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This chapter provides an overview of the book. It argues that human dignity deserves a closer examination within the debate on assisted dying. The aim of this book is threefold. First, it will enlighten and explain the widely shared intuitions about human dignity, which has a specific usage in the medical context of terminal illness, because opponents as well as supporters for assisted suicide lay claim to that notion. Second, it will push the debate an important step forward because arguments that are often taken for granted can be more fairly reconsidered once their relationship to dignity has been clarified. Third, if one is able to make sense of dignity even within the complex and seemingly confused context of this debate, one will have taken an important step toward a clarification of it in general, which might lead to its application in other contexts as well

Within the debate on assisted suicide and euthanasia, the arguments from autonomy and from the special value of life are often linked to human dignity in order to make the normative principles they defend more resistant against competing considerations. However, the resulting conceptions of dignity are usually presented as competing with each other; that is, either one spells out human dignity in terms of autonomy, or one explicates it in terms of the value of human life. As an alternative, this chapter offers a “combined approach”: It seeks to explicate dignity in terms of specific interpretations of both autonomy and life’s value in a way that ascribes a unique normative role to both. This can help explain the complex attitudes toward various cases that are discussed in the debate on assisted suicide and euthanasia. The upshot will be that the arguments from autonomy and from the value of life can be recognized as valid without having strict priority with respect to one another. Still, each one might be employed for turning the tide in favour or against assisted suicide and euthanasia within specific cases

If a person competently requests another person to assist her in dying, she thereby exercises her normative power to make the act permissible that belongs to her rights over her own body. Denying a person this normative power means, on the view developed in this chapter, to disrespect her human dignity. We thus argue against views that regard terminating one’s own life (by the help of others) as morally impermissible for reasons of human dignity. At the same time, however, we do not think that exercises of a person’s normative power to end her life provide others with any reasons to help nor does it put them' under a duty to assist. Respect for human dignity only requires us to respect a person’s normative power to make assisting acts morally permissible

Was kann es heißen, ein gutes Leben zu führen? Der vorliegende Sammelband beschäftigt sich mit dieser Frage interdisziplinär aus philosophischer und theologischer Perspektive und versammelt national wie international renommierte Experten zum Thema. Die Beiträge spiegeln den aktuellen Forschung wider. Das Buch eignet sich auch als Einführung und für einen Überblick über die in diesem Bereich diskutierten Probleme. Der Sammelband verfolgt zwei Ziele: Zum einen sollen die neuesten Entwicklungen innerhalb der philosophischen Debatte angemessen abgebildet und weiter reflektiert werden; zum anderen soll die Debatte durch die kreative Konfrontation philosophischer Ansätze mit theologischen Fragestellungen um reizvolle Aspekte erweitert werden. Dabei wird erstens die metaethische Dimension des Themas behandelt. Diese umfasst z.B. die Kontroverse um Objektivität und Subjektivität einer Theorie des guten Lebens sowie die Klärung dessen, was unter der Frage nach dem guten Leben überhaupt zu verstehen ist. Zweitens wird die normativ-ethische Dimension des Themas beleuchtet. Hier geht es um die inhaltliche Bestimmung eines guten Lebens sowie das Verhältnis von gutem Leben und Moral. Drittens schließlich sind einige Texte der theologischen Dimension des Themas gewidmet. In ihr wird nach den Perspektiven gefragt, welche die Bezugnahme auf Transzendenz für die Frage nach dem guten Leben eröffnet. Wie ist etwa das Verhältnis theologischer Begriffe wie Seligkeit, Lebensfülle und Erlösung zu den in der philosophischen Debatte üblichen Begriffen?