Topics Suicide

Question Dear philosophers, This is about suicide. If someone's experience of their life is negative and even if we in society do not believe their life is all that bad or that there is hope of it improving, isn't it the individual's right to remove themselves from what has become an unpleasant existence for them? Also is it fair to point to the harm that befalls others from said suicide as a reason against it when remaining alive would be causing the individual harm or pain? Is your life not your own and suicide your personal decision to not continue it? Thank you.

Accepted:
March 7, 2006

Comments

It is fair to point to the harms that would befall others, because such harms are surely not morally irrelevant. They are relevant, for example, when the potential suicide has caused others to be dependent on him or her, e.g. his or her children whose lives are likely to be blighted by the suicide of a parent. And even if the harm that would befall others is not due to earlier decisions by the agent (getting married, having children), he or she has moral reason at least to do what can be done to ease the pain of parents, siblings, friends, etc., left behind. In these ways, perhaps suicide is not all that different from other actions people take: They may have a right to take these actions, in the sense that it would be wrong to prevent them from so acting. But this does not mean that such actions are beyond moral criticism: Their execution may be morally flawed in diverse ways, and sometimes these actions may be morally wrong altogether. Thus consider divorce. People have a moral right to walk out on a marriage in the sense that it would be wrong to prevent them from doing so. Nonetheless, people often walk out in ways that cause much avoidable pain and hardship to the spouse and children. And sometimes even the most considerate way of walking out would cause so much pain and hardship for the sake of a relatively small gain that the agent would do wrong to give precedence to his or her own happiness over that of his or her family. The important, general point here is this: Even if one has a moral right to do X (= it would be morally wrong for others to prevent one from doing X) one's doing X may still be morally wrong.