To live is to die: A virtue account of arguments for the right to die

Ethics and Bioethics (in Central Europe) 10 (1-2):20-29 (2020)
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Abstract

In recent years, debates about euthanasia and assisted suicide have increased to the point that now, many people defend the recognition of the right to die, the right for people to decide upon the end of their life. Consistently, advocates fight to legalise practices such as euthanasia to guarantee patients’ possibility to die when they request it. In this paper, I review two of the strongest arguments invoked by proponents of physician-assisted suicide: the argument for compassion and the argument for dignity. The focus of this paper is to propose a review of these arguments through the lens of virtue ethics to inform the debate on physician-assisted suicide and question the relevance of such arguments for the legalisation of that right that would greatly ease the possibilities to end the life of a patient asking for it.

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References found in this work

Principles of biomedical ethics.Tom L. Beauchamp - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by James F. Childress.
Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals.Immanuel Kant - 1785 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Thomas E. Hill & Arnulf Zweig.
Taking rights seriously.Ronald Dworkin (ed.) - 1977 - London: Duckworth.
Virtue Ethics.Rosalind Hursthouse & Glen Pettigrove - 2022 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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