Hi all. From my understanding of Austrian/Libertarian theory, I understand that suicide should be legal and that the non-aggression principle is applied to allow aggression against oneself in this instance. Is this correct?
Non-aggression doesn’t mean non-violence/force.
Yes, I think libertarians generally think suicide is ok.
Certainly. One owns their body and their life itself, as a property, and may choose to end their life at any time, just as they may choose to throw away a shirt they no longer want.
There are many instances where suicide is the most rational choice, and we aggress against people by preventing them from ending their life, such as those in severe physical or emotional pain.
Would you be okay if one of your family members chose to commit suicide?
I wouldn’t be ok with it, but I don’t think I should have legal power to stop them.
So I can see that people have the right to use force against themselves. What about euthanasia? I’m talking about assisted suicide, or granting another person permission to terminate one’s life. (Presumably one would be unconscious or anesthetized during the actual euthanasia.) Do individuals have the right to alienate control over their own bodily safety and survival?
How else do you get surgery done?
Depends on circumstance. If my dad had like bone cancer, one of the most painful of all diseases, I would be fine with it.
If it was my little brother who killed himself over some silly breakup with a girl, I would think it a stupid waste.
None of that implies that I have a right to stop a person from attempting suicide.
Wheylous’s point is good, that surgery after all is the sanctioned use of force on your body to correct some problem.
If your problem is life itself, why should there be any moral qualms about assissted suicide. Considering that there’s a lot of ways to botch a suicide and make your problem worse, having some assisstance is a great help. Many who want to commit suicide for real also fear botching the job and waking up a quadraplegic or physically disabled such that they can’t finish the job or would be a burden on family continually, etc.
I think there should be a process to assissted suicide. Doctors whom engage in it will want legal protection, naturally, meaning they would insist on having a contract so that the situation is clear, having it witnessed, having a cooling off period, etc. Once the person is sure, has been given time to think on it, has paid for the procedure and submitted to the method of suicide, which is may be as simple as drinking some chemicals that render one unconscious and stop the heart, then it’s a humane and rational way to go.
Much worse is the way we ‘assist’ suicide in the US, with hours or days of hospital torture in the ICU, with loved ones spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases to ‘do everything possible’ as one last show of compassion for an aged loved one who would be much better off dying peacefully on their own terms. The people who work in elderly care say the deaths of these old people are often drawn out and very painful and it bothers them that they have to do these procedures, but the system forces them to do what the patient and their family ask for.
I understand your concerns about euthanasia, but I was interested in confirming that euthanasia is an allowable way of alienating control over your own body (which you all generally appear to agree with).
Doesn’t this make euthanasia a permissible form of slavery? Should selling oneself into slavery be permissible?
Eh? Not sure how you’re making that leap. Gonna have to say no. Selling yourself into slavery is not actually possible.
It’s not possible because slavery is a state of continual aggression, and always against the slave’s will. It is not a state that could be both voluntary and involuntary at the same time. You cannot alienate your own will as long as you remain alive.
You could agree to serve as someone’s “slave” in the sense that you will choose to do whatever they demand of you. But if at any point you backed out of the deal and they tried to prevent you from leaving, they have aggressed against you and can be prosecuted.
In any case, there’s no room for slavery in a libertarian haven based upon the highest virtue of voluntaryism.
I have no idea what euthanasia has to do with the slavery issue…
Both euthansia and slavery involve alienating control of your body (not necessarily your will, but the slaveowner is free to punish slaves whenever he wants). Is it inconsistent to say that alienating control of your body is only permissible on one specific instance?
euthanasia does not alienating control of your body, it involves alienating your present from your future.
Once you have been euthanised, there is no you that has been seperated from your body. you are dead. you are not a person anymore, there is only a body. To be alienated you would still need to be a person, and yet be fully distinct from your body… which is not possible.
I’m leaning on the Epicurean idea, that death is not to be feared as the dead do not suffer their deaths.
Not necessarily. Alienation involves lending someone else direction over something you own- like lending a drill to someone to build their house, or lending your body to a doctor during euthanasia.
Does alienation require a subject and an object? Might the subject need to be aliv during the time when the alienation is happening?Or is Karl Marx alienated from his body today?
my current thought is
if we can allow one dose of a drug in anesthesia, a lethal dose of the drug in euthanasia does not seem like it should be aggressive.
a person has a contract with the self, but there is no defined end date or terms of termination that a person breeches if they decide to end life.
if a slave says he can leave at whim, a master would take one that promised a time and payoff for early termination of the contract. the 7 year indentured servant would be more attractive than the at whim servant.
No/Yes/Maybe.
Anyway, I don’t think we’re understanding each other.
gray/yes
I agree, an action by an owner against one’s property is by definition, legitimate.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.