Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Euthanasia is usually discussed as both dangerous and morally wrong; a practice which will lead down a ‘slippery slope’ to unbridled institutional power to kill those most vulnerable. Globally, considerable research has accumulated from the surveillance of these practices in places where it has been legalised. This evidence, however, is often largely ignored. In addition, the morality of such a practice continues to be conceptualised in terms of theology or philosophical ethics. The aim of this paper is to show that the ethics of such a practice cannot definitively be decided through such abstract means and that it is the omission of the examination of the human experience which is the problem. Drawing on my own empirical data, I will discuss the question of euthanasia where it emerges; at the intersection of institution, patient and family. Issues of patient autonomy, freedom and human rights will be discussed along with suffering and the idea of the humane. I argue that context is vital to questions of morality and that inter-subjectivity and emotions are central to this understanding. Thus, we can only evaluate the ethics of euthanasia practices when we incorporate and consider the human experience of the dying process. In this respect, we must reconsider freedom from a phenomenological examination of its antithetical forms.