Could suicide ever be moral or rational? When I ask this question, some people claim it can never be rational or moral. When asked why, they say suicide is bad. Bad in what sense? Society? I simply want people to think for themselves. I think that depending on the situation suicide can be rational. If it can be moral, however, depends on one’s concept of morality. If a person where to suffer some ailment and there was no cure, only constant medication for the rest of their life, and they where in pain, then it seems rational for them to take their own life. If, however, said person suffered an ailment and eventually could have been cured, then their suicide is not rational. I now turn to morality. Said person’s suicide is moral, I think, if you consider it immoral to place someone in pain, or torment. If you are religious, for example, then you may consider it immoral for one to kill one’s self. Morality is a difficult thing for me to speak upon, for my idea of what is moral, may be different from someone else’s idea of what is moral. For example, I think cannibalism can be moral at times. But, I digress. I shall now pose the questions, what do you think? Where do you stand on this question? Do you think suicide can ever be moral or rational?
Rational suicide is called “sacrifice”.
Does that answer your question?
Suicide may seem rational to you but not to another. It may seem moral to you but not to another. But then, one day, existentially, something happens. You have a new experience, you have a new conversation with a new friend, you read something new you had never come across before. Now you start to think that maybe suicide is not rational…not moral.
Until, existentially, something else happens…
The most intriguing question then is this: Is there anyway for philosophy to establish for sure whether suicide is rational or moral?
Well, I don’t think so. But, then, something new could happen to me too, right?
Then, one by one, we all die. Some of us sure we know the answer, some of us not.
The answer is “Yes”. But the problem is never coming up with the answers, but rather convincing anyone else that you have it.
Sure, it is easy enough to say, “yes”. But it is considerably more difficult to construct the argument that demonstrates it. Has it ever been constructed? If so, I’d like to hear it.
Dying is equally as moral or rational as living.
Suicide may appear to be a rational decision at the time; but if you’re suffering, either mentally or physically, how can you be rational in your decision-making?
Welcome to ILP, aki.
There’s the weigh up between quality and quantity.
Hypothetically, if someone is going to suffer for 95% of their life, only to find peace for the last 5%, is it worth it? What if 99%? What if 75%? What if 50%?
The reality appears to be, if anyone has the right to decide the fate of a particular person, it’s said person. However, I’d hope someone made the choice with accurate information and understanding.
As for your questions: can it be Rational - Yes | can it be Moral: Yes.
And as Lizbeth said, it’s difficult to be rational when one is under pressure. It’s easy to lose sight of one’s values and objectives.
Who are “you” though? Every situation will be different. The amount of pain. The duration of the pain. The particular context in which the pain impales you. Your capacity to know if the pain will ever go away. Etc.
Being in pain does not make you stupid. Many are still able to grasp their “situation” reasonably.
With suicide the important thing is trying to discern the extent to which dying has been thought out. In my view, it is not unreasonable to want to die in proportion to how you view the quality of your life. And the extent to which you have thought through the possibility that your life might change for the better. These things are always profoundly existential.
It is rational or not rational from a point of view. And each point of view is reacted to from a point of view. Different assessments of the facts might change these points of view, sure. That is always an option that should be pursued when it can be.
But each individual should be allowed to make that judgment—knowing there will always be shades of grey that never go away.
"Being in pain does not make you stupid. Many are still able to grasp their “situation” reasonably. "
Yes.
This idea that one cannot be rational while one is suffering or in pain is just a cop-out. Additionally, the impulse for suicide does not need to arise only based on feelings of suffering or being in pain.
Without knowing the purpose in one’s life, one cannot make conscious rational decisions regarding anything.
Yes, but suppose someone does know the purpose of her life and then circumstances beyond her control [a health crisis, for example] makes her increasingly less able to actually pursue it? As the gap widens so does the despair.
But how in the world does she communicate this to someone who has no real purpose in life but still loves the living of it?
Every single one of us has his or her own tale to tell. Dasein is the heart and the soul of suicide.
Perhaps we could ask Stephen Hawking? 
For me, suicide is beyond good and evil, as we owe our lives to no one, unless we have children, or we have made many other important promises and commitments throughout our lives. For me, one doesn’t have to justify their suicide to anyone, one doesn’t have to make excuses, you may end your life out of happiness, if you’d like, having accomplished everything you wished to accomplish, it makes little or no difference to me, as you’re merely one in the billions. Suicide is very personal, obviously… naturally. If suicide isn’t a personal matter, then I don’t know what is. It’s your life, your body and mind, ultimately you and you alone have to live or die with the consequences of what you subject yourself to, not I, I carry on.
And how does one come to know the purpose in his life? I’d imagine there are loads of people who don’t recognize any implicit purpose or direction in their lives, yet still make conscious, rational decisions about all sorts of things.
Charles Darwin might be a good example.
Through very careful logic (Definitional Logic) concerning what purpose and a person are.
Imagine as you like. There are very many, even more, people who imagine they are being rational when they are not.
Charles Darwin might be a good example.
How would you know?
How would he know?
How can anyone know that they are being rational in his actions (ie. “conscious” of it) without first knowing what the purpose of his actions were? One must know the purpose before one can work out the rationale toward that purpose. When one presumes a purpose, it is not rationale, but accidental presumption which might or might not be rational. Presumption is the seed of all sin/error. Presumption is not a conscious act, but a pre-conscious temptation.
First, that indicates a falsely presumed purpose, but not necessarily.
It is true that if one identifies their true purpose yet can also clearly see that there is no means with which to accomplish it, they become truly depressed (cognitively, and perhaps emotionally). Death of that purpose becomes a certainty. That means that in order to live joyfully, she must make living joyfully her purpose and give up anything contrary to it.
That one goal/purpose is all it actually takes as that purpose happens to be her inherent purpose anyway (not that she could have ever known that, nor certainly not why). How does dying accomplish that purpose?
Yes, but then Dasein is not the purpose.
There are [at least] two ways to construe “purpose” here. One revolves around simply finding something in life that you have come to call, “my purpose for living.” This seems rooted [in part] in evolution. The will to live transcends time and place, history and culture. But nature here can be shaped and molded into any number of individual permutations. Even into its opposite: the will to die.
To imagine we can speak of these things in terms of an “inherent purpose” is…suspect. In my view, it is the embodiment of dasein.
Secondly, we can ask: what ought our purpose in life be? What sort of thoughts, feelings and behaviors are the most worthy of respect…or contempt? This too is embodied in daseins intertwined in particular worlds bursting at the seams with contingency, chance and change.
Dasein is not the purpose, true, but purpose can only be detected in or through the actual things each of us say, feel and do. Especially in our interactions with others.
And who can really pin down when another is not in accordance with how these relationships ought to be construed? Who can really tell another what it means to live and to die? At best we can exchange narratives and try to make distinctions between “true for all” and “not true for all.”
Ultimately, “I” is subjunctive. Rationality here is but one facet of that which motivates our behaviors.
Well now, thanks for the thought out responses. I think that depending on the situation and at times the person, suicide may be both rational and moral. But I have a problem with one thing; namely that life has a purpose. I don’t think there is any inherent purpose to our life, we are merely here because we are here. If I die tomorrow then my death does not effect the earth or the universe. It simply continues the cycle we call life. But enough of that. I have another question I would like to ask. Is birth a bad thing? If it is not, then why is death considered a bad thing? First my attempted answer. I think we can generally consider birth a “good” thing. Why is death a “bad” thing? Death is just the other side of the cycle we call life. A person is born, grows up, lives, dies. So, why do people consider death a generally bad thing? I do not see things as other people because of my generally negative world view…so a general explanation would be great.