Can Death Be Good for You?
If so, then euthanasia is not necessarily contrary to the Hippocratic Oath
A common criticism of assisted death is that it’s contrary to the Hippocratic Oath that commands doctors to “do no harm.” Additionally, given that nonmaleficence is one of the four fundamental principles of biomedical ethics, some think it’s clear that physicians ought not to participate in a patient’s suicide or intentionally and directly cause their death, as in the case of euthanasia.
This opposition to assisted death, however, assumes that death is harmful to the person who dies, which is not necessarily true. To see why, let’s begin with the observation that we commonly euthanize our pets. Why do we do this?
One common reason is that we don’t want them to continue to suffer and so by euthanizing them, we end their suffering. In other words, we often euthanize them for their sake. If this is true, then this practice assumes that death can be good for our pets.
Since we humans are also animals that can suffer, why wouldn’t death benefit us for the same reason? Yes, we’re not the same as cats and dogs; we’re the rational animal, as philosophers like to say. We possess theoretical and practical rationality, which is true. But how does that preclude the possibility of death being in our best interest?
Before we can answer this question, let’s take a look at how death affects well-being.
Deprivationism
Perhaps the dominant theory regarding the benefit or harm of death is deprivationism, which says that death is good or bad for you depending on the well-being or ill-being that it will deprive you.
According to the theory, death is bad for you because, and to the extent that, it deprives you of future well-being. Additionally, the more future well-being death takes away from you, the worse death is for you.
Deprivationism is intuitive in that it seems to explain our beliefs about the badness of death. If you were dying right now, I suspect you’d be upset about your life being cut short. You’d probably think about all the positive experiences you’d miss out on. The fact that we think death would deprive us of such things does a good job of explaining why we don’t want to die.
Another feature of deprivationism is that it explains the common belief that it’s generally worse when children die. Since death deprives them of more future well-being, death is worse for them than it is for someone who’s going to die soon anyway due to old age.
Importantly, if deprivationism is true, then death isn’t necessarily bad for the person who dies. According to the theory, death is good for you because, and to the extent that, it deprives you of future ill-being. So if it’s the case that your future is characterized by extreme suffering, the theory says that it’d be better for you to die sooner.
Deprivationism makes sense of the practice of pet euthanasia. We inexplicitly assume that if our pet continues to live, they’ll continue to suffer, so euthanizing them now is better for them because it will deprive them of that future suffering.
If this assessment of pet euthanasia is correct, then it gives strong reason to think that death could be good for human beings as well. Again, we’re animals that can suffer, so what’s the difference?
The Benefit of Suffering
A critic could perhaps respond in the following way: Because humans are rational beings, we’re uniquely able to benefit from our suffering. For instance, we can find meaning, repair relationships, and even grow spiritually, whereas our pets can’t have any of these experiences because they’re limited by their natures. Hence, suffering isn’t a net negative to human beings as it is for animals.
While it’s plausible that people can grow from hardships in a way that our pets cannot, the fact that we’re able to doesn’t mean that we will, especially when the suffering is great. Indeed, it’s plausible that some people don’t benefit overall from their suffering before they die, for a few reasons.
First, while our rationality enables us to attain higher goods, it also enables us to suffer greater bads. Our pets presumably cannot suffer existentially. They’re unable to believe that their life was wasted or that it had no meaning. They don’t feel toxic shame or deep regret. So it’s not clear that the good outweighs the bad for us.
Second, not all human beings can experience those higher goods due to their age, ill health, and/or cognitive decline.
And third, even in cases where a human being is attaining higher goods from their suffering, it doesn’t follow that they’ll continue to gain if they continue to suffer. Suppose there’s a cancer patient with six months to live. Do we really think that they must benefit overall from dying in six months rather than in five? This seems unlikely. It seems more likely that it’s possible that at some point there’s a net loss to their well-being.
The arguments above give us strong reason to believe that death can be good for us.
Reasonable Expectations
Perhaps the reader is willing to grant the metaphysical claim that death can be in our best interest but is unwilling to accept euthanasia because we can never know what the future will bring a particular person. In short, we don’t know if death will deprive a person of more future well-being or ill-being. So even if deprivationism is true, it’s practically inert.
I agree that no one can predict the future, but we can and often do have reasonable expectations. People can have good reason to think that their lives will improve or not improve, and we consider that to be sufficient when making other life-or-death decisions (for ourselves and for others).
Furthermore, if our ignorance of the future means that we shouldn’t believe that death would be good for a person, then it also means we shouldn’t believe that it would be bad for a person. Hence, taking that position wouldn’t support an anti-euthanasia stance. In fact, taking such a position would mean that it would never be appropriate to say that a particular instance of killing was harmful to the victim, which seems implausible.
This is, of course, if we accept the metaphysical claim that deprivationists make. If we reject deprivationism as the correct theory, then we’d need to have another account of what makes life good and death bad. So far I haven’t encountered a better one.
Conclusion
According to deprivationism, death is not necessarily harmful to the person who dies. If true, this means that participating in assisted death is not necessarily contrary to the Hippocratic Oath or the principle of nonmaleficence. I also argued that since we can have reasonable expectations of how our futures will go, deprivationism is not practically inert.