学士編入試験対策 一日一題 －－－ 15

学士編入試験対策　一日一題　－－－　15　[制限時間20分]

次の英文を読み、下の問いに答えなさい。

A well-known difference between the human being and other organisms is that the human being knows it is going to die, and gives this event a significance.  This significance is an important moment within the human being’s individual and cultural self-understanding. (1)A look at Jewish tradition shows that the “last breath” was sometimes counted as being the moment of death, but it is also noted that the absence of spontaneous respiration does not in itself determine death. Western medicine concentrated on the heart: for a long time, the moment of death was defined as cardiac arrest. It is a characteristic of our culture that, with secularization and scientification, religion has increasingly been replaced by medicine as the authoritative body in matters of death. Amongst other things, (2)this medicalization of death gives rise to a remarkable dynamism of interpretation. The brain death definition is the last interpretation of death put forward by medical science. (3)The “brain death criteria” assume that a human being is “dead” when its entire brain has irreversibly ceased to function. This new definition of human death should be viewed with the progress which has been made within the field of intensive care in mind.

（１）        下線部（１）を日本語に直しなさい。

（２）        下線部（２）はどういう事態を意味しているのか、日本語で説明しなさい。

（３）        下線部（３）を日本語に直しなさい。

（４）        人間とその他の生物との違いについて著者はどのように述べているか、日本語で答えなさい。