In Defense of Suicide
An Experiment in Reason
Suicide is a unique taboo. It is an untouchable topic from one front. The only mentions of suicide are that of discouragement or a very analytical approach of certain instances of suicide à la Epstein. The knee jerk response to condemn suicide is purely emotional and never rational and the only attempts to discourage suicide that are not purely emotional are from completely dogmatic religious orders (who might I add do not actually consider suicide to be a sin in their religious texts but their members project their feelings on the matter.)
Sin and crime are often denoted by the harm they cause to others, the gross offense to our nature, and the hatred for those who participate in these sins or crimes. For instance a thief hurts others, someone who is a sexual deviant generates disgust in pious, and murderers are hated. The hatred of murderers is actually a particular hatred because we do not hate murderers for ending life, but for ending the life of someone who intended to keep on living. The murder victim, if capable, is fighting for their life. The perpetrator of suicide is not fighting for the life, but fighting the struggles in their life or of their consciousness. On a side note we blame jurors and judges, not executioners. We blame illness or accident, not a doctor taking a patient off of life support. If anything we should “blame” the death on the circumstance, not on the one dying.
We know suicide is not criminal in our hearts, emotionally we don’t treat it as such. It’s not done unto others; with the exception of certain methods it is not viscerally disgusting; People who commit suicide are not hated like criminals are either, they are missed. One could say that they “hate” someone for killing themselves and leaving this world early, but you can have the same hatred when someone who died of natural causes died too soon, so the hatred is not unto the dead but unto death. We wish those in our lives who commit suicide to be brought back to life, to be near us again, to laugh and hug us again. We don’t wish ill things for them. These people are not criminals.
Many men of myth have ended their story by ending their life but we never hate them for it. These suicides are seen as noble, sympathetic, and even heroic. Think Ajax and Aegeus in Greek myth, Samson in the Old Testament, and Russel Casse (Randy Quaid) in Independence Day. Ajax kills himself out of shame after going mad, Aegeus kills himself out of grief from thinking his son has died, and Samson and Russel kill themselves as a sacrifice to defeat an enemy on behalf of their people. From a certain perspective one could even say The Christ allowing himself to be killed for the sins of humanity is a form of suicide. I will not be comparing any suicide to Christ’s sacrifice but it is hard not to mention that he did not avoid death. We sympathize and revere these figures in their acts.
Are the men who ran up the stairwells of the twin towers criminals, or are mothers who shield their children from gunmen condemned for walking straight towards death? No, they merely saw and accepted a path which they saw to be moral that included their own death. The firemen running to their death sought to save the people from the terror of burning alive, the mother sought to protect her children from agony and by doing so died herself without having to live with the death of her children. There are many examples of people causing their own death that we never call suicide because we justify it and there’s no point in listing them all, but they should cause us to question our stigma around suicide. Why should we condemn someone who tries to save themselves? Are we permitted to only die for others and not die for ourselves? Can we not end our own suffering? Can our death only bring relief to others? Is our death a currency only others can cash in?
It’s for good reason men like Seneca and Socrates accepted their suicides with pride. The suicide was not their crime nor their punishment, but their relief.
If you’re thinking about killing yourself keep in mind you probably won’t do it in a heroic way and you’re just a loser who didn’t accomplish anything. Just try harder or get friends who aren’t losers to teach you. If you’re having suicidal thoughts call 988 and seek help. For the rest of us we’ll be dreaming about suicide but our schedule is packed and our assistants couldn’t find a good time for it.
I don’t know you, Dalton, but I think you’re conceiving of suicide badly even in light of the ancient sources you’re drawing from. It’s true, for example, that Socrates approaches his death well, but we also see him explicitly argue against suicide right before drinking the hemlock in the Phaedo. We also see that suicide is a crime in the legal system developed in Plato’s Laws, because it constitutes a harm against both the person of the suicide and the city as a whole. Ajax’s suicide is a tragedy born out of madness, and Aristotle argues that suicide is an injustice committed against one’s political community. It’s just not true that there are no rational arguments against suicide made or possible.
I’m only saying all this because I expect, based on how you approached the topic, that you’ll find these ancient and philosophical sources more persuasive than me as an individual, who you could possibly accuse of just “emotionally” opposing suicide. I would encourage you to dig deeper, and to try to distinguish between acts of valorous self-sacrifice and suicide in a way you don’t here. There is a really excellent book that touches on some of these topics called “Courage: The Politics of Life and Limb.” I hope you’ll give it a read, and I also hope you have people near you to lean on as you work through this topic.