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Unit Code

PHI210

Assignment No.

Assignment Title

First Essay

Due Date

21/10//2012

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Unit Name

Practical Ethics

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Email:joseph.zizys@gmail.com

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Student Name:

Family Name Zizys

Student Number:

42351979

Date:

21/10//2012

Given Name Joseph

Task 2: Essay 1

Joseph Zizys
42351979

Suicide for the Ancients, Aquinas, Hume, Kant and Spinoza.

Is it morally wrong to commit suicide? To what extent is intervention justified to

prevent a person from taking his or her life? Answer with reference to the
philosophical arguments discussed in lectures and readings.

Different philosophers have held different views about the morality of suicide.
These different views imply different things about intervening to prevent suicide. I
reflect on positions held by the three famous early modern philosophers Hume,
Spinoza and Kant in relation to the historical positions of Plato, Aristotle and
Aquinas, and try to determine what those positions imply about the morality of
intervention to prevent suicide.

Hume identifies three criteria to condemn suicide: "If suicide be criminal, it must be

a transgression of our duty either to God, our neighbor, or ourselves." (Hume p20)
The first criteria is addressed by Plato, the second by Aristotle, and the third, in
varying degrees, by Aquinas, Spinoza and Kant.

In the Phaedo, Plato relates Socrates sympathy towards the Orphic position
against suicide, justified by the analogy of the guardsman deserting his post;

The allegory which the mystics tell us - that we men are put in a sort of guardpost, from which one must not release ones self or run away - seems to me to be
a high doctrine with difficult implications. All the same, Cebes, I believe that this
much is true: that the gods are our keepers, and we men are one of their
possessions [PHAEDO 61B -61C] (Plato p 104).

Aquinas elaborates on this argument:

because life is God's gift to man, and is subject to His power, Who kills and
makes to live. Hence whoever takes his own life, sins against God, even as he
who kills another's slave, sins against that slave's master, and as he who usurps to
himself judgment of a matter not entrusted to him. For it belongs to God alone to

pronounce sentence of death and life [Summa Theologica Secunda Secundae

Partis Q. 64 Article 5] (Aquinas)

Hume imagines a dialogue with someone holding this position, asking why we
should conclude that we have been placed by God or providence in this station,
saying for my part I find that I owe my birth to a long chain of causes, of which
many depend upon voluntary actions of men. (Hume 1986 p24) Humes
imaginary interlocutor responds that it is Providence herself that has guided all
these Causes (ibid). This being the case, retorts Hume, suicide must also be part
of Providence, and therefore cannot warrant condemnation;

"a house which falls by its own weight is not brought to ruin by his providence
more than one destroyed by the hands of men; nor are the human faculties less
his workmanship, than the laws of motion and gravitation. When the passions play,
when the judgement dictates, when the limbs obey; this is all the operation of God,
and upon these animate principles, as well as the inanimate, has he established
the government of the universe." (Hume p21)

If natural law determines peoples actions then we cannot condemn suicide, but if

humans have autonomy and responsibility, suicide may be reprehensible. There

seem to be several implications if Hume is correct. It appears that while there is no
reason to morally condemn a person that commits suicide, there equally seems no
reason to condemn the practice of intervening to stop a persons suicide, which is
what Hume is arguing we should in fact do. Because if Providence has dictated
our impulse to commit the act, it also provides license for a person to prevent our
act. For they too can claim that Providence has conditioned their temper to behave
the way they do.

This is of more than historical interest, if we replace Humes providence with

deterministic natural laws of physics then the problem is made all the more
concrete and difficult, for more than merely guiding us providence has in fact
completely determined every atom of our person for all of its history, and any free
will, surely a precondition of moral culpability, is totally illusory. If Hume wishes to
claim a positive right to suicide then his argument seems to have unpalatable
consequences if applied universally.

The third criteria for Hume is the question whether suicide transgresses a duty we
have to ourselves. Hume says that it would be absurd to think so:

That suicide may often be consistent with interest and with our duty to ourselves,
no one can question, who allows that age, sickness, or misfortune may render life
a burthen (sic), and make it worse even than annihilation. (Hume p26)

This again goes back at least to Plato, who has Socrates remark in the Phaedo on
the strangeness of the idea that if a person where so sick or misfortunate that
death would be welcome to them that; it should not be right for those to whom
death would be an advantage to benefit themselves, but that they should have to
await the services of someone else (Plato p104-105).

This is actually the point at which Socrates introduces the analogy of deserting
ones post and being the property of the Gods. Hume, feeling that he has dealt
with that already, need not be swayed by these arguments.

Aquinas argues that if it is our nature to seek our own flourishing that behavior that
runs counter to that flourishing is unnatural;

"because everything naturally loves itself, the result being that everything naturally

keeps itself in being, and resists corruptions so far as it can. Wherefore suicide is
contrary to the inclination of nature, and to charity whereby every man should love
himself. Hence suicide is always a mortal sin, as being contrary to the natural law
and to charity. [Summa Theologica Secunda Secundae Partis Q. 64 Article 5]
This argument though takes us full circle back to the question of causes, and
Hume can again to say that it is impossible to offend against the natural because
our actions are caused by the natural and the idea that we can act contrary to
nature is foolish;

"When the horror of pain prevails over the love of life; when a voluntary action
anticipates the effects of blind causes; 'tis only in consequence of those powers
and principles, which he has implanted in his creatures." (Hume p26)

So, says Hume, the creator is also the creator of human nature, and it is
impossible for a human to act in a way that is not in the end in accord with that
nature just as it is impossible to act in a way not in accord with the providence of
that creator.

