'Or not to be': the question of suicide in philosophy

He told it himself. Once, after a lecture, a young man approached Jean Améry and asked him: “Why did you write this book about voluntary death, and what is the real reason you didn’t take your own life?” The author of Raising One’s Hand over Oneself replied: “A little patience.” The Austrian writer, who had survived torture and Nazi concentration camps , told no lies. On October 17, 1978, he carefully arranged everything in a Salzburg hotel room, wrote farewell letters, paid the bills, and swallowed a sufficient quantity of pills. To his wife, Maria, he wrote: “My dearest one, before whom I kneel as I die. I am on the path to freedom. Liberation is not easy, despite everything.”

That statement has it all: death, life and its meaning, freedom, and love or relationship with others. All the great themes of philosophy fit within that framework. Albert Camus rightly wrote that "there is only one truly serious philosophical problem: suicide ." In the face of voluntary death, the main issues that thinkers of all ages have addressed in their systems come together, to the point that the diverse positions on it are capable of composing a particular history of philosophy . Particular, yes, but very significant because this question is not just any question; it is where the theories of each philosophical school of thought come into play. Therefore, Or not to be , the book that Bauplan has just published, is a tasting, but a strategic tasting, an immersion in the center of each author's thinking based on what each one had to say about suicide.

Curated by writer, editor, and philosopher Oriol Ponsatí-Murlà , this volume brings together the work of 30 thinkers—29 and Madame de Staël —from Aristotle , Cicero , and Saint Augustine to Cioran , Camus , and Foucault , as well as Montaigne , Spinoza , Marx , and Durkheim , among others. The proposed intellectual itinerary, deliberately broad, seeks to provide a snapshot that is as plural as it is rigorous of a problem that has dogged humanity since its origins. This is clearly proven by this raw anthology that goes... to the texts themselves!, one might say, versioning the phenomenologists. There is no room here for moral judgments: neither apologia nor condemnation fit in a book that has the virtue of presenting texts without explanation, without message: mere juxtaposition is the message. This does not prevent the compiler from including an interesting contribution in the introduction, making this the 31st contribution to the book rather than a standard introductory text.

Coming out of the closet, ending up in the dresser

Ponsatí-Murlà says, denounces in the first pages of the book, that suicide, hidden or concealed "for decades as something somewhere between shameful, sinful, and ominous ," has finally come out of the closet. Nowadays, a change of direction has occurred, which means that we can, and should, talk about numbers, cases... It is done, and it is done profusely. It has become, in a way, the elephant in the china shop , there at the center of discourse so that no one takes notice. Why? It has found a home in the sphere ofpsychology , psychiatry , and "other healers of the sick individual whom a maternal (or paternal) society seeks to protect and steer toward healthy normality." It is as if suicide has come out of the closet, yes, to end up in the drawers of the mental health dresser. And there it rests peacefully.

He gives an example taken from Law 3/2021, which regulateseuthanasia. He focuses on the removal of the word in question from expressions such as assisted suicide or assisted suicide. Everything "is converted into a modality of euthanasia, perfectly foreseen, described, and regulated, but which at no point is called suicide." The shocking aspect of the operation is that the thunderous questions that have occupied and tormented thinkers throughout the centuries—until when, to what extent, am I master of my life? Is inflicted death the limit of my freedom? Does it only concern oneself, or do others, society, have a say? —are relegated to the fence of emotional well-being or mental health: perfect for only those in one guild (or two) to deal with these matters, when the content of the questions seriously posed and considered challenge and shake everyone, every single person.

That suicide is not thought about because it is uncomfortable, but rather it is evaluated because it is calming, is the denunciation that resonates in the opening words of the work and in the closing words of the Hungarian-born psychiatrist Thomas Szasz who wrote: “The view that suicide is a manifestation of mental illness is presented as if it were not only true but beneficial to both patients and the general population.” 24 centuries of radical philosophical reflection mediate between the introduction of Or not to be and the fragments that are reproduced from Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide , by Szasz. 24 centuries beginning with the founding couple of philosophy in the West, Plato and Aristotle , who weren't too keen on suicide, with an unavoidable stop at the Stoics. And it brings surprises.

