Abstract
It is time now to turn to some practical problems in ethics. In this way we can see how realistic the approach to ethics recommended so far really is. We can see also just what it means in practice. I have suggested that there might be widespread incoherence in contemporary moral philosophy. In the next few chapters we will see a few examples of this. However, we should not expect ethics after Anscombe to be excessively different from ethics before Anscombe. It is not my claim at all that humanity is radically in error about ethics. In fact I am not sure whether this would even be a claim that could be made sense of. Could it somehow turn out that murder is a good thing, for instance? There is an inherent conservatism in the kind of Wittgensteinian moral philosophy that I am advocating that rules out this kind of radicalism. It is not as conservative as one might think, though, as we shall see in chapter 7.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
O’Keeffe, Terence M., “Suicide and Self-Starvation,” in Suicide: Right or Wrong?, edited by John Donnelly, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York (1990).
See for instance Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government,chapter 2: “everyone is bound to preserve himself and not to quit his station willfully,” quoted by O’Keeffe on p.119.
Holland, R.F., “Suicide,” in his collection Against Empiricism, Barnes and Noble Books, Totowa, New Jersey (1980).
Ibid, p.152.
Chesterton, G.K. Orthodoxy, Image Books, Garden City, New York (1959).
Holland, p.143.
Ibid p.155.
Ibid, p.148.
Donne, John Suicide, (Biathanatos transcribed and edited for modern readers) edited by William A. Clebsch, Scholars Press, Chico, California (1983), p. 25.
lbid, p.92.
Alvarez, A. The Savage God: A Study of Suicide, W. W. Norton and Company, New York and London (1990), p. 145.
Ibid, p.145. Alvarez gives Giles Romilly Fedden’s Suicide,London and Toronto (1938), p.305 as a reference here.
See ibid, pp.130–131.
From Richard Friedenthal’s Goethe: His Life and Times,London and New York (1965), p.128, quoted in Alvarez, pp.228–229.
Oates, Joyce Carol “The Art of Suicide” in Donnelly.
SeeOates, p.210.
Quoted in Alvarez, p.153.
O’Keeffe, p.132.
See Alvarez, p.239.
See ibid.
Brandt, Richard B. “The Morality and Rationality of Suicide,” in Donnelly, pp.185–200.
Brandt, Richard B. “The Morality and Rationality of Suicide,” in Moral Problems,edited by James Rachels, Harper and Row, New York (1979), p.476 (hereafter this paper is referred to as “Rachels”). Interestingly there are two versions versions of this paper. The version appearing in the more recent anthology leaves out some of the most objectionable passages, suggesting that either Brandt or his editor is now closer to my view. The spirit of the new version is still similar to that of the old, however.
See Rachels, p.475.
Brandt, p.196.
Ibid, pp.195–196.
Chesterton, p.19.
Brandt, p.196.
Ibid, p.193.
Ibid, p.196.
See Holland, pp.149–150.
Brandt, p.185.
lbid, p.187.
Ibid.
See ibid, p.194.
Pasternak, Boris An Essay in Autobiography,quoted in A. Alvarez “Literature in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” MA Handbook for the Study of Suicide,edited by Seymour Perlin, Oxford University Press, New York, London and Toronto (1975), p.50. Alvarez’ essay is based on his book The Savage God.
lbid pp.58–59.
Aquinas, St. Thomas Summa Theologiae, Part II, Question 64, a.5 in St. Thomas Aquinas On Politics And Ethics, edited by Paul E. Sigmund, W. W. Norton and Company, New York and London (1988), p. 70.
The most obvious exception to this rule is the case of the Islamic belief that we are all slaves of God. A Moslem might well accept Aquinas’ argument.
Kant, Immanuel Lectures on Ethics,translated by Louis Infield, The Century Co., New York and London (n.d.), pp.153–4.
Ibid, p.151.
Ibid.
Cannibals and the bleakly materialist might. David Plante reports Francis Bacon’s insistence that “Of course we’re nothing but meat,” and describes this as Bacon’s insistence on the obvious. See Plante, David, “Bacon’s Instinct” in The New Yorker,Nov. 1, 1993, p.96. But if we are all meat, to Bacon, or potential meat, to a cannibal, the suicide is not in the special position that Kant has in mind.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig Notebooks 1914–1916,edited by G.H. von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1984), p.91 e.
Chesterton, pp.66–80. For a discussion of the similarities between Chesterton and Wittgenstein, see William H. Brenner, “Chesterton, Wittgenstein and the Foundations of Ethics,” in Philosophical Investigations, Vol.14, No. 4, October 1991.
Ibid, p.69.
Ibid, p.71.
Ibid, p.23.
Ibid, pp.72–73.
Ibid, p.73.
Ibid.
Wertenbaker, Lael Tucker Death of a Man, Random House, New York (1957).
Holland, pp.156–157. Here we can see the kind of rationality that there was to Charles Wertenbaker’s decision. It was not the kind described by Brandt which I discussed in part 2 of this chapter, or so it seems to me.
See Donnelly, p30.
I have been greatly helped in writing this section by discussions of Chesterton with Stephanie Wilkinson.
Donne, p.3.
Oates, p.208.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Richter, D. (2000). The Ethics of Suicide. In: Ethics after Anscombe. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1478-5_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1478-5_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5371-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-1478-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive