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When Bungling Practice Is Joined to Absurd Theory: Doctors, Philosophers, and the Right to Die
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18449 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1990 |
6,985 Words |
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Hadley Arkes
Hadley Arkes is Edward Ney Professor of Jurisprudence and
American Institutions at Amherst College. |
During the famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, Lincoln was moved to make a point that had been made, long before, by Thomas Aquinas. Douglas had declared that he didn't care whether slavery was voted up or down in the separate territories, as long as the decision was made in a democratic way, with the vote of a majority. Lincoln pointed out that one could express indifference, in this way, only if one were dealing with a morally indifferent thing: Judge Douglas was “perfectly logical,” he remarked, in saying that any community that wants slaves has a right to have them – “if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit that [slavery] is a wrong, he cannot logically say that anyone has a right to do a wrong.”
Now, generations later, we find academic philosophers offering precious, mischievous essays, trying to claim, in the interests of “privacy,” that we have a “right to do a wrong.” But the argument still cannot escape its incoherence. The claim of a right to do a wrong comes into play only when someone is suffering resistance - someone else is interfering with out freedom to do as we like (perhaps our freedom to torture animals in the privacy of our homes). The claim of a right is made to fend off that resistance: To say that we have a right to have our freedom respected is to say that anyone who interferes with us is doing a “wrong”; and by a wrong we mean something they ought not do, something they are not justified in doing, even if it suits their interests or their pleasure. But of course, the apt response on the part of the intervenors is that they too have “a right to do a wrong.”
The claim cannot escape its incoherence, and anyone who spends much time among students will know that this is not the only example of incoherent “rights” claims. “I have a right to believe that I don't exist.” Who is the bearer of that right - the one who does not exist? In the age of Lincoln, these points did not need to be made among the literate. But in the age of Holmes and Blackmun, it does become necessary to remind, even jurists, even some doctors of law, that rights cannot be created merely through stipulation. A year ago at Clark University, at a conference on euthanasia, a group of us were encouraged to reflect again on a classic statement for euthanasia, written in the 1920s, by Herr Doktor Professor Karl Binding. As they used to say, a German joke is no laughing matter, and neither was Herr Doktor Professor Binding. His essay bore the title “Permitting the Destruction of Unworthy Life.” I wouldn't say Binding argued; it would be more apt to say that he asserted the freedom to take one's own life, and then, in a burlesque move, suggested that “natural law” itself would provide
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