IT'S not likely, on the evidence, that Jade Goody has ever seen her life in terms of profound moral and philosophical questions. It's less likely that she has ever imagined answering them. For all the fuss, her Big Brother Shilpa Shetty incident told us more about manipulations, evasions, stunts and voyeurism than it ever explained about racism in Britain. So what are we supposed to understand this morning about privacy, dignity, death and media money?

Were it not for the money - approaching a million, if you believe that - few would think twice about a young, dying woman who has chosen to marry her partner in her last days. Most would probably applaud, and spare a thought for two children soon to be motherless. But who, in these times, is ever allowed to forget the cash, and "careers" such as Ms Goody's?

Best deal with the media paradoxes first. Quite a number of the people who have been deploring Jade Goody for a lack of self-respect seem to know quite a lot about her. The standard excuse/riposte in the tabloid and Big Brother world seems to elude them: no-one forces anyone to watch; no-one is obliged to read the manufactured melodramas. To criticise Ms Goody for selling the most intimate moment in any creature's life, you must first have bought some revealed intimacy.

Who doesn't know as much? Very few, if honest. And the people at OK! magazine are banking on it.

They would not employ the word hypocrisy in their defence, of course. That might be bad for business. But they can answer the censorious with clarity: the human interest story is as old as the yellow press, and what could be more human than death? Those who are shocked must know enough of the tale to be able to form an opinion. They too are paying their money, and taking their choice.

Besides, Ms Goody is engaging in her last media coup, so she says, simply in order to provide for two children. What could possibly be wrong with that? She has no other legacy anyone can name. With a single discernible talent - for drawing attention to herself - she is merely (you might wish to say) putting her affairs in order in the only way she knows.

In any case, whose life, or death, is it anyway?

Not yours, not mine. I might insist, when the time comes, that I want dignity and privacy. Ms Goody seems to think she is doing nothing undignified. In her make-believe career, meanwhile, privacy was the one thing she could never afford. Given her grievous medical condition, in any case, her most distinctive trait recently has been courage.

So: a brave, caring mother asserting her right to make what she can, while she can, of her opportunities and her person? A mother, equally, who sprang from a lousy background, who was granted precious little in the way of education, who has endured the unstoppable spread of cancer through her body, and who faces certain death at the age of 27? Even for the tabloids which once treated the pursuit of Ms Goody as a blood-sport, it is difficult to fit words such as "slag", that old favourite, into these descriptions. Some of the redtops have gone noticeably quiet as a result.

Still, this is a death we are discussing, not expulsion from the Big Brother house. Jade Goody asserts her rights. Do we, observing, willing or unwilling, therefore relinquish our own rights while OK! and cable TV sponsor the spectacle, while Max Clifford, Svengali to the lower celeb, orchestrates the publicity?

We impose censorship in many areas of life. Press and TV cannot, despite any impression left by recent media "scandals", say and do, act and display, as they please. The idea of public decency might seem antique if we have reached the point at which, finally, someone is actually dying to be on television. But most of us retain our thresholds. Most, if pushed, would say that this or that "shouldn't be allowed".

There have been cases of suicides performed for encouraging internet audiences. Shock, horror, anger and police inquiries have followed. So does the fact that Ms Goody will enjoy excellent medical care with her family around her make the sole difference? Why is one way of ending a life in the public eye, a choice defended as a private right, different from another?

The question is anything but simple. Last week the prime minister, Gordon Brown, gave support and praise to Ms Goody. He wished her well and said that "everyone has their own way of dealing with these problems". Not so long ago the same Mr Brown was refusing to legislate to protect the families of those who choose assisted suicide. Rights, dignity, privacy, choice: how are these reconciled?

Just as public opinion appeared to be swinging behind Jade Goody (or at least failing to find a voice), Debbie Purdy was losing her case at the Appeal Court in London. She has multiple sclerosis and no intention of losing control of her death, or of its consequences. When the time comes she intends to travel to Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal. All she wants, meanwhile, is for a British court or a British government to declare that her partner will not be prosecuted as a result.

Brown fears the implications and complications of such a reform. As a result, the Appeal Court said that "no further guidance" was necessary. Police and prosecutors are reassuring, yet publicly non-committal. But no-one will grant Debbie Purdy the protection she seeks as she, too, faces death.

What of that inevitability? Allow Jade Goody ever decent motive, but surely her media show devalues the significance of mortality? Doesn't death lose its universal meaning when Max Clifford is issuing the press releases and organising the deals? If all taboos are gone, what becomes of human society? A grotesque sort of performance art on a tape loop? A fresh incentive for the next person desperate to attract the public's attention?

Many people, too many, die badly, the old in particular. Even in the 21st century, some hospitals have yet failed to learn enough about dignity, sensitivity and privacy. Some attitudes towards pain management remain barbaric. If Ms Goody's choices simply persuade the witless that death and bereavement are equivalent to an OK! magazine spread, that will count as a poor bargain.

Still: it's her life, and death, anyway. Numerous terminally ill people have kept diaries and composed memoirs, many of them illuminating and moving. Sky has broadcast footage of an assisted death as it happened. Is Jade Goody different because she adds neither insights nor wisdom? Most of us have attended funerals at which the man of God knew nothing whatever of the deceased. Only rarely is anyone outraged or inclined to say that a rite of passage has been debased.

Ms Goody is judged, it seems, because she insists on being as "tawdry" in death as in life. Instead of a decent, respectable insurance policy for her children's sake she has OK! and a large cheque. Cancer or no cancer, her marriage to Jack Tweed and the public display of her gown would have formed a gossip magazine event at any time. Her lack of education, if it needs saying, does not render the woman stupid. It does not appear - though you never can tell - that she is being used. Perhaps, just perhaps, she has already reconciled herself to death in every important way, and made her farewells. Perhaps, for her, the rest is just business, and no different, essentially, from the writing of a will. Grant her this much: she has very few choices left. Her mistakes, like her life, are her own business.

All of which, family aside, leaves the audience, the people who made Jade Goody what she is. Her soap opera of a career could not have happened without the reality shows, the redtops, the magazines and those whose tastes run to such entertainments. OK!, says the BBC (happy enough to report the details), has contributed £700,000 to the alleged £1 million offered to a dying woman. That extraordinary sum is being paid purely and simply because the publishers have calculated the number of copies they will sell. Their calculations are undoubtedly correct.

But then the story will end. For Jade Goody, there is no alternative, no sequel, no after-show celebrity party. Will the fascinated audience learn something from that? Death is final, the last truth. The manner in which you go matters less than the fact that, late or soon, you go. It's called reality and it has nothing to do with Big Brother or OK! For some people, perhaps a great many people, that will count as a belated discovery.

Imagine: intimations of mortality via the short life and strange career of Jade Goody. But why not? Great thinkers and world religions have struggled to achieve as much. Wrong agents, perhaps.