SUICIDE, ASSISTED SUICIDE, ACTIVE EUTHANASIA
that there is a right to die or that either assisted suicide or active voluntary euthanasia are permitted. See Ronald Greens response"Good Rules Have Good Reason: A Response to Leon Kass in The Ethics of Choice A Time to Be Born and A Time To Die pp. 147-56.
29. Ronald Dworkin , Life’s Dominions: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia and Individual Freedom, New York, 1993 p. 84.
30. Ibid. 215-26 Similarly Dan W. Brock identifies self determination as a significant criterium for making mortal decisions. He defines self determination as"people’s interest in making important decisions about their lives for themselves, according to their own values or conception of a good life, and being left free to act on those decisions. Self-determination is valuable because it permits people to form and live in accordance with their own conception of a good life at least within in the bounds of justice and consistent with others doing so as well." Life and Death Philosophical Essays in Biomedical Ethics, Cambridge , England, 1993, pp. 205-206
32. See below.
34. An interesting and frightening passage in The Art Scroll Commentary on Joshua,(ed. Reuven Drucker, Brooklyn , 1982) links the value of human life to the concept of creation in the divine image with behavior and not merely biological life. On one level the passage clearly supports the concept that biological life may be forfeited under certain circumstances and therefore rejects any absolutist concept of the sanctity of human life It raises a serious warning that when we either offer moral or other criteria which permit the Killing of individuals(or in this case"nations") we come dangerously close to the"slippery slope."
Since the Torah places infinite value on each individual by definition, the value of several persons cannot exceed the value of one. One infinity and one thousand infinities are equally large. Yet the Book of Joshua chronicles the wholesale slaughter of the Seven Canaanite Nations. How can the Torah countenance, let alone command such destruction of human life? How can this campaign of extermination be reconciled with the principle of sanctity of human life? The answer is that a life has value only insofar as it bears the imprint of the Divine. Man was created in the image of God and it is this image which confers value upon the substance of his body. If an individual is irrevocably entrenched in behavior which denies the very being and’ authority of the Divine he reverts to a mere clod of chemicals.
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