This past Sunday, the NYT Magazine ran a piece on assisted suicide. As I started to read it, I thought it conjured up certain Confucian themes, but by the time I had finished it, I was definitely thinking more in Taoist terms.
The Confucian resonances come from the basic outlines of a story: a father with Parkinson's disease works to create a law in Washington state, where he had served as governor, that will allow for assisted suicide. He is inspired by his own gradual demise and by a broader vision that would allow people to have control over their end of life circumstances. His son, a devout Christian, opposes him on religious grounds. Their relationship is strained by the father's history of not spending much time with his children as they were growing up but now expecting the son to play a certain role in this his final campaign.
The Confucian question to ask is: should the son's obligation to his father trump his religious beliefs in this case? Should the son help the father die, even if it violates his more general moral code?
Personally, I think the Confucian expectation of filial duty is not automatic and all encompassing. Sons are not expected to do anything at all that their fathers tell them to do. Although sons might be expected to shield fathers from legal actions in some cases (i.e. sheep stealing), sons should not act inhumanely at the command of the father. If a father told a son to kill someone, Confucius would not expect the son to automatically comply.
Assisted suicide is a bit murkier, however, since the father might be understood to have a certain privilege in determining his own life's conditions. But - and this is a very important but - the father is not wholly autonomous. No one is wholly autonomous in a Confucian world. A father is embedded in a web of social relationships and vital members of that network not only determine the quality of a father's life but should also have a voice in any discussions about the voluntary death of the father. Fathers may be due a certain respect, but they do not exist outside the practices that define Humanity.
These Confucian issues fell by the wayside, however, as I read passages like this one:
Gardner [the father] wants death but won’t acquiesce to his disease. The drugs that
are prescribed, like the electricity, to mitigate his symptoms are kept
and meted out by his assistant. When Gardner kept them himself he took
far more than was recommended. He couldn’t bear the shuffling, the
stiffness “like the Tin Man in ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ ” the stumbling; “it
does not fit with my concept of who I am.” He swallowed as many pills
as he needed to fit his concept....
He is driven by an idea of himself, an image in his mind of what he thinks he ought to be. Instead of looking and embracing what he is, he drowns in frustrations over what he is not or what he is no longer. The pursuit of an idealized self has become the rationale for the death of the actual self. His self motto is: "My life, my death, my control." As if any of us really controls the conditions of our own lives.
My experience with Aidan floods back to me at moments like this. He taught me about not having control, about relinquishing the idealized self, about embracing the actual conditions of the moment. And he taught me that through my reflections on Taoism.
The Tao Te Ching (22) comes to mind when thinking of the father who demand control over his own life and death:
In yielding is completion.
In bent is straight.
In hollow is full.
In exhaustion is renewal
In little is contentment.
In much is confusion.
This is how a sage embraces primal unity
As the measure of all beneath heaven.
Give up self-reflection
and you're soon enlightened.
Give up self-definition
and you're soon apparent.
Give up self-promotion
and you're soon proverbial.
Give up self-esteem
and you're soon perennial.
Simply give up contention
and soon nothing in all beneath heaven contends with you.
It was hardly empty talk
when the ancients declared in yielding is completion.
Once you have perfected completion
you've returned home to it all.
Taoism could accept assisted suicide if it was the path of least resistance, the natural next move of "nothing's own doing" (wu wei) but not in the pursuit of "My life, my death, my control."
Recent Comments