Citation

Engelhardt Tristram H. European Journal of Science and Theology 2012; 8(Suppl 2): 5-13.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

Metaphysical commitments have important implications for moral choices. Suffering and dying are nested in a quite different context of meaning, if human existence is held to end with death rather than to go to judgment before God. In the West after the French Revolution, a culture marked by laicité and a disengagement from the transcendent emerged. This led to a rupture of the dominant European culture from the traditional Christian Ethics and rituals that guided preparation for death so that a post-Christian and post-metaphysical palliative care ethics now exists that increasingly accepts physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. For countries whose dominant culture is still traditionally Christian, entering the European Union involves an encounter with this secular culture and its ethics. This essay explores the geography of some of the differences separating a secular palliative care ethics, which accepts physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, from the traditional Christian Ethics that had previously been dominant. This change in the character of the dominant Ethics is associated with a foundational change in the meaning of much of morality, especially a demoralization and deflation of the traditional morality of end-of-life decision-making into matters of life-style and death-style choices.

Language: en

Keywords

Euthanasia; Palliative care; End-of-life decision-making; Post-modern morality