CW // Suicide, euthanasia, self-harm
Conservatives in general do this thing where they assert facts – which can only be determined one way or the other by actually examining reality – and then build their conclusions on those assertions. For example, you do this thing above where you just assert 'it is uncontroversial to say that the only moral theory that could even justify euthanasia is utilitarianism ... Virtue ethics and deontology would certainly call for a person to find alternate means to deal with suffering besides destroying themselves'. This is plainly false and clearly meant to imply that euthanasia is something that no 'real' philosophers support. And, taking you at your word about your degree, a person with a philosophy degree really ought to know this. You also cannot defend your previous assertion by saying 'justify is in my eyes and I think they're wrong' because you state that utilitarianism, which you disagree with, is something that can 'justify euthanasia'.
Stoics in the time of the Ancient Greeks, arguing in the tradition of virtue ethics, argued that the fear of death was something to be overcome and 'that there were occasions, when the timing and reason were right, when a person should commit suicide ... (1) on behalf of his country and on behalf of his friends, and (2) if he falls victim to unduly severe pain or mutilation or incurable illness'. W Englert, 'Stoics and Epicureans on the nature of suicide' (1994) 10 Proc of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 67, 70. Late stoics, like Diogenes Laertius argued three conditions: (1) obligations to others – 'since right action is the only good, while life is not a good, but only something preferable, the save must sacrifice his life for important obligations' – (2) gross imbalance of the indifferents (stoic jargon for stuff that one should be indifferent to), where indifferents – like pain or ill health – 'make it impossible for [someone] to live' virtuously; and (3) to avoid being forced to do immoral or shameful things. The last closely related to the Roman suicide 'to preserve their sense of honour [or] in Roman terms ...
dignitas'. Ibid 70–73.
Contra your claims about how euthanasia legalisation would '[destroy] unity and community' and be incompatible with 'furthering of the common good', stoics argued that suicide is a moral positive specifically for the community and the common good; men express their virtue – and I say men because virtue (from
virtus) is literally manliness – most clearly with courage or indifference in the face of death. Nor would this kind of suicide be implicitly society destroying: Mediterranean society did not immediately collapse after Socrates drank hemlock, Cato tore his intestines out after Utica, or Brutus ordered a slave to stab him after Philippi.
We know of this from Cicero's
De Officiis and also from the praise given to Brutus, Cato Uticensis, Seneca the Younger, and others, who were truly virtuous, for killing themselves rather than be subjected to tyranny and to preserve an person's freedom. Ibid 78. Brutus argued this forcefully in
De dictatura Pompei (52 BC) (only snippets survive), saying 'for one can live honourably without power, but to live as a slave is impossible', a view very consistent with that of the Old Academy and stoics writ large. Kathryn Tempest,
Brutus: the noble conspirator (2017) 50. Seneca, for example, praises the example of a Spartan boy who when enslaved and when 'forced to perform a servile and humiliating task shouted "I will not be a slave" and cracked his head against a wall', adding, 'so close at hand is freedom'. Englert, supra, 79 (quotations and parenthetical omitted).
Diogenes Laertius summarises that 'Stoics say ... the wise man alone is free and that fools are slaves[,] for freedom is the power of self-determination and slavery [the lack of it]'. Ibid 80 (note 50) (quotation marks omitted). While Seneca does not argue this is appropriate for everyone, he 'applauds the action of those whose personality, commitments, and courage make such actions consistent'. Ibid 80. These are viewed in Cicero's
De finibus not only as something that a person
could do, but as a duty, that both 'fools' and 'sages' have a
duty to sacrifice themselves for their countries or their friends; fools and sages have a
duty, in extreme circumstances, 'to die rather than act inconsistently [with their
personae]'. Ibid 75.
Leaving the realm of virtue ethics, there also are libertarian deontologies which offer justifications for a right to suicide. They argue that the right to kill one's self is inherent to one's ownership over one's body. These are similar but not entirely the same justifications as stoics give: that one has the liberty to kill one's self because, as the stoics argued, 'the [stoic] sage is always free because he is never forced to do anything against his will'. Ibid 82. Libertarian deontology asserts it both in self-ownership and also in terms of non-interference: that others have no moral justification to stop one from killing one's self. Michael Cholbi, 'Suicide' (Winter 2021) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/suicide/#LibVieRigSui. Some libertarians limit this: 'we may be morally required to refrain from suicide when [doing so] harms others'. Ibid.
These ethical determinations are incompatible on the kind of policies banning assisted suicide that Assisted Suicide Act allows nations to impose at will. Those policies create a tension between a choice to end one's life and the risk of that going terribly wrong (for stoics, who dismiss pain as an indifferent, this would be in terms of a failed suicide attempt leaving a body incapable of acting in accordance with virtue), which I think should be avoided.
What you've done here and elsewhere (specifically the WA Discord) is straw-man your opponents as being Benthamite act utilitarians who want to torture babies if doing so will ensure a paradise for everyone else while also being total ignoramuses who know nothing about philosophy. I know I have not helped that by trutilposting, but as Sierra Lyricalia already told you (on Discord, I was ninja'd here, so I edited to clarify), you are confusing peoples' disagreement with your philosophical beliefs as not understanding them. People understand them; they are repulsed. At the same time, you also have shown broad ignorance of other peoples' philosophical beliefs or philosophical beliefs historically: virtue ethics is like only Aristotle, deontology is like only Kant, utilitarianism is only Bentham. Even a Philosophy 101 course goes deeper.
I made this post only to show that your implied claim – which I will parody here – that 'problematic' positivists, materialists, secularists, and pragmatists are entirely philosophically unjustified by anything but baby-torturing act utilitarianism is wrong. Cf Wonderess,
Discord (20 Jan 2022) ('Y’all have somehow been able to hit every problematic ideology on my bingo board[:] Positivism, materialism, secularism, pragmatism'). It is also the (incorrect) basis for your otherwise conclusory assertions that legalising painless suicide is 'dangerous and gravely disordered'. But in the main, this entire discussion does absolutely nothing to change anyone's minds. Actual ethics, ie the ethics that people use in their own lives and vote on, is almost entirely intuitive: intuitionism is simply correct, at least as a description of how people actually make ethical judgements. What comes afterward is post hoc justifications for deeper positions already taken. It also means that almost nothing in this discussion thread on a topic this polarised is going to convince anyone of anything.
