"We tend to reduce death to a duty of management."

Herz. 2014 Jun 7. [Epub ahead of print]

[When letting-be is more important than actions : Plea for a new culture of dying.]

[Article in German]

Maio G.

Author information

• Institut für Ethik und Geschichte der Medizin, Universität Freiburg, Stefan-Meier-Str. 26, 79104, Freiburg i. Br., Deutschland, maio@ethik.uni-freiburg.de.

Abstract

The fact of "being mortal" and mortality are of an existential meaning for every human being. The knowledge of death and the imagination of a finiteness of life have a crucial impact on the whole life. Today it has become a common approach to plan death, to organize and to regulate it. We tend to reduce death to a duty of management. With this rationalization of death we try to get within distance of it. Active euthanasia and assisted suicide seem to be the adequate answers to this approach but is death really well understood if we only try to handle it this way? Is autonomy really the only relevant principle to respect the concerns of dying individuals or desperate people who want to die? This contribution pleads for an emphasis on a new ethics of caring, because a truly human medicine is not possible without caring. It shows that care does not necessarily get in conflict with autonomy but that it is the prerequisite for autonomy.