More history "lite" in modern American bioethics.

• Author: Short, Bradford William

Abstract: This article revisits a disconcerting phenomenon. The history of prominent 17th and 18th century moral theorists who exhibited disapproval of all forms of suicide is well known. Nevertheless, there are many bioethicists who continue to claim that either these moral theorists never actually opposed suicide, or that they never believed in the inalienable right to life and liberty that is an important basis for secular moral opposition to assisted suicide. These erroneous claims evince an improper historical methodology. They originate from the bioethicists' inaccurate quotation of the moral theorists and also from the bioethicists' unwillingness to understand the moral theorists in their relevant historical context. The author concludes that this attempt to obfuscate the true history of 17th and 18th century moral theory may also be removing a line of inquiry from originalist constitutional analysis that Federal Courts have a duty to engage in.

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The academic study of history is a very old endeavor, while the study of bioethics does not date back to long before the Vietnam War. (1) Of course, history is important to all the politico-ethical disciplines, and it is also important to all the decisions that people have to make on knowledge derived from those disciplines. Be it the study of the Anglo-American common law, or of constitutionalism, or choosing the next President of the United States, knowledge of history is important to the endeavor. The American people cannot know where they are going unless they remember where they have been. Furthermore, the American people are part of a Western civilization that is much older than a mere two centuries. Consequently, in resolving political disputes, American voters are entitled to historical scholarship that is both truthful and accurate. This entitlement becomes only more evident when one's attention turns to the field of bioethics. Bioethics involves making decisions on politico-ethical issues such as abortion, assisted suicide and informed consent, all of which have long historical pedigrees. (2) Therefore it does not merely involve philosophizing on what should be, but it also involves recounting an accurate history of what has been and how humans can thereby develop a new, better ethic.

Over the last three decades, America's leading bioethicists have failed miserably in this task of studying ethics within a historically accurate framework. I have shown in a previous article for Issues in Law & Medicine how two of America's leading bioethicists, Tom L. Beauchamp and James E Childress, have adulterated quotations from the works of the great German philosopher and historical figure, Immanuel Kant. (3) Both in that same article, and then again in a follow-up article, I also showed how the American political philosopher, A. John Simmons, utterly misrepresented the history of John Locke's theory of inalienable rights in his Inalienable Rights and Locke's Treatises. (4) More importantly though, it must be stressed that both of these works of history lite subtracted from the American public's sum total of historical knowledge of the lives of Locke and Kant. When Americans training to be political philosophers and bioethicists take such fabrications concerning Locke and Kant to be true, they begin a process that leads to less and less accurate historical knowledge of Locke and Kant with each succeeding generation of students and teachers. With each new generation of teachers telling each new generation of students fabrications about Locke and Kant, pretty soon, the disciplines of political philosophy and bioethics become totally deceived. At that point, the Locke and Kant who most bioethicists think they are arguing with are nothing but figments of the bioethicists' collective imaginations. This cycle of ignorance cannot be good for the country, and it must be even worse for the country if it becomes perpetual. And yet, I fear that many who have read my writings in Issues over the past two years have come to the conclusion that the examples of history lite cited therein are nothing but isolated examples.

This article will prove, once and for all, that this conclusion could not be further from the truth and that my warnings concerning history lite should be taken seriously by the academic and political community. When I wrote History "Lite" in Modern American Bioethics, I knew that there were many other important works in the field of bioethics that "ignore historical context" and "quote ... prominent" philosophical "works ... [in]accurately." (5) Sadly, most of these works of history lite also adulterate the works of Locke and Kant. It is time to list as many of them as I can, and to explain how they insult the memories of men like Locke and Kant and also endanger the study of the history of ideas by those interested in medical ethics.

