A year after 90-year-old psychologist Daniel Kahneman took his own life through assisted suicide, a philosopher and a well-known bioethicist have written a fawning article discussing his death.
Philosopher Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Princeton bioethics professor Peter Singer praised Kahneman’s decision to end his life at one of the many death clinics in Switzerland, though Kahneman was not ill or dying. By Singer’s own admission, Kahneman was “relatively healthy” — but in a letter sent to his friends, Kahneman explained that as a younger man, he did not wish to experience the “indignities” of being elderly:
I have believed since I was a teenager that the miseries and indignities of the last years of life are superfluous, and I am acting on that belief. I am still active, enjoying many things in life (except the daily news) and will die a happy man. But my kidneys are on their last legs, the frequency of mental lapses is increasing, and I am 90 years old. It is time to go.
Singer and de Lazari-Radek interviewed Kahneman before his death, with full disclosure that they approved of his plan to undergo assisted suicide even as they acknowledged that he was a healthy man who was simply old. “[D]espite his advanced age, he was still capable of research and writing and could still enlighten audiences on how to make better decisions,” they wrote. “Apart from his intellectual gifts, he was healthy enough to participate in friendship and family life. Why did none of this give him sufficient reason to continue to live?”
READ: New poll shows UK population has serious concerns about effects of assisted suicide
They explained that this was a mindset that many people should aspire to, writing, “[I]f, after careful reflection, you decide that your life is complete and remain firmly of that view for some time, you are the best judge of what is good for you. This is especially clear in the case of people who are at an age at which they cannot hope for improvement in their quality of life.”
But “quality of life” is entirely subjective, and it seems that Kahneman’s desires may have been fear-based. Pro-suicide and euthanasia groups have been known to utilize fear tactics to sell people on the idea of assisted suicide. In 2019, Dignity in Dying Scotland launched a report and video designed to convince people that without assisted suicide, they will die a “bad death.” As Live Action News previously reported, this campaign was “roundly criticized by both opponents of assisted suicide and hospice workers.” Officials from Hospice UK called the campaign “misleading and irresponsible” for playing on people’s fears about the end of life in an “inaccurate and distressing” way.
But Singer and de Lazari-Radek said that there is only one lesson to learn from Kahneman’s death, and it is not how to further help elderly people enjoy their final years; or how to address suicidal ideations in the old, disabled, and ill; or why life is worth living even when it is not perfect. No, the lesson they wish to be learned is that committing suicide simply because you don’t want to be elderly is a good and dignified thing to do:
[I]f we are to live well to the end, we need to be able to freely discuss when a life is complete, without shame or taboo. Such a discussion may help people to know what they really want. We may regret their decisions, but we should respect their choices and allow them to end their lives with dignity.
This mindset is, at the very least, disturbingly consistent for Singer, who sees human life as valuable only inasmuch as it is wanted or able to contribute to society. Instead of seeing every human life as having inherent value and dignity, Singer sees life as transactional: something you are allowed to keep by being happy, able-bodied, and productive — and something to be taken away if you are not.
Singer has repeatedly argued in favor of infanticide, euthanasia, forcible sterilization, and even bestiality. It’s therefore not particularly surprising for him to argue that being old and wanting to die is not a marker of depression that should be treated, but instead is something to embrace and help people accomplish.
And that disturbing mindset is being promoted in the New York Times.
