View of Euthanasia of a Follower of Natural Law

View of Euthanasia of a Follower of Natural Law

Euthanasia is the international killing by act or omission of a

dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit. There are

different types of euthanasia; voluntary, when the person who is

killed has requested to be killed. Involuntary euthanasia is when the

person who is killed made no request or gave no consent, Assisted

suicide is when someone provides an individual with the information,

guidance, and means to take his or her own life with the intention

that they will be used for this purpose. When it is a doctor who helps

another person to kill themselves it is called "physician assisted

suicide." Euthanasia By Action is intentionally causing a person's

death by performing an action such as by giving a lethal injection and

Euthanasia By Omission is intentionally causing death by not providing

necessary and ordinary (usual and customary) care or food and water.

Natural law is based on the idea that everything in the universe has a

‘natural’ purpose, which has been divinely created, and the function

of everything is to fulfil its purpose. The key ideas of the natural

law tradition are; human beings have an essential rational nature

established by God, who designed us to live and flourish in prescribed

ways. Even without knowledge of God, reason, as the essence of our

nature, can discover the laws necessary for human flourishing. The

natural law are universal and unchangeable, and one should use them to

judge individual societies and their positive laws. Aquinas’s position

and the natural law tradition are in general absolutist.

For Aristotle the ultimate purpose of human bei...

... middle of paper ...

...sn’t a person has the right to die. John

Lock defines a person as; ‘a thinking intelligent being, that has

reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same

thinking, in different times and places. Some people who are

terminally ill cannot do these things; does this therefore mean they

have the right to die and it would be moral? It doesn’t mean we can

all choose death just those who don’t have the personhood qualities

and wish to end their suffering.

Natural law can accept euthanasia in the DDE and personhood vs. human

being, but Aquinas and in his five primary precepts doesn’t accept

euthanasia. Overall most of us are aware generally Natural Law doesn’t

accept euthanasia as it breaks the rules of law; for we all have a

reason to live and we shouldn’t ‘play God’ in deciding when we die and

how.