THE HARD BIGOTRY OF THE SOFT HEALTHY:

Which Terri Schiavo? (Douglas Kern, 03/24/2005, Tech Central Station)

We want to deduce Terri Schiavo's wishes and act upon them -- but which Terri Schiavo?

Perhaps the Terri Schiavo of 1989 and the Terri Schiavo of 2005 are not the same. Perhaps great suffering engenders new selves, with interests and preferences far different from the old selves whose desires now command the respect of the law. And perhaps these new selves should command their own respect.

Any moral order based upon an appreciation of human freedom must understand selves to be continuous, stable things. By dint of that stability, a rational, autonomous agent -- a libertarian self, so to speak -- can form agreements that extend significantly into the future. Libertarian selves can enter into binding contracts for decades at a time, and be held accountable for the performance of those contracts -- no matter how their future selves unfold. And no libertarian would find it unjust to punish the future self of a criminal for serious crimes committed as a young adult.

Yet we sense that our selves are not entirely constant. Many libertarians believe that entry into and exit from legal marriage should be relatively easy, because the self of today may have romantic needs and impulses far different than those of the self of twenty years from now. By this reasoning, true freedom must meet the needs of our changing selves. [...]

[W]ho has not leafed through an old yearbook or old photos, and failed to marvel at the grotesque foolishness of youth? Deprived of our hard-won wisdom and the insight that life-changing events provide, our younger selves seem so stunted as to be almost foreign. Time makes us strangers to ourselves.

I fear that, in our rush to compose our living wills, we will forget that the continuity of our selves may change profoundly should we fall victim to severe impairment. Our healthy selves may have little understanding of the new selves that will dwell in our broken bodies.

When thinking about such issues it's always helpful to recall one brutal example: Christopher Reeves's mother wanted to kill him when he got hurt.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 24, 2005 9:35 AM