Bioethics of Nonexistence

By Leonard Tumaini Chuwa

The greatest violence and violation of human life is legalization of its disposability and annihilation based on its condition. Such killing, whether of self or another, depicts absolute contradiction and betrayal of the very hypothesis of humanity. It manifests absolute failure to provide due care, and that is inhuman. Human life is who we are. It is the basis of any argument for human rights. There cannot be a right to terminate the existence of the rights bearer. Such a right contradicts the possibility of its own existence. There cannot be dignity in terminating the one in whom dignity resides. There can only be indignity in killing a person. The paradox of legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide represents humanity turned on itself. It is endorsement of existential nihilism and objectification of human life. It is the beginning of the end of humanhood. This book is a critical ethical exploration of mind-sets around euthanasia and assisted suicide to provide clarity, sobriety, and objectivity. The book is really about ontology of human life. Dr. Leonard Tumaini Chuwa is a Catholic priest and scholar working for Ascension as director of spiritual care for the state of Florida. Dr. Chuwa is certified by the National Association of Catholic Chaplains (NACC). Chuwa has bachelor of arts degrees in philosophy and theology; master of arts degree in theology and religious studies from John Carroll Jesuit University in Cleveland, Ohio; and a doctor of philosophy degree in bioethics and health-care ethics from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Chuwa is a distinguished public speaker on different bioethical issues. His first book, titled African Indigenous Ethics in Global Bioethics: Interpretation of Ubuntu, was published by Springer Academic Publishing as the first book in a new global bioethics series. Father Chuwa also authored Bioethical False Truths: Egotistic and Relativistic Autonomy vs. Christian and Ubuntu Relational Autonomy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098033149

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Bioethics 

of

Nonexistence

Option for No Option—

Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

LEONARD TUMAINI CHUWA, PHD

ISBN 978-1-0980-3313-2 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-0980-3314-9 (digital)

