Jak umiera człowiek?

Human life is a process. It is the process of becoming and ceasing to be a human being andit is a process of becoming and ceasing to be a human person. I accept the distinction betweenbeing a human being and being a human person and distinguish further – future, present,and past human persons. The main problem of the paper is when do we become past persons?Having distinguished and presented four distinctive modi of human dying (hospital death, hospicedeath, nursing home death, and death at home) I concentrate on the problem of gooddeath and ask what are the goods of the dying person. The goods are: life, the good of themind, the good of the body, the good of the communal life, and (paradoxically) the good ofdeath. The decision who is a terminal patient is a moral one and implies two different strategieswith regard to life: the affirmation of life, and the affirmation of death strategy. The firstone, based on the concept of respect for human life, ignores the value of human dignity. Thesecond one assumes that we should respect not only human biological life, but the whole humanperson, and we cannot respect the whole person if we do not respect her freedom of choiceand her right to self-respect. Care for the artificially sustained but absolutely personless humanlife, is not a proper terminal care but rather is post-terminal care, and as such requiresother, special justification.