1.  Important Questions

        What are some questions that one would like to be able to answer in order to have a satisfactory view concerning the moral issues involved in suicide?

(1)  What is the definition of suicide?  What counts as a case of suicide?

        (a)  Is one's underlying goal relevant?

        (b)  Is the killing/letting die distinction relevant?

Comment

        As regards (a), some people hold that killing oneself is not morally wrong if it is done from a sufficiently strong altruistic reason, such as saving the lives of others.  As regards (b) the question is whether it counts as a case of suicide if, rather than killing oneself, one simply refrains from taking action that would have saved one's life.

(2)  What is the moral status of suicide?

        (a)  Is suicide ever morally justifiable?

        (b)  Is suicide ever morally wrong?

        (c)  Or is suicide sometimes morally justifiable, and sometimes morally wrong?  If so, in what sorts of cases is it
        morally justifiable?

(3)  What are the basic moral principles that are relevant to the question of the moral status of suicide?  Are any of those moral principles theological ones?  Alternatively, are there any purely descriptive theological claims that are crucial to the issue of the morality of suicide?

(4)  What laws should there be with respect to acts of committing suicide?

(5)  What is the moral status of assisting someone to commit suicide?  Is it always morally permissible to do so?  Or sometimes?  Or never?

(6)  What is the moral status of preventing someone from committing suicide?  Should one always attempt to do so?  Or never?  Or in certain sorts of cases?

(7)  What are the basic moral principles that are relevant to the question of (a) assisting someone to commit suicide, and (b) preventing someone from committing suicide?  Are any of those principles theological ones?  Alternatively, are there any purely descriptive theological claims that are crucial?

(8)  What laws should there be with respect to (a) assisting someone to commit suicide, and (b) preventing someone from committing suicide?
 
 

2.  Important Arguments

        What are some important arguments that bear upon the moral issues involved in suicide?

2.1  Some Theological Arguments

I.  A Pure Appeal to Revelation

        A simple religious argument against suicide might runs as follows:

(1)  Christianity (or Judaism, etc.) teaches that suicide is morally wrong.

(2)  Whatever Christianity (or Judaism, etc.) teaches is true.

Therefore:  (3)  Suicide is morally wrong.

Comments

1.  The argument certainly looks valid.  Therefore any challenge must be directed at one of the two premises.

2.  If the appeal were to the Bible, one might be able to challenge the first premise.  But here the appeal is to the teaching of some church, or perhaps to some group within a given religion, so the prospects for challenging (1) may be very small, or simply non-existent.

3.  So it looks as if it is the second premise that is going to be crucial.  One possible strategy is the technique of counterexamples.  This may often be very promising.
 
 

II.  A Creation/Ownership Line of Argument

        An argument that involves a theological premise, but that appeals to moral principles that might be appealing even if one weren't religious, runs as follows:

(1)  Everything is created by a single person - the Creator. (Descriptive theological premise)

(2)  Every human being is created by the Creator.  (Conclusion from (1).)

(3)  Whatever a person creates belongs to that person. (Moral premise)

(4)  Every human being belongs to the Creator.

 (Intermediate conclusion from (2) and (3))

(5)  It is at least prima facie wrong to destroy what belongs to someone else. (Moral premise)

(6)  It is at least prima facie wrong for any human to destroy any human being. (Intermediate conclusion from (4) and (5))

(7)  Suicide involves a thing's destroying itself  (General definition of "suicide".).

(8)  Suicide, in the case of humans, involves a human being's destroying himself or herself..

 (An immediate consequence of applying the definition of "suicide" given at (7) to the case of human beings.)

(9)  It is at least prima facie wrong to commit suicide. (Conclusion from (6) and (8))
 
 

Comments

1.  The argument certainly looks valid.  Therefore any challenge must be directed at one of the four premises -that is statements (1), (3), (5), or (7).

2.  Since statement (7) is simply a definition, it appears that it is only the first three statements that one might question.

Possible Challenges?

Challenges to Statement (5)?

        There are various challenges that might be directed at statement (5).  For example, what about the case where one assumes that people own their own bodies, but it is necessary to destroy an attacker's body in order to save one's own life?  Is destruction of the individual's body even prima facie wrong in such a case?  Secondly, what if the owner of something gives one permission to destroy something?

        These objections to statement (5) seem sound.  However they don't cut deeply, since it seems that one can modify statement (5) in the light of these criticisms:
 

(5*)  It is at least prima facie wrong to destroy what belongs to someone else, unless it is necessary to protect one's own rights, or the rights of others, or, alternatively, unless one has the owner's permission to destroy the property in question.

