Is suicide immoral?

Committing suicide is not immoral. Just an incomprehensible (for most of us) response to extreme despair & the resultant lack of will to continue. I wouldn't presume to judge anyone who chooses this option .... just mourn for them for the the absence of hope they must have felt to do this.

That is so odd that you quote Camus Dyslexia - I was just ordering the myth of syssyphus on Amazon the other day.

Small world.



I have never thought about dessertion as an argument including duty against suicide. I will think about that more. Good Point.

TF

I know it is a federal crime to attempt suicide. I know also that most legality comes from a crime of morality - but I still fail to see how and why this would be punished.

I, too, think that attempted suicide is a cry for help.

I think that the idea of suicide as immoral because of one's duty to society presupposes one's absolute morality in living. No one is absolutely moral in his life.

An argument can be made that suicide is moral if one's departure from the world is more beneficial to it than one's continued existence in it.

Phoenix said it pretty much how I see it.

The answer to this question depends on how we define morality. (No need to thank me, Captain Obvious is always glad to lend a hand.)

In the big three religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) suicide is considered immoral because the person who commits suicide has thrown away a gift from God and, thus, committed a crime against God. Personally, I think the Almighty probably has more important things to worry about.

I prefer to think of morality in terms of harm. If a conscious human action causes more harm than it prevents or alleviates, then it is immoral. Given that definition, I'm forced to conclude that suicide is usually immoral. The vast majority of people who commit suicide only think they can no longer face life when in fact they can. Their suicide not only harms themselves, but those who loved them and, in many instances, a single suicide is accompanied by a spike in the suicide rate (it appears that a single suicide leads others who were borderline suicidal to see it as a more viable option). Thus the act of suicide in most instances harms a great many people beyond the direct victim of the act. How could this not be considered immoral?

Mills has provided us with a definition of morality. The hegellian definition if I'm not mistaken, by which suicide is potentially immoral when calculated on an individual basis.

Yet a concept that hegellian morality ignores is that of worthiness. For good or for ill it doesn't take into account whether a person deserves harm in its moral calculations. This is probably the main factor that prevents it from achieiving popular acceptance since it is human nature to believe that people deserve pleasure or pain in accordance with their actions.

Another concept left out of hegellian morality is the concept of responsibility in which one is not responsible for the extended results which occur based upon the personality of others.

For example by hegellian morality an attractive person turning down a romantic advance by an ugly and socially-akward person is often immoral since the boost to the ugly person's self-esteem and happiness would be greater than the displeasure that would occur for the attractive person. However by more conventional morality the attractive person is not responsible for the attraction that occurs within the ugly person or their loneliness and is only morally responsible for any additional suffering that could occur if they insulted the other within the rejection.

Applying these two concepts to suicide the morality of the event shifts somewhat from Mills calculations.

Firstly by worthiness, the parents may deserve the suffering caused by the suicide since their actions as parents may have lead to the suffering that motivated their offspring to shuffle loose the mortal coil.

Secondly by responsibillity the offspring is not responsible for the attachment that their parents hold for them, in most cases they have done nothing to foster this attachment and most likely given standard teenage behaviour they have discouraged it. Thus they hold no responsibility for suffering that that attachment may cause.

This is not to say that Mills is wrong, he is not. Merely illustrating his original point of "how we define morality" influencing whether an action is moral or not.

I think there are probably highly immoral suicides (eg, one that is carried out to punish an ex ) and highly moral suicides (eg when someone gives up their place on the lifeboat) and a million shades of grey between, and everyone will still have a different judgement of each.

Absolutely Eorl. The permutations thereof are mindboggling.

Can a tragedy be moral or immoral?
Suicide might indicate lack of hope for anything better in this life, but might also be an indication that the person is hoping for something better in the next.
My brother committed suicide fifteen years ago and I never considered whether what he did was moral or immoral - I have to accept that it was what he thought was the answer for him - and though I wish he'd been able to find a different answer - judgement of him or what he did was not a part of my reaction.
(I love you George)