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The concept of rational suicide occasionally occurs in the context of ethical questions, such as whether or not there are any circumstances in which physician-assisted suicide would be morally acceptable. Those who favor physician-assisted suicide seek to show that under some circumstances suicide would be a rational act and thereby be morally acceptable. The transition from ‘the rational’ to ‘the moral’ is, of course, dubious: surely one cannot conclude that because an act is rational it is necessarily morally good. Interesting as exploring this flaw might be, I wish to concentrate rather on the broader and more fundamental concept of rational suicide.

Thus, I assume rational suicide may or may not involve assistance by another in its performance, and my aim is to examine the possibility of rational suicide for people who may be considered able to make decisions.

Can people make a rational decision to die? Is there such a thing as rational suicide?

user
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Jordan S
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    We are one of the few species that is aware enough to consider suicide and escape from pain. If someone is worried about hurting a loved one and they hold off, that could be rational on their part. When that person is in so much pain that their rationality is clouded and they cannot consider a loved one's pain after they are gone, that might be a type of irrationality. If that is irrational then I wonder if at that point, suicide is no longer a moral problem for that person at that time. I'm also a firm believer in survival complexes. I'm thinking that when someone is in so much pain that they – user29984 Dec 12 '17 at 21:36
  • ... don't finish their sentences... – Scott Rowe May 03 '23 at 01:38

4 Answers4

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Schopenhauer is a figure who comes to mind here: he's not only advocated the related position of anti-natalism but also argued that suicide is a right of any human being, the opposite of immoral. By his argument, suicide can actually be the most magnificent declaration of moral freedom, as it constitutes taking maximal control of one's life.

It is an inviolable part of one's agency to end one's own existence is far from unheard of; the idea is that suicide can't be inherently immoral because it is among the most basic rights of any living agent to die. Some existentialism takes this to an extreme, according to which the default position is more or less that we should commit suicide unless we're able to find something worth living for.

To spin this into an explicitly moral argument (which has been done in exactly this way), suppose straightforwardly that happiness is the good, and that there exists a person nobody knows about who is doomed to suffer for the rest of their life and knows this. Under such a circumstance suicide becomes rational. Less contrived examples come up in the real world and have been the subject of many debates.

user
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commando
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  • Thanks for this. If may ask - what is hence the difference between morality and rationality in general? (To me the two seem to collide occasionally; sometimes doing the moral thing is irrational; and sometimes doing the rational thing is immoral). – Jordan S Nov 26 '15 at 02:52
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    @JordanS I am not an ethicist, but if I had to say: they totally overlap. What is moral is always going to be rationally determined. If something is moral it is moral *by virtue of* some rational ground. But I realize that is not a consensus position. – commando Nov 26 '15 at 02:57
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    Thanks again; I appreciate it. Indeed your position is not a consensus position --- just an example that is at times used in this context: during WWII non-Jewish Germans who saved Jews were risking their lives - they were moral but not rational when taking rationality to be one's desire to survive. I think hence that maybe egoism and altruism play some role of distinguishing at some cases between morality and rationality. But that's still something to contemplate. – Jordan S Nov 26 '15 at 03:02
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    @JordanS ah, but "taking rationality to be one's desire to survive" is *hugely* controversial. But your point stands =) – commando Nov 26 '15 at 03:03
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    Yes...figured it out as well -- practically every step towards position is controversial.... – Jordan S Nov 26 '15 at 03:05
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    Outside of Kantian and German Idealist views of human reason and "rational beings," reason becomes functionalist. One "has reasons" or "gives reasons"in relation to some end. This "end" could then be one's own survival or desires or whatever. Or some "higher end," which could be family, God, nation, humanity, whatever. Whether suicide or any other act is "rational" depends upon this moral framework, which cannot itself be "rationally" decided. Kant is, in my view, the best effort to ground rationality and morality. But only that... best effort. – Nelson Alexander Nov 26 '15 at 05:20
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    I would be cautious with the term 'suicide' in Schopenhauer, because this, for him, is not the same as neglecting the Will to Live, but instead serving it. The idea is willing nothing, not willing *not* to be anymore. This is futile in his metaphysical framework. – Philip Klöcking Apr 07 '16 at 19:30
  • Suicidal behavior cannot be moral since it cannot even be. – EternalPropagation Nov 23 '18 at 18:54
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Yes, suicide can be rational. It may in fact be a paradigmatic act of rationality.

