A Right To Self Termination By David Velleman Analysis

When considering the permissibility of suicide, it becomes important to recognize a person’s reasoning for wanting to end their life. In David Velleman’s paper, A Right to Self-Termination, he explores what he considers to be flawed justification for suicide. Ultimately, Velleman claims that suicide cannot be justified by appealing to a person’s self interest, or to a persons right to make autonomous choices concerning their life. To support this claim, Velleman introduces two separate paradoxes. In order to understand these paradoxes, I will first offer a reconstruction of Velleman’s argument, and then introduce the paradoxes. I then will offer a critique of these paradoxes, by arguing that one’s rational nature is not the only way that we value human beings.
In order to understand Velleman’s attack on the claim that self-termination is morally …show more content…
A person’s wellbeing has value that is derived from their intrinsic value as a person. This means that a person is valuable for their own sake, rather than to serve some larger purpose. What is good from the point of view of a person’s wellbeing can never be more important than what is good from the value of the person itself. To claim the opposite removes the grounds for caring about a person’s wellbeing in the first place. Prioritizing wellbeing over intrinsic worth is irrational because it leaves you with no reason to care about the wellbeing that is being prioritized.
A justification of suicide can be offered, where it is suggested that the life was no longer worth living, as no good could be derived from the life. However, in this claim, a person’s rational nature is being overlooked in order to prioritize their wellbeing. To end a life necessarily ends the rational nature associated with that life, and as such the rational nature is destroyed for the sake of the person’s