19 October to 26 October

Is suicide morally acceptable?

In suicide a person arranges his death in order to avoid a life that he does not wish to lead. It involves killing, but is it the same, morally speaking, as other kinds of killing, that is, sometimes morally acceptable and sometimes not?     In trying to tease out its moral nature three possible conclusions might be reached: 

• That it is always morally wrong.
• That it is wrong in certain circumstances and right (perhaps even laudable) in others.
• That it is always morally acceptable.
  

Those who opt for the second alternative will have to take account of a number of factors in deciding on the moral status of a particular suicide, including the motives that underpinned it and the spirit in which it was enacted. Was it, for example, simply the act of someone, at the end of her tether, who saw death as the solution to her problems? Was it, perhaps, what we might call a revengeful suicide, through which, by killing herself, the protagonist intended to punish others? Or was it perhaps a courageous and self sacrificial suicide, one in which the individual gave up her life for the good (as she saw it) of others?

Gavin Fairbairn, Running Stream Professor of Ethics and Language, School of Applied Global Ethics.

This is the first in a series of ethical reflections about suicide, in which I draw on my chapter on 'Suicide' in the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Applied Ethics (ed Chadwick, R.) published by Elsevier. If you would like to read the whole chapter before publication, email me at g.fairbairn@leedsmet.ac.uk.