Margaret A. Farley, 1 May 1995

All religious and cultural traditions have incorporated moral assessments of choices regarding human death. These choices appear in contexts of individual self-defense, war, criminal sanctions, debility and old age, and a variety of other situations where life and death appear to conflict and the balance between them threatens to rile in the direction of death. Though clear norms have governed many of these contexts, ambivalence and ambiguity have not always been overcome.