When is it ok to put down a human being? Part 3

The Morality of Everyday Things: An Everyday Philosophy Podcast

The third in our series on euthanasia and assisted suicide - later named with the much more provocative title, 'When is it ok to put down a human being?'. In this series we explore how much control we (and other people) should have over our own death. This is primarily focused on circumstances where death is near and inevitable, and life/treatment is becoming pretty horrible in the interim, but we do broaden the discussion a little beyond these boundaries. As we clarify in the episode, agency creates an extremely important distinction between assisted suicide and euthanasia, but even the most liberal countries draw some lines on where agency is not enough to bring us to support someone's wish for death.

In this episode, we talk through some of the pros and cons, including the classic 'slippery slope' argument as a negative and the limits of our autonomy, specifically bodily autonomy, in the pros column. We draw on some of the philosophical concepts from last episode as well as religious context and actual context. Ultimately, Jake and Ant - in classic Jake and Ant fashion - end up largely agreeing that respect for autonomy wins out in contexts where one can't be considered impaired in their judgement, in a way that can't be altered (physical pain may be an unavoidable impairment on your normal judgement, when near death).

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