#121 - Kathleen Stock - On Assisted Dying, Human Dignity, And The Post-Christian West

Kathleen Stock is a Contributing Editor to UnHerd, a philosopher, author of Material Girls and Do Not Go Gentle, and one of the most forensically precise thinkers in British public life.

A bill is moving through the British Parliament right now that would allow doctors to help their patients die. Its proponents call it assisted dying. Its opponents call it assisted suicide. In Canada, five percent of all deaths now occur through the state-sanctioned equivalent. In Belgium, they have extended it to newborn babies. Canada will allow it for those with mental illness alone from 2027.

The question is not only whether the bill is good policy. It is what it reveals about the kind of society we have become — and what we now believe a human life is worth.

In this episode of Thinking Class, Kathleen Stock examines the case against assisted dying not as a religious argument but as a philosophical one. Stock identifies three types of advocate — the Freedom Lover, the Merciful Helper, and the Utilitarian who sees humans as units — and subjects each position to the kind of rigorous examination its proponents have largely been able to avoid.

We think out lout about: 

• how the word dignity has been captured and inverted by the assisted dying movement, 
• why the safeguards being proposed will not hold, 
• what the Canadian and Belgian trajectories tell us about where this ends, 
• and whether a society that has lost the Christian account of suffering — that it can be meaningful, that it is not simply a problem to be eliminated — has any answer to the question of why a difficult life is worth living.

Kathleen Stock's new book Do Not Go Gentle is available here: https://amzn.to/4bUImaP

Follow Kathleen on X: @Docstockk | Read her at UnHerd

About Thinking Class:
Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, legal scholars, economists, theologians, and public intellectuals. Expect to hear discussion of long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes.

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