This paper tries to set the issue of voluntary euthanasia in a philosophical
framework by showing how some of the main philosophical theories about morality
would deal with the topic. Philosophers have not discussed euthanasia as
such until recently, although it is now a popular topic. What has always been
discussed, however, is suicide, which raises much the same moral problems
as voluntary euthanasia. The moral similarity between voluntary euthanasia
and suicide enables us to make a reasonable guess about what some of the great
philosophers would say about voluntary euthanasia.
In this country patients have a legal right to refuse treatment even if death
will be the result, though doctors may make it difficult for them to exercise
this right. But it is illegal for a doctor actively to bring about the death
of his patient at the patient's request, in the way that is now decriminalised
in the Netherlands. In this paper I shall concentrate on the controversial
issues: whether it is morally permissible for a doctor actively to bring
about the death of his patient at the patient's request and whether the law
should be altered to permit this.
My title mentions "death with dignity". But dignity is a very complex concept.
I shall not attempt to give a definition of dignity here. Instead I shall
list aspects of dignity which seem to be important when death with dignity
is discussed, recognising that some of these aspects will be more important
to some people, others to others. Dignity involves: not being dependent on
other people or on things; self-control and autonomy; privacy; the maintenance
of one's own standards, of all kinds; self-esteem. A death with dignity is
a death which enables the dying person to retain the elements of dignity
which he or she values.
Traditional philosophical theories about morality have often aimed to find
a criterion of morally right action. We can divide such theories into two
groups: those which hold that the right action is always that which produces
the best consequences, and those which hold that the right action is not always
that which produces the best consequences. Theories of the first kind are
called Consequentialist theories; theories of the second kind are called
Deontological theories, from the Greek words 'deonto' meaning 'to do with
obligation' and 'logos' meaning roughly 'body of knowledge'. Consequentialist
theories can be further subdivided: into Egoistic theories, those which see
the consequences which matter morally as including only consequences for
the doer of the action, the agent, and Universalistic theories, those which
see them as including consequences for all those affected. I shall return
to Egoism at the end of my paper. I shall begin with Universalistic Consequentialism,
because this view (which still has many philosophical adherents) may strike
one at first as the obvious common-sense, rational, secular approach to moral
questions.
The first question that arises about Universal Consequentialism is: what
counts as good consequences? One popular answer is the one given by John Stuart
Mill in his famous essay, Utilitarianism good consequences are simply happiness,
and happiness is pleasure and freedom from pain - not only physical pain
but also distress of other kinds. According to this view, then, the right
action is that which produces the most pleasure and least pain for all those
affected. Another kind of answer is also found in the works of Mill, notably
in his Essay on Liberty but also in Utilitarianism: the view that good consequences
depend not only on the quantity of pleasure but also on the quality of the
experiences which produce it and of the human being which is developed by
them. According to this second conception of good consequences, the right
action is that which promotes in oneself and others what we may call a higher
happiness, one which stresses self-development and the fostering of the distinctively
rational nature of human beings.
Terminology is a problem here. Some philosophers confine the term "Utilitarianism"
to the doctrine expounded in Mill' essay of that name, whereby the good consequences
are pleasure and the absence of pain. Others use the term 'Utilitarianism'
for Universal Consequentialism in general, since all versions of this view
judge actions by their results - their usefulness or utility. I shall adopt
this terminology, which distinguishes different forms of the theory as 'Hedonistic'
(pleasure-based) Utilitarianism and 'Ideal' Utilitarianism.
I think that both the Hedonistic and the Ideal Utilitarian would argue that
voluntary euthanasia is often right. The Hedonistic Utilitarian would say
that situations often arise in which a person's continued existence brings
more pain than pleasure both to them and to all those who are distressed by
their suffering - not to speak of the resources which are being spent on
keeping them alive and which would produce more happiness if used in other
ways. The Ideal version of Utilitarianism is even more in tune with the views
of those who advocate the possibility of death with dignity through voluntary
euthanasia. For Ideal Utilitarians can counter the familiar objection to
euthanasia - that no one who receives proper expert care need die in pain
and distress - by saying that the good that they seek is not mere absence
of pain, physical or mental, but the preservation of dignity and the exercise
of the human endowment of autonomy.
However, there are severe problems for the Utilitarian approach to the defence
of voluntary euthanasia. The first is that it seems to justify too much:
might it not sometimes justify involuntary euthanasia? If sufficient numbers
of people would gain in happiness and quality of life from the death of one
person, the Utilitarian has to agree that such an action would be justified,
provided it could be carried out without causing a general panic which would
outweigh the hoped-for gain in happiness.
This problem is one example of a general difficulty with Utilitarianism of
any kind. If the rightness of an action is to be measured in overall consequences,
there is no protection for the individual against the majority: they may
do whatever they like to him, provided there is sufficient gain to outweigh
his loss. We might put this point by saying that Utilitarianism does not
safeguard the individual's rights. And it is just this inability to safeguard
individuals' rights that leads many to reject the Utilitarian approach, as
yielding results which are too much at variance with our moral intuitions.
A second problem is the line that the Utilitarian has to take on changing
the law. We are apt to assume that the law should reflect private morality:
if an action is right, then the law should permit it. But for the Utilitarian
a law is right if it is useful: that is, if having such a law would maximise
the good results in which he believes. Some Utilitarians say that a change
in the law, to permit voluntary euthanasia with due safeguards, would indeed
do this. But a more cautious Utilitarian might believe that the existence
of such a law would not have the best possible consequences overall: for example,
he might think that it would increase distress because ill people would come
to feel that they had to ask for euthanasia although they did not want it.
