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Ethical Issues in Suicide
This book provides a broad, systematic, and comprehensive exploration of both historical and contemporary argumentation concerning suicide. It probes the underlying ethical, religious and philosophical issues about self-caused death, and shows how they are crucial in the current debate.
200 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 8, 2023
I’m ok xx
(Dissertation stations)
(Dissertation stations)
June 23, 2026
This is a thorough if not always pleasant look at the philosophical sensibilities surrounding suicide from antiquity to (relatively) modern times.
Quotations from famous as well as more obscure sources through the march of history documenting not just ideals, but actual behavior of Greeks and Romans concerning suicide in ancient times, as well as documented cases of individual and group suicides mentioned in Scripture are cited, as well as the writings of the Stoics, St. Augustine, and Immanuel Kant, among others.
Lesser-known individuals' suicide notes are provided, in cases where they articulated a desire to avoid a future of painful or debilitating conditions, a problem increasingly common in a world where emerging medical and life-support technology has made it possible for people who would have otherwise died to be brought back, but who often suffer a serious decline in their quality of life through disability. While suicide in such cases has some support in the ethos of pagan and primitive times, and some public sympathy for such sufferers, the fact of the slippery slope coming to public consciousness in our time where such people may be subject to undue influence to unalive themselves or even offered help, is also noted.
There is an interesting discussion on how the blanket taboo on suicide in mainstream society got that way: the reason is that during the Roman persecutions, some Christians were just a little _too_ eager for martyrdom, putting themselves in situations where they were crossing the line.
Quotations from famous as well as more obscure sources through the march of history documenting not just ideals, but actual behavior of Greeks and Romans concerning suicide in ancient times, as well as documented cases of individual and group suicides mentioned in Scripture are cited, as well as the writings of the Stoics, St. Augustine, and Immanuel Kant, among others.
Lesser-known individuals' suicide notes are provided, in cases where they articulated a desire to avoid a future of painful or debilitating conditions, a problem increasingly common in a world where emerging medical and life-support technology has made it possible for people who would have otherwise died to be brought back, but who often suffer a serious decline in their quality of life through disability. While suicide in such cases has some support in the ethos of pagan and primitive times, and some public sympathy for such sufferers, the fact of the slippery slope coming to public consciousness in our time where such people may be subject to undue influence to unalive themselves or even offered help, is also noted.
There is an interesting discussion on how the blanket taboo on suicide in mainstream society got that way: the reason is that during the Roman persecutions, some Christians were just a little _too_ eager for martyrdom, putting themselves in situations where they were crossing the line.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews