Kristen Moreno Phil 164 Final Paper 5/12/11 Living Well and Dying Without Regret The things

that make us happy in life are ultimately the things that make our lives worth living for. It is up to the individual to use reason to figure out what those things might be. Aristotle states in his Nicomachean Ethics Book I that intrinsic happiness is equivalent to the highest good or overall wellbeing. Everything else that is of lesser value is derivative to this greatest good. In his philosophies, John Stuart Mill believes that one should be free to do what they want to achieve that happiness without restriction unless it brings harm onto another person. If this is achieved, then a person will have lived in the best humanly possible way. Similarly, for a person to die in the best way, it must be autonomous without restriction. This is exemplified in the Frontline documentary, The Suicide Tourist, in which a 59-year-old man, Craig Ewert, decides to end his own life instead of being subject to die by a rapidly progressing ALS disease. In comparison, the protagonist of Leo Tolstoys short story,The Death of Ivan Ilych, was also faced with a degenerative disease and the narrator-protagonist of Wit, a pseudo-documentary, was dying of cancer and were both reluctant to die. The difference in the latter two was the amount of satisfaction with the way they lived their lives. However, regardless of how they have lived their entire lives, a person may be forced to make a difficult choice for themselves or others that will cause the greatest good. In Babettes Feast, a small community must put their wellbeing in the hands of a single chef and in Deacologue #2, a woman must make the decision of whether or not to abort her baby. Overall, living the best life is lived by achieving the highest possible happiness in which a person, when conscious, has close to full autonomy or

authority assumptions with good intent and has unrestricted access to do the things that make them happy; similarly, a person has the right to die of their own choosing. The Suicide Tourist starts at the end of the journey and backtracks through Craig Ewerts days before he came to Switzerland to commit assisted suicide through a company called Dignitas. He is the victim of ALS and finds it increasingly difficult to perform certain actions as the days go by. Before he becomes completely dependent on others to bathe and feed him, he wants to voice his wishes to die before the pain or discomfort becomes too much to handle. At this point, I've got two choices, Ewert reasons. If I go through with it, I die, as I must at some point. If I don't go through with it, my choice is essentially to suffer and to inflict suffering on my family and then die -- possibly in a way that is considerably more stressful and painful than this way. So I've got death, and I've got suffering and death. You know, this makes a whole lot of sense to me. Ewert reasons that if he is going to die anyways, he might as well make it a peaceful one to save himself from a great amount of pain. However, the only thing holding him back from death was what he would be leaving behind. His life had been satisfying and so it would be all right if he died but he had a loving family that he would be sad to leave. For those that believe that suicide, even assisted suicide for the terminally ill, is wrong, they are unwilling to accept violations against the universal Sanctity of Life Ideal. Doctors buy into this ideal as well as the Difference Myth that states that all life is equally valuable and life is absolutely inviolable--doctors believe in saving lives and killing is considered a violation. This is the reason why the second couple in The Suicide Tourist did not receive approval for assisted suicide. The wife was too healthy to be helped to die and there was no way of telling how much time her husband had left. However, in cases of passive euthanasia, there are exceptions. According to the Difference Myth, killing is worse than letting die. Therefore,

passive euthanasia would not be considered on the same level as murder and could be permitted. In most countries, it is still unlawful to perform an assisted suicide for a patient that could instead receive treatment which is the reason Ewert and many others like him traveled to Switzerland. Ewert believed that the best humanly way for him to die was to let himself decide exactly when and how he was going to die. It was fully his choice and he made clear that he was not under the influence of anyone else who might have other motives for after his death. He was able to make this decision because he was satisfied with his life and could end it with no regrets. Oppositely, the protagonist in The Death of Ivan Ilych, is an old man who is scared of death. Ivan Ilych was a judge who was self-centered and only interested in material things. When he bought a new house for his family to live in, he decided to hang up curtains and accidentally bumped his side on the window ledge. Seemingly fine he continued to live in the same way. But as he grew older he began to have pains in his side and was losing the ability to stand and perform daily routines. He had distanced himself from his family long ago and forsook everything else for his job. Nearing his death and looking back on his life, he realizes that, he should have had a better connection with others, something just as precious as his own life. He calls the relationship he currently acts out with others an artificial life in which his wife pretends to care about him being ill and dying. This artificial life prevents him from finding the greatest good for his life and therefore he has a lesser quality of life. It is only when Ivan can find the authentic life that he will be able to face dying. He has nightmares about being forced into a black sack but not being able to fall into it completely. This is similar to Ewerts process of making the decision to die because both he and Ivan consider what will become of their families and themselves after they die. Ivan would like to look back on his life and believe that he had lived it right and that prevents him from letting go and falling into the sack in his

nightmares. When he is in front of his family and about to die, he finally sees some true sympathy from them and willingly acknowledges that he has lived an artificial life with them. Then he is able to allow himself to die. Similarly, in the movie, Wit, Vivienne, a professor with a doctorate-degree in English and a specialty in Metaphysical Poetry is diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. The movie is a documentary style in which she narrates her days in the hospital as well as how she lived her life. She spent her college days in the library, never making friends like her professor encouraged her to do. Even into her days as a professor, teaching John Donne poetry, she was strict and only concentrated on what she was teaching without considering that her students had their own lives. While in the hospital, she recites poetry and speaks about all that she has accomplished in life but as she realizes that her treatment cannot cure her and death is inevitable, she also takes a look back on her life. She feels sorry for not giving her assistant doctor, and former student, a higher grade and she feels even worse about not giving one of her students an extension because of his grandmothers death. She has no one who wants to visit her, she is unmarried and she is dying--this leads her to believe that she could have lived better. Another concern represented in this movie is the concept of patient autonomy. Beech writes that in order for patient autonomy to be preserved, the patient must give informed consent. Informed consent means that a patient must be informed of procedure, reason of treatment, duration, risks and side effects and must be able to give consent under complete understanding. Vivienne gave informed consent but she was not completely informed of the procedure or its effects in the first place. She agreed to take eight full dosages of chemotherapy treatments but she did not expect to be treated like an experimental object and was not fully informed of the side effects. Beech argues that even though patient autonomy may be preserved, a new and