Not to live, but to live well

The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) says that a Stoic is someone “ strong, even-tempered in the face of misfortune .” It offers synonyms: “firm, serene, impassive, imperturbable, whole.” It’s a definition that’s up to date, a hearsay philosophy, because what does a Stoic do? In Letters to Lucilius , one of the leaders of that doctrine, Seneca , describes life as a journey and affirms that death is a port to which one must navigate, not avoid. “As you know,” he challenges, “one shouldn’t always cling to life, because the good thing isn’t living, but living well.” For those who firmly believe that Stoicism means enduring everything… stoically, that’s a mistake: Stoics are in love with reason to guide them through chaos; they bet everything on that card to understand the world, control their emotions, and act accordingly. “The eternal law has done nothing better than give us one entrance to life and many exits […]. Only one thing prevents us from complaining about life: it holds no one back,” Seneca recalls.

Perhaps that's why, when Nero decreed his death, the Cordoban decided to act early and committed a bizarre suicide. He cut off his arms and legs, but it didn't work. He drank hemlock, but it took a while to work. In the end, he died of asphyxiation, asthmatic as he was, from the vapors of a hot bath. In the aforementioned text we find in Or not to be We find the early account of what he did: “It is foolish to die for fear of death: whoever kills you will come, wait. Why do you rush ahead? Why do you assume to administer the cruelty of others yourself? Tell me which of these two things: are you emulating your executioner or are you saving him work?”

Philosophers (and saints) against suicide

There are no surprises, however, regarding Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas . They appear here as philosophers, their names unaccompanied by the mark of sanctity, but whether they bear it or not, their theories and arguments were crucial in establishing Catholic doctrine upon them, which has not changed much. He who kills himself does not choose rest or any good, only nothingness; he is a murderer and does not heed the commandment “thou shalt not kill”; he adds another crime to whatever wrong he may have done (that is, he does not redeem anything) nor does he excuse the harm suffered… This was directed very particularly at raped women, because chastity “is a good of the spirit, it is not lost even by violence to the body,” writes Augustine of Hippo in The City of God , where he analyzes the case of Lucretia , who stabbed herself in the chest in front of her father and husband after being raped by Sextus Tarquin . “It is not love of chastity, but weakness of shame,” he wrote, looking askance at Christian women “who, despite having suffered similar situations, continue to live. They did not take revenge on themselves for another's sin so as not to add to their own crime.”

Aquinas's teaching approach in the Summa Theologica was straightforward: suicide goes against natural inclination, it injures the community, and, furthermore, life is a divine gift. He added that it prevents one's own atonement through penance, and in cases like that of Razias , described in the Old Testament, "it is not true fortitude, but rather a certain weakness of soul."

The chapter most closely linked to religion closes with the proposal of John Donne , the cleric who was born into a Catholic family, converted to Anglicanism and was ordained in 1615. He makes interesting contributions in his Biathanatos , considered the first book written on suicide in Western culture. There he explored an unorthodox defense of suicide, arguing that it should not always be considered an absolute sin. He condemned it for personal reasons such as suffering or despair, but considered it could be justified in cases of martyrdom or Christian charity, provided it was guided by reason and the glory of God.

Illustrated opinions

“It is evident that our instinct for self-preservation, natural in all men as in all creatures, comes from the Creator.” From which it follows that “anyone who acts against this natural instinct is acting against the will of the Creator.” It could easily be signed by the saintly philosophers of the previous epigraph, but it is the Encyclopedia in their own words, “suicide” attributed to Diderot. The article begins its exposition by giving four reasons why suicide goes against nature, examines cases and examples in a kind of accelerated history of suicide, and pays great attention to Donne's theses. It ends with a “state of the art” thanks to which we learn that at the time all cases of suicide were fiercely condemned “except those committed under clear mental insanity.” The guilty party was denied burial, and if they had already been buried, their exhumation was ordered: “Justice prescribes that the corpse be dragged by a cart, hung by the feet, and exposed in the public street.” Previously, the suicide's assets were also confiscated , but "according to new jurisprudence, this penalty no longer applies."