First, I would note that there is a fair amount of philosophical literature on this question, and I am not very familiar with it. Camus, for example, argues that the question of suicide is the ultimate manifestation of human "freedom," which is more or less the same as "rationality." Animals, vegetables, and minerals, locked into natural causality, cannot choose "to be or not to be..." or even pose the question, as Hamlet can. It is a possibility that arises only for the rational being.

Is it ever a "correct" decision, a best option? A moral option? That is a slightly different question.

Here, the concept of the immortal soul and a Kantian view of rationality enter the picture, confusingly. For the Ancients and Stoics such as Cato or Seneca, obviously suicide presents no moral problem. Likewise, for secular existentialists like Camus, it may present no moral problem. For the Christian, on the other hand, one's "life" is not one's personal property, and this view is not entirely limited to the religious. It may apply to Marxists, say, or anyone who conceives of a "higher purpose."

Christians like Kant might also argue that suicide to end suffering or attain some other material end is deluded in thinking it can actually have such knowledge or predict such outcomes. Pascal's wager may, indeed, make a "rational" or probabilistic case against the short-term benefits of suicide. And it is not only the possibility that suicide does not in fact "end one's life," it is also the unknown consequences for others and thus for the world at large.

Suicide is a possibility for rational beings only. Such a momentous "free" decision expresses the very essence of rationality. But it can never be "logical," for there is no possible certainty as to the consequences. Not even a calculable probability. And whether it can be "moral" is a matter of cultural context and one's overall understanding of life.

