By Raushan Kaliyeva
Human mortality is a primal idea for philosophers. Many philosophers claimed that if there will be no death, there will be no philosophy at all. In my paper, I want to ponder over the change in the concept of death over time.
Various philosophical doctrines have their own attitude towards death. Rationalists say that death has two outcomes: nonentity or afterlife. Epicureans and Stoics claimed that death is an inescapable part of human life: we were born from non-existing and there we will return. If we are not scared of birth, why should we be scared of death? Francis Bacon in his “Of Death” essays says: “It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.”
No one will argue the fact that we all will end up with non-existence. However, none of us can identify what death is and what will be after death. “Everybody dies, but not everybody agrees about what death is” (Thomas Nagel, 1987).
Biopolitics has its own way to deal with death. In biopolitics, the government tries to maximize its efficiency by controlling their population. Population=resource, therefore, the bigger and the more effective the population the better. In biopolitics, the government aims to increase the lifespan of its population and population aims to maximize the pleasure of their life. Based on this principle, killing people is irrational, but at the same time, biopolitics uses human mortality as a power.
Agamben contributed interesting thoughts on how death works in biopolitics:
“More interesting for our inquiry is the fact that the sovereignty of the living man over his own life has its immediate counterpart in the determination of a threshold beyond which life ceases to have any juridical value and can, therefore, be killed without the commission of a homicide.” (Giorgio Agamben, 2003-p115)
According to this quote, juridical value of human life is more powerful than individuals’ value of his own life. We can find lots of evidence to prove this statement from our life. Extremely violent perpetrators, whose juridical value converges to zero, might value their lives a lot, but the sovereign will sanction their lives by executing them. Using the same logic, in many countries pregnancy screening, which can identify abnormality in early fetus development, is mandatory and usually, if there will be any risk of any kind of pathology, family will be strongly persuaded to make an abortion. Again, biopolitics sees people as a resource, and wants to have the most productive people, but not disabled or less-productive people.
Euthanasia is more complicated. Terminally ill people are not productive, but since society still has some ethics, patient needs to nullify his life value by claiming his own will to die. Then, the sovereign will measure juridical value of this person and make a decision. Final decision remains encased in sovereign’s hands.
When patients with psychiatric disorders (those disorders, which do not affect patients’ consciousness) request euthanasia, it becomes even harder. Since juridical value of these individuals is not questionable, the governments are not welcoming this kind of euthanasia. We have a situation opposite to perpetrator execution: an individual selfconsciously nullifies his life value, but still has juridical value. Therefore, sovereign sanctions that person’s death.
Adam Maier-Clayton, a citizen of Canada, was diagnosed with rare mental illness, which made him feel constant pain and agony. He was fighting for his right to get medically assisted death. His request was rejected, and he committed suicide in a motel after two years of fighting for his right to die. Around the same time, in the Netherlands, Aurelia Brouwers, who demanded the same medical procedure, after eight years of juridical processes, got permission to die. Aurelia Brouwers was suicidal and had 20 attempts to commit suicide. She passed away peacefully in her home surrounded by her family. For Adam, this was inaccessible because the Canadian government decided that juridical value of his life is more important than his personal value of his life.
Adam Maier-Clayton has his video-blog on YouTube. On his videos, he mentioned several times that he is not suicidal, and he does not want to die, but at the same time, he does not want to live. He also said: “I have to commit suicide”. We have two paradoxes here. First, Adam says that he does not want to die, but at the same time, he does not want to live. It is obvious that it is physically impossible to satisfy those two desires at the same time. The second paradox is his attitude toward suicide. Suicide is a rebellious act of escaping this formality of juridical value. It is a personal decision to end your life, so nobody can force somebody to commit suicide (if it happens, it will be probably considered as a murder). Nevertheless, the first paradox is more interesting for our interest in life and death. By saying “I do not want to die, but I do not want to live,” Adam sanctioned both life and death. He transformed himself into the third position: a juxtaposition of death and life; a position where he is neither dead nor alive.
This transformation shows us that the ancient concept of death as a final act of human life, which unifies everyone, is no more justifiable. Death in its simplicity becomes very complex. That of course affects (or is even caused by) biopolitics. Foucault mentions that in the nineteenth-century death disappeared from political routine:
“One might say that the ancient right to take life or let live was replaced by a power to foster life or disallow it to the point of death. This is perhaps what explains that disqualification of death which marks the recent wane of the rituals that accompanied it. (Michel Foucault, 1978-p138)”
However, a power of death did not disappear completely and sovereign has found forgotten power relatively fast: “…something very similar to re-discovery of death has started to take place in the Western world since the mid-twentieth century” (Özpolat G, 2017-28). While making that re-discovery, sovereign realized that now disallowing life does not necessarily lead to death. By disallowing life, government nullifies juridical value of human, but not killing a human. It transforms human to that third position, where death and life intersects.
Understanding what death is seems to be beyond human’s intellectual limits. However, death evolves together with humanity. The more complicated we become; the more complicated our life and death becomes. Humans are no longer just biological organisms with two main functions: to be born and to die. We are institutionalized individuals whose life value can be measured using various scales. Adam Maier-Clayton and his experience made a paradigm shift in the concept of death.
References:
Agamben, Giorgio and Gayraud Joël. 2003. Homo Sacer. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Bacon, Francis. 1909. Of Death. London: L.C.C. Central School of Arts and Crafts.
Foucault, Michel. 1978. Part five, The History of Sexuality, Vol. I.
Nagel, Thomas. 2009. What Does It All Mean?: a Very Short Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Özpolat, Gürhan. 2017. “Between Foucault and Agamben: An Overview of the Problem of Euthanasia in the Context of Biopolitics.” Beytulhikme An International Journal of Philosophy7(2):15–31.
The Polyphony 