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Kant and suicide
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As a result of the medicalization of voluntary death, suicide ( with the exception of "euthanasia" ) is rarely the object of ethical debate. The situation was different centuries ago. Debates about the pros and cons of suicide were socially accepted during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment [1]. Philosophers' views on suicide varied, but they traditionally agreed that it was as such an important matter. Until 1800, all European philosophers discussed suicide. Schopenhauer was probably the last great philosopher who devoted a study specifically to suicide. (Camus' preoccupation with suicide is often seen as a matter of curiosity in the context of the 20th century).
In the 18th century, Kant too dealt extensively with the subject. Kant is considered the one of the greatest modern philosophers. His views on suicide are interesting because of several reasons:
- Kant is generally quoted as an opponent of suicide.
- On the other hand, Kant is one of the most passionate advocates of human autonomy. For him, there is no value more important than individual freedom: indeed, freedom takes precedence over life itself. This makes his thoughts on suicide particularly interesting.
- Kant was not a utilitarian. Utilitarianism says, roughly speaking, that a good action is one that achieves the best overall balance of happiness over unhappiness. [2] Kant, however, believed in absolute values, that is, there are goals that should be pursued by anyone in any situation, no matter how pleasant or unpleasant the results. Many essays on this site, such as the essays on rational choice and suicide are utilitarianist in spirit. Analyzing Kant's moral theory illuminates a different approach to morality.
Kant's ethics may seem difficult to the point of incomprehensibility, because of his distinctive slang. We tried to simplify our presentation and avoid terms specific to Kant.
Contents
1. The Natural Law Argument Revisited 2. Kant Favorable to Choosing Death 3. The Sanctity of Free Life (Duty to Self) 3.1. Criticism: Avoiding Procreation 3.2. Criticism: Freedom to Decide Versus Freedom to Act 4. The Body as a Condition of Freedom 5. Conclusion
1. The Natural Law Argument Revisited
Kant discusses suicide in the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals and disapproves of it as a general rule of conduct:
"A man reduced to despair by a series of misfortunes feels wearied of life, but is still so far in possession of his reason that he can ask himself whether it would not be contrary to his duty to himself to take his own life. Now he inquires whether the maxim of his action could become a universal law of nature. His maxim is: From self - love I adopt it as a principle to shorten my life when its longer duration is likely to bring more evil than satisfaction. It is asked then simply whether this principle founded on self - love can become a universal law of nature. Now we see at once that a system of nature of which it should be a law to destroy life by means of the very feeling whose special nature it is to impel to the improvement of life would contradict itself, and therefore could not exist as a system of nature; hence that maxim cannot possibly exist as a universal law of nature, and consequently would be wholly inconsistent with the supreme principle of all duty". [3]
For an act to be inherently good in Kant's system, it must comply with the principle (called "categorical imperative") that what you do should be done by anybody in a similar circumstance. For example, Kant believes that always telling the truth is good, because everybody should always tell the truth. The fact that you are psychologically inclined to be sincere, or that telling the truth makes you happy, has no moral relevance. An act is good if it is good as a matter of principle and it derives from duty, not from psychological inclination. If suicide were good, it should be the duty for everyone, at least for everyone in your situation. But suicide cannot be a universal duty, therefore it cannot be good. Suicide is based on self-love (a psychological inclination) and thus lacks moral value, i.e. is neither moral nor immoral.
This argument shows that there cannot be any universal obligation to commit suicide. However, it does not prohibit people to choose suicide. If someone thinks he should commit suicide because suicide is a duty for everyone, he is wrong. Kant's argument says: "If I commit suicide, then I want a natural law to be in force, to the effect that all living things destroy themselves. But this is absurd, since all living things naturally preserve themselves". This is only a stronger version of Aquinas' natural law argument discussed in the ash FAQ. While Aquinas simply says "don't kill yourself because nothing destroys itself", Kant seems to imply "A suicidal person is wrong since, if he is right in killing himself, then everything should destroy itself".