To be blunt, the production of history lite in modern American bioethics abounds. Margaret Pabst Battin, Hilde L. Nelson, John Hardwig and Lance K. Stell, over the last three decades, have all written works of philosophy that misrepresent the moral theory of Immanuel Kant and John Locke. In so doing, they have undermined the "cause of history" (6) because the study of the history of ideas is part of the study of history itself. This article will respond to these misrepresentations seriatim. Since only Stell's work misrepresents both Kant and Locke's theories, my rejoinder to him will come last in this article, and I will concentrate my analysis first on Kant's true theory and how Battin, Nelson and Hardwig all misrepresent it. (Thus, the article's focus will flow from Kant to Locke.) In each case I will show that the error concerning Kant's moral theory stems not simply from inaccurate quotation, but also from a refusal to present what Kant said and wrote in the relevant historical context. After that, Stell's assertions will be proven wrong by simply showing that they rely on blatant adulteration of quotations. In the final section of this article, I shall show how this history lite harms the study and interpretation of our American Constitution.

Battin's Misrepresentation of Kant's Lectures

Margaret Pabst Battin is one of America's most important bioethicists. Her The Least Worst Death: Essays in Bioethics on the End of Life is one of the academy's best-known statements of pro-assisted suicide theory. (7) She has been an influential professor of philosophy at the University of Utah for more than a decade now. (8) And in advocating for the right to suicide assistance she has claimed the authority of Kant:

Immanuel Kant held that suicide is forbidden because one has an obligation to respect the humanity in one's own person; he, too, though otherwise strictly impermissive of suicide, recognized at least one exception: the case of Cato. (9) Immanuel Kant's Lectures on Ethics contain the following passage:

Suicide can also come to have a plausible aspect, whenever, that is, the continuance of life rests upon such circumstances as may deprive that life of its value; when a man can no longer live in accordance with virtue and prudence, and must therefore put an end to his life from honourable motives. Those who defend suicide from this angle cite the example of Cato, who killed himself once he realized that, although all the people still relied on him, it would not be possible for him to escape falling into Caesar's hands; but as soon as he, the champion of freedom, had submitted, the rest would have thought: If Cato himself submits, what else are we to do? If he killed himself, however, the Romans might yet dedicate their final efforts to the defense of their freedom. So what was Cato to do? It seems, in fact, that he viewed his death as a necessity; his thought was: Since you can no longer live as Cato, you cannot go on living at all. (10) The Lectures on Ethics were not written by Immanuel Kant himself. Kant held the position of Professor of Metaphysics at the University of Konigsberg during the last quarter of the 18th century. (11) He had several brilliant students. (12) Some of them took notes on his lectures on moral philosophy. (13) These notes have been collected into the Lectures on Ethics. Not all of the sections of these Lectures are believable as being representative of Kant's true thought. (14) Yet, it is true that the passage just quoted concerning the Roman Senator Cato and the morality of suicide does come from the part of the Lectures written down by one of Kant's more faithful students, Georg Ludwig Collins. (15) But before we discuss Kant's opinion of suicide per se in the Lectures, we should discuss the historical context of the case study that he chose to relate to his students--namely the events surrounding the suicide of the Roman Senator Cato.

Cato the Younger was an important Roman Senator during the 1st century B.C. (16) He came of age--and thus, he came into politics--just as Julius Caesar began to make plans to destroy the Roman Republic and replace it with a dictatorship run by him. (17) Cato tried to stop Caesar democratically, by opposing Caesar's policies in the Senate and by making speeches against Caesar, but this strategy failed. (18) Nevertheless, eventually Caesar broke with one of his chief allies (the general Pompey) and that started a Roman civil war. (19) This war raged between Caesar and Pompey from 49 to 48 B.C. (20) But Cato actually stood up to Caesar for longer than Pompey did. Cato decided to support Pompey in the civil war (he thought that anyone might be better entrusted to preserve the Republic rather than Caesar). (21) From 48 to 46 B.C., Cato fought Caesar, and for much of that time Cato and his rebels were "shut up" in Utica. (22) As Caesar's forces surrounded Utica, it became clear that that Cato and his troops were defeated. Cato then made sure that all of his men were evacuated--by boat--from Utica; they presumably went to other parts of the huge...