strongest duty. These foundational duties, regarded as prima facie duties, can usually be listed but are not thought to create a fixed hierarchical scheme of values. In other words, there is no single action-guiding principle (as with KantÆs categorical imperative) that can be appealed to on all matters. The hierarchy of duties is fluid, and not reducible to one moral precept. One must arrange prima facie duties according to the intrinsic goods from which they are thought to arise; some duties, like duties of beneficence regarding others, will arise from the intrinsic goodness of pleasure (beneficence toward others will yield more pleasure) (The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001).
When applying prima facie ethics to a personÆs right to die, it is admittedly difficult to divine the proper solution. For many ethical theorists, the strength of a theory lies in its usefulness as an action guiding principle or set of principles that can be deduced by sound reasoning. On this assumption, when two different people are each in full use of their reason, that is, when they are reasoning properly or well, they will each decide upon the same ôrightö
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Encyclopedia Philosophy, Alliance HPA, WD Ross, According Kant, Stuart Mill, Bentham Mill, Power Attorney, , Moral Sentimentsö, Retrieved April, prima facie, encyclopedia philosophy, intrinsic goodness, internet encyclopedia philosophy, internet encyclopedia, retrieved april 10, categorical imperative, 10 2004, april 10 2004, retrieved april, april 10, facie ethics, prima facie duty, goodness pleasure, intrinsic goodness pleasure,
Approximate Word count = 1412
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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