The lesser evil and the rigged choice
For several years, the debate on the end of life has focussed on the choice between the legalisation of euthanasia and that of assisted suicide, the latter often being put forward as a lesser evil. Beware!
Between two evils, one must choose the lesser. The biased interpretation of this common sense proverb, repeated endlessly, is tantamount to the dialectic figure of a “rigged choice”. A rigged choice consists in presenting an alternative (for example “It’s now or never!”) by masking or denying the existence of other possibilities. The “rigged” choice is a degraded choice. Inherently, the alternatives which aim at choosing between two evils, as if there were no other possibilities, are a form of violence.
They are moreover manipulative when there are many other issues. Parents use rigged choices effectively when attempting to control a child: “Either finish your dinner, or go to bed”. The strength of the alternative is hypnotic: it forces ignorance of other possibilities, until the moment when the rebel child has enough strength of mind to answer back: “I don’t want either”.
Many surveys conducted by the Association for the right to die with dignity (ADMD, pro-euthanasia) use such this strategy. When asking participants to choose between “putting up with unbearable suffering” and “the right to die painlessly”, death is presented as a bearable alternative to unbearable suffering (literally “impossible to bear”).
It is hardly surprising that 9 people out of 10 ” in such case choose “euthanasia”. One needs to step back from the question to see the trap: “Neither one nor the other, I neither seek the right to euthanasia, nor that people should be forced to endure unbearable suffering. They should rather be relieved of their suffering, without however being killed off.” Quite often, the justification for an act in the name of the lesser evil is the result of this type of trap.
The grip of evil is thus extended insidiously. Hannah Arendt noted the fact when analysing the compromises by European democracies and certain personalities with the nazi regime: “Politically, the weakness of the lesser evil argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil are quick to forget that they have chosen an evil.” The acceptance of a lesser evil is often achieved at the expense of masking the good, the possibility of the good. The lesser evil is disguised as the good.
We have noted multiple attempts at simplifying the debate on the end of life, in France, to a rigged choice between euthanasia and assisted suicide. A certain number of carers may have considered that, “under the circumstances”, to avoid euthanasia, they had to resolve themselves to accept assisted suicide.
At least that alternative, they claimed, provides better protection for carers. That is highly debatable: on the one hand, carers would necessarily be involved in the process of assisted suicide (evaluation of patients, diagnosis making them eligible or not for euthanasia, prescription and supply of lethal products) ; on the other hand, according to the analysis by the National Consultative Ethics Committee (CCNE) itself, the legalisation of assisted suicide would lead ipso facto to euthanasia, in the name of the principle of equality, for patients who are incapable of self-administering their death. Paradoxically, the claimed lesser evil therefore becomes the unavoidable means of sliding towards the worse evil, which it claimed to avoid.
In fact, the theory of the lesser evil is often a means of satisfying one’s conscience by exempting an evil from any criticism, it is a way of implicitly accepting instead of attempting to avoid it. In short, there should not in principle be any need to make a choice, nor should one have to choose between “bad and worse” or between the plague and cholera.
Such a forced choice contradicts true freedom. The proverb introducing our reflection is deserving of some explanation: between a hundred evils, the lesser evil should only be chosen if the 101st possibility, even if more demanding and risky, cannot be considered as “good”! To counter the trap of the lesser evil, think rather of the possible choice of good, because, as also noted by Hannah Arendt: “It is in the void of thought that evil takes up position”.
