title: Moral individualism and elective death.
abstract: Moral individualism (Brooks, 2011; Smith, 2011) is a contemporary interpretation of morality as entirely a matter of personal choice. It is a popular rather than theory-based interpretation and has a number of social generative sources related to present-day preoccupation with individuality and personal distinctiveness. A key generative source is popularization of postmodernism, which prioritizes self-reinvention and provides moral individualism with the appearance of intellectual legitimacy. Moral individualism is a deeply flawed misconception of morality because it abolishes moral communality. My concern in this paper is that in doing so, it seriously jeopardizes productive discussion of the moral permissibility of elective death or choosing to die in despairingly and dire circumstances.
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada. Electronic address: pradocg@queensu.ca.
authors.forename: C G
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Prado
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D009014:Morals; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: Character education; Elective death; Foucault; Moral individualism; Postmodernism; Subjective relativism