Copyright © 2020 by Leonard Tumaini Chuwa, PhD

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

Introduction of the Problem of Euthanasia

1.1. Etymological Meaning of Euthanasia

1.1.1. Origin of the Word Euthanasia

1.1.2. Unfounded Rationale for Euthanasia

1.2. Types of Euthanasia

1.2.1. Active Euthanasia

1.2.2. Passive Euthanasia

1.2.3. Voluntary Euthanasia

1.2.4. Involuntary Euthanasia

1.2.5. Nonvoluntary Euthanasia

1.3. Orthothanasia and Dysthanasia

1.3.1. Orthothanasia

1.3.2. Dysthanasia

1.4. How Could There Be Dignity in Dying

1.4.1. The Problem of Pain and Suffering

Truth as What Is

2.1. Relevance of Truth

2.2. Truth About Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

2.3. Meaning of Truth

2.4. Minimalist Truth

2.5. Correspondence Theory of Truth

2.6. Transcendence of Truth

2.7. Ethics of Convenience

2.8. Whether Death May Be Ethically Claimed

The Role of Truth and Freedom in Bioethics

3.1. Being Human Is Being Contingently Free

3.2. The Ethical Fallacy of Freedom from Freedom

3.3. To Be Human Is to Be Rationally Free

3.4. Realistic Freedom Is Shared Freedom

3.5. True Freedom Knows What Not To

3.6. True Freedom Is Relational

3.7. The Illusion of Self-Sufficiency and Absolute Autonomy

3.8. Each Human Life as a Unique Act of Relationship

3.9. Reality Is Objective, Not Relative

3.10. Humanity Turned Against Itself

Utu Moral Worldview

4.1. Meaning of Utu

4.2. Utu Ethics Is About Unconditional Communitarianism

4.3. Utu Ethics Is About Common Good

4.4. Utu Evolving Personhood

4.5. Independence Against Interdependence

4.6. Ethical Life as Stewardship of Self, Others, and the World for All

4.7. Ethical Significance of Empathy, Compassion, and Vulnerability

Common Reasons for Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Explored

5.1. Typical Personal Testimonial Justifying Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide

5.1.1. The case of Brittany Maynard

5.1.2. The Case of Desmond Tutu

Medical Profession Against Itself

6.1. Medical Profession’s Identity Crisis—The Hippocratic Oath

6.2. Whatever Happened to the Hippocratic Oath

6.3. Death Is Part of Life and Life Part of Death

6.4. You Ought to Die, You Ought Not to Be Killed

Medical Profession for Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

7.1. Pseudo Right to Die or Right Not to Suffer

7.1.1. No One Is Free to End Life

7.1.2. There Is No Right to End Life

7.1.3. Palliation Rather Than Killing

7.2. Individual Medical Professionals for Right to Kill or Be Killed

7.3. Common Talking Points Used for Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

7.3.1. Competence Argument

7.3.2. Loss-of-Control Argument

7.3.3. The Principle of Double-Effect Argument

7.3.4. Nature Trap Argument

7.3.5. Compassion Argument

7.3.6. Patient and Physician Freedom Argument

7.3.7. Death-with-Dignity Argument

Why Legalizing Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Is a Misnomer

8.1. Medical Professionals Against Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

8.1.1. Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Are Against Ubuntu

8.1.2. Life-Giving Rather Than Life-Ending

8.1.3. Eugenics, Slippery Slope v. Comprehensive Palliative Care

8.1.4. Torture and Killing of the Dying v. Hippocratic Oath

8.2. Medical Organizations’ Views Against Euthanasia

8.2.1. Improve Care Rather Than End the Life of Care Recipient

8.2.2. Conflict in Meaning and Goals of Care

8.2.3. Slippery Slope and Eugenics

8.2.4. Induced Death Is Based on Ignorance of Actual Meaning of Life

8.2.5. Failure of the Society to Protect Those Most in Need of Protection

8.2.6. Authorization of Authority to Kill a Section of the Population

8.2.7. Psychological Pressuring the Terminally Ill to Suicide

8.2.8. No One Has Absolute Dominion Over Human Life

8.3. Nonmedical Professionals Against Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

8.3.1. Freedom to End Ability to Be Free

8.3.2. Resolving Problems of Human Beings by Killing Them

8.3.3. Killing Contradicts Medicine

8.3.4. Unethical Control Ideology

8.3.5. Betrayal of Patient-Physician Trust

8.3.6. Compulsion to Kill Self or Others Instead of Addressing Needs

8.3.7. Silent Statement for the Marginalized to Get Out of the Way

8.3.8. Exercising Freedom by Taking Away Its Very Possibility

8.3.9. Survival of the Fittest

8.3.10. Inviolable Intrinsic Value of Human Life

Intentional Death—Humanity Against Itself

9.1. Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide: A Self-Imposed Handicap by Society

