Midterm Report: A Good Death

Hello everyone! Jocelyn and I will be reporting on what it means to be given "a good death." The "art of dying" has been a concern spanning both era and culture. As is typical of human learning, we must first look back before we can move forward. Therefore, I will first explore historical standards of good deaths in the cultures of Western Christianity, Ancient Norse, and the Japanese Samurai. Once some commonalities emerge, we can explore how those may apply today. Jocelyn will then present the current obstacles to dying well in contemporary western medicine. Statistical evidence and the growing concern with furor therapeutics indicate the need for a death standard. In combination with modern empirical evidence and historical data, we then hope to make an argument for the ethical justification of euthanasia.