The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Suicide

Suicide is a puzzling and unsettling phenomenon. Because of others’ inability to directly engage with the subjective world of the person who commits suicide, it seems that suicide evades easy explanation. This quality of the inexplicability of suicide is strikingly captured by Jeffrey Eugenides in his novel The Virgin Suicides. In that novel, the narrator describes the reaction of five teenage boys to the suicide of their sisters. The boys in the story keep a collection of the dead girls’ belongings, through the examination of which they try, in repeatedly futile attempts, to fathom the nature of the girls’ death.

Suicide*

The question of suicide is the only truly serious philosophical problem. —Albert Camus

Introduction

Suicide is a puzzling and unsettling phenomenon. Because of others’ inability to directly engage with the subjective world of the person who commits suicide, it seems that suicide evades easy explanation. This quality of the inexplicability of suicide is strikingly captured by Jeffrey Eugenides[1] in his novel The Virgin Suicides[2]. In that novel, the narrator describes the reaction of five teenage boys to the suicide of their sisters. The boys in the story keep a collection of the dead girls’ belongings, through the examination of which they try, in repeatedly futile attempts, to fathom the nature of the girls’ death.

In the end we had pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how we put them together, gaps remained, oddly shaped emptinesses that mapped the puzzle into the shape of a map, like countries we could not name. (Eugenides 1993, 246)

Undoubtedly, the very challenge of understanding suicide is alone responsible for the wide array of attitudes toward suicide found in the history of Western civilization: embarrassment, denial, heroic glorification, sympathy, anger, moral or religious condemnation. Suicide is now an object of interdisciplinary scientific study, with fields such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, and psychiatry each offering important perspectives on the issue. Particularly promising advances have been made in our scientific understanding of the neurological basis of suicidal behavior (Stoff and Mann 1997) and the mental conditions associated with it. Nevertheless, it seems that certain questions about suicide lie at least partly outside the domain of science, and indeed, suicide has been a focus of philosophical examination at least since Plato. For philosophers, suicide presents theological, ethical, and psychological questions, among which one can point to questions such as: What makes a person’s behavior suicidal? What are the motives for such behavior? Is suicide morally permissible, or is it even obligatory under some exceptional circumstances? Is suicidal behavior rational? This article examines the main currents of historical and contemporary philosophical thought surrounding these questions.

1. Characterizing Suicide

Even when we try to describe a phenomenon such as suicide[3] precisely, the philosophical difficulties pertaining to it appear, surprisingly, and this is also true of attempts to introduce complex issues concerning how to describe and explain human action. And in the case of suicide in particular, identifying a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that fit well with our ordinary use of the term is especially challenging. A further, twofold challenge is that, since suicide is strongly colored by negative moral or emotional connotations, attempts to distinguish suicidal behavior[4] from other behaviors often covertly introduce moral judgments about the aims or moral worth of such behavior. That is, views that examine the nature of suicide often, and sometimes unwittingly, implicate views about the moral or rational justifiability of suicide and thus do not provide value-free[5] descriptions of suicide. Definitions given of suicide "are sometimes dependent upon prior judgments about its justifiability" (Lebacqz & Englehardt 1980, 701). Theorists of the issue of suicide often fail to distinguish between questions about whether an act was suicide and questions about whether the motives for that act were admirable or abhorrent. Most people claim that Hitler clearly committed suicide, while they do not hold this to be true of Socrates and Jesus. (On the question of whether Socrates committed suicide, however, see: Frey 1978) Suicide also carries strongly negative connotations in itself, and our primary inclination is to categorize only self-killings[6] intended to avoid deprivations as suicide, compared to self-killings intended to benefit others (Beauchamp & Childress 1983, 93 94.). Some even go so far as to deny the possibility of classifying self-killing motivated by altruism[7] under the category of suicide (Margolis 1980).

This conceptual instability complicates moral arguments about the justifiability of suicide by allowing us to "exclude from the definition of suicide" those self-killings that we believe to be something other than suicide, whereas it would be desirable first to arrive at a non-normative and defensible conceptual identification of suicide and then to raise the discussion about the moral merits of various suicidal acts (Kupfer 1990). In other words, "suicide" should not be equated with wrongful self-killing in the way that "murder" is equated with wrongful killing of another, lest we render ourselves incapable of even referring to the possibility of a kind of self-killing that could be morally justified. On the other hand, some philosophers have explicitly accepted the value-laden[8] character of suicide by suggesting that the word "suicide" has, as one of its functions, the acknowledgment of moral responsibility, and as long as disagreement persists about the extent to which agents themselves (as opposed to social conditions, health realities, and such matters) are morally responsible for their own deaths, conceptual disagreements about the nature of suicide will likewise persist (Stern-Gillett 1987).

But assuming that a purely descriptive account of suicide is possible, where should such an account begin? While we are tempted to call any death for which the individual is causally responsible a suicide, such an account of suicide seems vulnerable to obvious counterexamples. A person who is aware of the health risks of smoking or skydiving, yet eagerly engages in these behaviors and consequently dies, can be said to have been causally responsible for their own death without having engaged in suicide. Similarly, an individual who mistakenly gulps down a bottle of salt of hartshorn thinking it is lemonade and consequently dies, though the agent of their own death, has not engaged in suicidal behavior. Moreover, not only are there deaths in which the individual is the agent of their own death that do not count as suicide, but there are also behaviors that lead to death and are reasonably considered suicidal in which the agent is not the cause of their own death, or is only indirectly the cause. This can occur when an individual arranges the circumstances of their own death. A terminally ill patient who asks another person to inject them with a lethal dose of painkillers has, intuitively, committed suicide. Although they are not directly causally responsible for their own death, they seem to be morally responsible for it, because they initiate a chain of events intended to culminate in their death, a chain that cannot be explained without reference to their beliefs and desires. (Voluntary euthanasia[9] can be counted as an instance of such a case.) Similarly, those who "commit suicide by provoking the police to shoot them"[10], though not the cause of their own death, are considered responsible for it. In cases of this sort, if the individual does not initiate such a chain of events, they will not die, or will not bring about the maximal probability of their own death (see: Brandt 1975, Tolhurst 1983, Frey 1981, and for a possible objection to this view see Kupfer 1990).

Furthermore, many philosophers (Fairbairn 1995, chapter 5) doubt whether the actual culmination of an act in death is essential to suicide at all. It is common to speak of "failed" or "non-fatal" suicides, instances in which, due to the suicidal agent's mistaken beliefs (for example, about the lethality of the behavior for attempting suicide), unforeseen factual events, the interventions of others, and the like, the individual's death was not brought about.

Hence, suicidal behavior need not result in death, and the conditions that hasten an individual's death need not [necessarily] be conditions for which the individual is the cause. It follows, therefore, that, first, a correct account of suicide (contrary to Durkheim[11] 1897) must emphasize the non-accidental[12] relationship between suicidal behavior and death (i.e., death is to some extent the aim of the suicidal behavior). Second, what appears necessary for a suicidal act is that the person in question has chosen to die. Suicide is an attempt to impose death upon oneself and "is naturally intentional[14] rather than consequential[13]." (Fairbairn 1995, 58) These conclusions imply that suicide must be based on the intentions of the individual in question (where intention denotes the individual's beliefs and desires about their action). (See Brandt 1975, Tolhurst 1983, Frey 1978, O'Keefee 1981, McMahan 2002, 455) Roughly, an intention-based account (similar to Graber 1981, 57) of suicide is as follows:

1. For person S, behavior B counts as suicidal if

(a) S believed that the behavior B, or a causal consequence of the behavior B, would at least very probably bring about his or her death, and

(b) S's intention in engaging in behavior B was to die.

Although this account of suicide still has its shortcomings, it more precisely articulates the concept of suicide as a self-imposed death that the individual earnestly brings upon themselves.

Condition (a) is a condition related to belief[15], and its purpose is to exclude those deaths resulting from suicide where, although the individual brought about their own death, this was due to their unawareness of the risks associated with their behavior, such as when someone accidentally consumes a lethal dose of a prescription drug. At the same time, condition (a) covers cases such as a terminally ill patient whose death is only indirectly caused by their own request to die. Condition (a) does not require that S knows that behavior B significantly increases their risk of death, nor even that S's beliefs about the lethality of behavior B are correct or even justified. Individuals who attempt suicide often have incorrect beliefs about the lethality of their chosen methods for suicide; for example, these individuals generally greatly overestimate the lethality of over-the-counter anesthetics while vastly underestimating the lethality of handguns. Although a person may wrongly, or based on insufficient evidence, believe that putting their head in an electric oven significantly increases their chance of dying, such behavior is nonetheless considered suicidal behavior. The claim that S believes that behavior B will very probably be a cause of their death is admittedly imprecise, but it enables us to avoid being misled between two incorrect and extreme views. On the one hand, it rules out as suicidal behavior what is in reality only very marginally likely to lead to death (dying in a car is much more likely than dying in a living room) and is in any case rarely used as a method of suicide. On the other hand, the claim that S believes that behavior B will certainly or definitely cause their death is too strict, since (assuming the possibility of intervening conditions, and such matters) there will rarely be a case where behavior B necessarily causes S's death, and indeed, many individuals who attempt suicide are ambivalent about the act, an ambivalence that is in turn reflected in their chosen methods of suicide, which are non-certain methods of dying. This claim also enables us to correctly distinguish suicidal behavior from suicidal gestures[16], that is, behaviors where, although individuals attempt suicide, they do so with the belief that it probably will not cause their death, because these individuals have other goals (for example, gaining the sympathy of others) in mind from performing such gestures.