9.2. Helping to Terminate Life Is an Attack on the Self

9.2.1. At What Point Does Euthanizing Person Acquire Moral Justification to Terminate Life?

9.2.2. Balance of Power Between Personal and Community Judgment

9.2.3. God-Playing Physician Is Liability to Community

9.3. Pain Management Is a False Excuse for Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

Catholic Teaching on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

10.1. Human Dignity

10.1.1. Desecration of the Sacredness of Human Life

10.1.2. Materialism and Relativism

10.1.3. False Freedom

10.1.4. Politicization of Morality

10.1.5. Self-Defeating Democracy

10.1.6. Futility of Purposeless Human Rights and Principles

10.2. One for All, All for One

10.2.1. Turning on Self Against Otherness

10.2.2. Common Good

10.2.3. You Are Your Neighbor—We Are All but One

10.2.4. Ethics of Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

10.3. Civil Governments Cannot Legalize Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

10.3.1. The Dignity of Human Life Is in Its Natural Autonomy

10.3.2. Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Are Reciprocal

10.3.3. Duty to Resist Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

10.3.4. The Principle of Double Effect and Self-Defense

10.3.5. The Socio-Ethical Nature of Self-Defense

10.3.6. Justification of Life Given for Another Life

10.3.7. Moral Inculpability for Some Victims of Assisted Suicide

Utu versus Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

11.1. Holistic Care

11.1.1. Viewpoint and Fundamental Approach

11.1.2. Causes of Illness

11.1.3. Importance of the Other in the Self

11.2. Death Is Part of All Life

11.2.1. Life Goes On After Death

11.2.2. Death and After-Death Transformations

11.2.3. The Problem of Unnatural Death

11.3. Slow Death Not an Evil

11.3.1. -11.3.1. Appreciation of Reality Rather Than Escape from It

11.3.2. Impossible to Contemplate Euthanasia or Assisted Suicide

11.3.3. Death Is Not

11.3.4. Preparation for Death

11.3.5. Passing On from Us to You

11.4. Spiritual Care After Death

11.4.1. Proximity of the Living Dead to the Living

11.4.2. Interminable Communion with All Reality and with God

11.5. Anti-Atomistic Individualism

Utu and the Golden Rule Disproving Intentional Killing

12.1. Meaning and Significance of the Golden Rule

12.2. Community’s Moral Life Depends on the Golden Rule

12.3. I-Thou Relationship—Undeniable Reality of Personal Existence

12.4. Contextualization of Autonomy in Bioethics

12.4.1. Humans Are Defenselessly Social Beings

12.4.2. Autonomy Is One Among Equal Bioethical Principles

12.4.3. Utu-Like Approach in Decision-Making

12.5. Out of Many, One—E Pluribus Unum

12.5.1. Self-Creation in Collaboration with Community

12.5.2. Finding Oneself as One Moves into the Community/As One Dies to Self

12.5.3. Dying Is as Personal as It Is Social

12.5.4. Ideal Death Is Christlike and Utu

12.6. A Person Is or Is Not

12.6.1. Regardless of Its Ability Human Life Is Relational

12.6.2. As Long as We Share the Same Human Nature, We Are in This All Together

12.6.3. Whoever Can Kill Another?

12.6.4. All Human Beings of All Ages Are Persons

12.7. Respect and Human Maturity

12.8. Moral Relativism—The Culprit Behind Erroneous Ethics

Acceptance of Human Finitude

13.1. Human Freedom Is Contingent and Finite

13.2. Community Enabling and Limiting Personal Freedom

13.3. No One Can Reasonably Desire Death as an End

13.4. Incompatibility of Induced Death with Compassion

13.5. The Paradox of Compassion in Ending Human Life

The Blessing of Palliative Care

14.1. Meaning of Palliative Care

14.2. Life’s Meaning at Life’s Ending

14.3. Real Reasons for Choosing Induced Death

14.4. Ethics of Abandonment

14.5. Treat Pain as Much as Possible

Conclusion

15.1. Subjective Freedom vs. Objective Freedom

15.2. Termination of Human Life Cannot Be a Human Right

15.3. Impossible Option for Nonexistence—a Choice for No Choice

15.4. I vs. Thou

15.5. Self vs. Self

15.6. Taking One’s Life as Resistance to God

15.7. Appreciation of Human Life in Pain

16Bibliography

For victims of premature death because of misunderstanding of the meaning and purpose of life

For those who gave up their real freedom to materialism and relativism

For those who work hard to keep human life sacred 

Abstract

It is philosophically impossible to opt for nonexistence or nothingness because nothing (nonbeing) can neither be an object of the mind nor the will. It simply is not. Existence is infinitely better than nonexistence; hence, whether rationally or instinctively, humans and, in fact, all living beings are wired to opt for life. Option for life is fundamental because human life is who we are. The alternative is option for nonexistence, which is rationally at least absurd and at most impossible. Hence, the greatest right is the right to life. The imagined right to actually end our very selves is not only a misnomer; it is impossible. There cannot be an ethical right to terminate human life. Claiming such a right is tantamount to claiming irrelevance of truth and ethics. With an exception of extraordinary situations such as self-defense or defense of more lives, human life should not be ended.

Termination of life is termination of a being and all rights that belong to the victim being, the most basic of which is right to life itself. There cannot be a right the practice of which obliterates the right owner along with any possibility of any right. Sanctity of human life transcends personal preference as per whether life should be allowed to run its course or not. The growing desire for the falsely named death with dignity—which is, in fact, death devoid of any dignity at all because it entails violation of the sacred process of life—is indicative of the growing confusion about objective truth, especially about life. The confusion stems from societal prioritization of materialism and relativism over objective truth. However, the confusion of materialism and relativism can only be overcome by the truth. Human life ought to end naturally while receiving holistic care in a good palliative care program.

Manufactured death because of the desire to control life rather than letting life run its course is a way to obscurity. Embracing materialism and relativism as the telos of life is a sign of utter despair and frustration. It cannot be normalized and formalized. There is surely a need to salvage human community from meaninglessness and frustration clearly manifested in the defense for choice of nonexistence while forsaking existence, however short-lived. It is about time ethics is liberated by objective truth. An amount of pain and suffering belongs to the very meaning of being alive as corporeal, sensate being. Excruciating pain and human suffering may be alleviated by palliative care and love. Killing of self or those who need love the most is an escape from the sacred duty of being in solidarity with fellow humans at a time we need them or they need us the most. This kind of extreme egoistic individualism needs to be unlearned. I submit to you that the fight for a right to terminate one’s own or another person’s life because of pain and suffering is a false right that is based on an imagined escape from truth about the origin, nature, meaning, duties, and destiny of all human life. Humans are created for truth and for love. The battle against that is ultimately impossible. Only truth will set us free.

