“Always go to other people’s funerals. Otherwise, they won’t come to yours.”

-Yogi Berra, Baseball Legend

One of the more popular arguments given in favor of the legalization of assisted suicide is from the aspect of human dignity. That the pro-assisted suicide organization in the United Kingdom “Dignity in Dying” uses dignity in their very name means that the argument must have some appeal. But is all this talk of dignity or “dignity in dying” enough to justify the passage of the recently proposed assisted suicide legislation in the UK?

Talk of dignity presupposes an account of, or basic understanding of, just what dignity is. Dignity, like undignified, has many senses. What makes something to be dignified or undignified? Commenting rudely on a strange fashion choice in public might be undignified, as is living on the street if one is forced to do so. Persons who are tortured or publicly humiliated are said to have lost their dignity. But if someone becomes disabled or loses an arm or grows up with a mental handicap such as extreme autism or Asperger’s Syndrome, we wouldn’t want to claim that they possess any less dignity than other human beings.  We must distinguish then between a dignity that’s more intrinsic from a dignity that’s more extrinsic. Dignity taken extrinsically is being seen as socially acceptable or honorable or respectful in the eyes of others. In this sense, someone who has sex in public is doing something undignified (even if married) or if someone shouts an obscenity during the middle of a movie in a public theater it’s undignified. But someone who heroically walks to end racism is doing something dignified. 

Dignity in the sense of societal approval, however, shouldn’t be the relevant one for the debate over assisted suicide. Plenty of things that might be socially approved and dignified for a given society are morally abhorrent and bad. That the Greeks might have thought it dignified to leave infants out to die hardly means this is a practice that should be done.  Conversely, that certain things like screaming in public are undignified hardly means they are always morally bad––in emergency situations sometimes such things are morally required, as screaming at your co-worker when he is unwittingly walking in the direction of an airplane turbine’s kill-zone.

What is a more important sense of dignity is the intrinsic sense, one closer to the core of the person and not merely dependent upon changeable societal norms or approval. Here we come to two intrinsic senses of dignity as moral dignity and ontological dignity. Moral dignity is possessed by all human beings insofar as they are innocent of grave evil doing. In this respect all innocent human beings are intrinsically part of the common good and as such they ought not to be intentionally killed by anyone. Murder is morally wrong and is contrary to dignity in this sense.  So too is killing enemy soldiers in an unjust war, rape, and genocide contrary to dignity. Such actions aren’t due to their victims and make the persons who commit them less moral and more morally bad. 

But moral dignity can hardly justify assisted suicide.  Certainly, many persons who request assisted suicide believe life isn’t worth living or that their pain justifies their death on their own terms.  But an appeal to dignity alone cannot justify it.  Unless they are a grievous malefactor or someone guilty of a heinous crime, they still retain a basic moral dignity and thus any doctor or medical professional who kills them is violating their dignity.  So too, any person who kills herself/himself is violating her or his own dignity.  To claim their death is morally justified on the grounds that it’s moral begs the question or at the very least requires more serious moral justification than an appeal to dignity. If extrinsic dignity justifies assisted suicide because the person’s appearance is no longer socially acceptable in the eyes of others, then all sorts of other heinous practices could be justified so long as society approves of them. If moral dignity justifies assisted suicide, then this would assume the person is guilty of a heinous crime or that killing themselves is the moral thing to do.  But absent any further justification, it’s hard to see how dignity in this sense can justify assisted suicide. 

Perhaps, lurking in the background is a metaphysical assumption that dying in pain is worse than non-existence (or whatever might occur after suicide in the afterlife). Perhaps, it’s autonomy that trumps all and so assisted suicide is morally good as it’s an exercise of autonomy. Maybe, it’s that life is a burden on oneself or others, so assisted suicide is morally good.  But as I have outlined and argued in my recent book, all these arguments are suspect.  None can justify assisted suicide.

What of the last sense of dignity––ontological dignity? This sense is necessarily possessed by all human beings insofar as they’re human and can never be lost (unless the human ceases to be). But it’s hard to see how a soldier who intentionally kills himself to avoid pain is acting according to dignity in this sense. Ontological dignity is what necessarily belongs to us or necessarily follows upon what makes us human definitionally.  Historically, it was viewed that humans by definition are rational animals.

Perhaps, today people have other views or don’t know what it is to be human.  But it’s hard to see how included in any reasonable definition of man is any right to assisted suicide. If it’s the right to be free and choose how one wishes to live or to die, then we’re back at the autonomy argument. Let’s grant (for the sake of argument) that humans are definitionally autonomous beings.  But if there is no afterlife, does it make sense to say that undercutting the very conditions for autonomy to be possible in the first place (i.e. the destruction of existence & any possible future autonomous action) can actually justify suicide?  Can autonomy justify an action that ultimately destroys the very grounds or possibilities for future autonomy? It sure looks to be self-defeating. Further argumentation may be required here.  But the dignity argument for assisted suicide either fails or is a very weak argument at best.

John Skalko, PhD is a Professor of Philosophy and the author of the recently published book Popping the Metaphysical Myth: Four Agnostic Arguments Against Assisted Suicide.