Roping

Sexlessness is significantly related to happiness and life satisfaction

Roping, Ropemaxxing or Falling On One's Sword ("FOOS") is the Incelospherian term for Suicide meaning the conscious & deliberate choice to end one's own life. Any event that edges you closer to rope-related thoughts is called Ropefuel. Mass shootings often end in the perpetrator's suicide (attempt).

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide (Lifeslop vs. Lifegem Dilemma). Philosophizing, that's learning to die; that is wisdom's last conclusion. The Incel Wiki advises to not fear death itself but to see it as the final & purifying separation of the soul from the body to enter a higher state form of existence, namely the "Afterlife", "Reincarnation" or absolute Non-Existence (e.g. cession of consciousness). 93% of all humans who have ever existed are already dead, so you may not act like a pussy, you faggot.

The only suicidal animal is the human (not accounting for self-destructive behaviors), hence consciously killing yourself can be seen as the privilege that's a uniquely human expression even beyond most people's definition of "God's existence" (since most argue that God can't kill himself because such an action is logically contradictory to the definition of an eternal, immortal, and omnipotent being). Suicide is a phenomenon of human nature that irritates normies up to this day, whether as an isolated incident or a mass phenomenon (like when Incels in Germany started to kill themselves in high rates after the release of the novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther")

Foids have higher rates of non-fatal suicidal behavior (e.g self-injuries) and overall "attempt suicide" slightly more often than men but use much less-lethal methods (e.g. poisoning, overdose...) and are generally more inclined to larp & leverage self-injuries/suicide-attempts as a way to seek attention with retarded suicide notes (--> Women arrest in their emotional development earlier, and are therefore more socially inept), unlike men who more often use more-lethal and therefore suicide-safer methods (e.g. hanging, suffocation, shooting yourself, jumping from an "unsurvivable height" etc...) which explains the ridiculously higher suicide rate for men. The patriarchy striking again!

Most Incels advocate for the legalization of Euthanasia (= voluntary death to avoid further suffering and/or adverse life circumstances) yet it remains illegal in most countries and even in places where it's legalized/decriminalized, it's often only selectively applicable for those with serious physical health diseases who won't survive for long anyways (e.g. end-stage cancer), making Euthanasia unaccessable for most Ropers. Normies would literally rather see your corpse than grand you the health care choice to end it clean, safe and with dignity (My Body, My Choice only counts when foids want to kill their to-be baby in this soyciety😂)

I know what you might think: You're only such a miserable chud cuz u don't get laid! That's a valid point cuz most ropers wouldn't have died this way if they were born a foid or chad, statistically speaking; the problem with this flawed logic is that normies believe that one is born to be someone else than who one is, and since to be nobody-but-yourself (in a soyciety which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else) means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight making ropemaxxing even more attractive for some: You can't choose where you're thrown, but you must choose what to make of the place where you've landed, and some achieve peace in the best way by acting preemptively. Ofc, first learn in what life consists (=naturally, ascension and further sex, any other thing is cope but may be sustainable until a certain point); then, if you shall be dissatisfied with life, have recourse to death, my dear buddy boyo. This article doesn't recommend you to kill yourself, it remains neutral; it's literally pro-choice, although roasties have gangraped this word nowadays, unfortunately.

Ropefueling Characteristics

Roping is especially prominent among Nymphocels and Truecels within the "Incel community" (who may think it's morally corrupting to exploit a whore's precarious situation to "buy sexual consent" + it's obviously cucked to pay for them, including if you indirectly pay when they're "your wife" as an oofy doofy; even if one doesn't care about that, though, living in poverty or in a place where escortmaxxing is illegal often makes it financially hard-to-obtain; another soyciety fun fact, or rather trvthnvke: In many countries, only the sex-client can face legal consequences while the whore can still whore around without having to deal with the law!)

