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Undignified Arguments

A Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

SØREN HOLM
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Abstract:

Something strange has happened to the concept of dignity in bioethics. After a long period in which U.S. pragmatist and U.K. consequentialist philosophers have argued that the concept is useless and vacuous, and in which they have been reasonably successful in expunging it from mainstream English-language academic bioethics, dignity has suddenly become popular again in debates about the legalization of physician-assisted dying (PAD). And, even stranger, it is deployed not by conservatives but by liberals. In the debates about PAD, liberal proponents of legalization seem to accept without question that there is such a state or process as “death with dignity,” which is juxtaposed to “undignified dying.” It also seems to be accepted that both of these states can be fairly easily identified and that they carry great moral weight. This article provides an analysis of the current resurgence of “undignified” arguments and argues on the basis of that analysis (1) that a proper understanding of the concept of dignity shows that the previous reductive arguments against dignity are partially incomplete and therefore partially misguided and (2) that, despite dignity having meaning, the idea of an undignified death cannot carry the moral weight it is given by proponents of the legalization of PAD.

Keywords

dignityphysician-assisted dying (PAD)death with dignity
Type
Special Section: Responsibility, Vulnerability, Dignity, and Humanity
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , April 2016 , pp. 228 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

Notes

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32. The recent case of the civil rights activist and Africana studies instructor Rachel Dolezal tragicomically illustrates this point. After having fashioned a life narrative as a black woman, she was found to have white parents, and to have made official complaints about racial discrimination directed against her when she was a white student at a predominantly black university. Whatever she decides to do with her life, she will never be able to regain control of her own life narrative.

33. Underestimating this ability may be “natural” for academics, because much of the literature displays a distinct lack of charity in interpretation.

34. That is, the claim that for person P, with a life narrative N, there is a set of dying processes D that are objectively undignified in the sense of being strongly incompatible with the core of P’s life narrative.

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