اما، شرط (ب)، خیلی پیچیده‌تر از اینهاست. زیرا مگر قرار است که شخص با رفتار خود چه چیزی را قصد کند که نتیجه‌ی آن مرگ باشد؟ زیرا نمونه‌هایی وجود دارد که گرچه شرط (الف) در آنها حاضر است، اما اینکه آیا شرط (ب) نیز در این نمونه‌ها حضور دارد یا نه بسیار مسئله‌ساز به نظر می‌رسد. به عنوان مثال، آیا سربازی که به منظور نجات همرزمان خود بر روی نارنجکی که به درون سنگر پرتاب شده است شیرجه می‌زند در رفتاری خودکُشانه درگیر شده است؟ خیلی‌ها، خصوصا طرفداران دوآتشه‌ی آموزه‌ی اثر مضاعف[17]، در پاسخ خواهند گفت «خیر»: به رغم این واقعیت که سرباز می‌دانست که رفتارش احتمالا اسباب مرگ او را فراهم خواهد آورد، قصد او کاستن از شدّت انفجار به منظور نجات دیگر سربازان بوده است، در حالیکه مرگِ او تنها یک نتیجه‌ی پیش‌بینی‌شده از انجام عمل‌اش بوده است. اما اینکه آیا میان نتایجِ پیش‌بینی‌شده[18] و نتایج قصدشده[19] تمایزی آشکار وجود دارد یا تمایزی مبهم و نا-روشن، مسئله‌ایست قابل مناقشه (Glover 1990, ch. 6). (خواه مرگی پیش‌بینی‌شده باشد یا قصدشده البته ممکن است که هیچ ارتباطی به این نداشته باشد که آیا عملی خودکشی است یا نه اما در عین حال به این مسئله مرتبط است که آیا آن خودکشی موجه است یا خیر.) برخی اینگونه استدلال خواهند کرد که سرباز با فرض نسبتا قطعیِ مرگ خود بوسیله‌ی شیرجه رفتن روی نارنجک، حداقل به نحو ضعیفی، در معنای مورد نظر آلوین گولدمَن[20]، مرگ خود را قصد کرده بود (Tolhurst 1983). در عین حال، مواردی که عموما به عنوان خودکشی ملاحظه شده‌اند نمایشگر قصدی کامل برای مردن نبوده‌اند. نظریه‌ی جاریِ روانپزشکی بر این باور است که نمونه‌های بسیاری از رفتارهای خودکُشانه نه به قصد مردن بل به نیّت «فریاد برآوردن برای یاری گرفتن» انجام شده‌اند. در چنین مواردی، شخص مورد نظر تمایلی به مردن ندارد، بل نیّت او بدست آوردن توجه دیگران به چنان نحوی است که در مقابل امکان مرگ مقاومت کند. اما، بیان این مطلب درست به نظر می‌رسد که زمانیکه شخصی که فریاد یاری سر می‌دهد، به رغم اینکه قصد مردن نداشته، اما می‌میرد، مرگ او نه پیش‌بینی‌شده است، چرا که شخص عملا قصد مردن نداشته است، و نه کاملا تصادفی، چرا که شخص به شکلی آگاهانه درگیر رفتاری شده است که باور داشته به احتمال بسیار قوی اسباب مرگ او را فراهم خواهد آورد، و مرگ او را در معنایی آشکار به امری تبدیل می‌سازد که خودِ او آنرا بر خویش تحمیل کرده است. (اما بنگرید به: Graber 1981, 58) چنین موردی، در کنار خودکشی نیّت‌مند و مرگ تصادفی، می‌تواند بر نیاز به مقوله‌ی سومّی در دسته‌بندی خودکشی دلالت کند (Cholbi 2007).

Here, and in the concept of “intending to die,” a genuine logical difficulty persists, because acting in order to bring about one’s own death almost always has some other aim or justification. That is, death is generally not chosen for its own sake, nor is it the end of suicidal behavior. Suicidal behavior can have a number of different aims [other than death itself]: for example, relief from physical pain, relief from psychological anguish, martyrdom for a moral cause, fulfilling duties understood as social obligations (e.g., sati[21] and seppuku[22]), avoiding judicial execution, avenging others, protecting the interests or well-being of others. (For a classification of different types of suicide, see: Fairbairn 1995, ch. 9) Thus, individuals who attempt suicide often do not intend death per se; rather, death is seen by these individuals, rightly or wrongly, as a means to accomplish other ends (Graber 1981, 56). In short, there appear to be no compelling instances of “non-instrumental” self-killings[23] in which “the person’s primary intention is simply to end his life and there is no independent objective for engaging in such an act.” (O’Keefee 1981, 357) But the claim that the individual must desire to die (Fairbairn 1995, ch. 6) also fails to resolve this issue, for again, what the individual desires is probably not death itself but a consequence of death. Both the soldier who jumps on a grenade and the depressed individual who issues a “cry for help” may not desire to die, insofar as they could prefer that their desires be satisfied without dying or placing themselves at risk of death. Yet, this is compatible with their willingly choosing to die in order to satisfy their aims.

This brief attempt at the conceptual analysis of suicide reveals the failure of such a project, and as we observed, vague concepts such as intention and compulsion replaced the vague concept of suicide. We may be drawn to analyses of suicide that are increasingly convoluted or impractical (Donnelly 1998, 20), or we may agree that suicide is an “open-textured”[24] concept whose instances are held together only by weak family resemblance in the Wittgensteinian sense of the word, and thus resist analysis in terms of precise logical conditions. (Windt 1981)

An alternative to providing necessary and sufficient conditions for suicidal behavior is to view it along a continuum. Most suicide researchers[25] in the psychological sciences treat suicide not as an either/or[26] type of concept but as a gradable[27] concept, that is, they grade suicide based on the individual’s beliefs, the intensity of their intentions, and their attitudes. The Beck Scale[28] for conceptualizing suicide is perhaps the best example of this approach. (See Beck 1979)

2. Highlights of Historical Thought

2.1 Traditional and Classical Views on Suicide

Philosophical discourse on suicide dates back at least to the time of Plato. However, at least until the Stoics[29], suicide attracted the attention of philosophers in the traditional Mediterranean world not in a systematic but in a sporadic manner. As John Cooper has noted (Cooper 1989, 10), neither ancient Greece nor the Latin world had a single word that adequately translated the modern term ‘suicide,’ even though most ancient city-states had prohibited self-killing as an illegal act.

Plato explicitly discusses suicide in two works. First, in the Phaedo, Socrates, along with the Pythagoreans, cautiously endorses the view that suicide is always wrong because it represents the release of our selves (i.e., our souls) from a “guard-post” (i.e., our bodies) in which the gods have placed us as a form of punishment (Phaedo 61b-62c). Later, in the Laws, Plato claimed that suicide is disgraceful and that those who commit suicide should be buried in unmarked graves. However, he recognized four exceptions to this principle: (1) when a person’s mind is morally corrupted and therefore his character cannot be saved (Laws IX 854a3-5), (2) when suicide, as in the case of Socrates, is carried out by judicial order, (3) when suicide is compelled by an overwhelmingly unavoidable misfortune, (4) when suicide results from shame at participating in grossly unjust actions (Laws IX 873c-d). Suicide under such conditions can be permissible, but if carried out under conditions other than these permissible ones, according to Plato, it is an act of cowardice or laziness and is committed by individuals too weak to navigate their lives through life’s vicissitudes. Aristotle’s only discussion of suicide (Nicomachean Ethics 1138a5-14) is a difficult and perplexing passage in the Nicomachean Ethics where he attempts to explain how suicide can be unjust and deserving of punishment if the person who could be treated unjustly is the very person who commits suicide. He concludes that suicide is in some way a wrong against the state, but does not elaborate on the nature of this wrong or the specific errors committed by those who take their own lives.

Perhaps the most striking point about Plato’s and Aristotle’s texts on suicide is the relative absence of attention to the well-being or autonomy[30] of the individual. Both of them largely restrict the justifications offered in favor of suicide to considerations about the individual’s social roles and duties. The Stoics, by contrast, largely held that the moral permissibility of suicide has nothing to do with the moral character of the individual contemplating it. Rather, they believed that whenever the means for living a life in which one can naturally flourish are not present, suicide can be justified, regardless of the virtue or character of the individual in question. Our natures, in order to bring us happiness, require certain “natural advantages”[31] (such as bodily health), and the wise person who recognizes that these advantages may be absent from the scene of his life realizes that ending his life is neither a factor for increasing his moral virtue nor for diminishing it.

