Traditional Arguments About Suicide

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Traditional Arguments About Suicide
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Suicide as an Offence Against Self Community

• Aristotle taught a theory of Natural Law
• Moral rules are simply expressions of how to
  promote our thriving
• Our nature determines what thriving is
• We are communal by naturea political animal
• We (like all creatures) have a natural instinct
  to live

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Suicide as Offence Against God

• St. Thomas Aquinas also taught a theory of
  Natural Law
• Adds a purely theological argument
• Our lives really belong to God, so if we destroy
  them we destroy something that belongs to God
  alone

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Hume On Suicide

• If God is control of everything God controls our
  desires for suicide too
• Utilitarian considerations could in certain
  circumstances lead to a judgment that serving
  community (witnessing our deaths paying the
  bills) and ourselves (if in extreme pain) would
  be best achieved by killing ourselves

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John Locke and Inalienable Rights

• Some rights we exercise freely (vote, speech,
  property)
• Some rights are inalienable--they cant be
  refused or given away by their holders
• Life and liberty (and security of person) are
  inalienable
• Otherwise slavery can be justified, as can the
  grotesque misuse of ones body

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Kant

• Free will is the source of all moral judgement,
  but suicide destroys this source, so it
  inherently repudiates moral judgment and thus
  cannot be moral
• We should always do our duty--we must be alive to
  do so, so it is always our duty to stay alive
• Would we say it is OK for everyone wearied of
  life to kill themselves?