the right to die... the will to live...
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The pope's condition is deteriorating, for all to see, and he's becoming a potent symbol for his message: that life is sacred, no matter how painful...
on October 24, 1993, a father took the life of his 12-year-old daughter to relieve her from the pain and suffering from her severe form of cerebral palsy... the Supreme Court of Canada, in a per curiam decision dismissing the appeal of his conviction for murder, observed that “the law has a long history of difficult cases” and recognized that “the questions that arise in [this] case are the sort that have divided Canadians and sparked a national discourse” and that their judgment “will not end that discourse”...
on this night of vigil, awaiting the inevitable for a man who is, for all intents and purposes, indescribable... and after days and weeks of legal, political, and moral wrangling about the "right to die" in the United States... i feel compelled to reflect, despite the knowledge that none of what i say, write, or think matters until and unless i'm in a similar situation...
i'm not a religious person... not anymore... there was a time in my life when i considered myself and was considered by many to be a "Christian" (for lack of a better comparison, i might well have been considered a "fundamentalist" or an "evangelical")... i consider myself now a virtue ethicist, a philosophical agnostic, and a pragmatic idealist... none of that precludes me from maintaining a core set of values, many of which i admit are residual from my days as a believer...
every human life is sacred and precious... the quality of life can never be really judged by human standards, whether philosophical or practical, legal or ethical... as individuals and as a society, we have the positive obligation to protect life... we have the negative obligation not to destroy or injure human life... whether one judges the acceptability or unacceptability of euthanasia solely by ethics or by law, or even by both, one basic truth will remain: human life is sacred and precious... "quality-of-life" arguments rest on a false kind of personalism... there is an assumption that only conscious life is worth living... euthanasia promotes a dangerous and threatening attitude towards life, a growing tendency to view death as a good and life itself as a burden...
i don't know if what i say or believe now would change if i had to face the same situation personally or with a family member or close friend... i have no attachment to any of the situations mentioned above... while the death of a public figure like the pope, whom i had the privilege of witnessing at the 2002 World Youth Day in toronto, is a shock to me like to many, it affects me in no direct way... a discussion like above, in focusing on addressing broader philosophical issues, will necessarily have failed to take into complete account the subjective aspects of a personal tragedy... i believe that i am a moral person... but i am not a moralist... i feel compelled to write, as i did before, not because i have any answers, but because life is a series of questions...
"Suffering seems to belong to man's transcendence. It is one of those points in which man is in a certain sense destined to go beyond himself." -- John Paul II
--------------------
The pope's condition is deteriorating, for all to see, and he's becoming a potent symbol for his message: that life is sacred, no matter how painful...
on October 24, 1993, a father took the life of his 12-year-old daughter to relieve her from the pain and suffering from her severe form of cerebral palsy... the Supreme Court of Canada, in a per curiam decision dismissing the appeal of his conviction for murder, observed that “the law has a long history of difficult cases” and recognized that “the questions that arise in [this] case are the sort that have divided Canadians and sparked a national discourse” and that their judgment “will not end that discourse”...
on this night of vigil, awaiting the inevitable for a man who is, for all intents and purposes, indescribable... and after days and weeks of legal, political, and moral wrangling about the "right to die" in the United States... i feel compelled to reflect, despite the knowledge that none of what i say, write, or think matters until and unless i'm in a similar situation...
i'm not a religious person... not anymore... there was a time in my life when i considered myself and was considered by many to be a "Christian" (for lack of a better comparison, i might well have been considered a "fundamentalist" or an "evangelical")... i consider myself now a virtue ethicist, a philosophical agnostic, and a pragmatic idealist... none of that precludes me from maintaining a core set of values, many of which i admit are residual from my days as a believer...
every human life is sacred and precious... the quality of life can never be really judged by human standards, whether philosophical or practical, legal or ethical... as individuals and as a society, we have the positive obligation to protect life... we have the negative obligation not to destroy or injure human life... whether one judges the acceptability or unacceptability of euthanasia solely by ethics or by law, or even by both, one basic truth will remain: human life is sacred and precious... "quality-of-life" arguments rest on a false kind of personalism... there is an assumption that only conscious life is worth living... euthanasia promotes a dangerous and threatening attitude towards life, a growing tendency to view death as a good and life itself as a burden...
i don't know if what i say or believe now would change if i had to face the same situation personally or with a family member or close friend... i have no attachment to any of the situations mentioned above... while the death of a public figure like the pope, whom i had the privilege of witnessing at the 2002 World Youth Day in toronto, is a shock to me like to many, it affects me in no direct way... a discussion like above, in focusing on addressing broader philosophical issues, will necessarily have failed to take into complete account the subjective aspects of a personal tragedy... i believe that i am a moral person... but i am not a moralist... i feel compelled to write, as i did before, not because i have any answers, but because life is a series of questions...
"Suffering seems to belong to man's transcendence. It is one of those points in which man is in a certain sense destined to go beyond himself." -- John Paul II
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posted by þΛųL jØŋαŦhΛŋ @ 23:00
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