The Weight of Living: Autonomy, Care, and Responsibility for the Self

Abstract

What control should we have over our death? This article re-examines the way this question has been approached in the euthanasia debate by exploring what it means to take responsibility for one’s own life, especially in the face of mental disability. It does so through presenting anthropological research on the role of care, autonomy, and responsibility in L’Arche - a Christian organization in the UK in which people with and without learning disabilities share community – in order to identify, contextualize, and challenge central assumptions about agency in the euthanasia debate.