Stoical Suicide

Wednesday we talked about the concept of suicide in class. The stoics say that if your life is in such chaos that you cannot actively practice Wisdom, Courage, Justice and Temperance. Then it is the logical thing to do is to commit suicide. I can understand where their ideas stem from this in how they want to actively be able to practice these virtues and reach a form of happiness. However, where my view differs is in their idea of wanting to follow their virtues whenever they can and avoid failing to do them. For example, in class I said how it is not temperate to commit such an extreme act. And this extreme act goes against the virtue of temperance, creating a paradox. The man who considers killing himself but does not creates such a paradox. He thinks, “I cannot follow the virtues, I must end my life,” but then in choosing not to, he practices the virtue of temperance but then his earlier statement is proven wrong.

Many people would agree that the person in such a bad state – for example under a dictatorship – has the power to kill himself no more or less than before he was put in to such a state. That is to say that this man is committing suicide for two reasons, 1) because he feels he cannot actively practice the four Cardinal virtues, and 2) because he doesn’t like the place he is in. While some may say that those are two very good arguments, I disagree. I believe that the stoics put too much stock into how much they needed the Cardinal Virtues. While they are extremely important and good to live out as often as possible, I feel that they break the fourth one of Temperance in committing suicide for something that could be very opinionated. That is to say, some people in the bad state may not think it is that bad, therefore those who are not upset at life at the moment would say that the man who kills himself is ignorant for not seeing what they see. Whereas another man agreeing with the suicidal man would disagree saying that the other man had no choice and had to end his life. I just don’t think that the stoics thought the process through of how bad off they really were.