In Ancient Greece death was seen as an exit door that led “from here to yonder”, as Socrates puts in Plato’s Phaedo (117c/Plato 1997), that is, from life on earth to the afterlife. One of the key philosophical questions concerning death was whether man had the right to open the door. In an earlier passage from the same dialogue, Socrates explains to Cebes that “we men are in a kind of prison, and that one must not free oneself or run away” (Phaedo, 62b)—at least, not “before a god has indicated some necessity to do so” (Phaedo, 62c). Some centuries afterwards Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher, expressed a different opinion. Life should be preserved as long as it is beneficial, but if it becomes unbearable, one can give it up. As he writes in a well-known passage from the Discourses, “[h]as some one made a smoke in the house? If he has made a moderate amount of smoke I shall stay; if too much, I go outside. For one ought to remember and hold fast to this, that the door stands open” (Discourses I, XXV, 18/Epictetus 1956).
Since antiquity, the arguments put forward by philosophers have become more solid and sophisticated. Nevertheless, the main question to be answered remains the same: do we have a right to voluntarily put an end to our life? This question can be essentially declined in two different, but strictly related, questions: (1) is suicide morally permitted? and (2) can suicide be considered (at least in certain situations) a rational act? An analytic approach to this question is typical of recent, contemporary philosophy of suicide, which is now treated as an independent branch of philosophy. With few exceptions (like St. Thomas Aquinas and Hume), past philosophers have considered the question of the morality and/or rationality of suicide in a rather fragmentary way, so that their arguments in favour or against suicide, often to be found in detached passages of different works, must be pieced together in order to get a general view. As will be shown, this is precisely the case with the four philosophers considered in this book.
Nowadays, there are several valuable studies that offer an overview of the several philosophical (and religious) arguments that can be put forward in support or against one’s right to commit suicide. The works of Cosculluela (1995), Battin (1996), Wittwer (2003), and Cholbi (2011) are good examples of this. The scope of these studies is often introductory. This means that, in presenting the several arguments pro and con they gain in comprehensiveness, but inevitably lack in depth.1 The aim of this book is to address some of the same questions that these studies address. To this end, however, a different approach is followed. Attention is focused on four modern perspectives, which can be considered as representing or illustrating four different views of suicide. Putting forward seven different arguments against suicide and defending a strict prohibition of this act, Kant is a representative of the anti-libertarian view. Schopenhauer also essentially opposes suicide, but he does it as a consequence of his metaphysical view of the world, which is thoroughly pessimistic. His stance exemplarily shows that a pessimistic worldview does not necessarily go hand in hand with a pro-attitude towards suicide. Contrary to Kant, Nietzsche is rather favourable to voluntary death, at least in certain specific situations. His stance, reminiscent of the Stoics’, can be thus considered as representative of the libertarian view. Finally, Wittgenstein considers suicide from the standpoint of his mystical–religious worldview, conceiving it as the elementary sin. Addressing these different but, as will be shown, complementary positions, this book provides an unusual way of understanding the phenomenon of suicide in an integrated way. The book of course does not pretend to have an exhaustive character on the immense topic it touches upon, but what it lacks in comprehensiveness it gains in depth.
The reason to consider Kant’s, Schopenhauer’s, Nietzsche’s, and Wittgenstein’s views of suicide in the same book also derives from the fact that, as mentioned in the Preface, there is a fil rouge that links these views together. In the Appendix to the first volume of the World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer clearly acknowledges that “however different the content of my line of reasoning is from that of Kant, it has clearly been very heavily influenced by Kantian ideas, it necessarily presupposes them, and takes them as its point of departure” (WWR I: 443/Schopenhauer 2010). When it comes to morality and its grounding, however, Schopenhauer’s view is “diametrically opposed to Kant’s in its essential points” (BM: 122/Schopenhauer 2009). This can be clearly seen in Schopenhauer’s negative evaluation of Kant’s view of suicide. Schopenhauer is very critical of the way in which Kant approaches suicide and several pages of his prize essay On the Basis of Morals are devoted to criticizing some of the arguments put forward by the latter.
Nietzsche’s relation to Schopenhauer recalls, to a certain extent, Schopenhauer’s relation to Kant. Nietzsche was deeply influenced by Schopenhauer (“my great teacher”, he called him in the Preface to the Genealogy of Morality; GM, Preface, 5/Nietzsche 2006) and this influence is not limited to the former’s early philosophy, as is often believed. At the same time, however, Nietzsche was a profound critic of Schopenhauer’s life-denying philosophy. Thus Nietzsche partly elaborates his view of suicide in opposition to his teacher’s, and, more in general, to pessimistic attitudes to life. Indeed, due to the influence of Schopenhauer’s thought, pessimistic philosophies were à la mode in the second half of the nineteenth century and Nietzsche knew them well. Furthermore, as mentioned, Nietzsche’s view is also antithetical to Kant’s—although this antithesis is not the result of Nietzsche’s direct confrontation with Kant’s arguments against suicide, but it rather depends on Nietzsche’s more general critique of his moral theory.
