Epilogue

Abstract

Abstract This chapter shows that the proper place of consent is much more modest than often supposed. Sometimes the rights at stake are exceedingly strong and the moral importance of not violating them without consent is likewise. (Consent to sex is like that.) Other times the rights in question morally pale in comparison to other moral values at stake (as when you need to use someone else’s pen without their permission to sign a document saving someone else’s life). Instead of fixating on ‘advance directives’ as a form of ‘conditional consent’ to be followed slavishly, doctors should instead feel much freer simply to do what is ‘in the best interests’ of their patients. Advance medical directives, like bequests, might better be seen merely as ‘expressions of a person’s wishes’ that we ought to abide by purely out of respect for that person.