END-OF-LIFE CARE AND PREPARATION FOR DEATH IN A POST-CHRISTIAN AGE

Richard Rorty, Gianni Vattimo, and H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. are correct in their assessment of our contemporary culture; namely, that a rupture has occurred separating the contemporary dominant secular culture's understanding of morality from that of Kant's Enlightenment. It is not just that the contemporary culture is moving towards affirming rights to physician-assisted suicide and voluntary active euthanasia, but, more significantly, the new morality and Bioethics that are emerging accepts physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia because they have demoralized choices in these matters to issues of death-style decision making. Killing with consent and assistance in self-killing have been demoralized in their significance, thus deflating as well the significance of end-of-life care, which is the primary focus of palliative care. Palliative care is regarded in merely immanent terms as a cost-effective approach to treating the morbidity of patients in the last months of their lives, rather than to regard such care as a support in the preparation through repentance for death. Rorty and Vattimo in different ways recognize that the contemporary culture prohibits such transcendent concerns. Engelhardt recognizes that Rorty and Vattimo are right in their diagnosis, but that this state of affairs constitutes the cardinal danger from the now dominant secular culture: there has been an all-encompassing, immanent displacement of transcendent concerns.