Nelson Alexander
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    "Animals... locked into natural causality, cannot choose... or even pose the question." ... "Suicide is a possibility for rational beings only." Okay, uh. Where is your evidence for the first claim? There is absolutely no substantive evidence in ethology and evolutionary biology that humans are somehow more "rational" than other animals. Second, what is a "rational being" anyway? – commando Nov 26 '15 at 02:17
  • "There is absolutely no substantive evidence in ethology and evolutionary biology that humans are somehow more "rational" than other animals." – Nelson Alexander Nov 26 '15 at 02:38
  • Well, of course there is no answering this type of crude skepticism. What is a "rational being"? Look in the mirror. It is that very being that asks such questions. I do not have any settled opinions about these very, very fundamental questions. But I take my basic view of "rationality" not from some Hobbesian idea of "calculation" or machine logic, but from the German idealist tradition, especially Kant's idea of freedom as a "second form of causality." To collapse the distinction between human consciousness (aka: rationality) and determinate causality is just oxymoronic. – Nelson Alexander Nov 26 '15 at 02:49
  • @NelsonAlexander you seem to be presupposing that non-human animals do not possess the same sorts of mental faculties we do... a dreadfully ad-hoc and unscientific position to attempt to maintain... you also seem to be presupposing either compatibilism or indeterminism... specifically in the case of humans and not other animals... – commando Nov 26 '15 at 02:55
  • I would add that we have no "evidence" of animal, vegetable, or mineral "suicide," in the sense you suggest. Of course, metaphors are readily available. Entropy, Freudian death wish, reification. The definition of "rationality" is precisely that "grey area" distinction between animal and human. If you wish to rephrase that in terms of "complexity' or "emergent properties" be my guest. – Nelson Alexander Nov 26 '15 at 02:57
  • Your definition of "scientific" escapes me. It seems patently obvious that animals, even our beloved dogs, do not "possess the same sorts of mental faculties we do." Communication is the essence of "mental faculty." And we do not exchange jokes, puns, and witticism with dogs. If you insist this "proves nothing" then we just plunge into deep skepticism and end up somewhere in the vicinity of Bishop Berkeley. – Nelson Alexander Nov 26 '15 at 03:03
  • @NelsonAlexander "Communication is the essence of 'mental faculty'" this is patently scientifically false, see any solitary species, isolated individual, etc. *ad infinitum*. "And we do not exchange jokes, puns, and witticism with dogs" do you exchange jokes, puns, and witticisms with speakers of Berber? You'd have a hard time, not knowing their language. Now imagine trying to communicate with an entirely different species. Good luck making any ground on showing they don't have communication (protip: birds have incredibly complex calls, prairie dogs construct complex social signals, much more) – commando Nov 26 '15 at 03:07
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    'It seems patently obvious that animals, even our beloved dogs, do not "possess the same sorts of mental faculties we do."' I think we should simply agree to disagree here, this sort of "patently obvious" claim is the foundation of unscientific dogma and "common sense" misbelief misdirecting scholarly progress for millenia. – commando Nov 26 '15 at 03:10
  • I agree and desist. (Chat police!) But I do believe you confuse "science" with skepticism. Science only operates with working axioms or the "patently obvious" agreements, such as Occam's razor. I certainly agree that whatever I call "patently obvious" must be falsifiable. Notify me immediately when you have good evidence of animal suicides or vegetable scientists. – Nelson Alexander Nov 26 '15 at 03:22
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    Can you clarify the distinction between "rational" and "logical"? Also, do you admit probabilistic reasoning or other ways to try to incorporate uncertainty? (If not I am not sure how one decides anything in any situation.) – Rex Kerr Nov 26 '15 at 04:39
  • I certainly admit probabilistic reasoning as the very basis of science. My distinction between logical and rational is between reason as "calculation" (Hobbes) and reason as... well, the enabling constraint of freedom or possibility (Kant, roughly). For Hobbes, et al, reason is deductive and Euclidean, a computer. For Kant it is "reasoning" or "rationality" as exempted from mechanical causality... the "other causality" by which rational beings exempt themselves from purely "logical" computer-like determinism. – Nelson Alexander Nov 26 '15 at 05:02
  • @commando. Funny, as it happens I have exchanged witticisms with actual Berbers, decades ago. The gestural, symbolic level of "joking" and reciprocity was not at all similar or comparable to my very affectionate exchanges with dogs. – Nelson Alexander Nov 28 '15 at 03:25
  • @NelsonAlexander "Because our ability to symbolically communicate with dogs is not the same as our ability to symbolically communicate with other humans, dogs must be in a lower genus of consciousness and 'rationality'. It is definitely not the case that our evolutionary history makes such communication difficult - it must be the case that dogs are mindless machines at the mercy of causation and we are superior." This is non sequitur. Not science. To doubt it is not skepticism. You are making a positive anthropocentric claim. You have no evidence other than "common sense". That is not science. – commando Nov 28 '15 at 15:50
  • Again, we seem to disagree on the definition of "science." Even science finds itself backed into the positions like the "anthropic principle." The ideal of removing all "anthropocentrism" from science is a regulative ideal, but ultimately unrealizable. I take the basically Kantian view that our knowledge of "other forms of consciousness" is necessarily limited. I certainly do not think dogs are "machines." But neither does evidence and observation suggest that their consciousness lends itself to "suicide" or "scientific theories" or other traits of "rationality." Not "inferior," different. – Nelson Alexander Nov 28 '15 at 16:14
  • @NelsonAlexander no, the anthropic principle is not anthropocentric, it's a trivial observation that asking "why is there something other than nothing" is problematic because we couldn't ask that if there was nothing. It's totally realizable to remove anthropocentrism from science, and I have fellow academics in ethology, neurobiology, and biology struggling to defeat the ingrained self-elevation among humans that is totally unscientific. Your view is vulnerable to the obvious reductio that as much as you cannot know the mind of a dog, you cannot know the mind of a human. Why not solipsism? – commando Nov 28 '15 at 17:09
  • Indeed, solipsism and "other minds" and "mind-body" reduction (see, e.g., Nagel or Searle, let alone Heidegger) are problems. I am not some fervent humanist, and the ideal of removing "anthropocentrism" from science interests me, in such works as Luhmann or Brazier or radical systems theory and ecology. But I do not agree that my view is "totally unscientific." Or that my caution regarding nonhuman consciousness assumes some sort of oppressive dualism, prejudice, and the Tyranny of Man. To say a dog or ant is "just as rational" as a human is to simply collapse distinctions. – Nelson Alexander Nov 28 '15 at 18:29
  • @NelsonAlexander I am not saying they are "just as rational". But you are saying they are definitely different and less rational in some important sense. My objection is that we cannot know, especially in the case of cognitively complex creatures like many bird species (e.g. zebra finches) and prairie dogs. They demonstrate quite a bit of "rationality" given how hard it is to even observe "rationality" beyond our selves. To take a position that "animals are locked in causality" while we're not (N.B we are animals) without evidence is imprudent. – commando Nov 28 '15 at 18:50
  • I don't disagree with any of that. And happy to retract "locked in causality," which is vague anyway. I am using "rational" in the sense used traditionally in philosophy as what Kant calls "a different sort of causality," and any qualitative (or quantitative) distinction from animal minds is full of grey areas and slippery slopes, certainly. While I cannot conclusively define "rationality" in terms of observable behaviors I would say the seemingly human "choice" of suicide is a classic indicator, which was my point. – Nelson Alexander Nov 28 '15 at 19:01
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    There is a famous if rather disturbing experiment which showed that rats forced to swim with no hope of escape, elect to stop swimming long before they physically need to. – Richard May 22 '17 at 19:29
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Per the example you pointed out: someone who is in a terminal condition and an intolerable amount of pain, yet somehow still be rational, may decide to terminate their own life this would be a rational suicide by some people's account.

