Horn Ruth
Centre for Ethics in Medicine, University of Bristol, Canynge Hall, 39 Whatley Road, Bristol, BS8 2PS, UK.
Med Health Care Philos. 2013 May;16(2):197-209. doi: 10.1007/s11019-011-9357-5.
The objective of this paper is to understand from a sociological perspective how the moral question of euthanasia, framed as the "right to die", emerges and is dealt with in society. It takes France and Germany as case studies, two countries in which euthanasia is prohibited and which have similar legislation on the issue. I presuppose that, and explore how, each society has its own specificities in terms of practical, social and political norms that affect the ways in which they deal with these issues. The paper thus seeks to understand how requests for the "right to die" emerge in each society, through both the debate (analysis of daily newspapers, medical and philosophical literature, legal texts) and the practices (ethnographic work in three French and two German hospitals) that elucidate the phenomenon. It does so, however, without attempting to solve the moral question of euthanasia. In spite of the differences observed between these two countries, the central issue at stake in their respective debates is the question of the individual's autonomy to choose the conditions in which he or she wishes to die; these conditions depend, amongst others, on the doctor-patient relationship, the organisation of end-of-life care in hospital settings, and more generally, on the way autonomy is defined and handled in the public debate.
本文的目的是从社会学角度理解，被构建为“死亡权利”的安乐死道德问题是如何在社会中出现并得到处理的。本文以法国和德国为案例研究对象，这两个国家都禁止安乐死，且在该问题上有相似的立法。我预先假定并探讨每个社会在实践、社会和政治规范方面都有其特殊性，这些规范会影响它们处理这些问题的方式。因此，本文旨在通过辩论（对日报、医学和哲学文献、法律文本的分析）以及实践（对三家法国医院和两家德国医院的人种志研究）来理解每个社会中“死亡权利”请求是如何出现的，这些实践阐明了这一现象。然而，本文这样做并非试图解决安乐死的道德问题。尽管观察到这两个国家之间存在差异，但它们各自辩论中的核心问题是个人自主选择其希望死亡的条件的问题；这些条件尤其取决于医患关系、医院环境中临终关怀的组织，更广泛地说，取决于在公共辩论中自主是如何被定义和处理的。