When a person’s circumstances contain a preponderance of things in accordance with nature, it is appropriate for him to remain alive; but when he possesses or sees a majority of the contrary things, it is appropriate for him to depart from life.... Even for the foolish, and also for the miserable, it is appropriate to remain alive if they are possessed of a preponderance of those things which we consider to be in accordance with nature. (Cicero, III, 60-61)

Thus, not only concerns about one’s duties to others may serve as a justification for suicide, but also the individual’s own personal good. Seneca[32], the Roman Stoic who was himself forced to commit suicide, is even bolder, going so far as to claim that since “it is not merely living, but living well that is good,” therefore, the wise person “lives as long as he ought, not as long as he can.” For Seneca, it is not the quantity, but the quality of life that matters.

2.2 The Christian Prohibition

Perhaps the most significant event in the philosophical history of suicide was the rise of institutional Christianity[33], for Christian teachings have, on the whole, held that suicide is morally wrong, despite the fact that no text in Scripture explicitly condemns suicide. Although the early Church Fathers[34] opposed suicide, it is commonly believed that St. Augustine provided the first full justification for Christianity's prohibition of suicide (Amundsen 1989). He viewed this prohibition as an extension of the Fifth Commandment:

This law, rightly interpreted, even prohibits suicide, where it says 'Thou shalt not kill.' This is proved especially by the omission of the words 'thy neighbor,' in the commandment forbidding false witness against him: 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.' In the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill,' no limiting addition is made, nor any exception proposed in favor of anyone, least of all in favor of him for whom the commandment is given! (Augustine, book I, chapter 20)

Augustine thus concluded that suicide is an unforgivable sin. Later, St. Thomas Aquinas defended this prohibition on three grounds. (1) Suicide is contrary to natural self-love, whose aim is our preservation. (2) Suicide injures the community of which the individual is a part. (3) Suicide violates our duty to God, for God has given us life as a gift, and in the act of suicide we violate His right to determine the duration of our earthly life (Aquinas 1271, part II, Q64, A5). This conclusion was codified in the medieval doctrine that suicide nullifies our human relationship with God, for [it was believed that] our control over our body was limited to usus (possession, employment), while God's dominium (right of ownership, authority) over it was preserved. Medieval law and practice sanctioned the desecration of the suicide's corpse, as well as the confiscation of property and the denial of burial in Christian cemeteries, as penalties for suicide.

The rediscovery of numerous classical texts from antiquity was one of the impetuses of the Renaissance[35], but most Renaissance intellectuals generally affirmed the Church's position on suicide and showed little sympathy for the more tolerant attitudes toward suicide found among the pagans of antiquity. Two notable exceptions in the sixteenth century were Thomas More[36] and Michel de Montaigne[37]. In his work Utopia[38], More seems to advocate voluntary suicide for those suffering from painful and incurable diseases, although the satirical and fantastical tone of the work raises doubts about whether he actually supported this proposal in reality. Montaigne, in his Essays[39], recounts various anecdotes of individuals who take their own lives and interweaves these tales with quotations from Roman authors who were eulogists of suicide. While Montaigne's general skepticism prevented him from adopting a firm moral stance on suicide, he shows agreement only with the position of orthodox Christianity[40], and conceptualizes the matter not in traditional theological terms but as a matter of personal judgment or conscience (Ferngren 1989, 160-161).

Protestant reformers, including Calvin[41], while condemning suicide with the same certainty as the established Church, nevertheless insisted on the possibility that God might deal mercifully with the person committing suicide and permitted repentance in this matter. Interest in moral questions related to suicide was particularly strong in this period among Protestants in England, especially the Puritan sect[42]. However, by the late seventeenth century, the traditional Christian view was remarkably dominant, to the extent that a liberal dissenting thinker such as John Locke[43], believing that although God has granted us our natural personal liberty, this liberty does not include the freedom to destroy oneself (Locke 1690, ch. 2, para. 6), echoed the earlier Thomistic arguments.

It is generally likely that the first comprehensive modern defense of suicide is John Donne's Biathanatos[44] (1607). Although Biathanatos was not written for publication, it nevertheless seeks to demonstrate, by appealing to an array of theological and modern and traditional legal sources, that Christian teaching should not hold that suicide is necessarily sinful. Indeed, his critique is an internal one, and following the logic of Christian thought, it suggests that suicide is not against the laws of nature, the laws of reason, or the laws of God. If suicide were against the laws of nature, which command self-preservation, then all acts of self-sacrifice and abstinence would be similarly unlawful. Moreover, there may be events in which reason recommends suicide. Finally, Donne considers that not only does the biblical text lack an explicit condemnation of suicide, but Christian teaching has permitted other forms of killing, such as martyrdom, capital punishment, and killing in wartime (Minois 1999, 20-21).

2.3 The Enlightenment and Modern Developments

Donne's sophistical treatise[45] is an early example of the libertarian tendencies of the Enlightenment[46] in the 1700s. As suicide was examined through the lenses of science and psychology, the Thomistic natural-law[47] approach to suicide came under increasing attack. While Christian theology viewed suicide as a "relationship between the Devil and the sinful individual" (Minois 1999, 300), Enlightenment philosophers sought to understand suicide in secular terms, as facts about individuals, their natural psychologies, and their particular social environment. David Hume[48], in an unpublished essay entitled "Of Suicide" (1783), articulated this new approach with a direct assault on the Thomistic position. He regarded traditional attitudes toward suicide as obscure and superstitious. According to the Thomistic argument, suicide violates the order God has established for the world and usurps God's special privilege in determining the time of human death. Hume's argument against this Thomistic theory is complex, and while he tends to juxtapose distinguishable but related considerations, he principally attacks the seemingly arbitrary and contradictory concepts of natural law in the condemnation of suicide. Hume's argument proceeds more or less as follows:

1. If by “divine order” is meant the causal laws created by God, then it will always be wrong to violate these laws for the sake of our own happiness. But it is clearly not wrong to violate these laws, for God repeatedly permits us to violate them, since He does not expect us to remain passive in the face of illness or other calamities that befall us. Hence, in Hume’s interpretation, there is no obvious justification for the notion that God allows us to disrupt only some events of nature and not others. Just as God permits us to divert rivers from their natural course for irrigation, He equally permits us to divert blood from our own veins.
2. If by “divine order” is meant the divine laws that God has willed for us, i.e., laws that (a) are discerned by reason, and (b) are such that obeying them will lead to our happiness, then why should suicide not be in accordance with these laws when it seems reasonable to us that the balance of our happiness is best served by submitting to suicide?
3. Finally, if by “divine order” is meant merely whatever occurs in accordance with God’s pleasure, then it would seem that God is pleased with all our actions (since an omnipotent God[49] can presumably intervene in any part of our actions) and no distinction exists between those actions with which He is pleased and those with which He is not. If God has placed us on earth as a “sentinel,” then our choice to abandon this post and submit to suicide occurs with His cooperation just as much as any other act we perform.

Furthermore, according to Hume, suicide does not necessarily violate any duty to others. Reciprocity[50] may require that we benefit society in return for the benefits society confers upon us, but this reciprocity certainly approaches its limit when, by continuing to live, we provide only a “trifling advantage” at the cost of considerable harm or suffering to ourselves. In more extreme situations where our existence is actually a burden upon others, our death is “not only innocent but laudable.”

Finally, Hume rejects the view that suicide violates our duties to ourselves. Illness, old age, and other misfortunes can make life so miserable that continuing to live is worse than dying. Regarding the concern that people might attempt to take their own lives in a capricious manner, Hume responds that our natural fear of death guarantees that only after careful deliberation and assessment of future events will we dare to submit to suicide with peace of mind.

In the end, Hume concludes that suicide “may be free from every imputation of guilt or blame.” His position on this matter, along with a strong presupposition of personal liberty, is largely utilitarian[51]. Of course, the Enlightenment was not unanimous in its nearly permissive attitudes toward suicide. The most vociferous opponent of suicide in this period was Immanuel Kant[52]. Kant’s arguments, though reflecting earlier natural law arguments, show that moral worth, in his view, is something that originates from the rational wills of autonomous individuals[53] (Cholbi 2000). In Kant’s view, our rational wills are the source of our moral duty, and therefore, to suppose that the same will could permissibly cause its own destruction constitutes a kind of practical contradiction. Given the distinctive value of an autonomous rational will, suicide is an assault on the very source of moral authority.