If Schopenhauer criticizes Kant’s view of suicide, and if Nietzsche opposes Schopenhauer’s (directly) and Kant’s (indirectly) approaches to suicide, Wittgenstein’s most important remarks on suicide date from the early period, that is, at a time when his philosophy was strongly influenced by Schopenhauer’s metaphysics (which takes Kant’s transcendental idealism as starting point, as mentioned). Given that Schopenhauer exerted a major influence on the early Wittgenstein’s understanding of the world and of ethics, it is not surprising to see that this influence also extends to the latter’s view of suicide. In passing, it should be also mentioned that although it is not possible to know whether Wittgenstein was familiar with Nietzsche’s remarks on suicide, it is a fact that in 1914 Wittgenstein bought the eighth volume of Nietzsches Werke (GT 8.12.14/Wittgenstein 1992), which contained several texts from 1888. Wittgenstein was most interested in Nietzsche’s The Anti-Christ. In his Wittgenstein biography, Ray Monk comments on Wittgenstein’s interest in Nietzsche as follows: “More stimulating was a writer whose view could not have been more antithetical to the Tolstoyan Christianity that Wittgenstein had come to embrace: Friedrich Nietzsche” (Monk 1991: 121). In reality, Wittgenstein’s interest in Nietzsche can be easily explained. Indeed, although it is true that The Anti-Christ was a virulent attack upon the Christian religion and that Wittgenstein was “deeply affected” by Nietzsche’s hostility against Christianity (GT 8.12.14), Nietzsche’s work was strongly influenced by Tolstoy’s view of Christianity (Llinares Chover 2010). As will be shown, precisely this view contributed to an important extent to shape Wittgenstein’s view of suicide.
As one can see, there is a clear connection between Kant’s, Schopenhauer’s, Nietzsche’s, and Wittgenstein’s views of suicide. This connection, however, does not constitute the only reason for this book. Another reason is that, with the exception of Kant, the other three philosophers considered here are often ignored in the field of philosophy of suicide. This lack of attention seems to be motivated by reasons that are different in each case. Schopenhauer’s opposition to suicide may be regarded as unappealing since it presupposes his peculiar and, by now, outdated metaphysics of the will. However, Schopenhauer is among the philosophers who gave most importance to the topic of suicide (like Hume, he dedicated a specific essay to suicide) and in his writings one can find interesting considerations of various nature on this subject. These considerations go far beyond his argument for the futility of suicide based on metaphysical grounds and Schopenhauer’s approach to suicide is highly worthy of attention for the broadness of its scope and for being ahead of his time, among other reasons. One of the aims of this book is thus to revaluate Schopenhauer’s view of suicide and bring it to the attention of contemporary scholars.
In the field of philosophy of suicide Nietzsche has received even less attention than Schopenhauer. This may come as a surprise if one considers that his published writings contain several remarks on suicide and that a speech from the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is significantly entitled On Free Death. This lack of attention can be differently accounted for. One reason might be the fragmentary and unsystematic character of Nietzsche’s approach to suicide. Another reason might be the strong rhetorical component of the texts in which he presents his view. As will be shown, however, although Nietzsche tends to appeal to emotions instead of defending his position with proper arguments, he nonetheless gives his readers reasons that support his argumentation, and these reasons can be scrutinized and examined just in the same way as Kant’s, Schopenhauer’s, and Wittgenstein’s arguments can be. A third reason that might explain why Nietzsche’s view of suicide is often ignored in secondary literature on philosophy of suicide is the fact that, along with the notion of free death, he also defends a quick death for all those who cling to life out of cowardice and fear, and refuse to take a timely leave from it. Without denying that considered from a contemporary perspective this latter notion appears unsettling, one should resist here the temptation of decontextualizing Nietzsche’s words and reading them through the distorting prism of our historical perspective. In any case, the notions of free and quick death can and should be kept separated, so as to judge Nietzsche’s arguments in favour of voluntary death without any bias.
Of the four philosophers considered in this study, Wittgenstein is the one who has received less attention in the field of philosophy of suicide. To my knowledge, the only in-depth study on Wittgenstein’s view of suicide is the very recent paper by Gómez Alonso (2018) which, however, mainly (although not uniquely) focuses the attention on the relation between Wittgenstein’s early view of suicide and Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of the will. This lack of attention may be explained by the fact that Wittgenstein’s remarks on suicide are very few in number and that in order to grasp their meaning it is necessary to understand some of the very complex and difficult notions that he introduces in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Once this difficult step is overcome, however, Wittgenstein’s view of suicide appears very insightful and directly linked to some of the most profound thinkers of the nineteenth century such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, and James, among others.
Unlike Schopenhauer’s, Nietzsche’s, and Wittgenstein’s views of suicide, Kant’s view has been the subject of count...