Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators urging them to stop expanding assisted suicide
(LifeSiteNews) — On this week’s episode of The Van Maren Show, Jonathon speaks with historian and professor Dr. Richard Weikart about his new book Unnatural Death: Medicine’s Descent From Healing to Killing, which details the history of philosophies that led to the acceptance of euthanasia in the modern Western world.
Jonathon asked Weikart why the book traces the history of euthanasia all the way back to Greco-Roman times, when most people only began in Nazi Germany, and how we can trace that thread to the present day. Weikart noted that there was no assisted suicide during this period, but prominent philosophers of the age debated the morality of suicide.
“[S]ome approved of suicide, like the Stoics, for example, the Stoic philosophers, which was very popular among the Romans especially, they thought that suicide was a noble thing if it was done [when] you’re suffering,” the historian said. “There were others, like Aristotle, who took a dimmer view of suicide, although some of these philosophers still did think that there were some pauses, perhaps when it may be moral, but for the most part they thought it was immoral. Some, like Socrates and others, again, they made some exceptions for it.”
Weikart also underscored that infanticide was a common practice in the Greco-Roman world, especially for babies who had disabilities. “They did what they called ‘exposing’ the child, which meant that they put it out in the fields or hillside where it would die of dehydration or be consumed by some wild animal. And so I start there because that seems to be the first place where [there are] really serious philosophical debates going on that would have ramifications for subsequent history.”
The professor then explained that in the fourth century, once Christianity became the dominant intellectual driving force in Europe, previous ideas of suicide were overturned.
“In fact, it was enshrined in law that suicide was illegal to such an extent that they actually punished people. Now, how can you punish someone who commits suicide? Well, they actually would punish the heirs, very often, by stripping them of property,” Weikart explained. “And so, if you committed suicide, you knew that your heirs would be punished for you having committed suicide. Also, your body would be dishonored very often too, you wouldn’t be given an honorable burial.”
The historian noted that infanticide and abortion were also banned during this period, and Christian philosophy would continue to predominate until the Enlightenment period.
Jonathon later noted the cognitive shift on abortion, euthanasia, and infanticide during the Enlightenment and Renaissance period, highlighting what George Grant wrote on the subject in his book Third Time Around: The History of the Pro-Life Movement from the First Century to the Present.
“[H]e really gets into the extent to which infanticide and exposure and abortion really came back during the Renaissance because people were going back to these pagan times. And it wasn’t just about recovering the art and the philosophy and the literature, but it was also about returning to a pre-Christian worldview with regards to infanticide and euthanasia,” the host said, before asking Weikart how he would characterize this cognitive shift.
Weikart agreed with Grant’s assessment, emphasizing that this shift wasn’t overt right away, with no one writing in favor of euthanasia or suicide. Still, some books were written that portrayed these acts positively. He explained that it wasn’t until the 18th century that philosophers started to write favorably of suicide, with the well-known British philosopher David Hume writing the essay “On Suicide.”
“[H]e argued in that essay ‘On Suicide,’ not only that suicide was perfectly morally legitimate, but he said that the value of a human being is no greater than the value of an oyster, that’s actually the animal he compares us to there,” he said. “That we’re no more valuable than oysters, and because of that, then killing a human being is not all that big [of] a deal, really.”
For more analysis from Richard Weikart, tune in to this week’s episode of The Van Maren Show.
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Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators urging them to stop expanding assisted suicide