Introduction

The last three decades have experienced an increase of demand for legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Some states have already legalized either or both of them. This work is a quest as per whether euthanasia and assisted suicide are legalizable in the first place. The main reason states and the law exist is to safeguard human life. The daunting question is whether it is within the states’ competence to permit euthanasia or assisted suicide. Persons find themselves already alive. They naturally and instinctively defend and protect their lives by avoiding whatever threatens it. Humans, therefore, are wired toward preservation of life and avoidance of death. Human beings of all backgrounds and ethnicities have explicitly or implicitly realized the right to life as the basis of all other rights. If there is any good on earth that is sine qua non, it is the good of life. The duty to preserve life is clearly transcendental. It is based on the mysterious nature of its origins, existence, meaning, and destiny. To justify ending life at any of its stages or states, one needs to understand what life really is, why life rather than not life, and what life is about.

One of the greatest threats to ethics and morality is relativism: the desire to go by personal convenience rather than the truth. Because of the desire for convenience in our times, morality tends to be relativized and politicized. There has been a desire to legalize what is not legalizable. In his Christian Theology and Medical Ethics: Four Contemporary Approaches, James Tubbs states that the basis and aim of the moral life is to see the truth, for only as we see correctly can we act in accordance with reality.¹ These days, nice expressions are used to conceal the harsh reality of killing hidden in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. Some of the most common expressions used are death with dignity, planned death, and aid in dying.² However much we use words to conceal the reality of suicide and homicide within euthanasia and assisted suicide, the fact of taking a life will always linger. Truth cannot be altered by what we choose to name it. I submit to you right at the beginning of this work that the intentional falsification of the truth is unethical and unfair to humanity. This work aims at lifting the veil off euthanasia and assisted suicide whatever branding is put on them.

Part of the problem behind euthanasia, mercy killing, and assisted suicide is society’s failure or refusal to deal with reality as it really is. The refusal to recognize reality for what it is, including its mysterious nature, is also the basis of the ideologies of individualism and relativism. The reality of life needs to be understood before it is dismissed and so unjustifiably ended. Human life is clearly much more than its experience. It transcends what it experiences. Human life cannot be reduced into utility. The two major defining characteristics of human beings are rationality and free will. The ability and willingness to utilize those two essential and defining features of being a human being is crucial in dealing with the problem of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are ethical problems because they are based on an assumed false premise. Proponents of euthanasia and assisted suicide base their claim on the experience that life encounters rather than on life as an ontological reality. Their claim rests on such things as incurable illnesses, pain, and right for self-determination. This claim is based on a shallow and distorted perception of life as an experience or utility that is using, doing, and/or having. Clearly, life is not what life can do, what life has, or what life experiences. Reducing life to its ability or experience is an impediment to life itself. In other words, life is not at the service of what it experiences. To the contrary, life’s experience ought to serve life. The reduction of human life to mere utility is a fallacy of ignoratio elenchi (irrelevant conclusion), which is based on a wrong assumption about the very essence of human life. The wrong assumption of the meaning of life as pure utility is now universalized through constant repetition. The repetition has practically made people accept it as though it were true. This is a fallacy of argumentum ad nauseam, argumentum ad infinitum. They are logically wrong.

Whether one is capable of practicing rationality and free will at any particular time in his or her life or throughout his or her life is not relevant. Exceptional incapacity does not change the essential nature. Personhood is innate, inextricable, and ingrained in all human beings regardless their ability. In other words, there cannot be possible or potential human person. A human person is exactly one at all moments and stages of his or her existence, or he or she will never be. I submit to you that unless there is an existential proof as per when one becomes a person, other than at the very moment of existence, the conception, a human person exists actually at the moment of conception. The person who is ontologically present at conception remains one throughout his or her lifespan. He or she is substantially a person throughout, or he or she is not. If he or she is not a person at any moment of his or her existence, one has to define what he or she is before becoming a person and how the substance changes from nonperson to person. If one may cease to be a person substantially, one has to explain this process of transubstantiation. The claim that personhood develops over time is self-contradictory and utterly absurd. Either being is or being is not. Finite beings subsist in being themselves. They partake in existence, which transcends experience and comprehension of a particular being.

