Suicide, Ride Or Die?

~Arthur Schopenhauer on Suicide ~

Studies In Pessimism Full Article

“In my chief work I have explained the only valid reason existing against suicide on the score of mortality. It is this: that suicide thwarts the attainment of the highest moral aim by the fact that, for a real release from this world of misery, it substitutes one that is merely apparent. But from a mistake to a crime is a far cry; and it is as a crime that the clergy of Christendom wish us to regard suicide.

The inmost kernel of Christianity is the truth that suffering — the Cross — is the real end and object of life.

Hence Christianity condemns suicide as thwarting this end; whilst the ancient world,taking a lower point of view, held it in approval, nay, in honor.

But if that is to be accounted a valid reason against suicide, it involves the recognition of asceticism; that is to say, it is valid only from a much higher ethical standpoint than has ever been adopted by moral philosophers in Europe. If we abandon that high standpoint, there is no tenable reason left, on the score of morality, for condemning suicide. The extraordinary energy and zeal with which the clergy of monotheistic religions attack suicide is not supported either by any passages in the Bible or by any considerations of weight; so that it looks as though they must have some secret reason for their contention. May it not be this — that the voluntary surrender of life is a bad compliment for him who said that all things were very good ? If this is so, it offers another instance of the crass optimism of these religions,— denouncing suicide to escape being denounced by it.”

It will generally be found that, as soon as the terrors of life reach the point at which they outweigh the terrors of death, a man will put an end to his life. But the terrors of death offer considerable resistance; they stand like a sentinel at the gate leading out of this world. Perhaps there is no man alive who would not have already put an end to his life, if this end had been of a purely negative character, a sudden stoppage of existence. There is something positive about it; it is the destruction of the body; and a man shrinks from that, because his body is the manifestation of the will to live.

However, the struggle with that sentinel is, as a rule, not so hard as it may seem from a long way off, mainly in consequence of the antagonism between the ills of the body and the ills of the mind. If we are in great bodily pain, or the pain lasts a long time,we become indifferent to other troubles; all we think about is to get well.

In the same way great mental suffering makes us insensible to bodily pain; we despise it; nay,This is especially evident in the case of those who are driven to suicide by some purely morbid and exaggerated ill-humor.No special effort to overcome their feelings is necessary, nor do such people require to be worked up in order to take the step; but as soon as the keeper into whose charge they are given leaves them for a couple of minutes, they quickly bring their life to an end.

Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment — a question which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to an answer.

When,in some dreadful and ghastly dream, we reach the moment of greatest horror, it awakes us; thereby banishing all the hideous shapes that were born of the night.

And life is a dream: when the moment of greatest horror compels us to break it off, the same thing happens.

The question is this:What change will death produce in a man’s existence and in his insight into the nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer.”