A Right To Self-Discrimination David Velleman Analysis

In his article ‘A Right to Self-Termination?’ David Velleman brings up the topic of the right to die and elaborates his view on the subject. Two broad principles are stated by Velleman and he goes on to reject the first principle and accept the second principle. The first principle is that “a person has the right to make his own life shorter in order to make it better…”the second principle is that there is “a presumption in favor of deferring to a person's judgment on the subject of his own good.”(Velleman,607).These two principles boil down to the statement “...a person has the right to live and die, in particular, by his own convictions about which life would be better for him.”(Velleman,607). Velleman rejects the first principle and accepts the second principle, the rejection of the first principle is on the basis that it sanctions the suicide of a person for a particular reason whether that reason be to avoid harm or to simply obtain benefit(s).

In what follows, I will further explicate the arguments posed in ‘ A Right to Self Termination ?’ I find the view stated in the article is compelling and will argue with Velleman that it is morally wrong for a person to commit suicide on the basis that doing so reduces oneself to a mere means. I will argue that in the case of suicide the act of committing suicide is unjustifiable, we have a value inside us, in all humans that we all must live up