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Suicide and the Law: an Historic Perspective
By Hermotimus Boukephalos
"You Do understand that suicide is a criminal offense?
In less enlightened times they'd have hung you for it."
Satan (Peter Cooke) to Stanley Moon (Dudley Moore),
In the film Bedazzled?
Had philosophy been able to offer clear answers on moral dilemmas, the job of the legislator would be much easier. However, since the positions on many hot issues such as the right to die are influenced by culture and differing values, it seems that the debate will never end.
Today, whether or not suicide is illegal depends upon the jurisdiction in which the question is asked. Although successful suicides are beyond the reach of the law, suicide is prohibited, for example, in most Islamic countries (the Koran specifically forbids suicide). On the other hand suicide has always been more accepted in East Asian cultures.
This essay aims to gain a better understanding on todays culture and values through the place suicide took in culture and law throughout history.
Suicide is not specifically condemned in either the Old or New Testaments; indeed there are a number of rather neutrally-reported suicides in the Bible.[2] The early Christian Church was permissive of suicide, and many sects actively embraced suicide, especially through provoked martyrdom, as an escape from the evil world - the Apostle James is reported to have said, "No one will be saved if he is afraid of death, for the kingdom of death belongs to those who kill themselves."[3]. Many early Christians deliberately provoking the authorities to execute them, and even goading the lions to attack: St. Ignatius, facing martyrdom, is reported to have said, "Let me enjoy those beasts, whom I wish much more cruel than they are; for if they will not attempt me, I will provoke and draw them by force."[7]
It was partly in refutation of these sects in the early 4th Century that St. Augustine condemned suicide in "The City of God," though Augustine insisted on an interpretation of the Sixth Commandment inconsistent with the suicides recorded in the Bible, and he relied largely on the position of older, pagan philosophers, notably Aristotle, who argued that humans were the property of the God(s).[4]
Suicide remained largely decriminalized for several hundred years after St. Augustine condemned it. The first comprehensive legal code of the Christian West, the Code of Justinian, completed in the early 6th Century, recognized rational suicide for reasons of, "impatience of pain or sickness... weariness of life,... lunacy or fear of dishonor." Justinian did forbid suicides undertaken "without reason, on the grounds that a person who "would not spare himself would much less spare another." [5]
Nevertheless, the Church's condemnation of suicide was gradually codified in secular law during the Dark Ages, becoming a criminal act under common law in England in the 10th Century, and a crime throughout medieval Europe. This view was reiterated by St. Thomas Aquinas[8].
A person who successfully suicides cannot, obviously, be imprisoned or executed for his "crime." Medieval law resorted to abusing the corpses of suicides, indulging in superstitious rituals such as driving a stake through the heart of a suicide, refusing suicides burial in consecrated ground (the Old Testament suicide of Ahithophel, described in 2 Samuel 17:1,23, mentions that he was buried in his father's sepulchre, after he hanged himself). Suicide laws also punished the families of suicides, declaring the dead person's property forfeit, and otherwise attempting to terrorize people who might be considering suicide. Criminal punishments also applied to attempted suicide, with the logical, if ironic, effect of encouraging would-be suicides to make certain they did not fail.[1]
These barbaric attitudes toward suicide began to fade during the 17th and 18th Centuries. The logic behind criminalizing suicide began to be questioned early in the Enlightenment, with such authors as John Donne, Motesquieu, David Hume, and Voltaire taking apart the arguments that suicide defies God's will any more than any other human action. France was first to act on the new liberal ideas, decriminalizing suicide after the 1789 revolution. Other European states followed, Britain being the last to remove suicide from the criminal statutes, in 1961. Many U.S. states also decriminalized suicide during the 19th Century.[6]
Suicide is no longer a felony in any of the United States, though it may remain on the books as a misdemeanor in some jurisdictions.
The fact that suicide in many cases is no longer illegal does not mean that the state will not intervene to prevent it, however. The medicalization of suicide has resulted in a system in many Western countries in which persons merely suspected of contemplating this legal act may be incarcerated without due process of law until such time as doctors, not the courts, may decide to release them. This is often done with much less resort to due process than is afforded to criminals. A legal mandate to intervene to prevent suicide is held superior to the doctor-client relationship, and the American Bar Association has declared that its members are obliged to disregard their client-attorney confidentiality requirements to report a client they suspect of planning suicide.
In light of the irrational approach towards suicide throughout history, it is not surprising that terminally-ill patients, suffering untolerable pain, are kept alive due to the "sanctity of life". This continues the attitude which started in the middle ages, although more practiced in a more subtle and dignified fashion.
That philosophy provides no easy answers has led different cultures to different attitudes about suicide, from praised martyrdom to abuse of the deceased body. These difference are mostly derived from religion and superstition. It is time we break away from old patterns of thinking.
We must put man and his desires at the center of our consideration. Once we are aware of our old values and beliefs we need to take great care before we apply these to the problem of suicide. Only by impartial consideration can we avoid making the mistakes made in the past.
[1] - Robert Ingersoll, "Suicide and Sanity"
[2] - The "Bible and Suicide," an a.s.h. post, var. Bible cit.
[3] - The (apocryphal) Gospel According to James
[4] - Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 8
[5] - A. Alvarez, "Savage God: A Study of Suicide," 1970
[6] - Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed., vol. 11
[7] - St. Ignatius, quoted by John Donne, "Biathanatos."
[8] - St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II, 64,5