better model is needed. The ultimate goal of treatment, after all, is to maximize wellbeing which would equal the best life. But patients must put trust in their doctors that they will make the correct assumptions on what decisions the patient would make themselves if they had equal knowledge. Doctors are not to make their own judgements for a patients wellbeing. Key evidence that this was being violated was how Viviennes doctor kept pushing full strength dosages no matter how much pain she was in, insisting that she could handle it because she was strong. He also made his own judgement when he decided to give her a specified amount of timed painkiller instead of assigning the system of patient controlled dosage of painkiller. Savulescu would have approved of his methods because he believes that doctors should not always defer to their patients wishes; the best way to save patient autonomy is to ignore their wishes and insist on the doctors own educated assumptions. The final violation occurred when a Code Blue was called despite Viviennes DNR. The nurse, and the only one with a sense of human compassion, stopped the Code Blue team in time in order to save Viviennes last request. However, as Savulescu would argue, sometimes it is for the better that an authority can override the wishes of those without proper knowledge or practice. An example of this is in Babettes Feast. A small community of devout religious peoples flourished under the influence of a head preacher who pressed living simple lives being loyal to God. When he died and his daughters were the heads of the town, they tried to keep his priciples alive. However, when the whole community got older, there were conflicts and grudges. The sisters take in a French refugee named Babette and the woman becomes a housekeeper and cook for them. Later, she happens to win the lottery at the same time when the sisters want to hold a dinner to celebrate their late fathers 100th birthday. She begs and convinces the sisters to let her cook a traditional French dinner and the sisters are quick to give in as they are too kind to say no. The

problem is that the communitys religious beliefs only allow them to eat bland food and not to indulge in luxurious foods and a French dinner is basically just that. They see the ingredients such as quail, turtle and wine and they try to convince the sisters that this dinner will be the work of the devil. The sisters hide their concerns from Babette so she will not be offended and agree with the community that they will eat the food but not enjoy it, linger in the taste, or ever speak of it again. When they have the dinner, they soon learn to just enjoy the food and have nice conversations, even making up with their enemies. Babettes food unexpectedly brings the people closer and happier than they have been in years. They were able to get all their sins off their chests and make up with one another. Babette purposely did not defer to the communitys wishes to not hold a French dinner because she believed that it would bring them the most wellbeing. The dinner definitely had positive effects and the people were grateful to her despite her introducing something of a taboo to their world. Another example of a doctor having an influence on patient autonomy is shown in the movie Deacologue #2. A woman, Dorota Geller, is married but pregnant with another mans child. Her husband is hospitalized for a disease or illness and if he survives, she will abort the child but if he dies, she will keep it. This causes her to question the doctor of her husbands chances of living. As time goes on and the baby grows, it will be harder to get a clinic to perform an abortion. The doctor will not disclose any information to her and when he finds out that Dorota is considering abortion, he is personally against it because he had the experience of losing a child. In order to convince her not to have the abortion, he tells her that her husband has no chance of recovery. The doctor lied to Dorota because he thought that keeping the child would make her the happiest in the end; that she might regret having the abortion since she was previously unable to conceive a child. In a sense it is not right because the doctor gave false

information about her husband and put his own preferences above Dorotas. Many people are against abortions, especially later than 3 months of fetal development. Others argue that zygotes only have claims to life and not rights. Claims belong to those that have potential but nothing is definite. Tooley explains that a person does not have a right to life unless they also have a desire to live. To desire to live means that one must desire to continue to be the subject of experiences that happen in life. Also one must have a concept of self, or an ability to form abstractions. Newborns and infants cannot form this concept of self because they have very little knowledge and experience. Therefore, Dorotas right to life should have been enough to trump the claims of her baby and an abortion would be permissible. However, because she received false information, her judgement was under the influence of the doctor and she did not have the abortion. The film does not go on to show if Dorota finds out that her husband would be fine so we do not know if she is happy with her decision. Living life to the fullest really means receiving the most wellbeing out of life. That achieving the greatest happiness will lead to the best life humanly possible. This happiness is satisfied by many different things such as physical, emotional, financial, occupational or familial wellbeing. Ewert is a great example of how a person can live a great life full of love and success but still be able to make the decision to die in the best and most painless way. Saving oneself from a great amount of pain is definitely one of the most reasonable justification for wanting to die. However, like Ivan Ilych and Vivienne did not understand until they were about to die, it is important to form relationships with others if that is what will truly matter in the end. To be consumed in your job and not care for others or even to cause others harm will not result in being able to die without any regrets. Sometimes guidance from authority is needed to show people the right path to their greatest happiness as shown in Babettes Feast and Deacologue #2.

Without endangering the happiness of others and being allowed to do things unrestrictedly, the best possible way of living will occur. And when death is close, it is best if there are no regrets even if the person did not live to the fullest.