The Ethics of Suicide: Historical Sources
Language: English
Pages: 752
ISBN: 0195135997
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Is suicide wrong, profoundly morally wrong? Almost always wrong, but excusable in a few cases? Sometimes morally permissible? Imprudent, but not wrong? Is it sick, a matter of mental illness? Is it a private matter or a largely social one? Could it sometimes be right, or a "noble duty," or even a fundamental human right? Whether it is called "suicide" or not, what role may a person play in the end of his or her own life?
This collection of primary sources--the principal texts of ethical interest from major writers in western and nonwestern cultures, from the principal religious traditions, and from oral cultures where observer reports of traditional practices are available, spanning Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Oceania, the Arctic, and North and South America--facilitates exploration of many controversial practical issues: physician-assisted suicide or aid-in-dying; suicide in social or political protest; self-sacrifice and martyrdom; suicides of honor or loyalty; religious and ritual practices that lead to death, including sati or widow-burning, hara-kiri, and sallekhana, or fasting unto death; and suicide bombings, kamikaze missions, jihad, and other tactical and military suicides.
This collection has no interest in taking sides in controversies about the ethics of suicide; rather, rather, it serves to expand the character of these debates, by showing them to be multi-dimensional, a complex and vital part of human ethical thought.
these cases the perpetrator is assumed guilty—and those in situations of depression (“weariness of life”) and intolerable physical pain. It also interprets what are now called “dyadic” suicides, those suicides intended to affect another person, as felonies where the intent was to injure. Penalties for suicide variously involve forfeiture of inheritance and/or moveable goods, penalties that primarily affect surviving family members or heirs. In cases of mental illness, however, the inheritance and
that is, the moral authority to take his own life, he does note that a man convicted of a capital crime—who by his act has forfeited his own life, and whose sentence is delayed by being forced into penal servitude—is able to hasten his death sentence after all by refusing to obey his master. The slave can thus “draw on himself the death he desires,” that is, bring about the ending of his life by provoking others into executing him. Is this a moral argument, perhaps one that, in asserting the
they see a cow, so he acted in sight of the buffalo. They killed many buffalo and butchered them. The youth packed his horse. When the people camped, he went through camp singing. On the next day they moved, and camped in a coulée. One of the young men was thrown off his horse, which ran away. He rode back to the old camp site to catch the runaway, and found a party of Sioux. There were a few young Crows with him. They drove the Sioux into the bed of a creek; there were breastworks there. The
has he reft from me, either by killing them or selling them away in the islands that are beyond the sea: even now I miss two sons from among the Trojans who have thronged within the city, Lycaon and Polydorus, whom Laothoë peerless among women bore me. Should they be still alive and in the hands of the Achaeans, we will ransom them with gold and bronze, of which we have store, for the old man Altes endowed his daughter richly; but if they are already dead and in the house of Hades, sorrow will it
will enjoy heaven for a considerable time. But attend to what Manu and others say respecting the duty of widows: “Let her emaciate her body, by living voluntarily on pure flowers, roots, and fruits, but let her not, when her lord is deceased, even pronounce the name of another man. Let her continue till death forgiving all injuries, performing harsh duties, avoiding every sensual pleasure, and cheerfully practising the incomparable rules of virtue which have been followed by such women as were