Voltaire , in line with the encyclopedic article, shows scientific and anthropological interest and draws attention to a novel point: the role of "fashion." He compares it to the custom of dueling or death by decapitation. It's not that the French—he cites a few names— were less courageous than the Romans . "The real reason was that suicide in such cases was not fashionable in Paris at the time. This fashion had been established in Rome."

What Rousseau thought about suicide he integrated into the letters that make up his work Julia, or the new Heloise There he refutes some arguments already seen. Regarding the idea that life has been given to us, he says, "Precisely because it has been given to us, it is ours. Hasn't God given you two arms? Yet, when you fear gangrene, you cut off one." He writes in the same vein a few lines later: "God," they say, "has placed you in this world, why do you leave it without his permission? And he also placed you in your own people."

The enlightened Madame de Staël took a firm stand against suicide. “What characterizes the true moral dignity of man is self-denial,” she wrote. She speaks of conscience as the knowledge of duty, as opposed to instinct, and of duty as “the sacrifice of oneself to others.” Her example is that of Thomas More, who sacrificed all satisfactions to a sense of duty and conscience.

Suicide in the service of theory

The thinkers who created comprehensive philosophical systems not only continued to address suicide, but also made room for it within them. If Schopenhauer 's theoretical edifice is based on that irrational, blind, and unconscious force that underlies all reality and that is the will—the protagonist of his work— The world as will and representation —suicide will come to affirm it : “The suicide wants life and is only dissatisfied with the conditions under which it finds itself”: he may renounce life, but never the will to live.

Marx approaches social reality with the soul of a materialist scientist. He begins by criticizing Madame de Staël for calling it unnatural and notes that, given the number of suicides, "it is in the nature of our society to generate them." When justifying the causes, he inverts the classic terms: responsibility toward society would not be a deterrent; on the contrary, if culprits are to be found, they are the people who remain, since "there is not even one individual worthy of being kept alive for their sake." Responsible, therefore, is a society whose relationships are created "from the top down; and suicide is but one of the thousand and one symptoms of this social struggle, evident today, where so many combatants withdraw because they are tired of being among its victims ."

Following the path opened by Marx, Émile Durkheim wrote one of the canonical books on the subject, elaborating on the intentionality of the act: “the death of a madman who throws himself from a high window because he believes he is at ground level is not the same as that of a man of sound mind who kills himself knowing what he is doing.” Also to be mentioned are the well-known Cioran , who dedicated a good part of his work to reflecting and writing about voluntary death, and Albert Camus , with the aforementioned phrase included in The myth of Sisyphus .

Among the list of contemporary authors, it's worth noting the lesser-known Paul-Ludwig Landsberg . He was a philosopher born into a Jewish family, baptized as a Protestant, and eventually converted to Catholicism. His point of view renews the latter's theses. He notes—I'm impressed, he says—that of all existing morals, only Christian morality is "strictly speaking, the only one that absolutely commits suicide." And he attempts to understand this by drawing on "the scandal and paradox of the cross," the mystery of suffering. God is a father, not a master , Landsberg reminds us, and "if He makes us suffer, it is for our salvation." Thus he creates a kind of podium, placing Christian martyrs at the top: “The vast majority of humanity is morally below the Stoics. The Christian martyr is above them […]. The hero, master of his death, is above the cowardly and enslaved masses. The saint is a kind of specifically Christian super-hero.”

Spinoza, Hume, Hegel or Nietzsche … Missing from this line-up are powerful names in the reflection on suicide whose theses are also included in Or not to be. In the final pages, for example, Foucault appears, who, like a stand-up comedian, focuses on the most basic things, on things that are normally overlooked. Let's imagine a fantasy. Foucault takes the stage in his elegant, calm, yet defiant style. He takes out a knife—obviously bearing the mark of Ockham—and says: "Do you know the one question that should never be asked when dealing with suicide ?" And, after a pause: "Why." It's possible he lit one of his everlasting cigarettes... "Why? Simply because I wanted to." He concludes provocatively with some "advice for philanthropists. If you really want to reduce the number of suicides, ensure that people only kill themselves out of a reflective, calm, and unpredictable desire." There's little laughter. No jokes. In silence, he ponders the second part of the dilemma of being... or not being.