Anthony Joseph Luke Gormally

The doctor–patient relationship that is at issue in assisted suicide should be governed by norms of justice, expressed in rights and obligations. An autonomy-based understanding of dignity provides no basis for just regulation of interpersonal relationships and in particular grounds no right to assistance in suicide. An understanding of dignity as intrinsic to human nature does provide a basis for the doctor–patient relationship, as for all interpersonal relationships, and one that is incompatible with accommodating in law the judgment that characteristically underpins requests for assistance in suicide and that purports to justify such assistance, namely the patient’s judgment that his or her life is no longer worth living. The continued prohibition of assistance in intentional killing is one that serves both to protect citizens, including patients, and to preserve the integrity of medical professionals as healers and servants of life.

This fourth and final volume of writings by Elizabeth Anscombe reprints her _ Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus_, together with a number of later essays on thought and language in which she explores issues of reason, representation, truth and existence. As with previous volumes this gathers hitherto inaccessible publications and previously unpublished texts. Singly and collectively the four volumes provide for a broader and deeper understanding of the thought of one of the twentieth century's most important anglophone philosophers.