Memory, Community and the Reasons for Living

In trying to see what significance suicide and euthanasia have in the Christian community, and how the memory and the narrative framework of that community provide resources for determining an appropriate position on suicide and euthanasia, this essay advances an experimental model of how moral notions operate within the story and convictions that sustain human communities. It is suggested that given the Christian understanding of life as a gift and the necessity of trust for our lives as social creatures, suicide and euthanasia are incompatible with essential elements of the Christian story and must therefore be rejected. While this position, together with the ambiguity of suicide and the necessity of distinguishing between euthanasia and letting die, may sometimes result in tragic circumstances, such tragedy is the inescapable result of truthfulness to a complex story. This essay is intended to contribute to discussion of suicide and euthanasia, to the bearing of moral notions and narrative, and to an understanding of the nature and function of ethics. If Suicide is allowed then everything is allowed. If anything is not allowed then suicide is not allowed. This throws a light on the nature of ethics, for suicide is, so to speak, the elementary sin. Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 1914-16, 10.1.17. Suicide and Euthanasia as Moral Problems THICISTS do not need to provide a reason to describe suicide and euthanasia as moral problems. Everyone seems to agree that if anything is a moral problem suicide and euthanasia are prime examples and thus ready grist for the ethicist's mill. As Wittgenstein suggests, we seem to be on fundamentally moral grounds when dealing with the taking of one's own life. Yet we feel it is by no means clear why it is assumed that suicide and euthanasia raise moral issues, or indeed, what those issues are and how the ethicist might relate to them. At the very least people have begun to realize that acts of suicide STANLEY HAUERWAS (Ph.D., Yale) is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. RICHARD BONDI (B.A., Oberlin) is engaged in doctoral studies in theological ethics at the University of Notre Dame.

Assisted suicide · Criminology · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Ethics in medical practice · Psychology · Theology and Philosophy of Evil

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