La « vertu » des directives anticipées

Advances directives, established by Leonetti's law, are written instructions, which express what a person wishes about his end of life. Our goal in this article is to enlighten the philosophical basis for them. Usually, they are justified by the respect for the autonomy. However, this principle does not give an account for all kinds of directive. It leads indeed to think that directives that only mention a meaningful value or virtue are unusable. We use the framework of the virtue ethics to propose an alternate point of view on the advance directives, and particularly on those which resort to general values or virtues, in order to show that they can be considered as very useful.