{"id":4746,"date":"2018-02-24T15:40:05","date_gmt":"2018-02-24T15:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/02\/24\/benatar-on-suicide-is-suicide-murder\/"},"modified":"2018-02-24T15:40:05","modified_gmt":"2018-02-24T15:40:05","slug":"benatar-on-suicide-is-suicide-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/02\/24\/benatar-on-suicide-is-suicide-murder\/","title":{"rendered":"Benatar on Suicide: Is Suicide Murder?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the eleventh entry  in a series<\/a> on David Benatar's The Human Predicament <\/em>(Oxford UP, 2017). I have decided to skip ahead to Chapter 7, "Suicide," and leave Chapter 6, "Immortality," for later. This episode discusses pp. 163-172.<\/span><\/p>\n

We have seen that for Benatar death, being a part of the human predicament, contra<\/em> Epicurus, is no solution to it. Suicide is no escape. Mortality is a "brute and ugly feature of the human predicament" (161), but death "does not solve the problem of one's mortality." (163) Nor does death, which includes death by one's own hand, solve the problem of meaninglessness. At most it eliminates the felt<\/em> meaninglessness of a particular person's life. The only way to avoid the human predicament is by not being born.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, suicide is a reasonable response to one's condition if it has become bad enough. This raises the question whether suicide is ever morally acceptable. Benatar argues that there are cases in which suicide is both reasonable and morally acceptable.<\/span><\/p>\n

He makes an important linguistic point. To say that one 'commits' suicide "presupposes the wrongfulness of suicide." (168). So he prefers the verb 'carry out' instead.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is Suicide Murder?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

One who understands the concept of murder understands that while killing a human being may or may not be wrong, murdering a human being is always and indeed necessarily wrong inasmuch as murder, by definition, is wrongful killing. But what makes murder wrong? One answer is that it is wrong because it violates the victim's right to life. So one might argue as follows (my formulation, not Benatar's):<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

If a person has a right to life, then it is morally wrong for anyone to violate it.<\/span>
The suicide, by killing himself, violates his own right to life.<\/span>
Ergo<\/span>
The suicide does something morally wrong. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The argument is not compelling inasmuch as the correlativity of rights and duties can be upheld while denying that one has duties toward oneself:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

On this view my having a negative right to life implies that others have correlative duties not to kill me. It does not imply that I have a duty not to kill myself. Thus, when a person rationally kills himself, he has not violated his own rights. (170)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Waiving the Right to Life<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But suppose I do bear duties to myself, duties  entailed by the rights I possess. Benatar maintains that, even so, "a competent right-bearer has the moral power either to assert or waive a right' (170)  For example, I waive my right to bodily integrity when I grant a surgeon permission to operate on me. Why then  can't I waive my right to life? If do, then, by the same stroke, I nullify my duty not to kill myself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reflexive duties are different from non-reflexive ones. As a rights-bearer with the power to waive my rights, I may release myself from my reflexive duties.<\/span><\/p>\n

One naturally wonders, however, how a right so fundamental as the right to life itself could be waived. If any right is inalienable, it is the right to life, I should think.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is the Right to Life Inalienable?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Some will indeed maintain that a basic negative right such as the right to life is inalienable. If my right to life is inalienable, then I cannot waive it.  Nevertheless, Benatar maintains that one can hold both that suicide is sometimes morally permissible and that rights are inalienable. How? By distinguishing between "the inalienability of a right and its waivability." (171) Waivability, unlike alienability, is typically limited. If I waive my right to bodily integrity and give a surgeon permission to cut into me, the waiver is for a limited period of time, for a specific purpose, and is granted to a specific person and no one else. So far, so good.<\/span><\/p>\n

But how does this show that the inalienable right to life can be waived for a time by the person whose life it is is so as to permit the person to kill himself during that time? If my right to life is inalienable, then no one may kill me at any time. From this it follows that I may not kill myself at any time.  Either I do not understand what Benatar is saying on p. 172, or he has fallen into confusion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Contra Benatar<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Benatar maintains that suicide is sometimes morally permissible. The follow argument, however, sees to show that it is never morally permissible:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

1) The right to life is inalienable.<\/span>
2) An inalienable right is one that it is morally impermissible for anyone at any time to violate.<\/span>
Therefore<\/span>
3) It is morally impermissible for any one at any time to violate his own right to life.<\/span>
Therefore<\/span>
4) Suicide is always morally impermissible.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We shall have to return to the aporetics of the situation. For the argument just given either proves too much in that it could be modified to show that killing in just war, self-defense, and in capital punishment are morally impermissible, or else shows in effect that there are no inalienable rights.<\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the eleventh entry  in a series on David Benatar's The Human Predicament (Oxford UP, 2017). I have decided to skip ahead to Chapter 7, "Suicide," and leave Chapter 6, "Immortality," for later. This episode discusses pp. 163-172. We have seen that for Benatar death, being a part of the human predicament, contra Epicurus, is no solution to … Continue reading “Benatar on Suicide: Is Suicide Murder?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[282,311,349],"tags":[648,649],"class_list":["post-4746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-benatar-david","category-rights-and-duties","category-suicide","tag-benatar","tag-suicide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}