How to Die if Death Is Planned?
This essay looks at two significant changes that dying and death are undergoing in today’s pluriform and secularizing world. One is that wishes of autonomy during life are now increasingly being extended to autonomy over when and how to die. Through euthanasia a person can decide to avoid the painful and miserable condition that precedes the end of life. A second major change is that those who die and those who stay behind may have diverse beliefs and expectations about what happens at and after death. The rather uniform rituals that used to be performed before and after death in, for instance, the Christian world does no longer reflect the beliefs of a large number of people who face death today. This brief essay explores the intertwinement of these two developments around death and dying in today’s society, with a focus on the country of the author, the Netherlands.