Sanctity of life and deciding for others

In this paper, I analyse paternalism in context of a specificity of the delicate relation between two basic moral obligations: the duty to help others and the obligation to respect their autonomy (i.e. respect them as human beings entitled to be respected). The duty to help is universal but restricted by the duty to respect all persons as such. This is the essence of inter-subjectivity as the source of morality and medium and context of everything we decide and do. One of the most important and apparent conflicts between these two duties is the dilemma of whether to help prolong life or to help die when prolonging life violates the integrity of life by denying its desired and accepted end. This entails that rigid concepts like ‘the sanctity of life’ perhaps cannot give an absolute guidance to what is necessarily morally right and may entail disrespect of both of the above mentioned two duties: rejecting helping might be a kind of disrespecting. This has an interesting implication regarding the Hippocratic Oath, which is often used as an excuse to avoid fulfilling the duty to help others in cases when they need such help most urgently.