The End of Life and the Ascription of Responsibility

Nowadays the bioethical debate on end-of-life issues seems to still be characterized by some problematic interpretations of moral responsibility. For example, within certain utilitarian approaches, the same moral responsibility is ascribed to a physician who practices euthanasia and to another who withholds or withdraws life-sustaining treatments. Let’s call this point of view “the always equal argument”. An opposite approach to the ascription of responsibility emerges from the thesis that there is an absolute moral distinction between killing and letting die. Let’s call this thesis “the never equal argument”. After showing that the always equal argument erroneously describes the act of withholding or withdrawing treatments such as euthanasia, the paper addresses the implications that both a rejection and an unconditional defense of the killing/letting distinction could have in the ascription of responsibility. To specify, it is argued that while the always equal argument calls for an over-responsibility of the physician, the never equal argument leads the agent to take less responsibility for his actions. By referring to other moral distinctions, the paper then suggests an intermediate position that addresses the relevance of the distinctions between cause and conditions and between negative and positive duties. Finally, by the distinction between morally culpable letting die and letting die for the patient’s good, it is argued that in some cases letting die is morally equivalent to killing. Ascribing responsibility at the end of life thus means struggling with the complexity of moral acting, but maintaining all these distinctions is necessary to avoid reductive approaches.