October 30, 2013
Suicide as a
Mistake: A Bizarre Idea from Two Philosophers
I’ve never thought that philosophers
or philosophy had much to contribute to understanding suicide ever since I read
what philosophers had to say about the death by suicide of Socrates (Lester, 2004).
(Peggy Battin is an exception, of course!) I recently read an article in a
philosophy journal that confirmed my opinion. Pilpel and Amsel (2011) proposed
that a decision to die by suicide can be morally permissible and rational and
yet be a mistake. This comment argues
that their reasoning behind this is incorrect.
Pilpel and Amsel discuss briefly the
concepts of rationality and morality, for which various authors have proposed
clear criteria. In arguing that a suicide can be a mistake, Pilpel and Amsel
introduce a construct that they never define. (They say that they leave this
for a later article.) However, from their article, we can decipher some clues
as to what they mean by a mistake. They present a case, more about which later,
and say that they “feel strongly that she
is throwing her life away” (p. 116). Clearly, this phrase does not propose
criteria for making a mistake in general, since most of our mistakes do not
involve life and death decisions, but in the present context, throwing one’s
life away is considered by Pilpel and Amsel to be a mistake. Pilpel and Amsel
also characterize the reasoning of their hypothetical case of suicide as odd
and absurd and as a blunder, again terms for which they propose no definition.
Rather than proposing a new
philosophical (or psychological) construct, Pilpel and Amsel seem merely to
have given their subjective opinion of what is a good decision or a bad
decision. For Pilpel and Amsel, choosing to die by suicide, even in a way that
is meets the criteria for rationality and morality, is a bad decision. For
Pilpel and Amsel, life is precious.
To bolster their argument, Pilpel
and Amsel present a hypothetical case. I remember once being scolded by a
priest when I argued against the existence of Heaven by proposing my version of
it (in which people lounged around in deck-chairs sipping ambrosia). Setting up
a straw man, or in the present case a straw woman, is not a good way of arguing
for a proposition for, even if hypothetical cases are of interest to
philosophers, they are of minimal interest to those of us who are psychologists
who study real suicides.
The hypothetical woman described by
Pilpel and Amsel is thinking rationally, and her suicide does not violate her
moral principles, according to Pilpel and Amsel. Her motivation for suicide is
that she has achieved all she set out to do, and now her life will be a steady
decline. She expects to experience more frustration as she ages and less
satisfaction. She decides to die at this point, a high point in her life.
Although they are not clear on this
point, Pilpel and Amsel do seem to value life. The question they fail to
address is the criteria for a to-be-valued life. Socrates threw his life away.
He could have proposed exile as his punishment, and his request would have been
granted. Did his age make his choice to die by suicide (ordered by the court)
less of a mistake? Yukio Mishima chose to die by suicide (seppuku) at his peak
(creative and physical), but did his goal of political change (overthrowing the
government) make his choice of throwing his life away less of a mistake.
Many people have self-immolated to
protest the government. Thich Quang Duc immolated himself in Vietnam in 1963 to
protest the government’s oppression of Buddhists, and his death lives on in our
memory. His death remains famous 50 years later. A mistake or not? Craig and
Joan died by car exhaust poisoning in New Jersey in 1969 to protest the
American involvement in Vietnam (Asinof, 1971), but readers of this essay will most
likely not have heard of them. A mistake or not? Were inmates of Auschwitz who
chose suicide throwing their lives away when many survived and gave witness to
the horrors?
I doubt that the construct of a mistake is a useful construct, and
Pilpel and Amsel did little to convince us of its value,
References
Asinof, E.
(1971). Craig and Joan. New York:
Viking.
Lester, D.
(2004). Thinking about suicide.
Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science.
Pilpel, A.,
& Amsel, L. (2011). What is wrong with rational suicide. Philosophia, 39, 111-123.
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