Abstract

The traditional approach to determine the human’s death was based on evidence of cessation of breathing and circulation. There has been significant progress in the field of resuscitation during the twentieth century. Since the physicians were able to provide an artificial blood circulation and respiration, it turned out that the current cardiopulmonary standard of human death is insufficient. It was therefore replaced by brain death. Even this position has many problems. One of them is the question which part of the brain must be non-functional. The prevailing definition speaks about the whole brain death. An alternative definition considers determining of the death by non-functioning of higher brain, which is linked to the existence of consciousness. Thus, death is defined as the irreversible cessation of consciousness. As a promising starting point of access to the death appears the understanding of life as a system of mutually reinforcing and conditioning processes. All approaches are linked to a number of ethical issues and, last but not least, to the question what we consider a life worthy of living.