The New York Times' Week in Review section has an article about the Schiavo case called "Did Descartes Doom Terri Schiavo?" Rather than just saying "of course not", the author proceeds to mischaracterize the debate in several different ways. He writes:
"Beneath the political maneuvering and legal wrangling, the case re-enacted a clash of ideals that has run through the history of Western thought. And in a way, it's the essential question that has been asked by philosophers since the dawn of human civilization. Is every human life precious, no matter how disabled? Or do human beings have the right to self-determination and to decide when life has value? (...)The plea last week to prolong Ms. Schiavo's feeding, against the wishes of her husband or what courts determined to be her own expressed inclinations, echoed the teachings of Aristotle, who considered existence itself to be inviolable.
On the other side, the argument that Ms. Schiavo's life could be judged as not worth living echoed Descartes, the Enlightenment philosopher who defined human life not as biological existence - which might be an inviolable gift from God - but as consciousness, about which people can make judgments."
First, as I have said before, nothing in this case turns on the question: what is Terri Schiavo's life worth? No one is arguing that if her life were really worthwhile, then we would have the right to subject her to medical treatment against her will. Most people who support existing law in this case are arguing simply that whether or not we can subject her to medical treatment depends on what she would have wanted. Anyone else's opinions about the worth of her life, or the choice she should have made, are strictly irrelevant.
Second, the author of this article claims that Descartes defined human life "as consciousness, about which people can make judgments". This is not obviously true: Descartes defined our souls as our minds, but what he would have said about 'human life', which might be taken to refer to the life of a human organism, is a different question entirely. (It is standard Christian doctrine that when our human body dies, our soul does not; I would assume that Christians on both sides of this case would agree with Descartes that we are not reducible to our bodies.)
Third, what does the author mean when says that liberals, following Descartes, define human life "as consciousness, about which people can make judgments"? People can make judgments about anything: bodies, souls, the intrinsic value of human life, shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages, kings, you name it. That consciousness is among those things is completely beside any point the author could conceivably be making.
What's more likely is that the author means to say that, according to liberals, not only can we make judgments about consciousness and its value, but that there is no fact of the matter about which of those judgments are right. Here he would be echoing a point made by David Brooks, among others:
"Once you say that it is up to individuals or families to draw their own lines separating life from existence, and reasonable people will differ, then you are taking a fundamental issue out of the realm of morality and into the realm of relativism and mere taste."
This is badly mistaken. It does not follow from the claim that we allow someone to decide some question for him- or herself that we must think that all answers to that question are equally valid. This is clear if we think about less dramatic examples. For instance, I believe that everyone who is registered to vote has the right to decide who to vote for. This obviously does not mean that I think that all opinions about who to vote for are equally valid. As it happens, I don't: I think that (at least sometimes) there are clear reasons to prefer one candidate over another. But just because I think this, it does not follow that I think that everyone should be forced to vote as I think best. That's a completely different claim, and one I totally reject. (And pace David Brooks, I reject it on straightforwardly moral grounds.)
Likewise, I think that every adult should have the right to marry whomever he or she chooses, to pursue any (lawful) career in which he or she can find a job, to live in any city he or she wants, to practice any religion he or she believes in, and so forth. But while I think that, in general, competent adults are the best judges of their own interests, this is not why I think that they have these rights. For while it is generally true that competent adults are the best judges of their own interests, it is not always true; those who think that we grant autonomy to competent adults only because they will generally make the decisions that serve their interests best should also think that in those cases in which we have good reason to think that competent adults are getting it wrong, we have the right to intervene, even if no one other than that person will suffer because of his or her mistake.
I do not believe this. I do not believe that if we concluded, after serious reflection, that there was no earthly reason to settle in some city unless one already had friends and relations there, we would have the right to bar people who didn't have such friends and relations from deciding to live in that city. I do not believe that the only thing that prevents us from legitimately dictating who people should marry is that we have not yet perfected psychological tests that allow us to determine compatibility with greater accuracy than individuals. (If you consider the divorce rate, such a test would not have to be all that accurate to do better than individual choice.) In all these cases, I believe that we have the right to make these decisions for ourselves, and that this right does not depend on the claim that we do a particularly good job of identifying our interests. Even if God, who is both omniscient and benevolent, were to tell our legislators exactly who each of us should marry, what job each of us should hold, and (of course) which religion each of us should practice, I would still believe that we, not those legislators, have the right to decide those questions for ourselves, because our right to autonomy does not depend either on our making the right choices or on the idea that in the cases at issue, no choice is right.
If this is right, then when someone claims that adults should have the right to decide some question for themselves, they are not committed to the view that there are no right answers to that question. Sometimes it is clearly true that a person's impending marriage is a big, big mistake. (Imagine that the spouse-to-be is a registered sex offender with a history of spousal abuse, a crack addict, a serial killer on the run from the law, and whatever other features you think would make the decision an obviously bad one.) If you know that person, you should presumably try to talk to him or her, and tactfully try to explain why the upcoming nuptials are a very bad idea. But it does not follow from your finding it completely clear that this marriage is a disastrously bad idea that you think the other person does not have the right to enter into it if he or she chooses.
Likewise, when I say that competent adults have the right to decline medical treatment, nothing follows about my view of human life and its value, or even about whether or not I think that there are right answers to the question: should a given person choose to accept or refuse treatment? The fact that I think that there are right answers to this question does not imply that I think it would be permissible for the government to force anyone to do what is right. It would not imply this even if the reasons for thinking that some answer was right were obvious. (See the marriage case just discussed.)