It would be a mistake to infer from Kant's words the conclusion that suicide is never appropriate. A suicidal person of course does not want everybody to commit suicide, let alone "life" in general to destroy itself; he perhaps thinks suicide is appropriate (but not required) for anyone in his situation. To use the above argument as a general prohibition of suicide is wrong because:
- What is appropriate for someone is
not necessarily appropriate for everyone. Not all our actions are done
according to a maxim ( a fundamental principle or rule of conduct)
that must function as a universal law. We do lots
of things because they agree with our tastes or inclinations and are
permitted, not required, by our values. For example, when one chooses
a profession, one does not want everybody to choose that same
profession, otherwise, division of labour would not be possible. So
the mere fact that suicide cannot be a universal norm does not show
that it is immoral, it only shows it lacks moral
value (as it is a matter of personal taste or inclination).
- "Required" and "permissible" are two
different things (as in pro-suicide versus pro-choice). A pro-choice
advocate would like to universalize the maxim that people have
the right to commit suicide if they want; but not the
maxim that people should commit suicide.
- It is not entirely true that all forms of life naturally avoid self-destruction. If so, death itself would be impossible as a biological phenomenon. It is however a natural law that all living creatures die. Kant (and any "natural law argument") doesn't address the possibility of death. Since we are by nature mortal, why is it wrong to choose when to die, to do what is natural? To argue that, given what Kant says, suicide is never justified, you have to assume we are biologically immortal. Kant actually argues here that suicide is inappropriate for an immortal creature (God or a god), but this is a different issue.
Whether Kant actually intended this argument as a general prohibition of suicide is unclear. Perhaps his concern was to prevent any tyrant from coercing one of his subjects to commit suicide. Fact is, the above argument only proves that there cannot be any universal duty to commit suicide. In short, we shouldn't force people to kill themselves.
2. Kant Favorable to Choosing Death
Perhaps dissatisfied with his own argument in the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant devotes to suicide a longer essay [4].
What is remarkable (and intriguing), is that Kant continues to ignore the distinction between pro-death and pro-choice. He never considers the notion that suicide can be a private matter, a personal choice. In his view, if someone could justifiably commit suicide, he would do so not because he has such a right, but because he obeys a duty to commit suicide. When Kant disapproves of suicide, he thinks such a duty is absurd, therefore nobody can be justified in choosing suicide, or asking someone else to commit suicide.
It is interesting to compare this view with current arguments against euthanasia, which claim that "the right to die will become the duty to die". While contemporary opponents of euthanasia have in mind the "psychological pressure" on people to die, Kant wanted to make of this a matter of logic. Perhaps he thought suicide is such an important matter, that no one can kill himself unless he believes he is under an obligation to do so?
The result of this attitude (equating pro-choice with pro-death) is unexpected. When Kant examines the issue more closely, he discovers (contrary to his own previous opinion) that suicide can sometimes be dignified. This happens when the urge to preserve biological life comes into conflict with morality, i.e. someone can live only by compromising his values. Kant is unequivocal that morality is superior to life. ("It is cowardly to place a high value upon physical life"). But since, as we saw, suicide is for him a matter of duty and not of personal choice û this leads him to actively encouraging a form of suicide, called self-sacrifice. For example [4]
"There are many circumstances under which life ought to be sacrificed. If I cannot preserve my life except by violating my duties towards myself, I am bound to sacrifice my life rather than violate these duties... Yet there is much in the world far more important than life. It is better to sacrifice one's life than one's morality. To live is not a necessity; but to live honorably while life lasts is a necessity".
Kant does not simply permit voluntary death when one is about to lose one's dignity, he urges it:
"life, in and for itself, is not the greatest of the gifts entrusted to our keeping and of which we must take care. There are duties which are far greater than life and which can often be fulfilled only by sacrificing life".
If one can live only by doing wrong things, suicide is required:
"If a man cannot preserve his life except by dishonoring his humanity, he ought rather to sacrifice it; it is true that he endangers his animal life, but he can feel that, so long as he lived, he lived honorably."
One can find several such quotations in the final paragraphs of his essay on suicide, including an imaginary example of several innocent people accused of treachery: the bravest of them will commit suicide, while those of "less inner worth" will choose captivity. Only vile people want to prolong their life at any price:
"I should endeavor to preserve my own life only so far as I am worthy to live"
We quoted these passages in order to draw attention to an aspect less known of Kant's work. When the name of Kant arises in discussions about suicide, he is invariably seen as a dogmatic adversary of it. He mentions suicide favorably only in the last paragraphs of his text, which perhaps few people read.