Spinoza (Spinoza, Ethics, sec 4 prop 20, p154) takes something like this argument

and uses it to suggest not that there nothing morally wrong with suicide, but that it
is in fact impossible to commit suicide, in the sense that it is impossible for a self
to will it's own unbeing;

that a man, from the necessity of his own nature, should endeavor to become
nonexistent, or change himself into another form, is as impossible as it is for
anything to be made from nothing, as every one with a little reflection can easily
see

Spinozas position on the face of it seems the most shocking of all, but again on
reflection it seems actually quite close to Hume. In some ways the view is also
very contemporary. Suicide that is the result of severe depression or
schizophrenia would today be thought of as the tragic outcome of a mental illness,
not the moral failing of the individual, and it is only a small further step to suggest
that every case of suicide is the result of mental impairment. Again, this leads in
the limit to a kind of determinism, it seems on its face to justify intervention to
prevent suicide, but it makes it difficult to condemn murder, or any other act.

Kant takes a seemingly identical idea to Spinozas; "but to use the power of free

will for its own destruction is self-contradictory." (Kant p148) but uses it to return
forcefully towards the views of Aristotle and Aquinas, arguing that suicide is
indeed morally abhorrent. Kant seems to allow that a person can behave in a self
contradictory manner, but that it is wrong to do so;

"A being who existed of his own necessity could not possibly destroy himself; a
being whose existence is not necessary must regard life as the condition of
everything else, and in the consciousness that life is a trust reposed in him, such a
being recoils at the thought of committing a breach of his holy trust by turning his
life against himself." (Kant p151)

so;

"a suicide opposes the purpose of his Creator; he arrives in the other world as one
who has deserted his post; he must be looked upon as a rebel against God." (Kant
p153-154)

This is interesting because it takes the idea from the Phaedo that life is a trust
reposed in him and relates it to the formal contradiction pointed out by Spinoza.

Thus Kant says, contrary to Spinoza, that a persons being is not necessarily
existent, so there is no logical contradiction in ending ones own being, rather it is
by analogy to the formal contradiction that the moral norm is established.
Therefore, according to Kant;

"we may treat our body as we please, provided our motives are those of selfpreservation" (Kant p149).

However this still does not resolve how it is that we draw the line between what
constitutes suicide and what does not, that is when the behavior is self
contradictory and when it is that external forces have caused the act.

For example Kant (Kant p155) gives a scenario where an assortment of persons,
all innocent but some "contemptible" are given the choice between jail or
execution, and he claims that those of little morals would choose prison, while
those of principle would choose death, rather than living as an "object of
contempt". It is hard to see how the conscious choice of certain death is not some
kind of suicide, or what criteria could be used in every case to make a
determination.

So when Kant says; "We must draw a distinction between suicide and the victim of
fate" (Kant p150) This is precisely the distinction that Hume denies, if there be
fate, then our own hand is as much it's instrument than the enemy. Kant counters
Spinoza, Hume counters Kant, Spinoza counters Hume, like rock paper scissors.

There remains the second criteria mentioned by Hume, that of the transgression
against the community. Kant argues that suicidality is profoundly detrimental to the
community. If our life is worthless to us then there is no threat that could prevent
us from committing the most depraved of crimes (Kant p151). Kant is making his
case from a long tradition of claiming that suicide harms the community or state.
Aquinas puts it like this;

because every part, as such, belongs to the whole. Now every man is part of the
community, and so, as such, he belongs to the community. Hence by killing
himself he injures the community, as the Philosopher declares

The Philosopher Aquinas here appeals to is Aristotle. The section in question is

book five of the Ethics were Aristotle asks if a person can treat themselves

unjustly. Aristotle imagines a case where a person in a fit of rage or despair cuts
their own throat and asks if they have committed an unjust act toward themselves.
Aristotle says that this cannot be so because the act was voluntary, and one
cannot be the voluntary victim of an injustice according to Aristotle's contract
theory of justice. nobody is voluntarily treated unjustly. Aristotle then says that
the real victim is the state, which has suffered because the act is inconsistent with
the general virtue that prohibits the killing of citizens (Aristotle p200-201). It is not
clear form the text that Aristotle is claiming that the state is harmed directly by the
loss of its citizen, rather that the behavior is out of concord with the states laws
against murder. Aquinas appears to go further than Aristotle in implying a kind of
direct loss to the community, and Kant goes further still, arguing that the damage
is rather in the deprivation of the state of its capacity for deterrence (one thing to
note is that Aristotle here clearly contradicts Aquinas and Kant about the
possibility of criteria 3, that suicide is a transgression against ones self).

Hume counters by arguing that whatever duties one owes to society must have
some limit and proportion to the difficulty impose upon ones person;

I am not obliged to do a small good to a society at the expense of a great harm to

myself; why then should I prolong a miserable existence, because of some

frivolous advantage which the public may perhaps receive from me? (p26 Hume)

The strength of this counter-argument depends on the extent of harm suicide is

presumed to do to the state, according to Aristotle it seems not much, but
according to Kant its a great deal.

In conclusion, Hume seems to fail to make the case that we should have a right to
suicide. If suicide is natural then intervention to prevent it is equally natural, and
his utilitarian argument suffers form the same weakness that most do; the
impossibility of knowing the relative quantities of pleasure and pain accrued to the
self and to society by our act.

Bibliography

Aristotle, The Ethics, translated by J.A.K Thomson, revised edition published by

Penguin Classics 1976/

Aquinas, Summa Theologica accessed at www.newadvent.org/summa/ on

21/10/2012.

Hume, On Suicide in Applied Ethics, Peter Singer, Ed. OUP 1986.

Kant, Lectures on Ethics, Louis Infield translation, Harper and Row 1963.

Plato, The Phaedo in The Last Days of Socrates, Hugh Tredennick translator,
Penguin Classics 1954.

Spinoza, The Ethics, Andrew Boyle translator, Everyman Edition 1959.