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A Study on Withdrawing of Life-Sustaining Treatment in the Perspective of Bioethics: Focusing on Bernhard Häring’s “Perspective of Freedom”

  • Journal of the Korea Bioethics Association
  • 2009, 10(2), pp.35-47
  • Publisher : The Korean Bioethics Association
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research

Kwon, Hyeok-Nam 1

1숭실대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

This article presents Bernhard Häring’s “Perspective of Freedom” as a important theological insight in the euthanasia debate. Häring has anticipated the inadequacy of various arguments against euthanasia and has seen the need for Catholic theology to articulate an argument drawn directly from its own theological sources. As a renewal of Catholic moral theology, Häring’s work is significant in its use of freedom and fidelity as primary virtues which define the goal of moral agency. Häring’s argument has a certain advantage for the purpose of christian moral theology, the main advantage being that it explicitly engages the question of suffering and human freedom and provides a context within which the moral meaning of suffering can be discussed. Häring suggests that a convincing argument against euthanasia can only be made in the “perspective of freedom.” Häring’s work shows how issues in medical ethics may be evaluated by assessing their impact on freedom. In his moral theology the maximization of freedom is used as a point of reference. Häring argues that human freedom must respect the meaning of creaturely finitude, and that the realm of human freedom, stewardship, and dominion cannot extend to control over death and mortality. Euthanasia, Häring argues, is wrong because it aborts the meaning of human life and freedom. Freedom, he indicates, can have meaning in the acceptance of death but not in the control of death.

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