Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Suicide (original) (raw)
Related papers
2021
The motivation behind attempting suicide ranges from egoistic to altruistic, with societal preconceptions varying significantly between the two. In this ethical review, moralist, relativist, and libertarian theories are utilized to explore the morality of suicide. The hedonistic act utilitarian theory, which assesses the righteousness of an action solely based on the amount of pleasure or displeasure it creates, is used to evaluate the morality of suicide. According to the beneficence principle, there is sometimes a moral justification for suicide to alleviate suffering. On the other hand, Mill's rule utilitarianism views actions by their effect on overall human happiness and directs us to perform actions that maximize utility. For some individuals, like those undergoing immense suffering, the right to painless suicide would maximize utility. Kantian theory focuses on an individual's duty to uphold honour, dignity, and rationality. Collectively, these three virtues set the foundation of Kantian deontology. Furthermore, the libertarian view emphasizes the inherent right of human beings to individual security, liberty, and property with minimum government intervention. Libertarians recognize that suicide can be a rational and reasonable response to intolerable suffering. The ethical theories have proven to be interdependent; together, they propel us toward a better understanding of the morality of suicide.
Ethological Problems with the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide
OMEGA Journal of Death and Dying, 2022
Joiner and colleagues' Interpersonal Theory of Suicide (IPTS), a prominent "desire-capability" model of suicide-based on the common-sense idea that people take their own lives because they want to, and can-is critiqued from a biological perspective. Tinbergen's ethological "four questions" guide the analysis: evolution, survival value, ontogeny, and proximate causation, each addressing a different aspect of biological understanding. Problems for IPTS emerge with all four. As a parsimonious solution, the desire-capability hypothesis is reconceived as an ultimate, instead of proximate, mode of explanation. By this light, desire and capability for suicide combined in our species' ancestral past, thus making suicide a recurrent survival threat, and driving the evolution of special-purpose defensive adaptations. This stance tallies with the pain brain theory of the evolution of suicide, and with Joiner and colleagues' own investigation into organismic anti-suicide defenses, which appears to conflict conceptually with IPTS. These defenses' evolved algorithm may make suicide an intrinsically aleatory phenomenon, opaque to usefully accurate prediction. Positive implications for prevention and research are proposed.
A philosophical examination of the concept and nature of suicide as a socio-ethical issue
International Journal of Humanities and Innovation (IJHI), 2019
This paper critically examines the nature of suicide as a contemporary Socio-ethical issue. It argues that the phenomenon of suicide is one that can be understood from varied standpoints, especially where it refers to the reasons why most people contemplate suicide. In this paper, I tried to show those moments in which the notion of suicide seems to project ambivalence based on some foundational ethical principles, some of which seem to justify or condemn the act of suicide. Some of the arguments thus examined include amongst others, the theological argument, domino argument, legal principles, justice argument, and utilitarian principle etcetera. It was against this backdrop that I took a bent and reached a crescendo in which case I maintained that the notion of suicide runs contrary to the fundamental ethical value of traditional Igbo aborigines of the complementary system of thought, the latter who avers that ndu bu isi (life is of supreme value). It was upon this premise as well as other principles of human co-existential experience that I condemned the act of suicide. I employed the philosophical tools of skeptic-critical evaluation cum analysis to arrive at this conclusive conclusion.
From Act to Fact: The Transformation of Suicide in Western Thought
• The article is about the moral debate over suicide, from Augustine to the present. It assesses critically the transformation of a humanistic debate into a scientifi c one. Among the fi gures who receive detailed attention are Augustine, Montaigne, Donne, Vol-taire, Rousseau, and Durkheim.
The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 1986
There are two main moral issues regarding suicide: first, whether suicide is morally permissible, and ifso, in what circumstances; and second, whether a person who knows that someone is contemplating or attempting suicide has an obligation to intervene and ifso, how strong that obligation is. With respect to the first issue, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that suicide is not wrong in itself. To characterize suicide as murder ofone's selfis incorrect. Even ifpeople who commit suicide deprive the
Choosing death: the moral status of suicide
Psychiatric Bulletin, 1996
Our moral conception of suicide is examined. It is argued that a neutral definition of suicide is difficult to achieve and that how we treat the question of suicide shows what value we place on the sanctity of life or on life as a means to other ends. The case is made that autonomy, the principle of self-governance, has acquired special importance in the modem world to the detriment of other ethical principles such as beneficence.