        One would then have to modify the statements that follow statement (5) so that the rest of the argument will enable one to get to statement (9) by a valid route.  Part of the necessary modification will involve, moreover, the addition of at least one more theological claim - namely, that God has not given humans permission to kill themselves.  But this seems unproblematic.

        If statement (5) can be appropriately modified, then it would seem that the only way to challenge the argument is to challenge either statement (1) or statement (3).

Challenges to Statement (3)?

Possible challenge to (3):  If one creates things that possess rights, then it may be false that one owns such things.  (Case of parents creating children.  Or consider the imaginary Frankenstein type of case.)

Challenges to Statement (1)?

        Possible challenges to (1):  (a)  God does not exist;  (b) Isn't it true not that God created everything, but, at most, that he created everything that existed at a certain point in the past?

        The idea behind the second challenge to statement (1) is that God has merely created the material out of which everything is made, while others, in many cases, have played a role in arranging that material in various ways, to make different things.  So it would seem that God is only partly responsible for the existence of things, and that, as a consequence, he only partially own them.

III.  The Move to "Partial Creation/Ownership"

        Can the above argument be revised if one shifts to partial creation/ownership?   If one revised the argument in that way, the first part would run as follows:

(1)  Everything is created at least in part by a single person - the Creator. (Descriptive theological premise)

(2)  Every human being is created at least in part by the Creator.  (Conclusion from (1).)

(3)  Whatever a person creates belongs to that person. (Moral premise)

(4)  Every part of every human being that is ceated by the Creator belongs to the Creator.

 (Intermediate conclusion from (2) and (3))

(5)  It is at least prima facie wrong to destroy what belongs to someone else. (Moral premise)

(6)  It is at least prima facie wrong for any human to destroy any part of any human being that is created by the Creator.

(7)  Suicide involves a thing's destroying itself  (General definition of "suicide".).

(8)  Suicide, in the case of humans, involves a human being's destroying himself or herself..

But now the problem is that the grand conclusion - namely,

(9)  It is at least prima facie wrong to commit suicide.

will not follow from (6) and (8), since in destroying oneself via suicide, one is not destroying any part created by the creator.  For the Creator created only the matter - and the soul, if humans have souls -  and suicide does not destroy any matter (or any soul).

        In short, the basic problem with attempting to do so is that if a human being commits suicide, it looks as if what God contributed to the existence of that human being is being returned to God undamaged.  For God supplied the relevant matter, and that is not being destroyed.  The form in which that matter was arranged is being destroyed, but the form was imposed upon the matter by the decision of two humans to reproduce, not by God's activity.  So what belongs to God is not being harmed or destroyed.

Final Comment

        One good way of thinking about this argument is to think about the following argument - which appeals to a right to autonomy or self-determination - at the same time, and to see if any ideas come to mind from juxtaposing these two arguments.
 
 

2.2  Some Non-Theological Arguments

I.  An Appeal to Autonomy/Self-Determination

(1)  Every person has the right to live his or her life as he or she chooses, provided that the choice in question does not violate anyone else's right.

(2)  In many cases, suicide does not violate anyone else's rights.

Therefore:  (3)  In many cases, suicide is not morally wrong.

Comments

1.  The argument certainly looks valid.  Therefore any challenge must be directed at one of the two premises.

2.  One way of challenging (2) would be theological:  one could appeal to the idea that even if suicide does not violate the right of any human person, it may still violate someone's right, because it may violate God's right.

3.  Alternatively, one could contend that, contrary to the first premise, a person has, say, a duty to make the most of his or her life, or that one's life is not really one's own, since it belongs to God.
 
 

II.  The Rationality Plus No Harm to Others Arguments

(1)  There are circumstances in which it may very well be in a person's own interest, all things considered - and taking probabilities into account - to commit suicide.

(2)  There are circumstances in which a person's committing suicide does not harm anyone else - or, more generally, does not make anyone else worse off.

(3)  There are circumstances in which a person's committing suicide does not violate anyone else's rights.

(4)  There are circumstances in which a person's committing suicide does not make the world as a whole a worse place.

(5)  There can be cases where all four conditions are satisfied - that is, the suicide is (a) in the interest of the person committing suicide, (b) does not make anyone else worse off, (c) does not make the world a worse place, and (d) does not violate anyone else's rights.

(6)  An action that is not contrary to a person's own self-interest, and that does not make anyone else worse off, that does not make the world as a whole a worse place, and that does not violate anyone's rights, cannot be morally wrong.

(7)  Conclusion:  There are cases where suicide is not morally wrong.