True, Kant does not advocate the freedom to commit suicide; the opening sentences of his 1784 essay condemn suicides motivated by unhappiness. However, Kant does not offer a very clear criterium for which suicides should be admired and which reviled. The problem of drawing such a criterium should be particularly important for him, since, as we have seen, he talks about suicide in terms of duty, not of choice: in his opinion, in some cases people must choose to die, in some cases they must stay alive.
3. The Sanctity of Free Life (Duty to Self)
The mere possibility of a conflict between life and morality makes sense only if lengthening your life at any cost is not assumed to be moral. This is indeed what Kant believed: "life is not to be highly regarded for its own sake".
For him, morality is treating every person as an "end in itself" and not as a mere means. In particular, what matters most is respecting the freedom of other people (and of yourself) to pursue their own ends. Freedom is identical, according to Kant, with the ability to set your own purposes. Obviously, one cannot be moral unless one is free. The status of a person as "an end in itself" consists in treating him as being capable of setting and pursuing his/her own ends. [5] The ultimate value is to respect any person as a rational being that sets and pursues his/her own goals.
Deception, manipulation, coercion, using other people for purposes you know, but they are ignorant about, are things Kant would have abhorred, even if some of these conducts (for example lying) could sometimes result in greater overall happiness, they are still wrong (in contrast to the utilitarian view).
To limit someone's ability to achieve their own goals, their own way of happiness, is always immoral, even when coercion seems to be done in the benefit of the person whose freedom is limited (the plea "I know your own needs better than you do", for example involuntary psychiatric treatment due to "dangerousness to oneself", might be rejected on Kantian lines, although Kant did not deal directly with the issue).
Is then suicide a matter of personal autonomy, a goal a person could set for themselves and we should respect in others? Kant's answer is ambivalent: as we saw, he praises suicide for "moral" reasons. If you can no longer treat other people as ends-in-themselves, or if you cannot be treated any longer as an end (and not mere means for other's aims), you should commit suicide. But if your only reason for committing suicide is unhappiness, Kant does not think you are free to kill yourself.
His argument is that a person who commits suicide destroys their own free will, their own ability to set ends for themselves. To commit suicide cannot be a rational decision, since a successful suicide terminates the ability to make any further rational decision. Therefore, freedom does not include the right to kill yourself, since suicide annihilates your very freedom:
"If freedom is the condition of life, it cannot be employed to abolish life and so to destroy and abolish itself. To use life for its own destruction, to use life for producing lifelessness, is self-contradictory".
A person who commits suicide sins thus not against God (Kant was by no means a religious dogmatic), but against their own freedom. A suicider disposes of his humanity (i.e., his freedom) as a means and not as an end, since he wants to be free only so long as this procures him a pleasant state. In this sense, committing suicide is similar to selling yourself into slavery: in both cases, one gives up one's free will, one treats oneself as a beast or a thing.
Kant is aware that suicide is not immoral as such: it does not interfere with other people's freedom, "suicide does not violate the property of others". The duty to live freely and honorably is prior to other moral obligations or rights: you have to continue to live freely in order to be subject to any obligation, to enjoy any right. A psychological anti-suicide cliche, perhaps familiar to ashers, is "you cannot make other people happy unless you are happy yourself". Kant offers a loftier version of it: you cannot respect the free life of other people unless you respect your own free life. Insofar as Kant is opposed to suicide, his position, as expressed in his anti-suicide passages, can be called "sanctity of free life". "Sanctity of rational life" or "sanctity of moral life" would be equally appropriate names. This is a position close to, but not identical with, "sanctity of life" (the view that human life is the highest value).
3.1. Criticism: Avoiding Procreation
A case against "the sanctity of life" in general has been made by Peter Suber [6]. According to Suber, the notion that merely extending human life is the ultimate moral goal leads to the view that making as many children as possible is everyone's duty. Any activity other than making life, longer and more life, would be sinful or less moral than procreating. Celibacy, chastity and contraception would be as great sins as murder. After all, procreation is a way of using your own body to produce more life. And since human life is allegedly a value superior to any other value, procreation would be a duty. The "sanctity of life" is thus inconsistent for anyone who does not think celibacy and chastity are condemnable. The odd conclusions lead us to believe that the problem is that our assumption is incorrect, therefore, extending life is not the most important value.
