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Summary Of Michael Tooley's Arguments Against Euthanasia

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Tooley’s main thesis was that in the appropriate situation voluntary active euthanasia nor helping someone commit suicide is morally wrong and that it should be legally permitted. Tooley first defines Euthanasia as where a person is intentionally killed or allowed to die because it is believed that this person would be better off dead. Michael Tooley uses 6 premises that defend his thesis. The first premises is that it is in a person's best interest to die if they are suffering from a incurable and painful illness. He justifies this point by saying that people on their deathbed would rather die than have to endure another moment of pain. The second premise he uses says that if a person thinks that dying is in his best interest then committing suicide …show more content…

Tooley states that committing suicide will make the world a better place because it will end the emotional stress on families and such. In premise four Tooley says that with conditions of no one else being wrong, making the world worse off, and if it is in the person's best interest then it can not be morally wrong. Tooley uses an example to justify this by taking two future possible outcomes one with a happy ending and one with a sad; and states that no one would be worse off in either situation because the other group wouldn’t exist. The fifth premise Tooley uses is that it could be morally wrong to assist someone commit suicide only if it was wrong for that person to commit suicide or if committing suicide opposed that person's best interest or if assisting the person commit suicide violated a obligation to someone else. Tooley says that how can it be morally wrong for someone to help someone do something that is not morally wrong. Tooley the states that only two possibilities would allow this to be morally wrong are if the person helping belongs to a religious group and suicide is against their

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Conclusion I have argued that even though a physician killing an untreatable patient and a physician letting a patient die upon their request are both morally justifiable, the distinction between the two regarding the morality of physician assisted suicide is important because they are both justified differently. I have presented two counter arguments based on consequentialism, and argued that both of them untrue. A physician killing an untreatable patient upon their request and letting an untreatable patient die upon their request are both justifiable aspects of physician assisted suicide, and therefore it is not an important distinction to make regarding the moral permissibility of physician assisted suicide. However, it is an important

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Assisted Suicide is acceptable in some situations and people should have the ability to be able to choose to commit suicide. By assisting others in suicide, you are putting the person, their family, and the people

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”(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).

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The argument that I am analyzing is found in Philippa Foot’s article Euthanasia. This specific section starts at the beginning on page 88. This argument starts once she talks about the true meaning of Euthanasia and the difficulty in how people see or perceive it. In Foot 's article, she wants to prove that an act of euthanasia is morally permissible, as long as you’re performing it for the right cause or reasons. Foot defines euthanasia as "a matter of opting for death for the good of the one who is to die."

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