Shannon Seng Dian Hui, 16

School: Dunman High School

Topic: "In giving, we receive; and in saving lives, we honour our own." (Anonymous)

Award: Open Category, 2025

Honouring Life Beyond Death: Organ Donation 

The anonymous aphorism, “In giving, we receive; and in saving lives, we honour our own,” evokes a paradox central to the ethics of self-sacrifice: that in relinquishing a part of oneself, whether in life or death, one affirms a deeper, perhaps more enduring form of selfhood. Nowhere is this dynamic more palpable than in the act of organ donation. Both living and deceased donation constitute more than biomedical interventions. This essay examines the dimensions of organ donation through the lens of this dictum, situating the act of organ donation within the self and the collective. 

The Autonomy of the Living Donor

Living organ donation poses an immediate ethical question: what compels an individual to voluntarily incur bodily harm, pain, and risk for the sake of another's survival, often with no tangible recompense?

Utilitarianism, especially in its classical form as articulated by Jeremy Bentham and later refined by John Stuart Mill, evaluates the morality of actions based on their consequences; specifically, the extent to which they promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number. From a utilitarian perspective, the moral calculus is straightforward. Saving a life outweighs the risks endured by the still-living donor. 

But such a perspective, while true, fails to capture the full experienced reality of organ donation. The decision to donate, particularly to a stranger, cannot be reduced to a utilitarian calculation or cost-benefit analysis. Our sense of self (which is to say our identity and sense of worth) does not exist in isolation or built solely on what benefits us, but rather co-constructed through our relationships with others and our willingness to care for them. Organ donation reflects a form of ethical subjectivity in which the self is constituted not through isolation or self-interest, but through the donor’s capacity for altruism and empathy. To give an organ is not merely to sustain another’s life, but to affirm the donor’s place in a world where being human means being responsible for and compassionate to each other. 

Philosophers such as Emmanuel Levinas have emphasised the ethical primacy of the Other: the idea that responsibility for the Other precedes self-interest. The living donor enacts this philosophy bodily, allowing the needs of the Other to live within them. Yet paradoxically, donors frequently report experiencing not loss, but gain: a heightened sense of purpose, a reinforced identity, and emotional fulfillment. This inversion of the logic of scarcity that by giving of oneself, one becomes more whole, lies at the heart of the quote’s first clause, “In giving, we receive.” It is not only that the recipient lives; it is that the donor’s act of giving becomes moral self-realisation in a shared world. 

Living donation also complicates notions of agency and autonomy. Instead of just freedom from interference, autonomy here means having the power to make meaningful choices like choosing to help someone else, even at personal cost. Donors don’t lose control by giving something up. Rather they exercise it by deciding how their body can make a difference. 

Thus, in such cases living donation reveals its richer dimensions as the freedom to, rather than freedom from. In this sense, “in giving, we receive” is not metaphor but lived reality. 

The Continuance of the Deceased 

What does it mean to save a life after one’s own has ended? The deceased cannot consciously choose to receive the gratitude of the living, yet their final act of giving reconfigures how they are remembered. The deceased cannot consciously choose to receive the gratitude of the living, yet their final act of giving reconfigures how they are remembered— not as victims of mortality, but as agents of renewal. In this sense, “saving lives” becomes an act of posthumous self-honouring. 

While Kantian ethics often emphasise duty for its own sake, deceased donation introduces something that quite closely aligns with Aristotelian eudaimonia: the idea that a life well-lived includes actions that sustain the polis, the community. In this way, organ donation becomes a final act of civic virtue as a gesture that reflects a life oriented toward the good of others, and affirms that the meaning of a life well-lived is found not only in how it ends, but in what it gives. 

There is also a redemptive quality to deceased donation, especially in cases of sudden, senseless loss. For families grappling with unendurable grief, organ donation can offer a sense of purpose in the midst of pain. The idea that parts of a loved one continue to live (literally, biologically live) within others is sustaining. It affirms that the dead are not simply lost, but remembered through the continued life they make possible. 

Our Shared Horizon 

Organ donation also prompts us to ask how societies conceive of the body: whether as a private possession to be guarded, or a shared resource embedded in a communal ethic. In countries with opt-in systems, donation is often framed as a heroic individual choice; in presumed-consent systems like those in Spain or Belgium, donation is normalised, embedded in law as the default expectation. Such policies do not negate autonomy but reframe it within a collective moral vision, where individual rights coexist with communal responsibility. This institutional framework cultivates a cultural ethos in which organ donation becomes not the rare exception, but the quiet norm. This normalisation not only enhances the availability of life-saving organs but also fosters a profound communal benefit. Through the formalisation of both living and deceased donation systems, a collective ethos of shared responsibility and mutual care emerges. This is an ethical ecosystem where individual generosity contributes to the greater good of society as a whole. As such institutionalised organ donation of both living and dead gives rise to collective gain. 

Organ donation also invites us to reconsider how we understand death, not to diminish the pain of loss, but to recognise the quiet hope that can emerge from it. In our modern medicalised society, death is a clinical event. In this context, deceased donation reinscribes death with meaning by weaving it into a broader narrative. It transforms the clinical cessation of life into a source of renewal, a point at which one life’s ending enables the continuation of others. In this way, the donor’s death becomes a fulcrum as an end that gives rise to new chapters in the lives of others. Therefore, organ donation reclaims death as a moment of communal benefit where the passing of one strengthens the future of many. 

The end of a life becomes more than an absence; it becomes a bridge to new beginnings, allowing the legacy of the donor to live on in the bodies and stories of others. 

The Gift Beyond Measure 

“To give” in the context of organ donation is not merely to transfer tissue. It is to affirm, against the entropy of death and the inertia of self-interest, that life is worth sustaining beyond the boundaries of one’s own body. “In giving, we receive” not because there is an immediate reward, but because the act enlarges the moral self, situating it within a network of lives, hopes, and futures. And “in saving lives, we honour our own” not only by prolonging the life of the recipient, but by ensuring that our death, when it comes, is replete with purpose. 

Organ donation thus emerges as a luminous act at the intersection of ethics, legacy, and love; a gesture that dissolves the illusion of isolation and reaffirms the dignity of the human condition.

Disclaimer: Please note that the views and opinions expressed in the essays for the Live On Festival 2025 are those of the participants and are not endorsed by the National Organ Transplant Unit (Ministry of Health).

To learn more about organ donation and organ transplantation in Singapore, please visit www.liveon.gov.sg