- A Roman soldier, having lost in battle, falls on his sword.
- A criminal, seeing no escape, brandishes a gun and commits suicide by police
- A terminally ill person finds a doctor who will pull the plug.
- A mentally ill person may decide that death is preferable to life.
- A religious leader is assassinated.
- Persons during the Great Depression of 1929 jumped out of windows to their deaths.
- Some lose at Russian roulette.
Is quality of life more important than is its quantity? Is there anything noble about suicide?
I’ve heard that suicide is an unpardonable sin.
I don’t see how it could be otherwise. Nobody wants to say they lived to the ripe old age of 100, but hated every minute of it. I think one might consider suicide noble under specific conditions - a way of taking one’s ‘fate’ into his own hands. I can’t really speak on sin, as I think the concept is ridiculous and disgusting.
Thanks, Stat.,
I would like to present here the history of philosophical opinions about suicide. All quotes are from Granville Williams 1967 article in “The Encyclopedia of Philosophy.” Current thoughts on the matter will be welcomed here.
Plato found that the death of Socrates was suicide in the sense that it was a noble choice between life with denial of one’s principles and death. Plato notes that suicide is permissable for one facing “any shame of extreme distress and poverty or affliction by any extraordinary sorrow or inevitable turn of fortune.”
Aristotle, however, “thought of suicide as an act of cowardice and an offence against the state, but the reason he gave for the latter position–that what the law does not command, itforbids–is palpably false.”
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There are 2 types of suicide: 1 an irresponsible one, where there are selfish motives and no further responsibility to for being service to others living.
And the other type has to weigh suicide in terms of others for whom responsibility is owed.
These two types are as different as those between apples and oranges, and that’s before quality of life, religious orientation, or the capacity to understand the nature of suicide.
Finally, suicide as a necessary act of society, still has to conform to the conditoons of the above.
The above is my opinion.
The religious leader example seemed like an exception, or I missed something.
I don’t want to call some suicides noble. But I also don’t like the whole sin thing about it. Sometimes life is really not worth living. Some latter stage of cancer wehre either you are in so much pain you cannot connect with other people or you are drugged and can’t either. Sometimes it is what you want: a parent saves a child and dies doing this and knew pretty much this would happen. I hesitate to use the word noble here. They were making a choice that they wanted.
I think suicide can be a bad decision, probably usually is. Someone thinks the person who broke up with them IS THE ONE, so there is no point in living. Sometimes suicide seems like an angry statement. Might as well stick around and yell at people.
But thinking of it as a sin just adds another layer of pain.
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Yes, I believe that it is. I’ve been doing reckless things for almost 20 years, and I’ve never made a long term plan.
I don’t save money. I don’t have life insurance, and I don’t go to the doctor unless I have a broken bone or a fever high enough that I have to be placed in a tub of ice, (no shit this happened once).
I know a good bit of people who are a good bit older than me. Some of them are quite successful. Some of them have accomplished what they thought were their dreams, others didn’t, but got a lot of money, or had kids or whatever.
On a daily basis, I enjoy my life more than almost any of them. Believe it or not, I often am solicited for advice by people whom I would normally consider my superiors in life, at work, academically, wherever.
I’ve never met a 90 year old who was happy to still be alive. I’ve met many, many people between the ages of 40-50 who were utterly disappointed with their lives, and seemingly at the stage where a teenager realizes that there might not really be that much to life, and just sort of gets bored.
I go out on a regular basis and make it a point every day to do something that gives me adrenaline, or something like it. When I was a kid and a teenager I grew up and lived in a very bad area, and a good number of my friends are imprisoned, or have been killed, or have killed themselves via drugs, car wrecks, guns, whatever. I just can’t do it. I think the best way to die is suddenly, unexpectedly, and with a smile on your face…at whatever age.
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As Woody Allen said I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
Actually, It was Israelite Zealots that did that, not Roman solders. 
Absolution in ethics seems to be most prevalent (by far) among the pious. There seems to be a certain duality that appeals to religion. Good vs Evil, Light vs Dark etc…
Ethics is completely subjective however. Some of those well-considered examples you chose so wisely were cases in which suicide was the best option logically; in others it was an act of desperation, or honour.
So you see that ‘suicide’ as an act, with no further information, is not an act but a word, and as such cannot (and most definitely should not) be considered an “unpardonable sin”.
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And how exactly does that affect the OP question?
Is that a constructive use of your time? I only ask because your emoticon suggests an antagonistic tone.
Josephus says that about the zealots. Shakespeare says that about the Romans, probably excluding the foot soldier, but including such as Marc Antony.
- A soldier dies while saving some of his comrades.
- Jim Jones and his followers drink poison-laced Koolade.
10.Socrates drinks hemlock.
On futher research Ive found that Plato was mostly against suicide. So the problem there has to do with how Socrates died. I’m researching Hume’s “Of Suicide” essay. If any here are familiar with it,I’d like to hear from you. He seems to be offering refutation of objections to suicide based on relgious beliefs, social beliefs and personal beliefs.
Thanks for the personal account, Smears. And thanks Bill for bringing in the Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire.
MLK knew that if he continued to do what he was doing, he would be assassinated.
Suicide typically forsakes hope, as such it is short sighted. But there are certain conditions when there is no possibility of hope, I guess. Such as say, facing a fiery inferno in the trade centers on 9/11/2001 or jumping out to spare the pain.
Hope has a lot to do with it. Many MIs see no viable future. Dante placed this sign over the gates of hell: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” What if life is hell for some?
For whom is life not hell for at some point in their lives?
Some are unable to make a distnction between a momentary hell and one that could last for a lifetime.
Did Socrates commit suicide?