I'm sure there are people out there who think that paternalism should be our default position, and that we should allow ourselves liberty only in those cases in which the right choice is not obvious. But I have not seen anyone making this argument about Terri Schiavo; I certainly would not. I would appreciate it if people who are trying to summarize the debate would bear this fact in mind, and stop talking as though concern for individual liberty implied moral skepticism. It does not. The claim that competent adults should have the right to make certain decisions for themselves is itself a moral claim, and one that I believe is true.
(To state the obvious: nothing I have said implies, or is meant to imply, that there are no other grounds to object to the idea that Terri Schiavo should not have her feeding tube reinstated; just that it is not true that those of us who do not think it should must, at heart, be moral relativists.)
David Brooks, moral relativist:
DAVID BROOKS: But the interrogation process and how we react at Gitmo, how we react in Iraq, these are issues that I think we should have memos about. You know, every week we sit here and we watch on Fridays the soldiers that have been killed in Iraq and . . .
JIM LEHRER: We have some more tonight.
DAVID BROOKS: And we know very little about the insurgents. And we have got to somehow do a better job in knowing about the people who are killing the faces we see every Friday night. And this is part of that process. And I think his [Gonzales] role has been utterly appropriate.
David Brooks
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
January 7, 2005
Say it ain't so Dave!
Posted by: Frank | March 27, 2005 at 03:38 PM
Terrific post, hilzoy. I only wish sobriety was as infectious as hysteria.
Posted by: Gromit | March 27, 2005 at 04:13 PM
hilzoy,
Have you tried submitting an op-ed on the Schiavo case, to the NYT or elsewhere? If not, maybe you should. Certainly a letter to the NYT would be valuable.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov | March 27, 2005 at 05:09 PM
What I find particularly interesting about the coverage of this case is the media's sheer inability to cope with the fact that a) the dividing lines between the various opinions don't follow any neat, pre-packaged political categorization, and b) insofar as they do, they don't adhere to the stereotypes of those categories. "Liberals" for personal autonomy and "conservatives" for governmental intervention*; whatever shall we do? Cats and dogs, living together!
They're doubly screwed by their own inability to see the world for what it is, rather than how they'd like to sell it. It's worse than that, even: they know damn well what's going on, they're just screwed by their unwillingness to see the world for what it is. The rampaging cognitive dissonance, the mental trainwreck as talking heads try to make this fiasco confirm to one of their standard narratives... it's priceless in a gruesome sort of way. The only downside is that, instead of using this to learn from their mistakes, they'll doubtless take it as a sign that they weren't doing stereotyping, oversimplifying and just plain misreporting enough to make their conventional schtick work.
And that sucks. Because we deserve better.
* Quotes definitely intended to be scary precisely because the groups don't categorize so neatly.
Posted by: Anarch | March 27, 2005 at 08:26 PM
I second Bernard's suggestion, incidentally. Work that good deserves a larger audience.
Posted by: Anarch | March 27, 2005 at 08:27 PM
I love the marriage example.
This totally explains my feelings about this too.
However, I fear this will go over the heads of a lot of people. Not because they're unintelligent, but because they simply don't want to consider this way of life. It's a foreign and distasteful concept to a lot of people. Many people think control, power, paternalism, patriarchal pedagogy, one-upping, and forcing people into things "for their own good", is the right way to go.
(Indeed, in social situations, I think this is called "co-dependency". heh.)
Some people live in The Arena their entire lives.
Myself... I'm not a slave so I refuse to be a gladiator.
So I'm careful to draw very clear lines about what I'll fight about and what I won't.
Unfortunately, I think there's even a small sect of fervent religious people who just want to fight for the hell of it. (Pun not really intended, but what the hell.)
Posted by: Chloe | March 27, 2005 at 11:11 PM
Bernard and Anarch: thanks, but I can't see it: very busy of late, and the idea of writing for places that, unlike ObWi, do not guarantee publication, isn't feasible just now. Plus, I think my stuff is too long. I was on the radio, though (big media me.)
Posted by: hilzoy | March 27, 2005 at 11:27 PM
OT, via Atrios: perhaps the insanest law I've heard of in modern times - the Michigan House wants to allow health care workers to refuse to treat people on "moral, ethical, or religious grounds".
Posted by: rilkefan | March 27, 2005 at 11:58 PM
rilkefan: check this out:
"TALLAHASSEE -- Hundreds of protesters trying to keep Terri Schiavo alive are calling the Florida Department of Children & Families hot line each day, and officials are concerned they could be jamming the line for people who are trying to report abuse unrelated to the case."
Posted by: hilzoy | March 28, 2005 at 12:06 AM
Brooks needs to stop talking about morality. In this column he's setting up the same dichotomy he always does: "conservatives=moral, liberals=heartless and think they're smart."
Posted by: Linnet | March 28, 2005 at 12:18 AM
Thank you, Hilzoy. You're a voice of reason. No wonder visits to your site are increasing. It ain't the Schiavo subject matter - talk about oversupply! - it's the substance of your remarks. Factual and rational. No oversupply of that, unfortunately; but could there ever be?
Posted by: David Rowlett | March 30, 2005 at 12:35 PM