|
PARERGA AND PARALIPOMENA: SHORT PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS |
|
[b]CHAPTER 13: On Suicide[/b]
§ 157
As far as I can see, it is only the monotheistic, and hence Jewish, religions whose followers regard suicide as a crime. This is the more surprising since neither in the Old Testament nor in the New is there to be found any prohibition or even merely a definite condemnation of suicide. Teachers of religion have, therefore, to base their objection to suicide on their own philosophical grounds; but their arguments are in such a bad way that they try to make up for what these lack in strength by the vigorous expressions of their abhorrence and thus by being abusive. We then of necessity hear that suicide is the greatest cowardice, that it is possible only in madness, and such like absurdities; or else the wholly meaningless phrase that suicide is 'wrong', whereas there is obviously nothing in the world over which every man has such an indisputable right as his own person and life. (Cf. § 121.) As I have said, suicide is even accounted a crime and connected with this, especially in vulgar bigoted England, are an ignominious burial and the confiscation of legacies; for which reason a jury almost invariably brings in a verdict of insanity. First of all, we should allow moral feeling to decide the matter and compare the impression made on us by the news that an acquaintance of ours had committed a crime, such as murder, cruelty, fraud, or theft, with that made by the report of his voluntary death. Whereas the former report arouses lively indignation, the greatest resentment, and a demand for punishment or revenge, the latter will move us to sorrow and sympathy often mingled with a certain admiration for his courage rather than with the moral condemnation that accompanies a bad action. Who has not had acquaintances, friends, and relations who have voluntarily departed from the world? And should we all regard these with abhorrence as criminals? Nego ac pernego! [1] I am rather of the opinion that the clergy should be challenged once and for all to tell us with what right they stigmatize as a crime an action that has been committed by many who were honoured and beloved by us; for they do so from the pulpit and in their writings without being able to point to any biblical authority and in fact without having any valid philosophical arguments, and they refuse an honourable burial to those who voluntarily depart from the world. But here it should be stipulated that we want reasons and shall not accept in their place mere empty phrases or words of abuse. If criminal law condemns suicide, that is not an ecclesiastically valid reason and is, moreover, definitely ridiculous; for what punishment can frighten the man who seeks death? If we punish the attempt to commit suicide, then we are simply punishing the want of skill whereby it failed.
Even the ancients were far from regarding the matter in that light. Pliny (Historia naturalis, lib. XXVIII, c. I; vol. iv, p. 351 ed. Bip.) says: Vitam quidem non adeo expetendam censemus, ut quoque modo trahenda sit. Quisquis es talis, aeque moriere, etiam cum obscoenus vixeris, aut nefandus. Quapropter hoc primum quisque in remediis animi sui habeat: ex omnibus bonis, quae homini tribuit natura, nullum melius esse tempestiva morte: idqlle in ea optimum, quod illam sibi quisque praestare poterit. [2] He also says (lib. II, c. 7; vol. i, p. 125): ne Deum quidem posse omnia. Namque nec sibi potest mortem consciscere, si velit, quod homini dedit optimum in tantis vitae poenis etc. [3] In Massilia and on the island of Ceos, the cup of hemlock was even publicly handed to the man who could state convincing reasons for quitting life (Valerius Maximus, lib. II, c. 6, §§ 7 and 8).* And how many heroes and sages of antiquity have not ended their lives by a voluntary death! It is true that Aristotle says (Nicomachean Ethics, v. 15) suicide is a wrong against the State, although not against one's own person. Yet in his exposition of the ethics of the Peripatetics, Stobaeus quotes the sentence (Eclogae ethicae, lib. II, c. 7, vol. iii, p. 286): [x] (Vitam autem relinquendam esse bonis in nimiis quidem miseriis, pravis vero in nimium quoque secundis). [4] And similarly on page 312: [x] etc. (Ideoque et uxorem ducturum, et liberos procreaturum, et ad civitatem accessurum etc. atque omnino virtutem colendo tum vitam servaturum, tum iterum, cogente necessitate, relicturum etc.) [5]
We find suicide extolled as a noble and heroic action even by the Stoics, as can be proved from hundreds of passages, the most vigorous of which are from Seneca. Further with the Hindus, it is well known that suicide often occurs as a religious action, particularly as widow-burning, self-destruction under the wheels of the Juggernaut Car, self-sacrifice to the crocodiles of the Ganges or the sacred temple-tanks, and otherwise. It is precisely the same at the theatre, that mirror of life; for example, in the celebrated Chinese play L'Orphelin de la Chine (translated by Saint-Julien, 1834), we see almost all the noble characters end in suicide without there being any suggestion or its occurring to the spectator that they had committed a crime. In fact, at bottom on our own stage it is not otherwise, for example, Palmira in Mahomet, Mortimer in Maria Stuart, Othello, Countess Terzky. And Sophocles says:
[quote] [x]. [6][/quote]
Is Hamlet's monologue the meditation of a crime? He merely states that, if we were sure of being absolutely annihilated by death, we would undoubtedly choose it in view of the state of the world. 'Ay, there's the rub.' [7] But the reasons against suicide which are advanced by the clergy of the monotheistic, I.e. Jewish, religions and by the philosophers who accommodate themselves to them, are feeble sophisms which can easily be refuted. (See my essay On the Basis of Ethics, § 5.) The most thorough refutation of them has been furnished by Burne in his essay On Suicide, which first appeared after his death and was at once suppressed in England by the disgraceful bigotry and scandalous power of the parsons. And so only a few copies were sold secretly and at a high price, and for the preservation of this and another essay by that great man we are indebted to the Basel reprint: Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul, by the late David Burne, Basel, 1799, sold by James Decker, 124 pp., 8vo. But that a purely philosophical essay, coldly and rationally refuting the current reasons against suicide and coming from one of the leading thinkers and authors of England, had to be secretly smuggled through that country like a forbidden thing until it found refuge abroad, brings great discredit on the English nation. At the same time, it shows what kind of a conscience the Church has on this point. I have expounded in my chief work, volume one, § 69, the only valid moral reason against suicide. It lies in the fact that suicide is opposed to the attainment of the highest moral goal since it substitutes for the real salvation from this world of woe and misery one that is merely apparent. But it is still a very long way from this aberration to a crime, such as the Christian clergy would like to stamp it.