This argument is effective against Kant as well, although Kant does not value mere life, but life able of moral conduct, free life. If you had children, they would most likely be rational humans capable of morality and of freely pursuing their own goals. If extending free, rational life were a goal in itself, every human being should be under a duty to procreate.
It is however obvious that Kant did not assume such a consequence: after all, he never married, and had no children. Celibacy and refusal to make children are accepted in our society, (although they might have been condemned in some ancient cultures and religions). If a poor family refuses to have children, this is not considered cowardice or insanity, but a rational and responsible attitude.
To answer why avoiding procreation is not immoral, Kant (who rejects suicide in the name of sacredness of free life) might argue that you have no duty towards the possible lives you could generate (since you have no duty to make children), but you have a duty towards the possible future life you could live (since you are not free to commit suicide whenever you want). Duties to your future self are more important than duties to the possible future selves for whose existence (or non-existence) you are responsible.
The most promising argument for such a position is probably to resort to the active-passive distinction. In this view, refusing to extend life is permitted (it is a passive conduct), while deliberately stopping life is forbidden (this is active intervention, in other words murder or self-murder). This distinction, far from clear, is often discussed in debates concerning the role of the physician in euthanasia (i.e., is there any crucial distinction between withdrawing treatment and administering a lethal injection to a dying patient?).
Similarly refusing to give birth to children is passive, yet committing suicide is active, thus the former is permissible and the latter is not.
To address this, lets look at suicide more closely. In the context of non-medical suicide, what is the difference between "not extending your own life" and "acting to stop it"? It seems it is a difference of method rather than of intention. For example, starving to death is "passive suicide", while shooting yourself is "active suicide". However, if passive action is permissible then passive suicide is permissible as well.
Therefore, we could
not ascribe to Kant the idea that refusal or indifference to
extend life ("passive suicide") is more acceptable than actively
stopping it. Indeed, Kant is unequivocal that we must extend free
(moral) life, not only refrain from stopping it: "we ought not to
risk our life and hazard losing it for interested and private
purposes. To do so is not only imprudent but base". Thus, the
question why we have a duty to extend only our own life, but not
lives of potential offspring, remains unanswered.
3.2. Criticism: Freedom to Decide Versus Freedom to Act
What is intriguing about Kant is that he opposes suicide, to the extent at which he does so, precisely in the name of freedom and autonomy. To this extent, Kant provided an original argument against suicide. Living freely, setting your own goals, is itself valuable. Suicide is wrong because it is a loss of freedom.
Actually, this understanding of freedom is incompatible with the freedom to act according to your decisions. The freedom that Kant values here is a freedom to decide, but not a freedom to act on your decisions. It is however obvious that the mere freedom to set our goals is not enough, if we are not allowed to achieve them.
Kant rejects suicide as suicide is a limit to our freedom to decide for ourselves. But isn't any human action, any fulfillment of a decision, a limit to the freedom to decide? The freedom to act and the freedom to decide are two different things: the first sets limits to the latter, not only in the case of suicide, but whenever a plan is put in practice. Anything we do is "irreversible" and thus puts a limit to our freedom: once you've done something, you cannot undo what you did, you can only change, perhaps, its consequences. You can (freely) deliberate whether to go to a friend or stay at home on a certain day; but once you've made a choice and acted on it (say, you remained at home), you are no longer free to decide to go to your friend that day ( you can regret what you did, but this is a different matter ). The freedom to act according to your decisions is always exercised at the expense of the freedom to make decisions.
Kant's unconditional praise of freedom leads implicitly to the prohibition of making use of freedom. This is the logical consequence, once you act on your decisions, you lose your freedom to decide to act otherwise. Suicide is not a special act in that it is irreversible, hence a limit to our freedom to decide: anything we do is such a limit. Suicide cannot therefore be condemned because it puts a limit to our "free life", unless we strive for the complete, longest freedom to decide. But such a boundless freedom to decide is possible only if we refrain from acting on any decision. The position, considering this kind of freedom as of value, is simply absurd. It requires deliberation, setting purposes, but doing nothing to achieve them.
