Theodor Ebert

This is a review of a book by the physician Uwe-Christian Arnold pleading for the right to assisted suicide. Arnold who has accompanied several patients to their end opens his book with several case studies. In the second part A. discusses the arguments against assisted suicide. One of the arguments is based on a reading of the Hippocratic Oath which is shared also by A. As against this reading, I argue that in this text the doctor is not committed to withholding a poison from his patient, but rather to be no part as an accomplice in a poisoning ordered or wished for by a third party. Given the very painful dying caused by the poisons known in antiquity it is in itself rather unlikely that a patient wanting to commit suicide did asked his doctor for a poison. In the third part of the book, A. argues against the slippery slope argument brought forward by people like the catholic philosopher R. Spaemann. Pointing to empirical evidence from US-states as Oregon, A. insists that allowing assisted suicide has helped to enhance palliative medical care and reduced the number of suicides.

This paper discusses passages in Plato’s Phaedo which seem to contradict each other: at Phaedo 65a-d and at 66e-67a Plato seems to rule out that sense perception can be of any help in the acquisition of knowledge, whereas at Phaedo 74b-75a it is claimed that we get our knowledge of (the form of) equality only via the perception of equal things. I argue that the incompatibility of these passages is only apparent since in the first group of texts (all taken from Socrates’ so-called apology) Socrates is made to represent the ‚true philosophers‘ (probably the Pythagoreans), whereas in the latter passages (from the recollection argument) he speaks in propria persona. I then discuss the question why Plato did insert in his dialogue a position which he does not share, and I finally argue that Plato did not believe in the recollection of the form of equality.