Right to Life, Right to Die
The article deals with the problem of the right to die as the derivative of the right to life. The author uses problematic, systematic, interdisciplinary, and descriptive approaches when she is looking for answers to such questions: 1) does any life have value? 2) whose claims to live should modern society guarantee? 3) is it appropriate to speak not only of the right to life but also of the right to die? For this purpose, the utilitarian position of P. Singer, J. McMahan, and M. Tooley is mostly analyzed. Several representatives of the “sanctity of life” conception become their opponents. The author concludes that 1) they speak about the right to die when they question life as an absolute or ontic good; 2) an alternative may be to distinguish between the levels of rights and to respect the persons, not their manifestations. Eventually, a different understanding of values is at the core of the disagreement.
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