Coming to terms with perfection: the case of Terri Schiavo

Our project is intended to supplement and extend research that emphasizes how the rhetoric informing the euthanasia debate admits a call of conscience and how this call would have us act heroically as we acknowledge what is arguably some particular truth that is at work in the debate (e.g., only God has the right to take a life). The relationship between conscience, acknowledgment, heroism, truth and rhetoric, we submit, presupposes the workings of our metaphysical desire for perfection--a desire that is definitely on hand when debating issues of the 'good life' and the 'good death.' The relationship constitutes a rhetoric of perfection that plays an essential role in the euthanasia debate as a whole. Such a rhetoric lies at the heart of the recent and much publicized case of Terri Schiavo--a young woman who lived in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years before she was allowed to die the 'dignified' death that she supposedly wanted all along. Keywords: Rhetoric of Perfection; Euthanasia Debate; Terri Schiavo; Right to Die; Right to Life