death | Pandaemonium

ON THE ASSISTED DYING DEBATE

October 26, 2021 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the complexities of the assisted dying debate, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 24 October 2021, under the headline “Claiming a monopoly on truth and decency is no way to win the assisted dying debate”. A man is standing on the parapet of a bridge. He is about to jump. What should you do? Most people would agree that the moral act would be to talk to him to try to persuade him not to. […]

Categories: Britain, Human, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: assisted dying, baroness meacher, death, netherlands, ronald dworkin, sanctity of life, slippery slope, suicide

A DANSE MACABRE IN KERMARIA

October 12, 2018 by Kenan Malik

It’s a tiny chapel in the tiny hamlet of Kermaria-an-Iskuit, in Brittany. It was built in several stages from the 13th to the 15th century. The entrance porch is adorned with striking statues of the apostles. And inside is the only danse macabre fresco that survives in France. The danse macabre is a late-medieval visual allegory about the universality of death. It depicts death, usually personified as a skeleton, leading people from all walks of life – pope, emperor, king, bourgeois, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Photos • Tags: art, brittany, churches, danse macabre, death, france, frescoes, kermaria

MORALITY, THE LAW AND THE DEATH OF A CHILD

April 30, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay on the Alfie Evans case was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the IAAF’s new regulations on women athletes with elevated testosterone levels.) It was published in the Observer, 29 April 2018, under the headline ‘A court is an unfit place for a case like Alfie Evans and its moral complexity’. It would be difficult not to share the heartbreak of Alfie Evans’ parents. Alfie was a 23-month-old child […]

Categories: Britain, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: alfie evans, best interests, death, harm, justice system, law, medical ethics, morality

DEATH AND MORAL CONFUSION

August 6, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of the article I wrote last month for the New York Times on the contrasting court cases of Charlie Gard and Noel Conway and the moral confusions they reveal about our attitudes to death. (I cannot publish my NYT articles on Pandaemonium until the month after they are published in the newspaper.) Charlie Gard died last week. It was a tragic case in which, as I suggest, there was no single right answer; there were valid […]

Categories: Britain, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: assisted dying, charlie gard, death, julian savulescu, morality, noel conway, peter singer

CHARLIE GARD AND OUR MORAL CONFUSIONS

July 20, 2017 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the New York Times on the contrasting cases of Charlie Gard and Noel Conway: Usually, a decision about a child’s best interests involves two alternative futures. Is he better off with his mother or father after a divorce? Is it in his interests to stay with parents who may be having difficulties, or to be taken into care? . In Charlie Gard’s case, though, the choice is between a possible future and a […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: assisted dying, charlie gard, death, ethics, law