To annihilate the subject of morality in one’s own person is to root out the existence of morality itself from the world, as far as one can, even though morality is an end in itself[54]. Consequently, disposing of oneself as a mere means to some discretionary end debases humanity in one’s own person… (Kant 423)

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, various developments occurred that, while not explicitly philosophical, nevertheless shaped philosophical thinking about suicide. The first development, appearing largely in the novels of Rousseau[55], Goethe[56], and Flaubert[57], was the emergence of a Romantic poetic “scenario” of suicide, according to which suicide was the inevitable response of a troubled and misunderstood soul in a love affair gone wrong through infidelity or cast out from society (Lieberman 2003). The second development was the emergence of psychiatry as a distinct scientific discipline, comprising specialists who diagnosed and treated melancholia[58], nervous attacks[59], and other ailments associated with suicide. Finally, largely thanks to the work of sociologists such as Durkheim and Laplace[60], suicide was increasingly viewed as a social disease reflecting widespread alienation[61], anomie[62], and other by-products and ideologies of modernity. In most European countries, rising suicide rates were regarded as a sign of cultural decline. These latter two developments turned suicide prevention into a therapeutic and institutional[63] preoccupation, resulting in a wave of hospitalization of those who attempted suicide. All three of these developments conspired to suggest that suicide was caused not by the individual agent themselves but by impersonal social or psychological forces.

Suicide was also an important topic for twentieth-century existentialists, who viewed the individual’s choice to submit to suicide as a response to the experience of the absurdity or meaninglessness of the world and human endeavor. Albert Camus[64] elaborates on this absurdity in his philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus[65]. In Camus’s view, Sisyphus does not heroically attempt to shirk his absurd task but instead perseveres and resists the temptation of suicide. For Camus, suicide tempts us with the promise of an illusory freedom from the absurdity of our existence, while it is ultimately nothing more than our abdication of the responsibility to confront or embrace the absurdity before us (Campbell and Collinson 1988, 61-70). Jean-Paul Sartre[66] similarly considered the possibility of suicide as a decree of the authentic human will in the face of absurdity. According to Sartre, suicide is an opportunity to observe our understanding of our essences as individuals in a godless world. For the existentialists, suicide was fundamentally a choice shaped not by moral considerations but by a preoccupation with the individual as the sole source of meaning in a meaningless world.

3. The Morality and Rationality of Suicide

3.1 Moral Permissibility

The central ethical question surrounding suicide has been

1. Are there conditions under which suicide is morally justified, and if so, under which conditions?

Several important historical answers to question (1) have been alluded to earlier.

Note that this question must be distinguished from three other questions:

1. Should the suicide attempts of other persons be prevented?
2. Should the state criminalize suicide or seek to prevent it from occurring?
3. Is suicide ever rational or reasonable?

Clearly, the answer to each of the four questions above will depend on how the latter three questions are to be answered. For example, one might suppose that if suicide is morally permissible under some circumstances, then neither other individuals nor the state should interfere with suicidal behavior. But this conclusion would not follow if those same individuals attempting suicide are irrational and intervention in their suicidal behavior is necessary in order to prevent them from taking their own lives (an act they would not perform if they were in a normal, rational state). Furthermore, according to those moral theories that emphasize rational autonomy, whether an individual has rationally chosen to commit suicide may be decisive for all four questions. In any case, the interrelationships among the moral permissibility of suicide, its rationality, and the duties of others and society as a whole with respect to suicide are complex, and we must be very cautious in assuming that the answer to any one of these four questions will decisively determine the answer to the other three.

3.2 The Deontological Argument from the Sanctity of Life

The simplest moral outlook on suicide holds that suicide is necessarily wrong because human life is sacred. Although this position is often associated with religious thinkers, particularly Catholics, similar positions can also be seen in the views of Kant and in the views of Ronald Dworkin (Dworkin 1993). According to the “sanctity of life” view, human life is inherently valuable and precious, which, by virtue of such a view, demands respect from others and reverence for oneself. Thus, suicide is wrong because it violates our own moral duty to respect the intrinsic value of human life, regardless of the value of that life for others or for the person whose life it is. The sanctity of life view is therefore a deontological position[67] on suicide.

The greatest merit of this position is that it reflects a common moral sensibility, namely that killing is wrong in itself. The major difficulties of the sanctity of life position are as follows:

First, if proponents of this position must seek to apply their view consistently, then controversial forms of killing such as judicial execution or killing in wartime must also be morally prohibited. But such a view would entail the prohibition of forms of killing that seem intuitively reasonable, such as killing in self-defense. It seems that accepting the sanctity of life argument entails endorsing a kind of thoroughgoing pacifism[68].

Second, the sanctity-of-life view must hold that life itself, apart from the degree of happiness it contains, is valuable. Most philosophers deny the notion that life is intrinsically valuable, because on this view, for example, keeping a person alive in a persistent vegetative state is valuable merely because they are biologically alive. This view would also assert that a life filled with unlimited suffering and anguish is valuable solely because it is a human life. Peter Singer (Singer 1994) and others have argued against the sanctity-of-life position on the grounds that the value of a continuing life is not intrinsic[69] but extrinsic[70], and must be judged according to the likely quality of the individual's future life. If the value of a person's continued life is measured by its likely future quality, suicide may be permissible in light of the low quality of their probable future life (see section 3.5 of this article). (No comment is made here about whether quality-of-life assessments are easy or uncontroversial. For discussion, see: Hayry 1991)

Finally, it is not clear that having adequate respect for the sanctity of life precludes ending it, whether by suicide or other means. Those who engage in suicidal behavior because of a future that promises a deeply depressed life do not necessarily show disrespect for the sanctity of life (Dworkin 1993). Ending one's life before natural death does not necessarily constitute an insult to the value of life. Indeed, it may be argued that in those situations where medical or psychological conditions reduce individuals to shadows of their former, fully capable selves, suicide can be considered a form of life affirmation[71] (Cholbi 2002).

3.3 Religious Arguments

Two general categories of arguments in favor of the moral impermissibility of suicide have emerged from the Christian religious tradition. One of these arguments is the Thomistic natural law tradition, which was criticized by Hume (see section 2.3 of this article). According to this tradition, suicide violates the natural law that God created to govern the natural world and human existence. This natural law can be understood in three senses: (a) natural causal laws, insofar as suicide violates this natural order, (b) teleological laws[72], according to which all natural beings seek self-preservation, or (c) the laws governing human nature, from which it follows that suicide is "unnatural" (Pabst Battin 1996, 41-48). Natural law arguments are no longer a central focus of philosophical debate, as they were heavily criticized by Hume and others (see Gay-Williams 1996). These criticisms include: that natural law arguments cannot escape a deeply speculative theistic metaphysics[73]; that these claims do not align with observations of human nature (for example, the existence of self-destructive human behaviors casts doubt on the claim that we "naturally" seek self-preservation); and that other actions which God is presumed not to condemn (for example, religious martyrdom) also violate natural laws, apparently rendering the prohibition of suicide arbitrary.

The second general category of religious arguments [against suicide] is based on analogies[74] concerning the relationship between God and humanity. The aim of these arguments is generally to establish that God, and not individual human beings, possesses the true moral authority to determine the conditions of human death. One prominent historical analogy in this regard (proposed by Aquinas and Locke) states that we humans are God's property, and therefore suicide is as wrong an act against God as stealing or destroying another person's property. This analogy appears to be weak in several respects. First, if we are God's property, we are considered a special kind of property, in which God has clearly granted us free will that allows us to act in ways inconsistent with His wishes and purposes. It is difficult to understand how an autonomous being with free will can be subject to the kind of control or dominion to which other categories of property are condemned. Second, this argument seems to be based on the assumption that God does not wish His property to be destroyed. But given the traditional theistic conception of God as a being in whom there is no deficiency, how can the destruction of something belonging to God (a human life) be considered harm to Him or to His interests (Holley 1989, 105)? Third, it seems difficult to reconcile this argument with the claim that God is all-loving[75]. If a person's life is in a very bad state, an all-loving God could permit His property to be destroyed through suicide. Finally, some have questioned the extent of the duties imposed on us by God's right to His property through this argument, suggesting that the destruction of property to prevent serious harm to the person themselves may be morally justified. If the only means available to save my life from the explosion of a time bomb is to place that bomb in the body of the nearest adjacent car to thereby mitigate the intensity of the explosion, and the nearest car to me is my neighbor's car, then the destruction of my neighbor's property to avoid serious harm to myself seems morally justified. Similarly, if I can only prevent probable serious harm to myself by killing myself, it seems that I am justified in destroying God's property (my life).

Another common analogy expresses the point that God bestows life upon us as a gift, and rejecting this gift by acquiescing to suicide is a sign of ingratitude or neglect towards it. The obvious weakness of the “gift analogy” is that a gift, if sincerely given, would not have conditions such as those suggested by the analogy, i.e., when a gift is given, that gift becomes the property of the recipient and the giver has no claim over what the recipient does with this gift. Squandering a truly valuable gift may stem from imprudence, but such behavior does not seem to be unjust towards the giver. According to Kluge’s interpretation, “a gift that cannot be rejected is not a gift” (Kluge 1975, 124). Another version of this line of reasoning holds that we owe a debt of gratitude to God for our lives, and therefore by killing ourselves we disrespect or even insult God (Ramsey 1978, 147), or that this act of ours is a sign of our irresponsible use of this gift. But this different argument is not truly safe from the criticism leveled at the initial version: even if we owe a debt of gratitude to God for the gift He has bestowed upon us, ridding ourselves of our lives does not seem to be incompatible with expressing gratitude on our part (Beauchamp 1992). Moreover, if a person’s life is full of calamity and misery, it is not at all clear why they should be indebted for this truly inauspicious “gift.” Hence, defenders of the gift analogy must propose a version of theodicy[76] in order to defend their claim that life, since it is given to us by a loving God, is a manifestation of God’s benevolent[77] nature and therefore necessarily constitutes a benefit for us (Holley 1989, 113-114).

