Eudaimonia and well-being
Questioning the moral authority of advance directives in dementia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21702433 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Philippa Byers (0000-0002-5526-6207, St Vincent's Hospital Sydney, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 23-37 |
| Publication date | 2020-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Metamedicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0166-2031 • E-ISSN: 1573-1200 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11017-020-09517-w |
| PMID | 32034586 |
| OpenAlex | W3005396903 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 19 |
This paper revisits Ronald Dworkin’s influential position that a person’s advance directive for future health care and medical treatment retains its moral authority beyond the onset of dementia, even when respecting this authority involves foreshortening the life of someone who is happy and content and who no longer remembers or identifies with instructions included within the advance directive. The analysis distils a eudaimonist perspective from Dworkin’s argument and traces variations of this perspective in further arguments for the moral authority of advance directives by other authors. It then critiques a feature of the eudaimonist perspectives within these arguments—namely, the position that dementia has a retroactive negative impact on what a person has previously valued—and challenges the commonly held assumption underlying them that a person’s life and well-being have relatively low value beyond the onset of dementia. Although advance directives have moral authority as a means of guiding one’s future health care, accounts that dismiss the value of the lives and well-being of people living with dementia should be questioned to the extent that such accounts are used to support the moral authority of advance directives stipulating measures to foreshorten individuals’ lives
Alternative medicine · Dementia · Directive · Disease · Epistemology · Philosophy of medicine · Sociology · Ethics in medical practice · Medicine · Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues · Patient Dignity and Privacy · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology
The Philosophy of Well-Being
Human Identity and Bioethics
The Ethics of Killing
The essential moral self
On Avoiding Deep Dementia
Advance Directives and Discrimination against People with Dementia
“Tho’ much is taken, much abides”
Dworkin on Dementia
Reasons and Persons
Towards a Theory of Dementia Care
Personal Identity
Respecting the Margins of Agency
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,4 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2024 (4) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |