The fragility of the human being and the "right" to die

biojuridical considerations

Claudio Sartea

pp. 273-292

in: Aniceto Masferrer, Emilio García-Sánchez (eds), Human dignity of the vulnerable in the age of rights, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

The chapter analyses thoroughly, in the perspective of philosophical anthropology and philosophy of law, the meaning and relevance of the final phase of human life. The author's analysis ends up overturning the most common attitude, that multiplies rights forgetting about duties and suggests a rehabilitation of duties also in the final phase of life: duties of the dying, as of his relatives and of the sanitary personnel taking care of the person. The concluding proposal is to re-elaborate the concept of human dignity, subtracting it from the arbitrarily subjective perspective to which it has been recently linked (by its very nature impossible to be central to a proper juridical protection), and inserting it in a vision capable of treating fairly both the structure of the human being and his relations, and true lawfulness.