A more interesting case is the typical Hollywood scenario of someone purposefully dying to save loved ones or their country or something. I am not talking about suicide bombers or people blowing themselves up for a political cause, but the movie scenario where some has to die to prevent an asteroid from hitting the planet or something like that. Such a suicide would indeed be considered rational by any measure.

Alexander S King
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    Thank you very much for this answer. The interesting (indeed) case you describe - to die so to save loved ones --- I still wonder whether or not from the individual point of view such act of suicide would be rational. I mean, we could think of it as not rational still and as rather merely moral and heroic act. Maybe answering the question requires unpacking the meaning of 'rationality'?...(We could assume rationality to be composed inter-alia of survival instinct and thus avoidance of suicide) – Jordan S Nov 26 '15 at 01:42
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    I do not see why you separate the suicide bomber and Sydney Carton. Wherever the act is relativized to a "higher purpose" than the life of the individual, it is functionally and contextually "rational." – Nelson Alexander Nov 26 '15 at 01:58
  • @NelsonAlexander the value of a life compared to the glory of the elephant noodle deity or freedom of expression in whereveritisland is debatable at best, sacrficing one life to save many from certain and immediate termination is a much clearer case. Assuming all lives are of equal value, the utility of suicide in the second case is easy to figure out. See the trolley paradox. – Alexander S King Nov 26 '15 at 02:18
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    No, you are making wild and unwarranted assumptions about the future, not to mention the obvious cultural and "secular" biases. As Hume notes, there is no logical basis for preferring the end of a slight pain in my fingernail to the lives of all other human beings. It is only when the "higher purpose" is axiomized that the act can be rationalized. There is nothing more delusional about "preserving the caliphate" than about Carlton "preserving" the love of his friends. – Nelson Alexander Nov 26 '15 at 02:37
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Ghandi said be the change you want to see in the world.

The past several months has been (for me) an examination of reality on reality’s terms, rather than my own or from a human viewpoint.

When one examines the ethical dilemmas of being a human in this world.. from beyond purely just the scope of the viewpoint of being human, it quickly becomes clear our existence is anything but special.

In fact, the discovery might throw us for a proverbial loop of unease and uncertainty about how we view ourselves, and what the moral and ethical outcomes of our existence demands we do.

If any life exterior to planet earth were to observe humanity and its impacts on earth, it would quickly and accurately assess that we are cancerous to the planet.

Our individual and collective existences serve merely to perpetuate and grow the cancer so as to consume the planet and destroy it, exactly in the fashion of a parasite.

Our existences consist of consumption and waste, and consumption for the production of waste. Nothing more, nothing less.

We work to eat, eat to live, live to work, and repeat.

In the process we consume fossil fuels for transportation, heat, clothing, materials (such as tires and plastic bags, etc), etc; and we destroy nature both to create space for our dwellings, but also to construct those dwellings from the trees we harvest.

We pump vast pollution in a myriad of endless ways into our atmosphere, we toss all of our physical waste into either the ground or the oceans, and we fill endless tanks full of shit and piss every day.

We murder billions of animals a year so that we can eat whatever we desire whenever we desire it. And to top it all off, we go to war with one another over who gets to do all of this for the lowest possible costs.

All in the name of progress.

I for one have reached the point where I no longer wish to be a cancer cell.

I disagree with humanity and being alive.

This leaves me at the ethical and moral dilemma about what the correct course of action should be; as if I am to follow Ghandi’s famous quote of being the change one wishes to see in the world, then am I not also obligated to perform the action that best represents my call to be the change I wish to see?

If I disagree with humanity, and my beliefs are so strong so as to present an argument in which logically dictates and rationally argues the immorality of sustaining being alive, does that not result at the moral obligation of actively choosing not to continue participation as part of this parasitic and vile species?

user32166
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    You can't *be* the change if you are not alive to be it. It is best to set an example of how to *live*. – Frank Hubeny Apr 04 '18 at 04:31
  • Your view should contain some action that creates a symbiotic world with nature instead of ‘im a cancer cell and need to die’. Are you saying humans in no way can live in tandem with nature? “The person who says they can and the person who says they can’t are both right” -Confucius – Robus Nov 23 '18 at 14:49