Treat Voluntary Euthanasia as a Philosophical Problem

According to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 「when a person carries out an act of euthanasia, she brings about the death of another person because she believes the latters present existence is so bad that he would be better off dead, or believes that unless she intervenes and ends his life, his life will become so bad that he would be better off dead. 」

With a thorough understanding of this concept, I can start to lead you to analyze voluntary euthanasia.

Generally speaking, voluntary euthanasia is like suicide, but instead of one killing himself, he lets doctors do it for him.

First, suicide is bad; it shows that one is not being responsible to his own life. Anyway, just don t commit it.

Have you guys ever thought of the purpose of your lives? Im sure that you have thought about it thousands of times, but have you drawn a conclusion? When I first thought about this question, I was on a nihilists stand point; I believe the universal truth is simply a paradox: there isnt one. Everyone has his own truth』and he is going to die anyway, so why bother? After a hundred years, we will die and decompose into elements. Our body parts will be nutrient of vegetables and

will be eaten by others. Just like Sisyphus who was punished by Zeus. Everything he can do is rolling a rock to the top of amountain again and again. We are the same arent us? Composed of natural exist element and convert back into it.

In addition, we are changing every moment. There is a paradox been debated over centuries: the Ship of Theseus. According to the definition from the Internet Classics Archive, the Ship of Theseus states that the ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, in so much that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same. For every minimum time limit, we are experiencing metabolism, with the new cells replacing the old cells, our lives are continued. As a result, you are never you who existed whatever time ago.

So whats the purpose of living?

Existentialists state that people exist in order to feel, to love, to enjoy, to mate, to have

sex and to reproduce. On the other hand, people exist also to hate, to be hated, to have sadness, to feel the pain, to see your loved one die in front of you and you can do nothing and, eventually, you die.

So why suffer?

Killing shouldnt be the biggest crime; hurting people is. Watching someone suffer to death is no better than just giving him a painless sleeping pill.

Please dont criticize those doctors who help their patients die by euthanasia. They

just want their patients integral lives to be more enjoyable.

Work Cited

"Voluntary Euthanasia (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2017-07-06.

Plutarch. "Theseus (23.1)". The Internet Classics Archive. Retrieved 2008-07-15.

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