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Suicide: Philosophical Definitions
The emphasis of what we call here "philosophical" definitions is on
increasing the accuracy of the definition of suicide. This is done by
starting out with an initial definition. The idea then is to test this
definition against our intuition, by examining test cases. We strive
that the definition and our intuition will agree on the classification
of as many test cases as possible. Of course, things get interesting
when there is disagreement. If a given test case is classified as a
suicide by the definition, but according to our intuition, it is not a
suicide; or if the test case is not a suicide according to the
definition, but it is according to our intuition, then this indicates
that something is wrong with our definition. We need to provide a new
distinction which did not exist in the initial definition. This
process is repeated over and over again, until we reach definitions
which are complex as the one, for example, by John Donnelly:
"S commits an act of suicide if and only if S intentionally and deliberately strongly wills, either through his or her own causal efficacy or that of others, that his or her life be totally or partially preternaturally extinguished (S might believe in some form of personal postmortem existence), for reasons of an egocentric and/or altruistic sort, such that S willingly causes or generates his own or her own death more or less according to his or her action plan, except in cases where S can preserve his or her life only by performing a morally dishonorable act where such an act is likely adjudged impermissible by anyone who is willing to take the moral point of view (i.e., by being impartial, conceptually clear,factually informed, willing to universalize such a decision, etc.), and/or cases in which S is in a state of terminal illness such that without extraordinary medical support to prolong life or an improbable cure, S would die in a year or less." [1]
This definition may appear overly complex, but every qualification in it is intended to handle a different problematic case. In spite of these efforts, there are several reasons why an objective definition is impossible.
First, the definitions rely on intuition regarding the test cases. There is disagreement as to how to classify some of the test cases. Since there is no agreement on the cases, there can be no agreement on one single definitions.
Additional difficulties arise due to political, moral and social contexts. A government may claim that a person on a hunger strike committed suicide, whereas the supporters would say that the government murdered him. The government's claim stems from the desire to lay the responsibility on the striker. Christians may refuse to classify the death of Jesus as suicide since it does not conform to their beliefs, that on one hand, Jesus is a holy, and on the other, suicide is a sin. Coroners may tend to classify suicides as accidents in order to spare the stigma of suicide from the survivors. In all these cases, the meaning of the term "suicide" is likely to be modified for the cause at hand.
For these reasons, in these web pages, we are not even going to attempt to provide a single true definition. Instead we will provide definitions and test cases which were suggested by several researches. This will lead to the presentation of numerous interesting distinctions which are useful in their own right.
REFERENCES
[1] John Donnelly, "Suicide Right or Wrong", second edition, p 20, 1998.
