| dc.description.abstract | Euthanasia is an important issue of bioethics and a thorny moral dilemma. Euthanasia is now legal in Netherlands, but, it is illegal in Taiwan. However, in certain cases, pain caused by terminal disease can’t be lessen by hospice care, so for many years, request of legalization of euthanasia have been raised in many countries. There are no overriding arguments. Up till now, weare still fighting for euthanasia, but no many countries could make it legalized. It is because euthanasia is a challenge of the prohibition of “you must not kill”, therefore it is not easy to get passed.
In some kind of situation, dying patients don’t want to be kept alive, and what if patients voluntarily ask for euthanasia at his free will, would euthanasia be justified? This thesis explores the morality of dying patients’ euthanasia and tries to analyse euthanasia from a Confucian perspective, that is, from Mencius’ principle of ching-kuan. There are different kinds of views of euthanasia in bioethics. I shall examine some of these such as Principlism, Confucian ethics, Singer’s preference utilitarianism on euthanasia.
This thesis tries to verify that under certain conditions, euthanasia is a proper and humane choice for incurable and painful dying patients. I wish to suggest some good reasons to support euthanasia for dying patients as the best life decisions for themselves. | en_US |