The analysis of the philosophical texts of the classics of New European philosophy (F. Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Pascal, Locke, Voltaire, Lametri, Diderot, Holbach, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel) confirms the thesis about the "transversal character" of the problem of human relations to death throughout the history of philosophy. The philosophical comprehension of this problem by the mentioned classics of philosophical thought (especially F. Bacon, Pascal) retains its significance for modern philosophy and culture.

Nietzsche turned out to be a prophet who anticipated many worldview and philosophical subjects of man's relation to death in the XX and the beginning of the XXI century. Along with the usual themes of suicide and death penalty in the history of philosophy, in his works he discusses the right of a human being to be born and, what is especially important for us, the right to die, though never using the term "euthanasia".

According to authoritative researchers of the history of philosophy (Jaspers and others), is the forerunner of modern philosophy, which is also confirmed by the exceptional attention this thinker paid to the problem of man's attitude to death. Nietzsche's "philosophy of life" anticipates many modern emphases of society's and man's attitude to death: the positive meaning of the problem of euthanasia, some arguments for justifying suicide, the dialectic of compassion and cruelty in relation to the "dying patient" in the conditions of medicalisation of social life.

Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him.

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce

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The metaphor "death is a dignitary" means that death is like an important official who comes to visit and must be treated with respect and ceremony.

Dear Stephen - that is a interesting saying - and seeing death as a dignitary is interesting - in many cultures 'death' is an entity such as the reaper in Christianity or, in the Indian tradition, Yama.

There only one book surpassed all the books on earth and provide extra-ordinary answer to 'death' polemic in the western world. More than that it also answering the current calamities between western paradigm vs monoteism paradigm. However to read this book required 100 percent open minded and without prejudice: https://quran.com/en

Dear all - I am uploading the call for papers for the LXX CICA International Conference: The Dignity of Death

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid 8-9th March 2024

Call for Papers

If you are interested in presenting please write to me personally [email protected] or via RG. I shall pass on the requirements.

Motivation

The vision of CICA is to help create a more humanitarian and conscious society through deepening our knowledge about consciousness, education, investigation/research, resolution of conflicts and the analysis of aggression and violence at all levels.

As our consciousness is considered the key to a meaningful life, its study is vitally important when considering the final moments of human life, known as death. Death as a topic is often taboo in modern society, but that does not make it any less important; on the contrary, as it involves many issues and is something we shall all have to face, it makes it a timely topic for this next CICA conference, which we have entitled ’The Dignity of Death’.

During the last quarter of the previous century and the beginning of the present, CICA has addressed different issues by scholars from an international, interdisciplinary, comprehensive approach to providing a more holistic focus on important individual, biological and societal issues. Many of these topics involve violence and potentially harmful behavior, so in addition to death in general, at this conference, we shall also address euthanasia. Responsible citizenship demands attention to the causes and consequences of harmful action, and reducing and preventing violence requires understanding the phenomenon, in this case, the complexity of the aspects involved in the dying process. A broad basic understanding is necessary if we are to propose positive remedies and point out ways toward peaceful solutions, consistent assistance, and non-violent alternatives.

The conference will take place at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

As traditionally death and the process towards and after death has been the territory of spirituality and religion, its study is multifaceted and goes beyond purely biological and social issues. However, as the dying process, like that of birthing, is slowly now being appropriated by the medical profession with them sometimes playing a role in when and how we die, we must ask ourselves how this trend, often encapsulated by the slogan ‘death with dignity, ’impacts, alters/improves or contradicts a more spiritual perspective?

Until about 1850, the English term ‘dignity’as well as its Latin root, dignitas, and its French counterpart, dignite did not have a moral connotation but referred to the natural order of things or merit, which included a form of inequality. From this perspective the Dignity of Death suggests that death is worthy of respect, it is part of the natural order of things and has merit, which embraces a certain distinctiveness or dissimilarity. In 1948, when the United Nations ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the newer post 1850 understanding of the word dignity meaning inherent or unearned worth of humans, became codified and officially took on a moralizing and political aspect, which implied sameness (Debes, R. 2017, Dignity a History, Oxford University Press, 2017).

