Recently Ayeray Medina Bustos posed the question: 'Is suicide sensible?' Her attempt at an answer reveals the inherent tensions between absolute and relative morality. For example, her belief that 'self destruction is wrong in all of its forms' invokes a paradigm of thinking that is incomprehensible to those who do not sign up to such an absolute conception of morality. Of course, relativism has its own problems, including the nihilism and shallow pragmatism for which its most extreme versions are criticised.

Absolutist approaches to morality fail to address issues to do with reality and knowledge. Medina Bustos's claim that suicidal behaviour is 'egotistically wrong' can only be judged against the personal norms and experience that create our ego and our moral frameworks, and which interplay to construct the boundaries whereby we assign anything to being 'inside' or 'outside'. In the case of suicide, it is doubtful whether a psychotic individual or a suicide bomber perceives the world in the same way.  Neither would an inmate at Auschwitz, who ended their own life on the electric fence, take much comfort from someone claiming it was not sensible. Given this, I think we should return Fairbairn's original question, 'Is suicide morally acceptable?'

Paul Miller, PhD Centenary Student, Faculty of Sport & Education