Euthanasia

Introduction

Rachels attributes the difficulties of classical utilitarian doctrine to a narrow identification of good and evil that is happiness and misery with hedonism. He illustrates the difficulty by elaborating a fictitious story of a man who is subject to a ruse for his entire life. This man receives a doctoral degree for worthless scientific work, is feted by the world at large for research that is without merit, and is befriended by everyone all for the sake of making him happy. Rachels claims that 'upon this man's death' most people would judge his life to have been unfortunate. If the duped individual discovers that everyone insincerely offered their accolades and friendship merely to provide him with pleasant states of consciousness, his happiness would be forsaken. Rachels claims that things such as achievement and friendship are not good because they make men happy; rather, they make men happy because they are good: Achievement and happiness are not good because they make us happy. Rather, having them (and other things like them) makes us happy because we recognize them as goods. To explain their value, then, we have to look elsewhere than to the conscious states that accompany them.

Rachels does not deny that attaining happiness and avoiding misery is a very important goal; he simply does not want to make this the sole of action, because people maintain interests in things such as religion, even though it does not always lead to the most happiness. He thinks that the deficiency of the classical theory is its narrow identification of good and evil with a hedonistic concept of happiness and misery. Rachels adopts a broader understanding of personal welfare which is grounded on interests, rather than on a hedonistic understanding of happiness. Therefore, he proposes we substitute a better conception of welfare: rather than speaking of maximizing happiness, let us speak of maximizing interests let the principle of utility say that actions are right if they satisfy as many interests as possible. Thus, the freedom to practice his religion might be in an individual's interests, even if it diminishes his pleasant state of consciousness. If the individual desires it, it is in his interests, by merely substituting interests or preferences for happiness (i.e., pleasure).

Discussion

Rachels can maintain a utilitarian framework because the judges actions solely by their outcomes. At the same time, he avoids the deficiencies of the classical model which seem to permit the abrogation of certain important interests. Thus, the re formulated utilitarian principle, which maximizes interests, precludes the violation of someone's religious practices or life if the individual prefers to practice his religion or perpetuate even a miserable existence. Rachels does not offer any further arguments to justify or develop this theory. He spends most of The End of Life demonstrating how the principle is applied to euthanasia, relying in particular on case-studies and examples. The second important point in Rachels' defense of utilitarianism is his attempt to replace false moral beliefs with judgments based on reason. Foremost among the false ...