Furthermore, there is a less recognized undercurrent of religious thought that supports suicide. For example, suicide allows us to be reunited with our departed loved ones, allows us to ensure the entry into heaven of those who have been forgiven, and also frees the soul from the bondage of the body. In both the Christian religious tradition and Asian religious traditions, it is believed that suicide promises a vision of, or union with, the divine[78] (Pabst Battin 1996, 53-64).

3.4 Libertarian Views and the Right to Suicide

In the view of libertarians[79], suicide is morally permissible because individuals possess a right to suicide. (Of course, it does not follow from this view that suicide is necessarily rational or wise.) Libertarianism, whose historical lineage goes back to the Stoics and Schopenhauer[80], has been strongly associated with the “anti-psychiatry”[81] movement in the late second half of the nineteenth century. According to critics of the “psychiatry” movement, attempts made by the state or medicine to intervene in suicidal behavior have fundamentally been coercive attempts to pathologize acts related to individual freedom that are morally permissible (Szasz 2002).

Libertarianism typically claims that the right to suicide is a right of non-interference, i.e., that others are morally prohibited from interfering in [another person's] suicidal behavior. Some even advance a stronger claim in this regard, according to which the right to suicide is a liberty right[82], such that refraining from suicide is not a duty of individuals (i.e., suicide does not violate moral duties), or suicide is a claim right[83], according to which not only are other individuals morally obligated not to interfere in a person's suicidal behavior, but they are in fact morally required to assist the person in their suicidal behavior. That we have a claim right to suicide implies that we also possess rights of non-interference and liberty rights, and it is this right that constitutes the central concern of physician-assisted suicide[84] (Pabst Battin 1996, 163-164). Since the question of whether or not we have a liberty right to suicide depends on whether suicide violates other moral duties, including duties to other people, I must defer discussion of this issue to section 3.5 and focus here on whether a right of non-interference can exist.

A well-known basis for the claim that we have a right to suicide is the assertion that we own our bodies and are therefore morally permitted to dispose of our bodies whenever we wish. (In section 3.3, we considered the point that some religious arguments for the moral impermissibility of suicide relate to God's ownership of our bodies.) According to this view, our relationship with our bodies is like our relationship with other items over which we have property rights[85]: just as the right to own a wristwatch permits us to use it, repair it, or throw it away whenever we wish, so too does our property right over our bodies permit us to dispose of them whenever we see fit. Consequently, since property rights are exclusive[86] (i.e., having a property right over something prevents others from interfering with it), others cannot interfere in our attempts to end our lives. The concept of self-ownership[87] invoked in this argument is a highly ambiguous concept, because what enables us to own ordinary material items is their metaphysical distinctness from us. We can own a wristwatch because the wristwatch is distinct from us, and even under the most dualistic[88] views of human nature, our selves are not sufficiently distinct from our bodies to make ownership of a body by a self a coherent concept. Indeed, the fact that certain modes of dealing with conventional property are unavailable in our dealings with our bodies (we cannot, in any literal sense of the word, lose or sell our bodies) would suggest that self-ownership may only be a metaphor for capturing a deeper moral relationship (Kluge 1975, 119). Furthermore, one person's use of their property, including its destruction, can also be harmful to others. Hence, in cases where suicide may cause harm to others, we may be morally obligated to prevent the suicide. (For arguments concerning duties to others, see section 3.5)

Another argument in favor of the right against interference by others is the claim that we possess a general right to decide about those matters most closely related to our well-being, including the length of our lives and the circumstances of our death. According to this view, the right to suicide derives from the deeper right of self-determination,[89] a right to shape the circumstances of our lives so long as we do not endanger or harm others. According to the "death with dignity" movement,[90] the right to suicide is a natural consequence of the right to life. That is, since it is the right of individuals not to be killed by others, the only person who morally has the right to determine the events of a person's death is the person themselves, and others are prohibited from attempting to prevent their own efforts at deliberate death.

There are at least two criticisms of this view. First, it does not seem that a person, by having the right to life, also possesses the right to death, i.e., the right to take their own life. From the fact that others are morally prohibited from killing me, it does not follow that another person, including myself, is permitted to kill me. If the right to life is a fundamental right, this conclusion becomes even more difficult, since in order to be able to kill myself, I must first deny my fundamental right to life, which I cannot do (Feinberg 1978). At the very least, it is possible that no one has a right to determine the circumstances of a person's death! Furthermore, based on the argument from ownership, the right of self-determination is likely limited by the possibility of harming others.

3.5 Social, Utilitarian, and Role-Based Arguments

The fourth approach to the question of the moral permissibility of suicide addresses not the question of whether others can interfere in suicidal behavior, but the question of whether we have a right to the liberty of suicide, i.e., whether suicide violates moral duties to others. Those who argue that suicide can violate our duties to others generally claim that suicide can either harm specific individuals (family, friends, etc.) or be a cause of harm to society as a whole.

There is no doubt that the suicide of a family member or loved one can cause a number of harmful psychological and economic effects. In addition to the usual grief, the "survivors" of the person who commits suicide face a complex set of emotions. Various forms of guilt are quite common among survivors, such as (a) the belief that the family members themselves were the cause of distress in the person who committed suicide, or (b) the survivors' failure to recognize this distress, or (c) their inability to prevent the act of suicide itself, all of which are factors that can cause feelings of guilt in survivors. Suicide also causes confusion, loneliness, and an awareness of vulnerability in survivors. Indeed, the notion that suicide is fundamentally a selfish act[91] dominates most common conceptions of suicide (Fedden 1938, 209). However, some of these reactions may be due to the strong sense of stigma and shame associated with suicide, in which case these reactions, without a logical circle, cannot be based on arguments according to which suicide is wrong because it causes these psychological reactions (Pabst Battin 1996, 68-69). Suicide can also cause obvious economic or material harm, such as when the person who commits suicide leaves behind dependents who are financially unable to support themselves. Thus, suicide can be understood as a violation of specific "role obligations"[92] applicable to husbands or wives, parents, and other guardians. But even if suicide is harmful to family members or loved ones, this would not result in an absolute prohibition of suicide, because some suicides will leave few survivors, or no survivors at all, and among those who commit suicide, the extent of these harms will likely vary so much that the stronger these relationships, the greater the harm of suicide and the greater the likelihood that suicide is morally wrong. Furthermore, from a utilitarian perspective, these harms must be weighed against the potential harms that would result for the person from continuing a difficult and painful life. In most cases, the very argument that suicide is a harm to family and loved ones will prove that such a judgment is sometimes incorrect.

A second type of social argument against suicide echoes Aristotle's claim that suicide is a harm to the community or the state. A general conception of such arguments is that since a society depends on the economic and social productivity of its members, its members have a duty to their society, a duty that is clearly violated by suicide (Pabst Battin 1996, 70-78). For example, suicide harms society by destroying the human resources provided by a society's members, or in the case of those individuals who possess irreplaceable talents in fields such as pharmacy, art, or political leadership, suicide causes serious harm to society. Another version of this argument states that suicide deprives society of whatever individuals can morally contribute to their society (through support, charity, and other moral examples). However, it is difficult to show that a society has a moral claim on the human resources, the talents of its members, or the virtue that in some way compels its members to contribute to social well-being. Ultimately, individuals often fail to contribute according to their special talents in society without incurring moral blame. Therefore, it does not seem to be the case that individuals are morally obligated to benefit society in every possible way they can, regardless of the harms inflicted upon them. On the other hand, this line of reasoning seems to show only that suicide is sometimes wrong, namely when the benefit that the individual withholds by dying (in terms of potential future harm) is less than the amount of benefit he would withhold from society by the act of dying.

A modified version of this argument holds that suicide violates the individual’s reciprocal duty to society. According to this argument, an individual and the society in which they live stand in a reciprocal relationship such that, in exchange for the goods society has provided for the individual, the individual must also continue living in order to provide the goods society demands of them. But the argument from reciprocity, in presenting the relationship between society and the individual as one that is fundamentally quasi-contractual[93], reveals its fundamental flaw in this way: the conditions of this “contract” may not be fulfilled at all, and even when these conditions are fulfilled, no obligations are imposed on the parties. If a society fails to fulfill its stipulated duties under this contract, that is, if it cannot provide the goods necessary for a decent quality of life for its individuals, then the individual is no longer morally obligated to continue living in order to compensate for arrangements that society has already failed to provide. As Baron d’Holbach[94] wrote:

If the contract is to be regarded as that which binds man to society, it will be evident that every contract is conditional and must be reciprocal; in other words, a contract envisages mutual advantages between the contracting parties. A citizen cannot be bound to his country or to his associates, except by the bonds of happiness. Are these bonds separable? If society, or those who represent it, use him with harshness and violence, treat him unjustly, and render his existence painful . . . and if sorrow, distress, melancholy, and despair, which have disfigured the picture of the world for him, prevail over him, does his liberty return to him? In short, for any possible reason, if he cannot support himself against the evils that assail him, he must be permitted to free himself from a world which henceforth is for him only a frightful desert. (d’Holbach 1970, 136–137)

Furthermore, once a person has discharged the burden of duties imposed upon them under this social contract, they will have no further duty to continue their life. Hence, elderly individuals or those who have already made their essential contribution to social welfare would, according to this argument, be morally permitted to commit suicide.