Rational mind and free will tend to mutually support and limit each other. They are contingent on each other. Implicitly, all knowledge seeks more freedom, and freedom tends to seek more knowledge. Because of human finitude, there is no earthly end in view concerning craving for more knowledge and freedom. However, the ideal of a perfectly free person is a fully informed person. To the extent one is knowledgeable, one may be free. The model of humanity is one who is perfectly knowledgeable and perfectly free. Such person is Jesus Christ. He is that which all humans knowingly or anonymously aspire to become. The proper object of all knowledge is the ultimate Truth—God. Being incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, is the ultimate revelation of God and the ultimate revelation of human person to himself/herself. This revelation sets humans ultimately and eternally free. Truth will set you free (John 8:32), and real freedom will lead you to the ultimate truth: God. All persons are meant for the infinite Truth and eternal freedom. Nothing created, nothing finite, will ever fully quench human desire for more knowledge of truth and more freedom. St. Augustine implies this truth when, at the beginning of his confessions, he states, For Thou has made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.³

Human life is as becoming. It exists as a process whose end is ultimate fulfillment, the beatific vision by which it will stop becoming and will be forever. The process of life starts in, is enabled by is, based on, and thrives in human relationships. When life retreats to absolute separateness and exclusive autonomy and ownership of life is diminished and emptied of its meaning, total lack of relatedness with others and the divine empties life of its very meaning, purpose, and telos. Life loses its substance, which is relationship with an-other. It is at that point that life ends. It ends because it does not exist for anything. Hence, the great commandment of love is a commandment of life. By commanding us to love, Christ commands us to live. Ultimately, the message of Christianity is a message of love and a message of life.

Catholics experience a foretaste of all that life is about in the theology of the Eucharist. The theology of the Eucharist has at its deepest core revelation of the meaning and purpose of human life. The Eucharistic relationship and intimacy are a foreshadowing of heavenly experience of life eternal. So deep the relationship that generates and sustains eternal life the parties become one. The Eucharistic bond of love then gives life eternal. It quenches all human desire—that is, communion: total oneness between the Creator and the created. Human spirit feeds on and thrives in human relationships. It is fulfilled in its union with the divine, and the Eucharist is already a foretaste of that union.

Because of human finitude, human knowledge of reality, including his or her very self, is limited. The paradox attributed to Socrates reveals human helplessness because of limitedness of knowledge and freedom. One version of the Socratic paradox is phrased as follows: I know that I know nothing, The only thing I know is that I know nothing, or I know one thing: that I know nothing, I know that all I know is that I do not know anything.⁴ The limitedness of human knowledge and freedom and the craving for more knowledge and freedom are invitation for eternal Truth and freedom. Jesus Christ revealed human person to himself or herself by revealing Himself. He stated that He is the way (to the ultimate telos of human life and to God’s will for human life), the truth (toward which human rationality and freedom are wired), and the life (that for which everything else exists). Christ is the revelation of all truth and perfect exercise of freedom to humankind.

The end object of all fields of human learning ought to be eternal truth that sets humanity eternally free. Bioethics should lead to more truth and liberate its students from confusion and absurdity. It ought to ultimately lead to eternal truth and freedom. Unfortunately, dictatorship of moral relativism and materialism, along with unrealistic hedonistic desire for pleasure rather than truth, tend to obstruct these essential and most important objectives of the discipline grievously. Many bioethicists of our times tend to use principles and theories to arrive at a desired self-created (therefore relative) and self-serving apparent truth regardless the actual objective Truth. This tendency is gradually leading many serious believers to distrust bioethicists of our times. This dangerous tendency leads humanity to untruth, hence, denying humankind its essential freedom. Bioethics ought not to impede but rather enable and promote human freedom. The objective of this work is to address this issue concerning the problem of euthanasia and assisted suicide, both terms being self-contradictory and ironic.

The origin, meaning, and purpose of human life is not really fully under the control of those who have life. They transcend them. In itself, this realization takes away the claim for freedom to end human life. Generally, no human person, not even the one who claims to own his or her life, has permission to end it. No one has absolute claim on his or her life because no one really initiated life except eternal Life—that is, God. We own life as stewards and treasure it because it was entrusted to us for our natural life span for reasons which largely transcend our comprehension. We do not have full comprehension of human life, much less its ownership. No one should take away what does not belong to him or