"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy." Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus
Today is Suicide Prevention Day (though suicide prevention does not prevent suicides...see below). For the past few years now, middle-aged white men were more likely to die by suicide? In 2017, men died by suicide 3.54 times more often than women, and white males accounted for nearly 70-percent of suicide deaths in 2017, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. From Warren Farrell: "From ages 9 to 14, boys' rate of suicide is three times as high as girls'; from 15 to 19, four times as high; and from 20 to 24, almost six times as high. As boys experience the pressures of the male role, their suicide rate increases 25,000%. The suicide rate for men over 85 is 1350% higher than for women of the same age group. Just as life expectancy is one of the best indicators of power, suicide is one of the best indicators of powerlessness."
Suicide has been a topic that philosophers have sometimes grappled with. David Hume claimed that suicide can be compared to retiring from society and becoming a total recluse, which is not normally considered to be immoral. Schopenhauer stated: "As far as I can see, it is only the followers of monotheistic, that is of Jewish, religions that regard suicide as a crime. This is the more striking as there is no forbiddance of it, or even positive disapproval of it, to be found either in the New Testament or the Old; so that teachers of religion have to base their disapprobation of suicide on their own philosophical grounds."
GK Chesterton wrote: "Not only is suicide a sin, it is THE sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world."
Immanuel Kant argued against suicide in Fundamental Principles of The Metaphysic of Morals. In accordance with the second formulation of his categorical imperative, Kant argues that, "He who contemplates suicide should ask himself whether his action can be consistent with the idea of humanity as an end in itself." Kant's theory looks at the act only, and not at its outcomes and consequences, and claims that one is ethically required to consider whether one would be willing to universalize the act: to claim everyone should behave that way. Kant argues that choosing to commit suicide entails considering oneself as a means to an end, which he rejects: a person, he says, must not be used "...merely as means, but must in all actions always be considered as an end in himself." Therefore, it is unethical to commit suicide to satisfy oneself.
Hobbes and Locke reject the right of individuals to take their own life. Hobbes claims in his Leviathan that natural law forbids every man "to do, that which is destructive of his life, or take away the means of preserving the same." Breaking this natural law is irrational and immoral. Hobbes also states that it is intuitively rational for men to want felicity and to fear death most.
"Confucianism holds that failure to follow certain values is worse than death; hence, suicide can be morally permissible, and even praiseworthy, if it is done for the sake of those values. The Confucian emphasis on loyalty, self-sacrifice, and honour has tended to encourage altruistic suicide. Confucius wrote, 'For gentlemen of purpose and men of ren while it is inconceivable that they should seek to stay alive at the expense of ren, it may happen that they have to accept death in order to have ren accomplished.'"~UKessays
Although George Lyman Kittredge states that "the Stoics held that suicide is cowardly and wrong," the most famous stoics—Seneca the Younger, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius—maintain that death by one's own hand is always an option and frequently more honorable than a life of protracted misery.
Philosopher and psychiatrist Thomas Szasz argued that suicide is the most basic right of all. If freedom is self-ownership—ownership over one's own life and body—then the right to end that life is the most basic of all. If others can force you to live, you do not own yourself and belong to them.
Jean Améry, in his book On Suicide: a Discourse on Voluntary Death provides a moving insight into the suicidal mind. He argues forcefully and almost romantically that suicide represents the ultimate freedom of humanity, justifying the act with phrases such as "we only arrive at ourselves in a freely chosen death" and lamenting "ridiculously everyday life and its alienation".[citation needed] Améry killed himself in 1978.
It is interesting to note that Shakespeare's most famous bit has to do with Suicide: "To be, or not to be; that is the question: Whether't is nobler in the mind, to suffer The stings and arrows of outrageous fortune; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And, by opposing, end them?"
"Why is it that men, who are afraid of death, call those who commit suicide 'cowards'”? ~ Of Philosophers and Fools by C.J. Cala
Did you know: "There is no evidence that suicide prevention prevents suicide. The rate of suicide among psychiatrists is at least two or three times that among the general public. Psychiatrists and psychiatric hospitals are regularly found liable for patient suicides (and for harm to others)."~Thomas S. Szasz
Suicide and Philosophy - 50 Books on CDrom
See also: Authors Who Have Defended Suicide, by Forbes Winslow 1840
Suicide in Ancient History
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