3.6 Suicide as a Moral Duty?

So far, we have been setting out arguments that consider whether there is a kind of moral permission for suicidal behavior, and indeed, it is this question that has dominated the ethical discussion of suicide. But social arguments against suicide are fundamentally consequentialist[95], and some act-utilitarians[96] have discussed the correlative possibility that the good consequences of suicide might so outweigh the bad as to render suicide commendable or even morally obligatory (Cosculluela 1995, 76 81). In fact, in some cases, suicide may be honorable. Suicides that are explicitly altruistic[97], that is, aimed at protecting the lives or well-being of others, or suicides that occur in the course of political protests, may fall under this category (Kupfer 1990, 73 74). Examples of this kind of suicide could include the aforementioned soldier who jumps on a grenade to save the lives of other soldiers, or a spy who, in order not to surrender vital military information to the enemy under torture, commits suicide before being tortured. Utilitarians, noting that terminally ill patients living in highly painful conditions have a right to voluntary euthanasia, have paid particular attention to the question of life-ending euthanasia (Glover 1990, chs. 14 15, Singer 1993, ch. 7). But utilitarian views hold that we have a moral duty to maximize happiness, from which it follows that when a suicidal act produces a greater amount of happiness compared to remaining alive, then that suicide is not only morally permissible but also morally necessary.

But this view, which might endorse a "duty to die," need not be established by appealing to arguments that are explicitly utilitarian or consequentialist. The philosopher John Hardwig[98] (1996, 1997), in articulating what he calls a "family-centered"[99] approach to bioethics[100], has argued that sometimes the burden a person imposes on others, and especially on family members or loved ones, by continuing to live is so heavy that such a person may have a "duty to die" in order to relieve them of this burden. Hardwig's argument does not seem to be based on the overall sum of costs and benefits resulting from a person's being alive or dead, but on the proportionality of the burden that a person imposes on others by continuing to live.

While Hardwig's suggestion that duties to others are neglected in the discussion of the ethics of suicide is generally acknowledged, critics of the "moral obligation of suicide" thesis raise a number of objections to his proposal (see: Hardwig et al. 2000, Humber & Almeder 2000). Some critics doubt that the duty of beneficence to which Hardwig appeals, when continuing one's life constitutes a heavy burden on others, justifies anything stronger than a permission for suicide (Drebushenko 2000). Other critics express concern that a moral obligation to submit to suicide gives rise to authoritarian and terrifying views in which individuals may be compelled to submit to suicide against their heartfelt wishes (Moreland & Geisler 1990, 94, Pabst Battin 1996, 94 95). This concern may reflect a kind of tacit agreement with the sanctity of life view (see section 3.2) or a concern about the violation of individual autonomy (see section 3.6). Still other critics have even suggested that if there is a duty to die, such a duty should not be understood as entailing that others can compel those who have such a duty to commit suicide (Menzel 2000, Narveson 2000). Questions about equality and social justice have also been raised (for example, is it more likely that particularly vulnerable groups such as women or the poor would act in accordance with such a duty?). One utilitarian response to these objections is to deny a duty to die on utilitarian grounds: suicide is morally prohibited because general adherence to a rule prohibiting suicide would, on the whole, produce better results than general adherence to a rule permitting suicide (Brandt 1975, Pabst Battin 1996, 96 98).

3.7 Autonomy, Rationality, and Responsibility

A more limited version of the claim that we have a right to non-interference regarding suicide—setting aside questions about duties to others—holds that suicide is permissible insofar as it is chosen reasonably, or, in Kantian terms, carried out autonomously. This position is more limited than the libertarian view, according to which suicide is permissible only when based on rational grounds, and others are permitted to intervene in suicide when it is not carried out on a rational basis.

This approach has been the impetus for a rich body of philosophical work on the conditions of rational suicide. This work generally divides the conditions of rational suicide into two categories: cognitive conditions[101], that is, conditions that ensure that individuals' assessments of their situation are reasonable and informed, and conditions concerning the individual's interests[102], that is, conditions that ensure that suicide is in fact in accordance with the individual's rational interests. Richard Brandt[103] summarizes the spirit of this approach as follows:

A person contemplating suicide is obviously choosing among future world-courses: the world-course that includes his death, say, an hour from now, and various other possible world-courses that include his death at a different time. . . The basic question a person must answer, in order to determine which world-course is best or the most rational for him to choose, is which he would choose under conditions of optimal use of information, considering all his desires. Such a question, with the clarity of all possibilities considered, is not merely a question of what we prefer now. Our preferences change, and tomorrow's preferences will be just as important as today's (Brandt 1975).

Another example of this approach is the view of Glenn Graber, who maintains that a suicide is rationally justified “if a rational appraisal of the situation reveals that death is better for the individual.” (Graber 1981, 65) According to Graber, if a person reasonably judges the probability of possible present and future values and the preferences that will be satisfied, this appraisal will be reasonable. On Graber’s view, a suicide is rational when it results from a careful assessment of how suicide advances or blocks the individual’s overall interests. Margaret Battin proposes three cognitive conditions for identifying rational suicide (facility in causal and inferential reasoning, a realistic worldview, and adequate information relevant to the person’s decision) along with two conditions related to the individual’s interests (that dying enables the person to avoid future harms, and that dying accords with the person’s most fundamental interests and commitments) (Pabst Battin 1996, 115).

Most persons who attempt suicide do not exhibit signs of systemic irrationality[104], let alone signs of insanity according to its legal definition, and with the exception of acutely psychotic patients, consenting to suicide is usually undertaken voluntarily (Radden 1982). However, these facts are compatible with the choice to consent to suicidal behavior being irrational, and serious questions can be raised about how often the conditions for rational suicide can be met in actual cases of self-inflicted death. Indeed, the possibility of rational suicide requires that certain assumptions about the rational autonomy of suicidal individuals be true, which may not be found in most actual cases. A person’s choice to consent to suicidal behavior may not reflect his or her true self, and the death such a person brings about could be an act he or she might not have undertaken in calmer, more composed moments. In other words, even if there is a right to self-determination that in turn implies a right to suicide, it seems that such a right would imply a right to suicide only when the person’s true self is making the decision, and many factors can erode a person’s rational autonomy, so that the individual’s decision to consent to suicide does not reflect his or her considered values or goals. Some of these factors cognitively distort suicidal agents’ assessments of whether to consent to suicide. The act of suicide is often impulsive[105] and is rarely carried out in a deliberative manner, something that in fact reflects the psychological vulnerability of suicidal individuals as well as their tendency toward instability and restlessness (Cholbi 2002). Suicidal persons (assuming there is no afterlife), by believing that they will still be agents of conscious experience even after their death, may have considerable difficulty acknowledging the finality of their death. In what are known as double suicides, the suicidal individual actually eagerly anticipates the moment when he or she (after death) will enjoy the pleasure of revenge against another person after being insulted or harmed.

Depression, in particular, is a clear link between suicidal thoughts and mental illnesses such as depression. While disagreement about the strength of this link persists (Pabst Battin 1996, 5), there is little doubt that the presence of depression or other mood disorders vastly increases the likelihood of suicidal behavior. Some studies in the field of suicide indicate that up to 90% of persons who attempt suicide showed symptoms of depression before death, while others estimate that the probability of suicide among patients with clinical depression is at least 20 times greater than among ordinary individuals. In cases of suicide linked to depression, individuals' desires for their own death are colored by strongly negative and sometimes distorted beliefs about their life situations (career prospects, relationships, etc.). According to Brandt (Brandt 1975), depression can lead to "infantilizing[106] a person's rational processes," resulting in poor estimation of probabilities and an unreasonable focus on present suffering rather than on a possibly good future state. Individuals who commit suicide due to depression also exhibit fanciful and grandiose beliefs about the likely effects of their death (delusions of martyrdom, vengeance, etc.). Furthermore, individuals attempting suicide are often ambivalent about the act itself, hoping that others will intervene, and it is with this hope that they show signs to others to prompt such intervention (Shneidman 1985). Finally, although repeated suicide attempts by a single person are very common, the drive for suicidal behavior is usually transient and disappears on its own (Blauner 2003). Taken together, these considerations suggest that even if a right to self-determination exists, the realm of suicidal behavior that genuinely exhibits rational, fully informed self-assessment may be rare, and therefore suicide would only occasionally be rational or morally permissible. (Philip Devine has even argued that suicide is necessarily irrational: according to his argument, since no one has experience of death, the person attempting suicide lacks the necessary knowledge to judge between life and its alternative, death (Devine 1978). See also: Cowley 2006). Moreover, if suicide is not always an expression of individuals' rational self-determination regarding their well-being, this would imply that others may have a prima facie[107] reason to intervene in suicidal behavior, and thus there would be no general right to non-interference (see section 3.7).