Suicide A Selfish Act or Selfless Act : Does It Really Matter
Globally, over 800,000 people die by suicide every year with one death every forty seconds. There are more deaths from suicide than from war and homicide together (World Health Organization, 2000). Some researchers concluded that suicide is as an act of eternal response to impermanent problems. One perspective is that suicidal behaviour a selfish act. Conversely, other quarters believe that suicidal behaviour is a selfless act. This study aimed to discuss the religious perspectives of suicide from the Christianity, Islam , Hinduism and Buddhism views. As, in the context of religion not all suicides are regarded as selfish acts. This study found that Hinduism accepts a man's right to end his life through the non-violent practice of fasting to death or to save one's honor. Suicide is morally valid if it is practiced one under divine command. Also at the same time, recommendations on suicide prevention in different religious contexts were addressed.
The “mad” intentions of those who suicide
inter-disciplinary.net
There is a tension in understanding agency in suicide. On the one hand, those who suicide must be recognised as the authors of their deaths. On the other hand, those who suicide are often reported as having suffered from mental illness such as depression. This renders them agentic, but only to a certain degree. They killed themselves but only because they were not in their "right" mind, since presumably no one in their "right" mind wants to suicide. Can agency in suicide be called rational, or is it inevitably attributed to madness and therefore irrational? What if it is rational even when someone is "mad"? What if it is rational precisely because someone is "mad"? I respond to these questions in three parts. First, I examine how suicidology interprets the notion of intent in suicide, and how this relates to the broader understanding of agency. Secondly, drawing on Judith Butler's work on performativity, I consider whether agency is relational. Thirdly, I explore whether intent in suicide is multi-dimensional, and what this offers towards recognising the agency of those who suicide, and honouring those who remain to grieve and remember. My argument is that understanding intent in suicide is dependent not only on individual actions, but also on social norms and assumptions -all of which must be considered when the one who suffers from depression wants to end it all.
The Morality of Suicide and the Individual as Creators and Evaluators of the Self
The investigation of suicide often leads one toward issues concerning morality, value judgment, power, and relationship. This is attributed to the idea that the victim is also the perpetrator which follows the rational suggestion that the given qualities are inherently and fundamentally related to the self to which external critics and judges produce the choice to internalize the victim’s/perpetrator’s burdens in an attempt to rationalize. Performing such a deed is not non-sensible, since it not only leads to an understanding of the suicidal individual, but to an understanding of our social atmosphere and the forces that may lead one toward such a seemingly tragic end. Henri Wijsbek’s essay “To Thine own Self be True: On the Loss of Integrity as a kind of Suffering” explores such an idea in which he relates a middle-aged woman’s, Mrs. Boomsma, loss of integrity to a rational reason to commit suicide. Meanwhile, the work of Gilles Deleuze/Félix Guatarri’s Anti-Oedipus provides supplementary and relevant material to Wijsbek’s essay in which the investigation of the morality and the self-relational characteristics are advanced. However, suicide is not immoral because the self is one of the most intimate relationships we generate and hold, giving the individual the power and the authority to judge the value of their lives. Most thinkers aim to extract the individual to isolate and study the suicidal person and avoid re-depositing the individual. This essay will analyze Wijsbek’s work by first examining the individual and how it relates to Mrs. Boomsa’s suicide, followed by taking this established perception of the individual and applying it to social relations. In doing so, this will show internal and external factors and demonstrate under what circumstances suicide can be moral thereby exhibiting the flaws in Wijsbek’s work while proving his conclusion correct.
Suicidology prevents the cultivation of suicide
Suicide is a socio-cultural phenomenon. Reports about suicide from different cultures and eras support the opinion that suicide can be a cultivated and normatively recognized act. International educated and scientific use of the term suicide produces, conveys and suggests a narrowing of reflection. A medical deficit viewpoint has been established, and corresponding theories constructed and ‘verified’ to justify the paternalistic interaction with suicidal people. The suicidal person is discriminated and isolated on multiple levels in the suicide development process. Psychological autopsy studies are driven by deficit- and illness-based approaches and are designed and conducted on a low methodological level. When suicidal actions are recognized as normal actions, or even interpreted as morally sound, medical, political, religious and other guardians of morality and the ruling order oppose such understanding and demand sovereignty of interpretation. The conflicts in the suicide field result from diverging values and interests, whereby open, controversial and empirically-based public discussions are generally avoided. There is a lack of reference in psychiatric and suicidology texts to the fact that ‘free will’, ‘free choice’ or ‘free mind’ in modern society are not restricted primarily by mental illness, but by socio-economic disadvantage and economic and political decisions that lead, among other things, to mental disorders. Cultivation of suicide is not in contradiction with prevention of suicide.