Rationality of suicide
December 12th 2006 02:21
Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa -- kamikaze pilot
The trickier types of suicide are sticking a fork in your head or switching off life support. Some folk believe that, in these cases, it's never rational to top yourself. As long as you can draw breath, you should fight for breath. No matter how bad it gets, there's always more to experience -- more pleasure, more knowledge, more meaning...
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Death is increasingly a decision. Most of the people reading this will someday soon ask themselves when to let go, how much money and energy should be exchanged for how little time, etc. A third of the people reading this will die of cancer, a third will die of heart disease.
But rationality stops somewhere. You can deliberate about means, but you can't deliberate about ends: you non-consciously have them or you don't, or you irrationally, existentially choose them. What, for instance, are your reasons for seeking happiness or desire fulfilment? And why do you care about prolonging your identity as long as possible?
Just because you instinctively do, doesn't mean you rationally should.
The more the matter is examined, the more obvious it is that the reasonableness of suicide depends on a whole host of beliefs and decisions.
Do you believe in an afterlife? -- because if you do, then you might be indifferent to this one. Do you believe that the "self", and what's good and bad for it, extends beyond biological borders (such that, perhaps, you can be hurt after death)? What are the goods of life anyway? Does the individual connect with, and should it serve, a larger whole (as kamikaze pilots, Stoics, and Confucius believed)? Do you give a shit about the money spent to keep you alive, or the toll you're taking on your children? What is your hierarchy of values? Does death itself hurt you, and in what way? Is the purpose of your life something other than cramming in as much happiness or desire fulfilment as possible? And can a life be complete?
The point should be repeated that a lot of people don't value life in itself. Thomas Nagel reckons: "almost everyone would be indifferent (other things equal) between immediate death and immediate coma followed by death twenty years later without reawakening". Marcus Aurelius deplores "cling[ing] to mere life like half-devoured combatants in the arena, a mass of wounds and dusty blood, yet imploring to be kept alive until the morrow, only to be exposed in that state to the same teeth and claws." The Stoics seemed in general to believe that if you lose rational control over your life, you should kill yourself, and make way for others.
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Ronald Dworkin
"[H]ow we think and talk about dying -- the emphasis we put on dying with 'dignity' -- shows how important it is that life ends appropriately, that death keeps faith with the way we want to have lived… We worry about the effect of his life's last stage on the character of his life as a whole, as we might worry about the effect of a play's last scene or a poem's last stanza on the entire creative work."
"People think it important not just that their life contain a variety of the right experiences, achievements, and connections, but that it have a structure that expresses a coherent choice among these -- for some, that it display a steady, self-defining commitment to a vision of character or achievement that the life as a whole, seen as an integral creative narrative, illustrates and expresses."
"[M]any people, as I said, think it undignified or bad in some other way to live under certain conditions, however they might feel if they feel at all. Many people do not want to be remembered living in those circumstances; others think it degrading to be wholly dependent, or to be the object of continuing anguish. These feelings are often expressed as a distaste for causing trouble, pain, or expense to others, but the aversion is not fully captured in that other-regarding preference… At least part of what people fear about dependence is its impact not on those responsible for their care, but on their own dignity."
"Athletes, or others whose physical activity was at the center of their self-conception, are more likely to find a paraplegic's life intolerable… For such people a life without the power of motion is unacceptable, not for reasons explicable in experiential terms, but because it is stunningly inadequate to the conception of self around which their own lives have so far been constructed. Adding decades of immobility to a life formerly organized around action will for them leave a narrative wreck, with no structure or sense, a life worse than one that ends when its activity ends."
"There is no doubt that most people treat the manner of their deaths as of special, symbolic importance: they want their deaths, if possible, to express and in that way vividly to confirm the values they believe most important to their lives."
"They are horrified that their death might express, instead, the opposite idea, which they detest as a perversion: that mere biological life… has independent value. Nietzsche said, 'In a certain state it is indecent to live longer. To go on vegetating in cowardly dependence on physicians and machinations, after the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost, that ought to prompt a profound contempt in society.' He said he wanted 'to die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.'"
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Notes
-- This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia articles Kamikaze, Ronald Dworkin, Million Dollar Baby, Weighing scales.
-- Friday 14 December 2007: Peter and Gordon, singing one of the few Beatles songs that they Fab Four didn't record themselves, declare: "I don't care what they say, I won't stay
In a world without love." -- Now, they're not talking about suicide here, but if love really is what makes life worth living...
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Comment by LaurenD
Very well written and arranged from start to finish, from Marcus Aurelius to Nietzsche, tackling an issue as complicated as a sackful of centipedes.
Frickin bravo, man!
LaurenD
Comment by Damo
Yet I have to say that comparing smokers with kamakazi piolets is a bit of a stretch.
Unfortunately I find the definitions of dignity and the value of a human life expressed by some as being extremely shallow.
Suicide is not as romantic as people try to portray. The aftermarth leave nothing but questions and guilt for all who knew the person.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Comment by KylieW
Celebrity Obsession
Terrific post! Amazingly well written, especially considering the topic is such a difficult one.
I agree with your comment above about suicide not being rational. I remember reading a study that was done on people who had tried to commit suicide by and had survived. The overwhelming finding in these people was that as soon as they had stepped off the bridge/or done whatever they'd decided to do, they wanted to take the action back. Really sad when you consider how many people don't survive.
KylieW
Comment by ag
Eat French Bread
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Comment by Damo
Just an after thougfht on this subject.
Just because something can be rationally defended does it become the correct answer.
A suicide can choose to end their life for many reasons:
Desperation; mental illness; iscolation; fame; nationalism etc.
The questions is whether the view point can be defended using rational arguments and selecting evidence. The question is whether it is a point of view that you agree with?
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Obviously, these are very tough questions...
But as to whether "Just because something can be rationally defended does it become the correct answer." -- the short answer, in my opinion, is "no".
The longer answer is: "No, depending on your concept of rationality."
I'm going to claim that you can still act rationally on the basis of bad evidence. Ie if a computer makes a calculation based on pi equalling 5 (because some programmer screwed with it), it's still behaving perfectly rationally.
Comment by beholdtheman
(No offence, I mean this playfully. I happen to be one of those existentialists you juxtapose with 'irrational' above).
What is rational is defined by one's culture. There is not one rationality, but many. These are facts, unlike your Enlightenment myth of one universal rationality. (Alasdair McIntyre is a good read on this).
On suicide, it is really up to you. However, I think we should all work to prevent it. According to our culture, that would seem to be the ethical and rational thing to do.