■다테이와 신야 저/정효운,배관문 역 20150529 『좋은 죽음』，청년사，411p. ISBN-10: 8972782939 ISBN-13: 9788972782933 18000원[교보문고]／[알라딘] ※d01.et.d00.
■Foreword (Korean Version)
Needless to say, if we question a foundation of a claim, there exist incompatible theses and its conflict remains unresolved in some cases. And I understand that what I insist in this book is different from the mainstream arguments made in what we call bioethics which have been developed in parts of the West. Then, does its difference/conflict mean irreconcilable conflict of the gods? I myself often feel great faith that I cannot find persuasive foundation especially concerning the autonomy of the self and autonomous self in such mainstream arguments in bioethics. I do not think that agreement concerning this is made so easily, or must be made.
However, I demonstrate the logic concerning my arguments made in this book. And I do not think what I write in this book presuppose a specific culture. Rather, it is general all over the world without great faith I stated above. Therefore, I think that people in the world understand what I write in this book. I truly hope that many people in Korea read this book.
I discuss the determination of death in this book and the discussion is based on my thought in On Private Property (1st edition was published in 1997 and the second one is in 2013 both of which are written in Japanese). I am planning to publish an English-version e-book of On Private Property by the end of academic year 2014. I would really appreciate your reading it.
As I described that I will publish three books that relate to this theme in the beginning of this book, the second book, Sole Life was published in 2009. It includes a chapter examining theories of Peter Singer and Helga Kuhse, who are regarded as "leading advocates" (see Chapter 1 "Saying / not saying the specialty of human life"). Moreover, the third book, Narratives and Deeds on Life and Death I: Death with Dignity Bill, Resistance, and Bioethics, whose organization is different from the initial plan, was published in 2012 together with Hitoshi Arima. In the book Arima introduces a utilitarian theory affirming euthanasia. The book also includes statements that approve/disapprove legalization made by various groups from 1978 to 2012. And I am now in a process of writing a book that introduces theme-related books and it will be published as an e-book in the near future.
In the end, I thank Hyo-Un Jung and Kwan-Mun Bae who suggest and conduct publication of this Korean version book. I made presentation at a symposium hosted by the Humanities Korea of Hallym University, which led to the Memorandum of Understanding made between the Humanities Korea of Hallym University and the Research Center for Ars Vivendi of Ritsumeikan University whose director is I. This plan of publication of the Korean version book comes from this relationship. I hope we keep good relationship with them and make fruitful research achievements. Our center, Research Center for Ars Vivendi has trilingual homepages, e-mail newsletters and Facebook pages (English and Japanese in addition to Korean). They provide information concerning this book and the homepage has my Korean page. I would really appreciate it if you would look at these and let me know any requests of information provision and questions. I would like to respond to them as much as possible.
Shin'ya Tateiwa
■Afterword by Translators
What death is ”good death”? Why do people regard death as “good death”? Is it really “good death” that choosing one’s death by oneself for death with dignity?
The author of this book turns up issues included in the cognition that generally regards death with dignity as “natural, responsible and self-determined death”. And he insists that we should not force discontinuation of “wasted life extension” but try to create a society where “everyone can live as long as they would like to live”. In this book the author at first considers what needs to be considered before death with dignity is legalized in Japan. That is, the title of this book Good Death (?) has a paradoxical meaning by posing a question to what is being said as “good death”.
Behind this book are so-called mainstream discussions in bioethics which have been developed mainly in the West. The author critically examines each of the discussions. Especially, the author’s criticism focuses on the fact that researchers in the West accept death with dignity naturally based on the autonomy of the self. However, there are people who insist self-determination stronger than anyone, such as people with severe disabilities. In the long social movements they have usually made a plea to “self-determination”. Still, they do not affirm self-determination of death easily. It seems that this is one of the clues the author questions the Western insistence of death with dignity which brings up self-determination. This is a unique approach of the author who has been actively involved in disability movements for a long time.
Although the author is an orthodox sociologist, he once distantiates the normal way of presenting an evidence with statistics and numbers. Rather, he claims that we need to keep questioning the actual issues over death dignity philosophically and ethically since what exists now is only the actual issues. While the author analyzes the actual situation from the viewpoint of sociologists, he also would like philosophers and ethicists to reconsider the actual issues.
Is there any right reason that determines a person’s life-or-death toward his/her life threatening treatment? In Japan various discussions have been made since 1980s concerning organ transplantation/brain death, or the insistence whether excessive treatments are necessary for the elderly. The author deals with each of the discussions and discuss each of them thoroughly.
Recently, the word, “meaningless life-extension medicine”, has been popular in Korea, too. What this means is both that a treatment is meaningless for life extension and that it also covers the meaning of “medicine for meaningless life extension”. In most cases the issue is the system because it relates to cost and profit. We would like you to read and consider whether “good death” and “death with dignity” are issues of value judgement or affirming them means consistency with the logic that covers this society’s priorities before affirming and praising them unconditionally.
This book Good Death (?) and the next book Sole Life are linked together in pairs not only for the tiles but the contents. To put it simply, we should not force “good death” and accept “sole life”. These two books belong to the category of academic books. The author presents very clear summary from the beginning and all introductions of each chapter/section always repeat the discussions which are previously described and then moves to the next discussion. Nonetheless, honestly speaking it was not easy for us to trace his sophisticated criticisms against statements over bioethics. Moreover, a flood of notes which sometimes overwhelm the body of this book annoyed us. Still, as the author says, we hope this book is fruitful in that his insistence which is probably very simple and natural leads to many discussions. We feel that our expression like this imitates his expression.
Translation of this book was planned as one of the library of the Humanities Korea of Hallym University. We invited Prof. Shin’ya Tateiwa to the first international academic symposium in June 2013 hosted by the Humanities Korea with the support of National Research Foundation of Korea. This lead to our visit of the Research Center for Ars Vivendi of Ritsumeikan University in February 2014 and research collaboration meeting there. Since this enables us to have the Memorandum of Understanding with the Research Center for Ars Vivendi, we truly appreciate Prof. Tateiwa’s various efforts. Prof. Tateiwa accepted our suggestion of translating his book with pleasure and he always responded to exchanges of e-mails with us with respect in the process of translation. In the end, we are thankful for Jin-Tak Oh, the director of the Humanities Korea, who supported us from the planning stage of this book, Bu-Yong Lee a lecturer of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, who reads a rough translation draft with us, and Yeong-Rim Lee, staff of Chungnyunsa（Publishing), who edited in an easy-to-read manner. We truly hope this book provides an opportunity for people to consider death with dignity seriously in the Korean society, too.
May 2015
Hyo-Un Jung, Kwan-Mun Bae
UP: September 28, 2015 REV: October 1, 2015
