THE NEW OBSCENITY

...Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's book, in question-and answer format, applies the conclusion of On Death and Dying to concrete cases posed by questioners...

...Death is un-American, incompatible with happiness and progress, proof of failure on the part of the dying person, the physician and the system...

...rather, its reality forces us to seek out that meaning...

...a legal tradition which insists that mercy killing is first-degree murder, thereby forcing juries to practice instant psychoanalysis to reach baseless "insanity" verdicts and judges to preach absurdity in justifying lenient sentencing...

...Ultimately, the ambiguity of morality will not go away...

...But death is real, and inability to face reality, besides being dishonest, is damaging to humans (e.g...

...The most serious objection holds that the legitimation of any kind of euthanasia, voluntary or not, will open the door to Nazi-type death-dealing programs to eliminate the useless and the unwanted, the old, the' poor and the invisible...

...indirect killing, "commission" vs...

...The revulsion at the core of our attitude toward death does not produce the best atmosphere for a clear, thorough, and honest discussion of the desirability of euthanasia...

...These issues at least can enjoy full and reasonable discussion in the new atmosphere of candor Maguire cites in his first chapter...

...Maguire argues patiently and at length that the objection is unfounded...

...Coming to grips with the fact of death and the inevitably of dying, honestly and compassionately, is a major task on the American agenda...

...when death is deprived of the meaning it had in a Christian culture, it becomes unbearably frightening...

...Richard Doss suggests that secularization in Western society may have something to do with this unhealthy denial of the fact of death...

...but that is what Daniel Maguire attempts, and the attempt succeeds...

...To set the context for that ordering process, he devotes three opening chapters to the current events which have put the subject of death and dying back on the front pages: the state of the art of medicine, where rapid advances in techniques for prolonging life have got "value-free" science "up to its neck in value-loaded questions...

...Morally, it may be difficult to find a difference between (say) commission and omission per se...

...Personally, I was grateful for the ength of argument spent on consider-tion of this objection...

...who are increasingly expensive and numerous-I still see those old-age homes where we put them turning into death houses...

...With this conclusion clearly in front of us, Maguire goes on to consider the objections to mercy killing, both as chosen for himself, by a clear-headed adult, and as chosen for others...

...As such, it has positive value, and Doss uses it as a springboard to discussions of Christian hope, immortality and resurrection...

...THE NEW OBSCENITY LISA H. NEWTON Western Attitudes Toward Death PHILIPPE ARIES Johns Hopkins, $6.50 The Last Enemy RICHARD W. DOSS Harper and Row, $4.95 Death By Choice DANIEL C. MAGUIRE Doubleday, $6.95 Questions and Answers on Death and Dying ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS Macmillan, $4.95 Recent years have seen the emergence of a substantial literature on the subject of death and dying (a footnote on this point would consume my allotted space), commanding the intense interest of an increasing audience...

...an incredibly > high percentage of widows and widowers die the year following their spouse's death...

...Death By Choice is a valuable contribution to that discussion...

...Mary Baker Eddy said it for us all when she flatly insisted that death is not real...

...the analogy between our society and Nazi ' Germany does not obtain in any relevant respect, and there is no grounds for a "domino," (or "wedge") argument: the argument from the slippery slope is invalid as it stands, and the circumstances of the dying provide a wealth of opportunities for drawing good moral lines...

...And it's not only the dying we reject, but also the aged...

...Recognizing that contemporary Christian attitudes are by no means consistent on the subject, Doss opts for a theological style which accepts the reality of death while recognizing it as "the enemy," the destroyer of love of life and love of other humans in the human community...

...He concludes that euthanasia is often morally defensible- not the only defensible course, perhaps, in any situation, but a fully moral choice, and the advocacy of a policy allowing it is a morally responsible public position...

...The duty of ethics, as he sees it, is to help us find and order all the circumstances, rules and other considerations relevant to any moral choice, that that choice may be, if not certain, at least as informed and rational as possible...

...From the "tamed death" of the early Middle Ages, death as a normal and familiar event in the life of the society, he takes us through the individualized Renaissance approach to one's own death as judgment, and the nineteenth century romanticized approach to the death of a loved one as an unbearable rupture of the fabric of life...

...Then he sets out to teach moral reasoning...

...Her answers are always practical and humane, and should be useful for hospital social workers and any others who work daily with the dying...

...A practical beginning for reasoning on moral matters is all Maguire claims to teach, and that reasoning must include the recognition that the most careful use of the methodic elements he suggests may still lead two persons to different conclusions or one person to the conclusion that several courses are open to him...

...In a study of the historical roots of our attitude toward death, Philippe Aries finds the current death-denial at the end of a series of attitudinal changes, discovered in funerary art, customs, rituals and writings...

...in its clarity, concreteness and sensitive appreciation of the complexity of the painful moral choices that have to be made in this area...

...Yet as we know, and as all four authors emphasize, death has become the "new obscenity" for our time, the literature of death is our pornography...

...but the agent feels different about "doing something" and "just letting it alone," and the moralist must take that feeling into account...

...Such interest might seem strange...

...But there is real merit in this discussion of ethical methods and distinctions, in the wealth of concrete cases that spell out his understanding of their implications, and in the lively appreciation of the importance of the psychological differences involved in them...

...these books address that task...

...people have been dying for a very long time now, and one would expect the subject to be familiar...

...The chapter on Ethics will not delight a professional philosopher, nor will the following chapter's treatment of various traditional distinctions (direct vs...

...Death, as a natural event, neither provides nor takes away meaning in life...

...and the "new morality," which has toppled the monolithic prohibitions of the absolutist past and reopened all the questions that were thought to be closed...

...But perhaps a greater danger to life lies in our growing acceptance of euthanasia without legislation which could, conceivably, control abuses...

...every time I think of legalizing euthanasia, Nazis come crawling down my nightmares and I change my mind...

...omission" etc...

...By the time the twentieth century arrives with its aseptic hospitals, we already have a Western sensibility prepared to "shield" the patient and the entire society from the confrontation with death...

...one's own approaching death, like syphilis, a shameful and agonizing private disaster, and one's grief for another, like masturbation, disgraceful and concealed (the comparisons are Geoffrey Gorer's...

...His thesis is a very simple one: that there are situations where a choice to put an end to what remains of a human life is morally defensible...