Suicide – Page 2 – Maverick Philosopher

Merton the Conflicted

Thomas Merton's sense of the reality of the Unseen Order was weak and underdeveloped because of the strong lure of the secular — to which, however, he never entirely succumbed, pace the thesis of David D. Cooper's excellent but mistaken Thomas Merton's Art of Denial: The Evolution of a Radical Humanist (University of Georgia Press, 1989, 2008).

Merton never lost his faith. He did, however, remain to the end deeply conflicted, so much so that some view his death by electrocution in Bangkok in December 1968 as a case of suicide. There is some plausibility to that conjecture, but I don't share the view.

Is It Always Morally Wrong to Take One’s Own Life? Part I

A reader poses a question:

A 45 year old lady wants to kill herself. This is not a view that she has come to lightly. She has been thinking about suicide fairly systematically for the last five years – ever since she turned forty in fact. She can think of reasons to live – her sister, for example, will miss her if she’s gone – but she can think of many more reasons not to live.

She has thought hard about the morality of suicide. She knows that there are religious objections to the taking of one’s own life. She is aware, for instance, that the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church states that suicide is ‘seriously contrary to justice, hope, and charity’. But she isn’t religious, and doesn’t believe in the afterlife, so she isn’t much impressed by such pronouncements. She has taken into account that some people, such as her sister, will mourn her death. But she does not believe that their suffering will be very great, and certainly not great enough to outweigh what she sees as her right to do as she wishes with her own life – including ending it. She is also aware that she might feel differently about things at some point in the future. However, she thinks that this is unlikely, and, in any case, she is not convinced of the relevance of this point: certainly, she does not think that she has any responsibility towards a purely hypothetical future version of herself.

She has canvassed other people’s opinions about suicide, but so far she has heard nothing to persuade her that killing herself would be wrong. She is frequently told that she "shouldn’t give up", that "things will get better", and that she "should just hang on in there", but nobody has been entirely clear about why she should do these things. For her part, she can’t really see that she stands to lose much of anything by ending her life now. She does not value it, and in any case, if she’s dead, she’s hardly going to regret missing out on whatever it is that might have happened to her had she lived.

Question.

Would it be [morally] wrong for this woman to commit suicide? If so, why?

I will assume that the lady in question has no human dependents and that her sister has agreed to take care of her cats or other pets. My answer is that I see no compelling reason to think that it would be wrong for this woman, precisely as described, to commit suicide, assuming that she harms no one else in doing so. Of course, one can give reasons contra. But I see no rationally compelling reason contra. Let's run through some reasons that have merit. The 'argument' that suicide is always an act of cowardice has no merit.

Augustine's Main Argument

Augustine says (De Civ. Dei i, 20): “Hence it follows that the words ‘Thou shalt not kill’ refer to the killing of a man—not another man; therefore, not even thyself. For he who kills himself, kills nothing else than a man.”

To kill oneself is to kill a man; to kill a man is wrong; so, to kill oneself is wrong. Suicide is homicide; homicide is wrong; ergo, etc. Tightening up the argument:

1) Every intentional killing of a human being is morally wrong.
2) Every act of suicide is the intentional killing of a human being.
Therefore
3) Every act of suicide is morally wrong.

The syllogism is valid, but the major is not credible. Counterexamples in decreasing order of plausibility: just war, capital punishment, self-defense, abortion in some cases, and, of course, suicide!

Note that (1) cannot be supported from the "Thou shalt not kill" of the Decalogue. As Paul Ludwig Landsberg correctly comments, "The Christian tradition, apart from a few sects, has always allowed two important exceptions: [just] war and capital punishment." (The Experience of Death, p. 78) I would add that the allowance is eminently reasonable.

How could suicide count as a counterexample to (1)? Well, as Landsberg points out, killing oneself and killing another are very different. (79) As I would put it, in a case of rational suicide such as the case my reader proposes, one kills oneself out of loving concern for oneself whereas the killing of another is typically, though not always, a hostile and hateful act.

Although Augustine's argument cannot be dismissed out of hand it is not rationally compelling.

Next time: The arguments of the doctor angelicus.

I'll end with one of my famous aphorisms:

One Problem with Suicide

Suicide is a permanent solution to what is often a merely temporary problem.

So don't do anything rash, muchachos. Your girlfriend dumped you and you feel you can't go on? Give it a year and re-evaluate.

