Abstract
The attempt to characterize the modes of death in terms of the personal pronoun originates in the life attitude that rights of patients shuld be respected against the dehumanization tendency sometimes found in medical practices. In this regard, the characterization of patients' death in terms of the second pronoun (you) rather than the first (I) or the third pronoun (he or she) is understandable. However, we feel some doubt about the adequacy of labeling the mode of human death with personal pronouns when we begin to ask the validity of the characterization from the standpoint of the meaningful mode of nursing. The reason why we feel this way is that the very attempt to characterize the mode of death in terms of the personal pronoun seems to be based on the mechanical and dualistic reductionism of modern science leading to the dehumanization tendency of medical practices. In confronting various modes of deaths of patients in medical practices, what we are asked for is to capture the holistic mode of human beings rather than to characterize them in terms of personal pronouns. In order to capture the real mode of a person who is dying, we have to avoid the objectification of her or his existence, or rather, to take part in the process of his or her dying mode intersubjectively. This indicates that we as medical professionals have to change our scientifically oriented life attitude into the holistically encountered life attitude toward persons who are dying.
