Q&A: The Philosophy of Suicide
The Philosophy of Suicide
Question
Are you familiar with, or have you written in the past about, the question of suicide from a philosophical perspective? In your view, is there a good way to ground the claim that suicide is something improper and immoral?
Answer
I haven’t written about it. I don’t have a moral position on the matter. I do have (and so does Jewish law) a halakhic and religious position. Admittedly, here, unusually, the religious outlook does affect the value-based outlook regarding the value of life as an expression of the image of God. Even so, I am doubtful whether this can be seen as a moral statement, because morality is supposed to be universal and not dependent on foundational religious conceptions.
Discussion on Answer
Clearly there are moral aspects here, but in the final analysis it’s hard for me to see why a person should sacrifice himself for others. If his life is not worth living in his eyes and he is suffering, should he have to go on suffering his whole life so that his parents won’t suffer or feel that their investment was in vain? I doubt it.
Thank you!
It seems to me that there is something value-based here beyond the halakhic realm, since the binding force of the halakhic and moral command ultimately rests on gratitude, in an ontic sense, to the Holy One, blessed be He. That gratitude does not belong to the halakhic realm, since it is what gives it validity. The Holy One, blessed be He, is the one who gave us life, and He is the one who created the suffering within it. So it cannot be that suffering is a sufficient reason for suicide, even without entering into halakhic considerations, because there is something like a kind of ingratitude, in an ontic sense, toward the Holy One, blessed be He. Perhaps one should qualify cases in which that person’s life is in any case devoid of value, if he suffers from a severe and paralyzing illness, and then perhaps the person’s suffering really does tip the scales. But in a case where the person is still capable of acting on the value plane in even a minimal way, it seems to me that the right thing is to continue living, no?
Ontic gratitude is not morality. In any case, I already wrote that belief in God changes the value-based attitude toward suicide. Beyond that, I do not know how far that obligation of ontic gratitude extends (how much suffering I am supposed to endure for its sake. This is not only about inability to function, but about suffering).
Beyond that, you mentioned in a responsa post here:
https://mikyab.net/Responsa/Morality in non-social contexts
“There is a way of life that is not value-based, even though it is hard to say there is a moral problem with it, such as a nihilistic life of pleasure alone, without involvement in things of value.”
Suicide is equivalent to a life without value, since you are wasting it without realizing the potential for value-oriented activity (whether it is simply wasting time on pleasures or wasting life through suicide, it’s all the same).
Beyond that, there is the moral aspect of harming family members and friends by causing them pain through your departure. Beyond that, there is also a certain harm to your parents, who invested in raising you up to this point, and you are throwing their investment in the trash.