The Diane Pretty case and the occasional impotence of justification in ethics.
Most discussions in ethics argue that a certain practice or act is morally justified, with any underlying theory taken as supporting a guide to general action by aiding discovery of the objectively and singularly right thing to do. I suggest that this oversimplifies the agent's own experience of the moral dilemma, and I take the recent English case of Diane Pretty's request for assisted suicide as an example. The law refused, despite the obvious sympathy many felt for her. This only appears paradoxical, I suggest, because too much is expected of the concept of justification, and because moral understanding of a particular case is too often reduced to the legalistic search for general justificatory reasons. The starting point should be, I conclude, a full awareness of the phrase "there but for the grace of God go I".
Cowley
Christopher
C
School of Medicine, Health Policy and Practice, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK. c.cowley@uea.ac.uk
D004645:Empathy; D006708:Homicide / Q000941:ethics; D006801:Humans; D009014:Morals; D010684:Philosophy; D018454:Spouses; D017236:Suicide, Assisted / Q000941:ethics* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D006113:United Kingdom