Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace: a theoretical model, combining quality of life and years of life, which offers clues for the proper time to die with dignity.
"Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word" said Saint Symeon (New Testament, Luke 2, 29). But, which is this day? How can we know it? In this article we re-examine theoretically, using a "thought experiment", the ancient dilemma of "when is the proper time to die". It is a contribution to the international debate on quality of life, quality of death, and dying with dignity. Quality is defined as a variable, which incorporates every other dimension of life except time (except years of life). It is accepted that a heuristic definition of life is the product of duration and quality, and, since quality can be negative, we accept the idea that life can be negative as well. Given that, the proper time to die in dignity is when life, from being positive becomes negative. After that we examine the individual as a member and part of the society in which he belongs and we conclude that negative life can be prolonged only be consuming positive life of other members of the society; this means that negative life in a hypothetical one-member society cannot exist; a critical population size is necessary. Finally, rising to the society level, and having defined society's life as the sum of every person's life, we discovered that preserving the negative life of some people can only be possible by consuming the positive life of other members of this society or/and other society (ies) or/and of the whole biosphere. Now the question is raised whether this is ethical or not, whether it is a human right and, if so, whose?
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D004992:Ethics, Medical; D018645:Greek World; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010686:Philosophy, Medical; D011788:Quality of Life; D019057:Quality-Adjusted Life Years; D012297:Right to Die; D012945:Social Values; D013727:Terminal Care / Q000523:psychology* / Q000592:standards*