So, we also must ask ourselves what are the implications of this change in the meaning of word dignity, how did different cultures, including our own, traditionally live the dying process, what have we lost, what have we gained? What can the different religions tell us about death, what is the role of religious/spiritual leaders in this process? How can early spiritual training in studying one’s own consciousness help us at the end of our lives, how can that help others who are dying? Among the issues to be considered must also include what occurs after death and how can the soul in transition be helped. One can look at these issues and death in general from multiple perspectives, including sociological, anthropological, ethical, religious, medical, and spiritual - spirituality embracing the study of our consciousness, our inner world, which scientists can research from the ‘outside in’ approach and through qualitative scientific investigation. Contributors are also encouraged to examine the palliative system adopted by different countries and address legal and ethical issues regarding death.

There are also many practical issues, such as what the people accompanying the dying person need to know about the dying process, what to do while and after death occurs, what options exist regarding the wake in modern-day societies, traditional societies and in other cultures, what is then done afterward with the body of the deceased and how the loved ones can better live the mourning process. Another possible topic can be examination of the understanding of modern-day children who have not been encouraged to have any contact with the dying process and death of a loved one and possibly have never seen a human corpse and much more.

The field is truly vast and can be addressed from a vast number of perspectives, some of which we have not mentioned here.

While the study of holy scriptures and subsequent proper ethical behavior (e.g. understanding death and its role in human life) is paramount for human development, I do not think that your unexplained Jamaliah Jamil claim/surpassed all the books on earth/ is very helpful in a scientific research forum.

Let me share the thoughts of my reading of death in the Qur`an

Death is one of the creations of God. Death does not mean one’s life ends, and nothing will happen after it. Rather, death is like a bridge that leads one from one life to another. Therefore, there is life after death, and people will remain in barzakh or purgatory until the Day of Judgment. If a person is righteous, he will be rewarded, and if he is wicked, he will be punished. When the Day of Judgment arrives, all those alive will die and be resurrected. Those who have died and are in their graves will also be resurrected. In the end, those who are righteous should not fear death.

If there was no death and everyone continued to live forever, Divine justice would not be administered, not to mention the fact that the world would be overloaded with people, and there would be little room for people to live.

Does death have dignity in its own right? Turns out no! Just read: "..And the message that we have been giving – we here being the humanitarian community, and I represent the humanitarian community writ large, not just the United Nations – is that we do not have a humanitarian operation in southern Gaza that can be called by that name anymore. That the pace of the military assault in southern Gaza is a repeat of the assault in northern Gaza. That it has made no place safe for civilians in southern Gaza, which had been a cornerstone of the humanitarian plan to protect civilians and thus to provide aid to them. But without places of safety, that plan is in tatters..." Excerpt from the Transcript of Press Briefing on the Humanitarian Situation in Gaza, Geneva, 7 December 2023, Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Affairs

Read the entire transcript on:

https://www.unocha.org/news/un-relief-chief-no-place-safe-civilians-southern-gaza

Released October 17, 2023. Berens N, Mahon MM, Roth K, Berger A, Wendler D. The Ethics of Conscientious Objection to Teaching Physician-Assisted Death. American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. 2023;0(0). Abstract: The literature on the ethics of conscientious objection focuses on objections to participating in morally contested practices. This literature emphasizes the potential for participation to undermine objecting clinicians’ moral integrity. Significantly less attention has been given to conscientious objection to teaching morally contested practices. Thus, it is unclear whether teaching morally contested practices has the potential to undermine objecting educators’ moral integrity, and to the extent that it does, what steps can be taken to address this concern. We accordingly examine the ethics of conscientious objection to teaching morally contested practices, with a focus on teaching physician-assisted death (PAD) to trainees in US palliative care programs. We focus on three primary components of teaching PAD: (1) teaching the history and context of PAD; (2) teaching trainees how to understand and respond to requests for PAD; and (3) teaching trainees how to provide PAD. We argue that teaching components one and two has little potential to undermine objecting educators’ moral integrity. Moreover, permitting objecting educators to opt out of teaching components one and two might undermine the education of trainees. In contrast, allowing objecting educators to opt out of teaching how to provide PAD may be important to preserving their moral integrity, and is unlikely to undermine trainees’ education. We argue that educators should be permitted to opt out of teaching trainees how to provide PAD and describe policies that training programs can adopt to implement this approach.

About death. A mate of mine in St Petersburg died recently. He was ready for death, he said: "I believe that there is life after death, if I am wrong and it does not exist, I will not know about it.

