This a systematic survey of the arguments and counterarguments that are most commonly in play when considering the ethical rights and wrong of euthanasia and whether it should be legally permitted.
By ‘assisted dying’ I shall mean primarily voluntary euthanasia (where a person is in a position to confirm or deny that they wish their life ended), but the expression may be taken to extend to albeit difficult cases of non-voluntary euthanasia (where a person is a position where they can neither confirm or deny that they wish their life ended), cases that are complicated by the possibility of the expression of prior wishes. This, of course, contrasts with involuntary euthanasia where a person’s life is ended against their wishes.
I assume that any validly supported conclusion as to the desirability or otherwise of euthanasia must be based on arguments, and a mere statement of belief, no matter how sincerely or dogmatically it is held, or how venerable such a belief may be, is insufficient to count as establishing or refuting the conclusion.
Arguments on euthanasia (assisted dying) divide into those based on rights and those grounded in utilitarianism, here termed consequentialism, the latter judging the rightness or wrongness of action not by its obeying or breaking absolute rules, but by the goodness or badness of the supposed consequences.
Roughly speaking the strongest arguments for euthanasia are rights-based and the strongest arguments against euthanasia utilitarianism-based. The consequentialist opposed to euthanasia will usually try to undercut the rights argument for it by denying the existence of absolute rights. Since it is hard for them to find a reason to rule out rights (or all absolute moral rules) altogether, as certain cases seem to demand them — no child torture, for example — it is hard for them to find an argument that singles out the right to decide when one dies.
However, I shall argue that even consequentialist arguments against euthanasia, usually taken to be the best grounds for opposing euthanasia, are not as strong as they are sometimes supposed. Indeed, as will be shown, many of the arguments of the consequentialist against euthanasia, just because of their tendency to deny absolute rules, may be found to cut both ways, and may be used to argue for euthanasia by plausibly inverting the supposed consequences.
One argument which tries to reverse a rights argument — one that usually on the grounds of personal autonomy argues that people should have the right to determine their own death — is where it is contended that it is not permissible for us to hand over our right to life and give to another permission to kill us.
The best reply here is that we think it is morally permissible to hand over all sorts of rights (as in the case of surgery, where the …
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