Topics Ethics

Question Are there ever situations where self-preservation is ethically unacceptable, i.e. where choosing to stay alive is inexcusable, and where the only ethical course of action is to die? Or is self-preservation always excusable, even if it is not ideal?

Accepted:
July 26, 2012

Comments

I suggest it is not always ethically permissible to seek self-preservation. Imagine that you need a heart transplant to survive and the only way to get a heart is by harvesting and thus killing another person (imagine the person is innocent, unwilling to die to offer you his heart, etc). Or imagine you and another person are in peril at sea, the other person has a life preserver that she owns, it can only support one person, and while it is likely she will survive in time for a rescue boat to arrive, you will otherwise drown. In that case, I suggest it would be wrong in fact, it would be a case of murder for you to take the life preserver from the other person with the outcome that you survive and she drowns. I believe that the criminal law in many countries does not permit self-preservaton as an excuse for killing: for example, I think that if someone made a plausible threat to you ("I will kill you unless you kill those people over there") this does not mean you can do just anything to preserve your own life.

Having said all that, I think that there are cases when self-preservation does seem to excuse. Imagine you and a companion are in the woods and threatened by a massive, hungry grizzly bear. Probably the heroic thing to do (all other things being equal) would be for you to confront the bear and allow your friend to escape. But while it is not ideal or particularly praise-worthy, you both might simply try to out run the bear, and perhaps it would be completely understandable if you were the faster runner and escaped while your companion did not. Even here, though, ties of friendship or fellowship might make it more noble for you not to out-run your companion, but simply run in different directions thus making both your chances equal of surviving.

Question Are there ever situations where self-preservation is ethically unacceptable, i.e. where choosing to stay alive is inexcusable, and where the only ethical course of action is to die? Or is self-preservation always excusable, even if it is not ideal? Accepted:July 26, 2012

Question Are there ever situations where self-preservation is ethically unacceptable, i.e. where choosing to stay alive is inexcusable, and where the only ethical course of action is to die? Or is self-preservation always excusable, even if it is not ideal?

Accepted:
July 26, 2012