Demographics that Show a Higher Likelihood to Die by Suicide

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  This male-to-female suicide difference is particularly noticable in Eastern Europe (--> Gynocentric countries: Ukrainian men literally get spawntrapped in their country (can't leave legally) and get kidnapped by their military to die in the front lines while women can just ditch out and live as refugees in Western Europe) but also in most other countries. China and more-islamic Countries seem to have a more balanced gender suicide rate.
  Men, Trannies and Trannymaxxers
• Students that were or are bullied within intrasexual competition are around 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than bullies, or generally non-victims
• Neets/Hikikomoris who Lie Down and Rot constantly
• Mentalcels
• Manlets; also, people with a psychiatric disorder that causes them to perceive themselves as ugly have a significantly higher rate than that among people with major depression
• Elder Folks, followed by middle-aged wall-hitters
• Poorcels
• People who lack(ed) positive reinforcement (--> negative reinforcement) and love-and-belongingness
• In the US, American Indians/Alaska Natives have the highest suicide rate followed by Whites. Blacks, Hispanics and Asian Americans (albeit some East Asian Countries have a very high suicide rate) show a significantly lower suicide rate.
• In Russia, ethnic minorities (especially in the Far East, so North Asiatic Folks related to Redcels) show a significantly higher suicide rate than ethnic Russians while the majority-muslim Caucasians have the lowest recorded suicide rate (Interestingly, Turkic minorities, e.g. Tatars and Bashkirs, are also muslim - though less strict and more secular - but also show a high suicide rate, possibly due to secular alcoholism).

"Presuicidal Syndrome"

The Austrian psychiatrist and suicidologist Erwin Ringel observed people who survived Suicide in the 1950s, and also concluded following pre-suicidal behavioral characteristics:

• Narrowing (ger: "Einengung"): The options in life become increasingly limited until ultimately suicide is the only option left; it can be based solely on the affected person's thoughts and behavior (depression, 'social disorder') or also in reality (social isolation/loneliness, unemployment, loss, illness).
• Aggression: Increased yet inhibited aggression that sooner or later turns against the affected person ('aggression reversal').
• Escape into a fantasy world: The feeling of not being able to cope with reality leads to an escape into unreality building an illusionary world in which thoughts of death and ultimately suicide play an increasingly large role.

Different Types of Suicide

The French sociologist Émile Durkheim identified four types of suicide, based on varying levels of social integration and regulation in society:

• Egoistic Suicide: Caused by low social integration; individuals feel detached, isolated, and alone, often resulting from weak ties to family or community.
• Altruistic Suicide: Occurs with excessive integration; individuals are so integrated that they sacrifice their lives for the group's obligations, honor, or causes.
• Anomic Suicide: Results from a sudden breakdown of social norms, regulation, or equilibrium, such as during economic crises or rapid societal shifts, leaving people feeling lost.
• Fatalistic Suicide: Caused by excessive regulation, where life is heavily controlled by oppressive, strict, or stifling rules (e.g. slavery or prisoners).

Weird Religious & Soycietal Stance Against Suicide

Most religions and even non-religious normies in soyciety dogmatically adopt a very negative stance towards Roping due to a perceived "sanctity of suicide" (e.g. "You only live once, bro!") or seeing life as inherently good/worth-living (→ Projection bias & False consensus effect); some even go so far and claim that no life's worth voluntarily dying, even when it's very evident that suffering can make it impossible to even slightly happily or just not-painfully 'live', e.g. when one incurablely, debilitatingly & hopelessly suffers under terminal illnesses, neurodegenerative disorders, severe chronic pain conditions, advanced progressive diseases etc... - If one goes so far to denounce every suicide/euthanasia-case, he may be checked for sadism or pathological malicious joy...

For instance, in the German language, Martin Luther coined the term "Selbstmord" ("self-murder" which btw is the best translation from the Latin word suicide which derives from "self + killing"; it's morally based on christian values viewing suicide as a sin since suicide was/is also considered a form of murder just like any other non-suicidal murder, at the end, which is why some Ropers wouldn't even be buried in graves, sometimes) until Nietzsche introduced the more-neutral term "Freitod" ("Free Death"), though, it's usage is still rather uncommon nowadays.

