CHAPTER VIII: DEATH

LESSON 1: DEFINITION OF DEATH Christianity

 Heaven – have a good moral
LEGAL-MEDICAL DEFINITION standing
Death  Hell – have a bad moral standing
 simply equated to the stopping of  Purgatory – in between
heartbeat & breathing (cardio- Protestant Christian
pulmonary)  Do not believe in purgatory,
Catholics do
Experts reconsider cardio-pulmonary based: Islam
1. The advent of life extending machines  Heaven depends on
2. The practice of organ transplant  Hell their faith
Judaism
Death (Harvard Medical School)  Heaven (Paradise)- good moral
 a patient who is breathing & heart is status
functioning through medical machines,
may no longer have any brain activity is Reincarnation
DEAD.  Rebirth cycle
Justification:  Can be human body, animal,
1. Improvements in resuscitative & ghost(Buddhism)
supportive measures have led to  Type of rebirth shall be determined
increased efforts to save those who are by karma (moral quality of human
desperately injured. action)
2. Obsolete criteria for the definition of  Good moral - higher rebirth
death can lead to controversy in  Bad moral – lower rebirth
obtaining organs for transplantation.
EXISTENTIAL DEFINITION
Death (Philippines)  Transition from being to non being
 Section 2, paragraph j of the “Organ  “to be”-to exist (to have all possibilities)
Donation Act of 1991, RA 7170  “not to be”- not to exist (to lose all
 Prevention of abuse & neglected of possibilities)
medical authorities in treating their  Against the idea of afterlife as the
patients by explicitly stating the center aspect of death
definition of death in our legal system.  Afterlife is not concrete & cannot be
empirically validated
RELIGIOUS DEFINITION
 Based definition on their own sacred LESSON 2: DEATH AS AN ETHICAL ISSUE
text Suicide
 A transition/shift from earthly life to the  Considered as impermissible act
life after(earthly) death  Intentional termination of one’s life
 Life beyond earthly life goes to the life Why is it wrong to intentionally terminate one’s
of the soul life?
Christianity Abrahamic religions 1. Theological arguments
Judaism  God-centered arguments
Islam  6th commandment
 soul will be directed to a place that  “thou shalt not kill”
is proportionate to the moral status 2. Natural law
during its earthly life  Everything naturally love itself
  Inclination to preserve (self-
preservation) LESSON 3: DEATH AS AN EXISTENTIAL ISSUE
 Suicide is against the law of Existentialism
nature, therefore, it is wrong  Focuses on what death can offer to life
 Proponent- St. Thomas Aquinas  Addressing anxiety becomes the main
& Immanuel Kant concerns of any human person
 Awareness of the possibility of our own
3. Socio-political arguments
death gives us anxiety
 Suicide is a selfish act which
 Invites us to look at death as our own
gives no regard to what others
possibility, and accepting this will bring
will experience
us confirmation to this life
 As part of a family, community
 Death bring meaning to life for it
& state, suicide inflicts harm to
reminds us of the possibility that
other persons
tomorrow, we may no longer be
 Injurious to one’s family
Otherworld
community & society
 Any form of otherworldly realm is
Euthanasia
nothing but a fiction and distraction
 Greek word “Euthanatos” – easy death
from human affairs – Friedrich Nietzche
 Easier course of death than to suffer for
Anxiety
a longer period
 Does not have a specific object
 Anxiety brought by death has no
What makes Euthanasia wrong?
specific object
1. Medical-legal arguments
 Existential awareness of non-being
 Contradicts the role of
physician
2 ways of facing anxiety brought about by
 Against physicians fundamental
death:
moral & professional
1. One faces it and accept it
commitment
2. Escape from it
2. Theological arguments
 God does not allow killing
Meaning of Life in Death
 God gave us life & it is only God
 Recognition of death as our own
who can take it away
possibility can help us realize the
3. Psychological argument
importance and value of our life
 Dying person may feel pressure
 Death reminds us to live
to opt for euthanasia
 Invites us to see the value of what we
 May feel guilt in considering
have and of what we are
himself of burden to his family
& medical personnel
 Their only way out
Abortion
 Death of a fetus for the sake of the
woman who carries it
 Plain murder
 Deserves gravest condemnation
Pro-abortion
 “Every person has a right to life. The
fetus is not yet a person. Therefore, the
fetus does not have yet the right to life”
CHAPTER V – Lesson 2 & 3
CHAPTER VI – Lesson 2 & 3
CHAPTER VII – Lesson 1 & 3
CHAPTER VIII – Lesson 3

Edmund Husserl
Martin Buber
Martin Heidegger
Guy Debord
Aristotle
Soren Kierkegaard
Jean-Paul Sartre
Pope John Paul II
Plato
Pope Francis
Gabriel Marcel
Emmanuel Levinas
Friedrich Nietzsche
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Rene Descartes