“Almost always, when it was announced to him that such a person had died quickly and without suffering, he asked the gods for him and for his family a similar euthanasia. – it is the very Greek term which he used to use. » Augustus, whose remarks Suetonius reports in Lives of the Twelve Caesars, sees his wish granted. He died at the age of 75, a seemingly natural, peaceful, quick and almost painless death, surrounded by his loved ones – the very definition of “euthanasia”, an expression meaning “good death”, which the Roman emperor borrowed to ancient Greek.
Two thousand years later, many people could take up the words of the first Roman emperor. The debate on what can and must be done to accompany the last moments, reopened recently with the announcement of a citizens’ convention on the end of life, which will begin its work on December 9, opposes the supporters of active aid or passive to die (the contemporary meaning of the term “euthanasia”) and the promoters of palliative care (aimed at relieving the physical and psychological suffering of patients until death). These two approaches, if they diverge on the modalities and purposes of the care provided to the dying, nevertheless share the same hope: that of a serene and peaceful death.
“The archetype of a good contemporary death is an end of life that is without suffering, without pain, surrounded and appeased”, confirms Michel Castra, professor of sociology at the University of Lille and author of Die well. Sociology of palliative care (PUF, 2003). “This archetype is declined on the side of voluntary euthanasia by the suppression of the agony, and on the side of palliative care by the mastery of techniques to fight against pain, to soften the agony. »continues the sociologist.
But to “soften” the agony is already almost to do without it – since the term itself is irremediably impregnated with physical and moral suffering. Inherited from ancient Greek agon (“the assembly” gathered for the games, and by extension the confrontation, the combat, the struggle), which has become agonia (anguish, mental struggle), the term was taken up in Latin by Christian authors to designate the anguish and apprehension of Christ praying in the Garden of Olives the night before his arrest and the start of the Passion. Synonymous with extreme suffering preceding death, the agony is erased today by the expression “end of life”.
This replacement progressive may seem quite natural, like the logical consequence of an age-old desire: to spare oneself the suffering of the last moments. A desire that modern medicine would now be able to fulfill. Initiated by the founding works of Philippe Ariès and Michel Vovelle in the 1970s, the history of attitudes towards death teaches us, however, that this is not the case, and that each era has forged its own expectations in the face of this special time in life.
You have 87.24% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.