On the Utilitarian view a law which does not have the best consequences is
not the right law; so the cautious Utilitarian would have to advocate in
public that the law should continue to forbid euthanasia, but in private
that people should frequently break it. This possibility of incoherence between
what is publicly supported and what is privately enjoined is an example of
another general difficulty with the Utilitarian approach: it often means
preaching one thing and hoping that people sometimes do another. This kind
of dishonesty is another respect in which Utilitarianism goes against many
of our moral intuitions. Modern Utilitarians have sophisticated replies to
the difficulties which I have raised. But I shall unfairly assume that in
the end they cannot be solved, and turn to another approach altogether.
The Deontologist maintains that some or all actions are right or wrong in
themselves, because of the type of action they are, whether or not they produce
the best consequences. This type of view is less easy to systematise than
the Consequentialist view. But for present purposes Deontologists can be
divided into those who start from lists of separate duties or rights, and
those who start from one general formula from which more particular duties
may all be derived. The source of the list or the formula is typically said
to be reason or rational intuition. But a religious philosopher might ground
them in God's commandments, even if he thought, as many did, that we can
be aware of such commandments by the light of reason without the need of
religious revelation.
I shall begin with the list-makers. Examples of these would be John Locke
in the seventeenth century, Richard Price in the eighteenth century and David
Ross and H. A. Prichard in the twentieth. Some Deontological philosophers
speak in terms of duties, others of rights, but for our purposes they may
be grouped together. However, we need to distinguish between two kinds of
rights. Some rights, commonly called negative rights, are rights not to be
treated in certain ways, and there are corresponding duties not to treat
the owners of these rights in these ways. Other rights are positive rights
to receive goods or services. Other people may have a duty to provide these,
though it tends to be difficult to decide exactly who, as with such rights
as the right to work.
There are two negative rights, found in most lists, which are particularly
relevant to voluntary euthanasia. These are: the right not to be killed, corresponding
to a duty not to kill, and the right to liberty corresponding to a duty to
respect others' liberty. I shall say a little about each of these. The notion
of a duty not to kill seems at first to rule out euthanasia of any kind,
and those who oppose euthanasia sometimes seem to think that all they need
to do is to say 'Thou shalt not kill' in a suitably solemn voice. But we
do not regard the prohibition of killing as absolute: we may think there
can be justified wars or justified capital punishment, or that killing in
self- defence or defence of others is justified. And it is easier to justify
voluntary euthanasia than the killing in these other cases, where the person
who dies does not choose to do so. If the reason why in general we ought
not to kill is that life is a person's most precious possession, then that
reason can be overturned if the person no longer wants to live.
The Egoist believes that the right action is always that which has the best
consequences for the doer of the action, or agent. As with Utilitarianism,
there are different versions of this doctrine according to whether the good
consequences are seen in terms of maximum pleasure, minimum pain (Hedonistic
Egoism) or in terms of other good consequences for the agent, such as his
or her self- development or flourishing.
At first sight, Hedonistic Egoism seems to prescribe a life spent trampling
on anyone who gets in one's way, and so to be ruled out as contrary to everything
that is normally thought of as right. But ever since Plato philosophers have
realised that in general human beings cannot maximise pleasure in that way.
Most people are not strong enough to do this with impunity, and in any case
most people need friendship and cooperation with others for their own happiness.
So Hedonistic Egoism cannot be dismissed quite so hastily. However, occasions
would arise where Hedonistic Egoism, like Hedonistic Utilitariansm, demands
ruthless action. For example, it would prescribe involuntary euthanasia to
a doctor or carer who would gain a good deal from someone's death, did not
care enough about the victim to miss him personally and could conceal his
deed from anyone who did. Such people, if rational, would not even feel guilty,
for they would by their creed have done the right thing. A doctrine which
prescribes this, even if on rare occasions, is too much at variance with
our ordinary ideas of morality to be persuasive.
However, Higher Egoism is another matter. For example, Aristotle's doctrine
is that the right policy in life is not to pursue our own pleasure but to
develop our own flourishing or foster our best selves. And the best self
is a non-egoistic self, who cultivates the kind of friendship in which friends
are second selves and possesses all the moral virtues, including other-regarding
ones such as generosity and justice.
This kind of Egoism, instead of telling us always to pursue our own welfare,
in a sense breaks down the distinction between self and others; we could not
readily criticise it on the ground that it was obviously at variance with
our ordinary moral views. On the other hand, it is not much use as a guide
to action. We first need to know what kinds of action are virtuous in order
to cultivate the virtues Aristotle speaks of. The appeal of the Aristotelian
approach today is not as a guide, but as a general framework in which one
may set the moral life, and indeed all aspects of life. Aristotle thinks
we cannot but pursue our own good as we see it, and perhaps he is right.
But he aims to win us to a noble view of that good, in which our own true
welfare is to be the best we can be. He lays stress on the distinctive nature
of man and on the best life as one in which rational faculties are well exercised.
The idea of a death with dignity, one in which these values are preserved,
fits well with his outlook.
In this paper I have tried to show in outline how various well-known philosophical theories of morality can be applied to the dilemma of death with dignity. I have argued that none of these theories need be interpreted as forbidding voluntary euthanasia and that several of them can provide a convincing justification of it.