[lit-ideas] Sui-Cide Versus Altru-Cide
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 21:53:45 EST
Thanks to L. Helm for the quote from Arendt on 'candidates for suicide', and
philosophers not necessarily being.
"men
who chose this way of life deliberately without being candidates for suicide
shows that this sense of an affinity with death does not come from the
thinking activity and the experiences of the thinking ..."
But then one thinks of Althusser who killed himself -- and his wife.
And only today I was reading about one of the ancient Grecians who 'starved
himself (or herself) to death', etc.
-- So I would _not_ think that Arendt is thinking that 'thinking' is a way
of suicide, as Helm's subject-line goes.
I'm surprised from this quote below (Cooper 1989:10) that Cooper thinks
there's no word in Greek or Latin for 'suicide'. I have not been able to
consult
with Liddell-Scott online Greek lexicon, but 'suicide' seems pretty Latin to
me. Actually, there's a lot of logic in that word (cf. matricide, patricide,
homicide). Indeed, Locke was fascinated by the asymmetries of language: he
noted that there is no word for 'ovinecide' (killer of sheep), since sheep
_are_
usually killed.
Good night,
Cheers,
JL
====
From the Stanford encyclopaedia, online:
Philosophical discourse about suicide stretches back at least to the time of
Plato. Still, prior to the Stoics at least, suicide tended to get sporadic
rather than systematic attention from philosophers in the ancient Mediterranean
world. As John Cooper has noted (Cooper 1989, 10), neither ancient Greek nor
Latin had a single word that aptly translates our ‘suicide,’ even though
most of the ancient city-states criminalized self-killing.
Plato explicitly discussed suicide in two works. First, in Phaedo, Socrates
expresses guarded enthusiasm for the thesis, associated with the
Pythagoreans, that suicide is always wrong because it represents our releasing
ourselves
(i.e., our souls) from a "guard-post" (i.e., our bodies) the gods have placed
us in as a form of punishment (Phaedo 61b-62c.) Later, in the Laws, Plato
claimed that suicide is disgraceful and its perpetrators should be buried in
unmarked graves. However, Plato recognized four exceptions to this principle:
(1) when one's mind is morally corrupted and one's character can therefore not
be salvaged (Laws IX 854a3-5), (2) when the self-killing is done by judicial
order, as in the case of Socrates, (3) when the self-killing is compelled by
extreme and unavoidable personal misfortune, and (4) when the self-killing
results from shame at having participated in grossly unjust actions. (Laws IX
873c-d) Suicide under these circumstances can be excused, but, according to
Plato, it is otherwise an act of cowardice or laziness undertaken by
individuals too delicate to manage life's vicissitudes. Aristotle's only
discussion of
suicide (Nicomachean Ethics 1138a5-14) is a difficult and confusing passage
in which he attempts to explain how suicide can be unjust and deserving of
punishment if the individual who could be treated unjustly is the suicidal
individual herself. He concludes that suicide is somehow a wrong to the state,
though he does not outline the nature of this wrong or the specific vices that
suicidal individuals exhibit.
What is perhaps most striking about Plato's and Aristotle's texts on suicide
is the relative absence of concern for individual well-being or autonomy.
Both limit the justifications for suicide largely to considerations about an
individual's social roles and obligations. In contrast, the Stoics largely
believed that the moral permissibility of suicide did not hinge on the moral
character of the individual pondering it. Rather, the Stoics held that whenever
the means to living a naturally flourishing life are not available to us,
suicide may be justified, regardless of the character or virtue of the
individual
in question. Our natures require certain "natural advantages" (e.g.,
physical health) in order for us to be happy, and a wise person who recognizes
that
such advantages may be lacking in her life sees that ending her life neither
enhances nor diminishes her moral virtue.
When a man's circumstances contain a preponderance of things in accordance
with nature, it is appropriate for him to remain alive; when he possesses or
sees in prospect a majority of the contrary things, it is appropriate for him
to depart from life…. Even for the foolish, who are also miserable, it is
appropriate for them to remain alive if they possess a predominance of those
things which we pronounce to be in accordance with nature. (Cicero, III, 60-61)
Hence, not only may concerns related to one's obligations to others justify
suicide, but one's own private good is relevant too. The Roman Stoic Seneca,
who was himself compelled to commit suicide, was even bolder, claiming that
since "mere living is not a good, but living well", a wise person "lives as
long as he ought, not as long as he can." For Seneca, it is the quality, not
the
quantity, of one's life that matters
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