Time Was . . .

. . . when I had space for books, but no money. Now it's the other way around.

So I allowed myself only two purchases today at the antiquarian Mesa Bookshop in downtown Mesa, Arizona, Gary Wills' slim volume, Saint Augustine, Viking 1999, and Joseph Agassi's Faraday as Natural Philosopher, University of Chicago Press, 1971.

But I resisted the temptation to buy a big fat biography of Richard Brautigan, a poet/novelist of sorts I hadn't thought about in years and whom I last read in the 'sixties. The book of his I read is probably the same one you read if you are a veteran of those heady days and were en rapport with its Zeitgeist. I refer of course to Trout Fishing in America. Even if you never read it, you will recall the cover from the numerous copies scattered about the crash pads of the those far-off and fabulous times.

But I resisted the temptation to buy the fat, space-consuming biography for which there is no room on my Beat shelf. Instead, I sat down and read deep into the opening chapter which recounts in gory detail Brautigan's suicide at age 49 in 1984 achieved by a .44 magnum round to the head.

Brautigan, like Bukowski, had a hard life and writing was their therapy. The therapy proved more efficacious in the case of Bukowski, however.

I have been visiting the Mesa Bookshop for over a quarter of a century now. These days I pop in once a year, every year, on Thanksgiving Eve right after I pick up my T-shirt and race number for the annual Mesa Turkey Trot, Thanksgiving morning, which I run or 'run' every year. Time was when I ran the 10 K but tomorrow I'll essay the 5 K and see how the old knees hold up.

After the book shop and a snatch of conversation with Old Mike behind the counter I follow my tradition of having lunch nearby either at a good Mexican joint name of Mangoes or as today at a Thai place across the street, Nunthaporn Thai Cuisine. Recommended if you should ever find yourself in the heart of Mesa.

How I love this time of year! And what a pleasure listening to Dennis Prager on the drive over and Michael Medved on the drive back.

Suicide, Drafts, and Street Corners

I have been reading Cesare Pavese (1908-1950), This Business of Living, Diaries 1935-1950, Transaction Publishers, 2009. I gather that Pavese was obsessed life-long with the thought of suicide. Entry of 8 January 1938:

There is nothing ridiculous or absurd about a man who is thinking of killing himself being afraid of falling under a car or catching a fatal disease. Quite apart from the degree of suffering involved, the fact remains that to want to kill oneself is to want one's death to be significant, a supreme choice, a deed that cannot be misunderstood. So it is natural that no would-be suicide can endure the thought of anything so meaningless as being run over or dying of pneumonia. So beware of draughts and street corners. (71)

From the entry of 16 January 1938:

Here's the difficulty about suicide: it is an act of ambition that can be committed only when one has passed beyond ambition. (73)

The last line of his journal, 18 August 1950:

Not words. An act. I won't write any more. (350)

Nine days later Pavese killed himself in a Turin hotel room with an overdose of sleeping pills. Apparently because of the ending of his relationship with the American actress, Constance Dowling.

Who among us has not been played for a fool by the illusions of romantic love?

Our restless hearts seek from the finite what the finite cannot provide.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: A Couple of Suicide Songs

Tastes in music are pretty much generationally-rooted. Just to yank (tug?) Dale Tuggy's chain a bit, I said to him while we were rooming together in Prague, that the heavy metal stuff he likes is "music to pound out fenders by," a phrase that Edward Abbey (1927-1989) applied to all rock music. I claimed heavy metal has little by way of melody. Tuggy, who is 20 years younger than me, demurred and pointed me to some songs one of which is Metallica's Fade to Black. The song was released in '84 when Tuggy was 14, so maybe it had the sort of impact on him that Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone (1965) had on me when I was 15.

"Fade to Black" features a very nice acoustic guitar intro and does have a melody, but can it hold a candle melody- or lyric-wise to Tom Wait's suicide song, Shiver Me Timbers? You decide.

The Morality of Suicide

There is a well-informed discussion of the topic at Auster's place. I have serious reservations about Lawrence Auster's brand of conservatism, reservations I may air later, but for now I want to say that I admire him for his courage in facing serious medical troubles and for soldiering on in the trenches of the blogosphere. He courageously tackles topics many of us shy away from. I hope he pulls through and carries on.

One Problem with Suicide

Suicide is a permanent solution to what is often a merely temporary problem.