3.8 Our Duties Towards the Person Attempting Suicide

With the exception of the libertarian position, according to which each person has a right against others that they not interfere in his or her suicidal intentions, it seems that each of the moral positions on suicide we have considered so far justifies the intervention of others in suicidal plans, at least in some situations. Non-coercive actions aimed at preventing another person's suicide require little justification. Asking the person attempting suicide and trying to persuade them of the value of continuing life, offering them counseling, and such matters are morally unproblematic, because such behaviors do not intend to interfere with the behavior or plans of the person attempting suicide except by engaging their rational capacities (Cosculluela 1994, 35; Cholbi 2002, 252). But the most challenging moral question is whether more coercive methods such as physical restraint, medication, deception, or hospitalization to prevent suicide can also be justified, and if so, when and under what conditions. In short, the question of intervening in suicide is a question of how protective intervention can be justified.

As noted in section 3.6, the suicidal urge is often transient, capricious, and influenced by mental illnesses such as depression. While these facts together do not seem to justify intervening in the suicidal intentions of others, they nevertheless suggest that suicide may occur under conditions in which the individual is not in full rational health. Moreover, given the additional fact that death is irreversible, when these factors are considered together, they make intervening in the suicidal plans of others justified on the basis of the individuals' interests (and the interests they would consider if they were in full rational health). We may call this approach to intervening in suicide the "no regrets" or "err on the side of life" approach (Martin 1980; Pabst Battin 1996, 141; Cholbi 2002). Since most situations in which a person desires to kill themselves are situations where we are uncertain whether they have chosen their death in a reasonable manner, it is better that "the informed, self-possessed person" prevents this act rather than "sitting on their hands and doing nothing" [in response to the person attempting suicide], "for if the person attempting suicide has performed this act out of panic and confusion (an act which, assuming its success, is irremediable because it results in the person's death), we have thereby prevented an unreasonable act, but if we conclude that this act did not stem from unreasonableness, the person attempting suicide can make another attempt at suicide." (Cosculluela 1994, 40). Further psychiatric or medical tests may adjudicate the question of the reasonableness of the decision of individuals attempting suicide. The degree of coercion of the methods used should be proportionate to the apparent seriousness of the intention of the individual attempting to die by suicide.

A neglected aspect of our duties toward individuals attempting suicide is the possibility that we may have a moral duty toward others to assist them in undertaking suicide. (Such a possibility is directly related to physician-assisted suicide and the more serious question in this regard is whether the right to suicide is a claim-right.) If there are conditions under which our intervention in those suicides that have been carried out irrationally or contrary to the individual's self-interest[108] is justified, then a similar supportive reason will also justify our assistance in promoting or enabling those suicides that are reasonable and in accordance with the individual's self-interest. Broad moral agreement with assisting others in undertaking suicide may entail significant moral hazards, meaning such agreement opens the door to the possibility that assisting others' suicide could be vulnerable to various forms of abuse, manipulation, or undue pressure (Pabst Battin 1996, 145-157). For example, family members or healthcare providers of a patient from whom hope has been lost may grow weary of the financial and personal burden of caring for them and decide to use poor-quality sedatives in order to make suicide seem more attractive to them. Thus, by permitting others to assist in another person's suicide, we may inadvertently allow them to encourage the person in question to commit suicide not for their own best interests, but because the suicide of such a person promotes the interests of these other individuals or institutions. Indeed, the fundamental fear surrounding physician-assisted suicide stems from concerns about whether laws and institutional procedures can be designed in such a way as to both allow others to assist them in their rational suicides and prevent such abuses.

4. Conclusion

As per the previous discussion, suicide is and will continue to be a rich area for philosophical inquiry. Recent advances in health technology have been responsible for extensive philosophical attention to one type of suicide, namely euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide (PAS), while the more 'ordinary' suicides resulting from psychological distress have been somewhat neglected. This is somewhat regrettable: euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide raise issues beyond those associated with other suicides, issues including the allocation of health care resources, the nature of medicine, the patient-physician relationship, and the prospect that permitting relatively benevolent forms of killing such as voluntary physician-assisted euthanasia may lead down a 'slippery slope' toward killings that are more morally troubling. But many of the same issues and concerns that surround PAS and euthanasia also encompass the more ordinary suicides resulting from psychological distress, and most authors who attend to the former category often show indifference toward the latter category of suicide. (In addition to the entry on voluntary euthanasia, Barry 2007, Dworkin et al. 1998, and Pabst Battin 2003 also provide a summary of the ethical debates surrounding euthanasia and PAS.)

Not only is suicide worthy of philosophical research in its own right, but it is also a source of insight for various other philosophical sub-disciplines: including moral psychology, ethical theory, social and political philosophy, the metaphysics of personhood, free will, and the theory of action. Suicide is also a domain where philosophical interests intersect with those of the empirical sciences. The collective efforts of philosophers and others to illuminate what many people have considered the most incomprehensible and difficult of human behaviors continue.

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* This article is a translation of:

'Suicide' in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. By: Michael Cholbi. First published Tue May 18, 2004; substantive revision Tue Jul 29, 2008.(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/suicide)

[1] Jeffrey Eugenides

[2] The Virgin Suicides

[3] suicide

[4] suicidal

[5] value-neutral

[6] self-killings

[7] altruism

[8] value-laden

[9] voluntary euthanasia

[10] suicide by cop

[11] Durkheim

[12] non-accidental

[13] consequential

[14] intentional

[15] doxastic

[16] gestures

[17] double effect

[18] foreseen

[19] intended

[20] Alvin Goldman

[21] Suttee: the act of burning a widow beside the corpse of her deceased husband in the Hindu faith. (M)

[22] Seppuku: suicide by the act of disembowelment in the Samurai tradition in Japan. (M)

[23] non-instrumental

[24] open textured

[25] suicidologists

[26] either/or

[27] gradient

[28] Beck Scale

[29] Stoics

[30] autonomy

[31] natural advantages

[32] Seneca

[33] institutional

[34] early church fathers

[35] Renaissance

[36] Thomas More

[37] Michel de Montaigne

[38] Utopia

[39] Essais

[40] orthodox

[41] Calvin

[42] Puritan

[43] John Lock

[44] Biathanatos by John Donne

[45] casuistical

[46] Enlightenment

[47] natural-law

[48] David Hume

[49] omnipotent

[50] reciprocity

[51] utilitarian

[52] Immanuel Kant

[53] autonomous

[54] in itself

[55] Rousseau

[56] Goethe

[57] Flaubert

[58] melancholy

[59] hysteria

[60] Laplace

[61] alienation

[62] anomie

[63] bureaucratic

[64] Albert Camus

[65] The Myth of Sisyphus

[66] Jean-Paul Sartre

[67] deontological

[68] pacifism

[69] intrinsic

[70] extrinsic

[71] life-affirming

[72] teleological laws

[73] theistic

[74] analogies

[75] all-loving

[76] theodicy

[77] benevolent

[78] the divine

[79] libertarians

[80] Schopenhauer

[81] anti-psychiatry

[82] liberty right

[83] claim right: This refers to claims that are enforceable. If someone has a claim right to suicide, then they can demand suicide as their right or claim. (M)

[84] physician-assisted suicide (PAS)

[85] property right

[86] exclusive

[87] self-ownership

[88] dualistic

[89] self-determination

[90] “death with dignity”

[91] selfish

[92] “role obligations”

[93] quasi-contractual

[94] Baron d'Holbach

[95] consequentialist

[96] act-utilitarians

[97] other-regarding

[98] John Hardwig

[99] family-centered

[100] bioethics

[101] cognitive conditions

[102] interest conditions

[103] Richard Brandt

[104] systemic

[105] impulsive

[106] primitivize

[107] prima facie

[108] self-interest

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Bibliography of Works Cited in the Article:

A) Historical Works (before 1900)

• Aquinas, St. Thomas, 1273, Summa Theologica, in Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Anton Pegis (ed.), New York: Random House, 1945..
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Roger Crist (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
• Augustine, St., City of God, Marcus Dods (trans.), Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1871.
• Cicero, De Finibus, H. Rackham (trans.), London: William Heinemann, 1914.
• Donne, J., 1608, Biathanatos, A Declaration of that Paradoxe, or Thesis, that Selfe-homicide is not so naturally Sinne, that it may never be Otherwise, London: Humphrey Moseley, 1648.
• Durkheim, E., 1897, Le Suicide, Paris: G. Baillière.
• d'Holbach, Baron, The System of Nature, or Laws of the Moral and Physical World, Volume 1, Robinson (trans.), New York: Burt Franklin, 1970.
• Hume, D., 1783, On Suicide, New York: Penguin, 2005. [Available online].
• Kant, I., 1785, Metaphysics of Morals, M. Gregor (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Locke, J., 1690, Second Treatise of Civil Government in Locke's Two Treatises of Government, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960.
• Montaigne, M., 1595, Essais Fortunat Strowski et al. (eds.), 5 vols., Bordeaux: Pech, 1906-1933.
• More, T., 1516, Utopia, George Logan and Robert Merrihew (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Plato, Phaedo, David Gallop (trans.), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1975.
• –––, Laws, 2 vols., R.G. Bury (trans.), New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1926.
• Seneca, “On the Proper Time to Slip the Cable,” L. Annaei Senecae Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, L.D. Reynolds (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965.

