Felicia Ackerman

You want to distantly deplore The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four? Peruse it further and you’ll see Some maxims true of you and me. Discussion of Nineteen Eighty-Four has generally focused on its political message, often to the exclusion of other aspects of the book. This essay broadens the discussion by considering a wide range of maxims thought and expressed by the book’s characters and assessing the applicability of these maxims to various nonpolitical aspects of the lives of these characters and to our own lives as well.

Death can be good— I’ll tell you how. Just have it come Decades from now.1 Full disclosure: The above poem expresses my outlook, and I have trouble empathising with people who want to die. But that does not make me unable to evaluate objections to the expressivist argument against PAS. Reed sets forth the expressivist argument as follows: ‘[W]hen we allow PAS for individuals who are terminally ill or facing some severe disease or disability, we send a message of disrespect to all individuals who face such adversities in that we imply that they are inferior or their lives are not worth living (or at least less worth living than they otherwise would be) precisely insofar as they are diseased or disabled’.2 The passage of mine that Reed quotes, however, was not intended to set forth an expressivist view. Rather than saying the double standard of selective legalisation ‘send[s] a message of disrespect’,3 it says this double standard in fact involves a systematic devaluation of some people’s lives. I will argue that there are conditions under which this double standard does send a message of disrespect, but first I want to disassociate myself from the expressivist formulations of Coleman and Keown that …

This article deals both with greatly extended finite life and with immortality and uses the term ‘greatly extended life’ to cover both. Except where indicated, it proceeds from some assumptions adapted from Christine Overall. First, people would know the life expectancy in their society or would know that they were immortal. Second, everyone would have the opportunity to choose greatly extended life. Third, greatly extended life would not be mandatory; people would be able to opt out at any point.

Consider these three positions about physician-assisted suicide:Physician-assisted suicide should be illegal for everyone.Physician-assisted suicide should be legal for only the terminally ill.Physician-assisted suicide should be legal for all competent adults.So far, the debate in America has been primarily between positions 1 and 2. I think it should be between positions 1 and 3. Both those positions embody reasonable viewpoints, and I will not try to decide between them in this chapter. But I will argue that the double standard embodied in position 2 is morally untenable.

. Conventional wisdom in our society is that a good death involves accepting it as natural rather than striving to stave it off as long as possible. An alternative view is “Death can be good / I’ll show you how / Just have it come / decades from now.” In this essay, I discuss how I use this poem and other light verses of mine in teaching philosophy. These poems offer unusual viewpoints in several additional areas of philosophical and bioethical interest, including growth through adversity, old age, family relations, obesity, envy, inequality, and ambition. Such poems can supplement traditional philosophical writing by presenting these alternative viewpoints in an amusing way that can capture students’ attention and relieve the solemnity that often pervades philosophy courses.

The word ‘dignity’ is a staple of contemporary American medical ethics, where it often follows the words ‘death with’. People unfamiliar with this usage might expect it to apply to one’s manner of dying—for example, a stately exit involving ceremonial farewells. Instead, conventional usage generally holds that “death with dignity” ends or prevents life without dignity, by which is meant life marked not by buffoonery, but by illness and disability. Popular examples of dignity-depleters include dementia, incontinence, and being “dependent on machines”—provided the machines are respirators rather than furnaces, refrigerators, and computers.