“It’s a huge battle between Eros and Thanatos” : Emmanuel Macron summoned Freud and the theory of the psychoanalyst on the life and death drive, at the conclusion of the dinner he devoted to the end of life, Thursday, March 9, at the Elysée. At the presidential table, sixteen people debated the subject for four hours from an ethical, philosophical and even metaphysical angle. Over dessert, Mr. Macron mentioned the “saving doubt”, the need to « maturation » on topics « complexes » that he wants “decant”. He let it be understood that he would give himself time, after the submission of the opinion of the citizens’ convention on the end of life on April 2, to decide on the advisability of opening the site of a decriminalization of the euthanasia or assisted suicide.
The six representatives of the religions invited have found a president “listening”. The exchanges were “exciting”told the Monde Haim Korsia, Chief Rabbi of France, « riches », appreciated his Catholic counterpart, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the Conference of Bishops of France. The religious insisted on the need, confides Mr. Korsia, to listen to the caregivers, some of whom are reluctant to practice the lethal gesture. “We must respect the caregivers who cannot be asked to kill. We cannot put them in contradictions that are difficult to live with”insisted Eric de Moulins-Beaufort.
“We are in a secular state, and we are not here to oppose changes in society, but I recalled the main principles of Islam according to which suicide cannot be considered by a believer”relates Chems-Eddine Hafiz, rector of the Great Mosque of Paris. “Laws write the values of society”remarked for his part Christian Krieger, president of the Protestant Federation of France, who wished, like his counterparts, that the message sent to those who suffer at the end of life be that of “support and accompaniment” towards them. All spoke of the need to strengthen the supply of palliative care that is unevenly distributed across the territory.
“Distressing patients”
A specialist on the subject, the philosopher Fréderic Worms expressed a position that he had entrusted to the Monde on the eve of dinner: “We need a very firm, very rigorous republican legal framework that hears requests for assistance in dying for exceptional cases that have reached the end of a care pathway., believes the director of the Ecole Normale Supérieure. Citizens inevitably project themselves into tragic cases. They would be reassured to know that, for situations that go beyond palliative care, there is a legal framework that provides for the possibility of active assistance in dying. » Such a frame “would reinforce, he explains, trust in palliative care that necessarily surrounds these situations”.
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