I was not afraid of death until I was 65 years old, I successfully cured cancer, the treatment lasted four years, then I waited for a relapse, I lay with dying patients in the same ward, etc. I was ready to die. Fortunately, death was pushed back. I became ill with covid, the virus affected all organs and psyche. I was very afraid to die. I didn't have time to do everything I had planned. I'm still very afraid of dying. But I am ready for it and I am trying to do some of the things I had planned.....

In my paper EARLY EMBRYONIC MORPHOLOGY AND ITS CHANGING FORMS I recount the approximately 49 days of our embryonic existence. This process also indicates that during our embryonic history, we have already taken different forms and to evolve and grow, we had to "die" to the each of the previous phases with their corresponding "way of being". This also implies that to evolve and grow we will also need to die to the form we are taking now.

In conclusion I quote from Rumi, the Persian poet and Sufi mystic

(1207-1273).

I died from minerality and became vegetable;

And from vegetativeness I died and became animal.

I died from animality and became man.

Then why fear disappearance through death?

12

Next time I shall die

Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels;

After that, soaring higher than angels -

What you cannot imagine,

I shall be that. (Rumi, n.d.)

Article EARLY EMBRYONIC MORPHOLOGY AND ITS CHANGING FORMS

I used to work at a hospital for older people, and death (natural death) was not uncommon. If I was in charge of a ward where a man or woman was dying, I used to try to think how I would feel in his / her position.

If the person wanted relatives to surround him or her, then I would overlook the rule about the limited number of visitors at the bedside. A relative who remembered me doing this thanked me not so long ago having remembered this from the distant past.

But if someone was alone and drifting in and out of consciousness, if it seemed to please him / her, I would find a member of staff (staff numbers permitting) to sit and be 'company' if that appeared to be the right thing. Or at least, make sure that we kept going back to his / bedside.

I would try to find a side ward if appropriate, but if I couldn't, I would pull some of the bed curtains round the bed.

And if he / she seemed to be in pain and restless and crying out, I would contact one of the visiting doctors for analgesia or sedation and monitor if it was helping.

So, I hope that the people on my ward died with dignity in a way appropriate to the individual in question.

I think the death bring dignity when the person can't continue, and when find staying more bring suffering

"War is waged to the despair of those who do not want to wage it", Albert Camus (own translation from French). This is the case of young soldiers brought to be assassins of children and old persons in spite of themselves: They will live (or never can for that matter) with that. The infamous paradox is that politicians and even better, some "intellectuals", revel in it (and can live with it)!

Dear Mary C R Wilson

Thank your for sharing your role in helping others die with the dignity in the way that was meaningful for them. In the past natural death was more common and the energy that accompanies it, is very different from a death where the end was forced in some way. It not only affects the field differently, it affects all those who are close to the dying person. We can either create loving patterns or patterns that reduce our humanity.

with warmth and appreciation Tina

Thank you Dr Tina Lindhard

I hope you have a lovely Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

The Limited Times, Dec. 17, 2023, Françoise Hardy calls on Emmanuel Macron to legalize euthanasia. Suffering from two cancers, the singer suffered martyrdom. In La Tribune Dimanche, she addressed a letter to the head of state. "Her life has become so painful that one sometimes wonders if it would have been better to let her go when she had a brush with death eight years ago," her son Thomas Dutronc told RTL in November. The Minister Delegate for Territorial Organization and Health Professions said a bill concerning end-of-life support on assistance on access to assistance in dying will be examined in 2024...

Read on:

https://newsrnd.com/news/2023-12-16-fran%C3%A7ois-hardy-calls-on-emmanuel-macron-to-legalize-euthanasia.BkGPtD3oLa.html

See Also:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Science_Conscience

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Could_Suicide_and_Death_Penalty_be_Rational_and_Morally_Defensible

In the same vein. The book by Derya Nur Kayacan "The Right to Die with Dignity, How Far Do Human Rights Extend?, Springer, 2022", offers a "comprehensive and comparative analysis of European assisted dying practices. Addresses the state’s responsibilities regarding the right to die and its often-overlooked limitations. Discusses the consequences of how time affects our outlook on life and death."

See Also:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Science_Conscience

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Could_Suicide_and_Death_Penalty_be_Rational_and_Morally_Defensible

In general, in many cultures, there is an emphasis on treating the dead with respect and ensuring that they are given the opportunity to maintain their dignity in their final moments. This may include respecting their wishes regarding end-of-life care, providing compassionate support, and respecting their personal values ​​and beliefs.