Henry Imler April 13th, 2005

Article: Is there a Duty to Die?
Author: Hardwig, John

It is not absurd to think that sometimes we have a duty to die.

It is not absurd to think that sometimes our loved ones do not have a duty to continue to support the dying.

Basic Argument:

1. People’s needs and wants and goods are interconnected [rejection of the indivualistic fantasy]
2. It is immoral to impose serious burdens on others to further one’s needs and wants
3. One is not relieved of their moral duties when they are sick and dying.
4. Sometimes continuing to live will place serious burdens on loved ones.
5. ∴ Sometimes one has a duty to die

Hardwig gives the principles on when someone has a duty to die, but repeatedly abstains from giving anyone a duty to die.

Conditions that might lead to a duty to die:

• Fundamental reason: The duty to die [d2d] increases when continuing to live [c2l] will impose significant burdens on those that are interconnected with you [loved ones, family]
  • These burdens can include: emotional, extensive caregiving, destruction of life plans, finacial hardship
• Greater as one grows older
• Have lived a rich life
• Loved one’s life has been difficult or impovrished
• When loved ones have already made significant contributions to your life
• The extent to which you can adjust to your illness, the more one can, the less the duty - note on increased social medicine and hospice
• Less likely of a duty if one can still make contributions to the lives of others
• More likely if your personality dies by a dementing disease
• Greater Duty to die if you have played the part of the grasshopper instead of the ant.

Do the incompetent have a Duty to Die?
They do not if they have never been competent, for nonpersons do not have duties. Hardwig dances around the issue of whether or not the formerly competent can have such a duty.

Social Polices and the Duty to Die:
In light of #6 above, the increase in availibility of social services to the dying decreases the duty for them to die. This is due to postulate #4 in the argument for a duty to die: It is immoral to impose serious burdens on others to further one’s needs and wants.
Accordingly, if society [or anything else] has set up a means of support, and you do not impose a serious burden on loved ones, then you do not have a duty to die.

Conversely, if the loved ones are willing to accept the burden created by keeping you alive, then they may, but they are never forced to carry the burden created by keeping you live, on a prima facie basis.

Misc Points:
Irony that the advances in medicine have created conditions for people to live for a unnaturally long time
The duty to die affirms my moral agency, my personhood.

• To treat one as if they are releaved of their duties when they are sick and dying is to treat them as a child.
• It implies that they are morally incompetent.

Meaning in death requires an affirmation of connections

• Life without connection is meaningless
• These connections can be to other things, like land, nature, ect…

I really think he is worming his way out of the connections/meaning of life issue.

• Does not reflect the actions of Jesus or his followers
• Not clear that the belief that “all life is sacred and therefore we should postpode death as long as possible in all cases” is univerally true
• The bible sends a mixed message on the topic of suicide
  • [I have no idea about this, Saul and Judas were seen in a negative light, but I know of no absolute stipulation against it.]
• Physical Death is not the ultimate evil in the Bible

2. The duty to die is concompatible with human dignity
It actually affirms thier himan dignity to restore to them moral agency.

3. The dying are already shouldering most of the burdens and to give them an additional burden would be wrong.
Is this really true?
Example:

87 year old woman is dying, she wants to live and in the fulfillment of that, her 55 year old daughter takes care of her. The lady lives two years longer instead of the forcasted 6 months. In the span of that time, the duaghter has lost her life plan, her career, her savings, her house, all of which results in a greatly lowered quality of life for a period of 30 years.

Which is the greater burden?

To lose a 50% chance of 6 months of life at age 87.
–or–
To lose one’s life plan, her career, her savings, her house, all of which results in a greatly lowered quality of life for a period of 30 years?

Clearly, the second option is worse

4. The Duty to Die impacts the poor more than the rich.

• This objection is a red herring. That fact is more a critique of the social setup than the duty to die.

• Ethics
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