4. The Body as a Condition of Freedom
Kant most often uses "freedom" with the ordinary meaning, i.e. freedom to act on your decisions. In this respect, he finds a different anti-suicide argument:
"In fact, however, our life is entirely conditioned by our body, so that we cannot conceive of a life not mediated by the body and we cannot make use of our freedom except through the body. It is, therefore, obvious that the body constitutes a part of ourselves. If a man destroys his body, and so his life, he does it by the use of his will, which is itself destroyed in the process"
Kant actually makes here the illicit inference from "only through our body can we make use of our freedom" to "destruction of the body entails destruction of our (free) will". From the fact that we need our body to be effective, it does not follow, however, that we need our body to be free.
For example, if the soul is immortal one could be free (to make decisions) after one's death as well. In other parts of his moral system, Kant claims that the soul is immortal; in his discussion of suicide, however, he ignores this.
For another, more realistic example, consider that we think it is obvious that people can be causally effective after death: one can influence people, one can "change the world" while being dead - by one's writings, letters, will, or suicide note. A person leaving such documents "does" something, using not his body but his image in the eyes of those still alive, although the control over the effects of what is done is limited.
Moreover, what someone did in his life can be judged in a way of another, according to whether and when he committed suicide. One's death may shed a new light on what one's life was about, and on how people interpret it: people's thoughts are altered by death. In this sense, dying is not necessarily ceasing to be influential. In extreme cases, it is possible that only by one's death can one's wishes be fulfilled. This is probably the reason for altruistic suicides.
It is nevertheless true that, if you commit suicide, and your soul is mortal, you will lose the ability to change your mind about your past decisions; to revise them. If your highest value is being always able to change your mind, to make decisions and regret your past deeds, then you should not commit suicide. But if what you value most is avoiding pain, or even "doing something" with your life, then Kant's arguments are not enough.
5. Conclusion
Contrary to widespread opinion, Kant does not oppose suicide in all cases. This essay showed, using less known passages of his work, that his attitude is actually ambivalent, and at times inconsistent. He praises suicide as a means to avoid moral degradation, but condemns suicide when its only reason is avoiding further sufferance. His argument that suicide is an encroachment of one's own freedom assumes that the freedom to make decisions is a higher value than the freedom to carry them out. Such an assumption is absurd. The thesis that free life is itself valuable is exposed to much of the same criticism as the thesis that life is itself valuable (prohibition of celibacy). As for his argument that the body is an indispensable condition of exercising one's freedom, it is plainly wrong.
There are several issues we did not examine in this article. At one point, Kant uses, probably insincerely, religious rhetoric to reject suicide (we are sentinels to whom God assigned a mission etc, he apparently ignored Hume's essay on suicide which analyzed this argument). The evaluation of probabilities in the decision to commit suicide is also unknown to Kant: for example, what about committing suicide when it is likely, but not sure, that one will not be able to live honorably and freely? Also, his implicit equation of suicide with treating oneself as a beast or selling oneself into slavery deserves more detailed consideration.
At times, Kant makes dubious psychological remarks (a man free to commit suicide will behave irresponsibly and can do any crime without fear of punishment, in fact, this comes into open contradiction with his approbation of suicide to avoid captivity).
One casual remark of his is yet worthy of attention: "man is greatly flattered by the idea that he is free to remove himself from this world, if he so wishes. He may not make use of this freedom, but the thought of possessing it pleases him". In other words, the mere fact that (suicidal) people know they can exit whenever they want can be "therapeutic" and improve life's quality. From a utilitarian standpoint, this entails that painless suicide methods should be easily available: even if people do not use them, they will be happy to have them. The right to die is thus a right that can be enjoyed during one's lifetime. This is perhaps a topic to be further debated.
Bibliography
[1] George Minois, Histoire du suicide. La societe occidentale face a la mort volontaire, Librairie Artheme Fayard, 1995
[2] Simon Blackburn, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 1996
[3] Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals http://www.msu.org/intro/content_intro/ texts/kant/kant_foundations.html
[4] Immanuel Kant, Lecture on Ethics http://www.siue.edu/~evailat/kant-suic.html
unless otherwise indicated, quotations in italics are from [4]
[5] Toshiro Terada, Why Couldn't Kant Be A Utilitarian? http://software2.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/TEth/TEthTera.htm
[6] Peter Suber, Against the sanctity of life http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/sanctity.htm