In its innermost core, Christianity bears the truth that suffering (the Cross) is the real purpose of life; and therefore as suicide opposes such purpose, Christianity rejects it, whereas antiquity, from a lower point of view, approved and even honoured it. That reason against suicide is, however, ascetic and therefore applies only to an ethical standpoint much higher than that which European moral philosophers have ever occupied. But if we descend from that very high point, there is no longer any valid moral reason for condemning suicide. It seems, therefore, that the extraordinarily lively zeal of the clergy of the monotheistic religions against suicide,* a zeal that is not supported either by the Bible or by valid grounds, must have a hidden foundation. Might it not be that the voluntary giving up of life is a poor compliment to him who said [x]? [8] So once again, it is the customary and orthodox optimism of these religions which denounces suicide in order not to be denounced by it.
§ 158
On the whole, we shall find that, as soon as a point is reached where the terrors of life outweigh those of death, man puts an end to his life. The resistance of the latter is nevertheless considerable; they stand, so to speak, as guardians at the gate of exit. Perhaps there is no one alive who would not already have made an end of his life if such an end were something purely negative, a sudden cessation of existence. But it is something positive, namely the destruction of the body, and this frightens people back just because the body is the phenomenon of the will-to-live.
However, the struggle with those guardians is not, as a rule, so difficult as it may seem from a distance and indeed in consequence of the antagonism between mental and bodily sufferings. Thus if physically we suffer very severely or continuously, we become indifferent to all other troubles; only our recovery is uppermost in our thoughts. In the same way, severe mental suffering makes us indifferent to physical; we treat it with contempt. In fact, if physical suffering should predominate, this is a wholesome diversion, a pause in the mental suffering. It is precisely this that makes suicide easier, since the physical pain associated with this loses all importance in the eyes of one who is tormented by an excessive amount of mental suffering. This becomes particularly noticeable in those who are driven to suicide through a purely morbid deep depression. It does not cost such men any self-restraint at all; they need not make a resolute rush at it, but, as soon as the warder appointed to look after them leaves them for two minutes, they quickly put an end to their life.
§ 159
If in heavy horrible dreams anxiety reaches its highest degree, it causes us to wake up, whereby all those monstrous horrors of the night vanish. The same thing happens in the dream of life when the highest degree of anxiety forces us to break it off.
§ 160
Suicide can also be regarded as an experiment, a question we put to nature and try to make her answer, namely what change the existence and knowledge of man undergo through death. But it is an awkward experiment, for it abolishes the identity of the consciousness that would have to listen to the answer.
_______________
[b]Notes:[/b] 1 ['I say no, certainly not.']
* On the island of Ceos it was the custom for old people to die voluntarily. See Valerius Maximus, lib. II, c. 6. Heraclides Ponticus, Fragmenta de rebus publicis, IX. Aelianus, Variae historiae, III. 37. Strabo, lib. X, c. 5, § 6, ed. Kramer.
2 ['We are of the opinion that one should not love life so much as to prolong it at all costs. Whoever you may be, you who desire this will likewise die, even though you may have lived a (good or) vicious and criminal life. Therefore may everyone above all keep as a remedy for his soul the fact that, of all the blessings conferred by nature on man, none is better than an opportune death; and the best thing is that everyone can procure for himself such a death.']
3 ['Not even God is capable of everything. For even if he wanted to, he cannot come to a decision about his own death. Yet with so much suffering in life, such a death is the best gift he has granted to man.']
4 ['That the good must quit life when their misfortune is too great, but the bad also when their good fortune is too great'.]
5 ['Therefore a man must marry, have children, devote himself to the service of the State, and generally preserve his life in the cultivation of skill and ability, but again quit it under the compulsion of necessity.']
6 ['God will release me when I myself wish it.' (Not Sophocles, but Euripides, Bacchae, 498.)]
7 [Hamlet, Act III, Sc. I.]
* On this point all are unanimous. According to Rousseau, Oeuvres, vol. IV, p. 275, Augustine and Lactantius were the first to declare suicide to be a sin, but took their argument from Plato's Phaedo (139), since shown to be as trite as it is utterly groundless, that we are on duty or are slaves of the gods.
8 ['(And God saw) every thing (that he had made, and behold, it) was very good.' (Genesis 1: 31.)]
|