B) Works from 1900 to the Present

• Amundsen, D., 1989, “Suicide and Early Christian Values”, in Suicide and Euthanasia: Historical and Contemporary Themes, B. Brody (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer.
• Barrry, V., 2007, Philosophical Thinking about Death and Dying, Belmont: Wadsworth.
• Beauchamp, T. and Childress, J., 1983, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 2nd edition., New York: Oxford University Press.
• Beauchamp, T.L., 1992, “Suicide”, in Matters of Life and Death, T. Regan (ed.), New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Beck, A.T., Kovacs, M., and Weissman A., 1979, “Assessment of Suicidal Ideation: The Scale for Suicidal Ideation”, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 47(2): 343–352.
• Blauner, S.R., 2002, How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me: One Person's Guide to Suicide Prevention, New York: HarperCollins.
• Brandt, R., 1975, “The Morality and Rationality of Suicide”, in A Handbook for the Study of Suicide, S. Perlin (ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Campbell, R., and Collinson, D., 1988, Ending Lives, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Camus, A. 1975, The Myth of Sisyphus. New York: Penguin.
• Cholbi, M., 2000, “Kant and the Irrationality of Suicide”, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 17(2): 159–176.
• –––, 2002, “Suicide Intervention and Non-ideal Kantian Theory”, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 19: 245–259.
• –––, 2007, “'Self-manslaughter' and the Forensic Classification of Self-inflicted Deaths,” Journal of Medical Ethics, 33: 155–157.
• Cooper, J. M., 1989, “Greek Philosophers on Suicide and Euthanasia”, in Suicide and Euthanasia: Historical and Contemporary Themes, B. Brody (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer.
• Cosculluela, V. 1994, “The Ethics of Suicide Prevention”, International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 9: 35–41.
• –––, The Ethics of Suicide, New York: Garland.
• Cowley, C., 2006, “Suicide Is Neither Rational Nor Irrational”, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 9: 495–504.
• Devine, P.E., 1978, “On Choosing Death,” in The Ethics of Homicide, Ithaca: Cornell UP.
• Donnelly, J., 1998, “Introduction,” in Suicide:Right or Wrong?, J. Donnelly (ed.), Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus.
• Drebushenko, D., 2000, “How Could There Be a Duty to Die?” in Humber, J., and Almeder, R. (eds.), Is There a Duty to Die?, Totowa, N.J.: Humana Press.
• Dworkin, G., Frey, R.G., and Bok, S., 1998, Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide:For and Against, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Dworkin, R., 1993, Life's Dominion, New York: Knopf.
• Eugenides, J., 1993, The Virgin Suicides, New York: Warner.
• Fairbairn, G., 1995, Contemplating Suicide: The Language and Ethics of Self-Harm, London: Routledge.
• Fedden, H.R., 1938, Suicide: A Social and Historical Study, London: Peter Davies.
• Feinberg, J., 1978, “Voluntary Euthanasia and the Inalienable Right to Life”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 7 (1978).
• Ferngren, G.B., 1989, “The Ethics of Suicide in the Renaissance and Reformation.”, in Suicide and Euthanasia: Historical and Contemporary Themes, B. Brody (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer.
• Frey, R.G., 1978, “Did Socrates Commit Suicide?”, Philosophy, 53: 106–108.
• –––, 1981, “Suicide and Self-Inflicted Death”, Philosophy, 56: 193–202.
• Gay-Willliams, J., 1996, “The Wrongfulness of Euthanasia”, in Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics, R. Munson (ed.), Belmont: Wadsworth.
• Glover, J., 1990, Causing Death and Saving Lives, London: Penguin.
• Graber, G.C., 1981, “The Rationality of Suicide” in Suicide and Euthanasia: The Rights of Personhood, S. Wallace and A. Eser (eds.), pp. 51–65., Knoxville: U. Tennessee Press.
• Hayry, M., 1991, “Measuring the Quality of Life: Why, How and What?”, Theoretical Medicine, 2: 97–116.
• Hardwig, J., 1996, “Dying at the Right Time: Reflections on Assisted and Unassisted Suicide,” in Ethics in Practice, H. LaFollette (ed.), New York: Blackwell.
• Hardwig, J., 1997, “Is There a Duty to Die?”, Hastings Center Report, 27: 34–42
• Hardwig, J. et al., 2000, Is There a Duty to Die?:And Other Essays in Bioethics, New York: Routledge.
• Holley, D.M., 1989, “Voluntary Death, Property Rights, and the Gift of Life”, Journal of Religious Ethics, 17: 103–121.
• Humber, J., and Almeder, R. (eds.), 2000, Is There a Duty to Die?, Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.
• Kluge, E.W., 1975, The Practice of Death, New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Kupfer, Joseph, 1990, “Suicide: Its Nature and Moral Evaluation”, Journal of Value Inquiry, 24: 67–81.
• Lebacqz, K. and Engelhardt, H.T., 1980, “Suicide”, in Death, Dying, and Euthanasia, D.J. Horan and D. Mall, (eds.),. Frederick, Md.: Aletheia.
• Lieberman, L., 2003, Leaving You: The Cultural Meaning of Suicide, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.
• Margolis, J., 1975, Negativities: The Limits of Life, Columbus, O.: Merrill.
• Martin, R.M., 1980, “Suicide and False Desires”, in Suicide: The Philosophical Issues, M. Battin and D. Mayo (eds.), New York: St. Martin's.
• Menzel, P.T., 2000, “The Nature, Scope, and Implications of a Personal Moral Duty to Die,” in Humber, J., and Almeder, R. (eds.), Is There a Duty to Die?, Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.
• McMahan, J., 2002, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Minois, G., 1999, History of Suicide: Voluntary Death in Western Culture, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Moreland, J.P. and Geisler, N.L., 1990, The Life and Death Debate, Westport: Greenwood Press.
• Narveson, J., 2000, “Is There a Duty to Die?” in Humber, J., and Almeder, R. (eds.), Is There a Duty to Die?, Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.
• O'Keefee, T.M, 1981, “Suicide and Self-Starvation”, Philosophy, 56: 349–363.
• Pabst Battin, M., 1996, The Death Debate. Ethical Issues in Suicide, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• –––, 2003, “Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide,” in H. LaFollette (ed)., Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Radden, J., 1982, “Diseases as Excuses : Durham and the Insanity Defense”, Philosophical Studies, 42(3): 349–362.
• Ramsey, P., 1978, Ethics at the Edges of Life, New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Shneidman, E., 1985, Definition of Suicide, New York: Wiley & Sons.
• Singer, P., 1993, Practical Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1994, Rethinking Life and Death, New York: St. Martin's.
• Stern-Gillett, S., 1987, “The Rhetoric of Suicide”, Philosophy and Rhetoric, 20(3): 160–170.
• Stoff, D.M. and Mann, J.J., 1997, “The Neurobiology of Suicide: From the Bench to the Clinic.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 836.
• Szasz, T., 2002, Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
• Tolhurst, W.E., 1983, “Suicide, Self-sacrifice, and Coercion”, Southern Journal of Philosophy, 21: 109–121.
• Tong, R., 2000, “Duty to Die,” in Humber, J., and Almeder, R. (eds.), Is There a Duty to Die?, Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.
• Windt, P., 1981, “The Concept of Suicide”, in Suicide: The Philosophical Issues, M. Pabst-Battin and D.J. Mayo (eds.), London: Peter Owen.

C) Works for Further Reading

• Alvarez, A., 1982, The Savage God: A Study of Suicide. New York: Bantam.
• Battin, M. and Mayo, D. (eds.), 1980, Suicide: The Philosophical Issues. New York: St. Martin's.
• Donnelly, J. (ed.), 1998, Suicide: Right or Wrong? Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
• Jamison, K. R., 2000, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, Vintage.
• Maltsberger, J.T., and Goldblatt, M., 1996, Essential Papers on Suicide. New York: NYU Press.
• Mayo, D., 1986, “The Concept of Rational Suicide”, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 2: 143–155.
• Nagel, T., 1970, “Death”, Noûs, 4: 73–80.
• Novak, D., 1976, Suicide and Morality: The Theories of Plato, Aquinas, and Kant and Their Relevance for Suicidology, Scholars Studies Press.
• Shneidman, E.S., 1998, The Suicidal Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Entry on “Suicide,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Author: Michael Cholbi

Translation: Behnam Khodapanah

*This article was previously published in an abridged form in the scientific-specialist monthly Ettela'at-e Hekmat va Ma'refat, December 2013, Daftar-e Marg Andishi 2.

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