VE

• Virtue Ethics sees moral actions as those which accord with the virtues. Virtues can be found by looking for the middle ground between the vices of excess and deficiency.
• The virtues most relevant to assisted suicide are

  · Justice

  · Courage

  · Charity

  · Love

  · Mercy

  · Compassion.
• Virtue Ethics sees the purpose of life as trying to achieve Eudaimonia. If a person is in a state where there is no longer any possibility of achieving Eudaimonia, then further living would seem to be pointless, and so it could be argued that assisted suicide would be acceptable in such a case.
• There is also the idea of habit-forming behaviour.

  · Providing assisted suicide might lead you to place less value on life which would be bad habit-forming behavior. Thus offering assisted suicide would be wrong.

  · However, refusing to provide assisted suicide might lead you to be willing to leave people in pain when you have the means to end that pain. Thus, refusing to offer assisted suicide would be wrong