Immanuel Kant About Suicide

All Enlightenment thinkers who wrote about suicide (Hume, Voltaire and Rousseau etc...) agreed that the religious condemnation of suicide was not only preposterous but also entirely lacking in charity. Kant, on the other hand, denounced suicide in the most unqualified and indeed quite furious terms:

“Suicide is in no circumstances permissible.” The man who commits suicide “sinks lower than the beasts.” We “shrink from him in horror.” “Nothing more terrible can be imagined.” “We look upon the suicide as carrion.” And if a man attempts suicide and survives, he has in effect “discarded his humanity” and we are entitled to “treat him as a beast, as a thing, and to use him for our sport as we do a horse or a dog.” (from The Metaphysics of Morals, 1797.)

Kant maintains that man is God’s property, and hence has no right to dispose of his own life. However, Kant also has some secular arguments:

"Suicide is abasing and degrading his humanity by treating himself as no more than a thing"

“Man can only dispose of things; beasts are things in this sense; but man is not a thing, not a beast. If he disposes of himself, he treats his value as that of a beast. He who so behaves, who has no respect for human behavior, makes a thing of himself.”

--> I am treating somebody as a thing (and thus debasing his humanity) if I try to dominate him so that he will, under the force of my superior will, automatically do what I want. And setting aside the notion of treating somebody as a thing, it is unquestionable that people do frequently debase other human beings. I am debasing a person if I humiliate him, if I get him to the point at which, to preserve his job which I control, he has to fawn and beg for mercy or to confess to wrongs he never committed. In such circumstances I have no regard for his feelings, especially for his pride and dignity. In reply to Kant, it must also be emphasized that a great many cases in which people have committed or have attempted to commit suicide do not at all resemble debasements of the kind just described. If I commit suicide I may do so freely. I am not necessarily the victim of the stronger will of someone else. Nor am I indifferent to my own feelings or my own dignity; but on the contrary I may compassionately decide to terminate what I regard as my pointless (or even perhaps degrading) suffering. In such circumstances I have not become a thing, and I have not at all debased myself.

"If a person commits suicide he can no longer perform any moral acts"

“It cannot be moral,” in Kant’s words, “to root out the existence of morality in the world.” The suicide “robs himself of his person. This is contrary to the highest duty we have towards ourselves, for it annuls the conditions of all other duties.”

--> To this it must be replied that the person who commits suicide does not root out the existence of morality itself from the world, any more so than when he dies a natural death or is killed in battle. He ‘roots out’ any new moral acts on his own part, but presumably there would be other people left who could engage in moral behavior. He would root out ‘morality itself’ only if he wiped out the human race.

Even if one adopts a religious stance or always considers life a 'gift', suicide must be regarded at least as morally permissible

This gift of God doesn't imply that suicide is inherently bad but rather that you have absolute freedom of choice of whatever you want to do with your gift/life irrespective how, why or when you die since it's not a gift but, in fact, a burden if you're not allowed to do anything with 'your gift', which in this case is your life. Btw, this is an appropriate definition for the slogan "My body, my choice" - not as it's commonly used for and by hedonistic spoiled women who can't properly use contraceptives and who often view abortion just as a new birth-control-methode sponsored by the soy health care system; of course, not referring to raped one's or who have no other choice but to abort if they don't want to endanger themselves, e.g. to survive the birth, cuz those are actual cases where "My body, my choice" makes sense in that context.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer doesn't think that killing yourself is a moral sin or "crime" and believes that every human being has a fundamental right to their own body and thus to their own life.

"They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice; that only a madman could be guilty of it; and other insipidities of the same kind; or else they make the nonsensical remark that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person."

But he sees the conventional suicide as inherently paradox:

He doesn't see roping as a genuine negation of the will to live (which for him is the highest goal in order to end suffering), but rather as an act that arises from the desire to continue life under better circumstances which is made impossible by suffering, so suicide is a futile failed attempt to escape suffering, since the metaphysical essence of human beings (the will) is not destroyed by the destruction of the physical body.

For him, the true negation of the will to live isn't the violent sudden suicide, so he advocates the ascetic negation of the will (e.g. through voluntary starvation or a life turned away from the world), which actually breaks the will.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche starkly differentiated between the suicide-term "Freitod" (eng: 'Free Death') and "Verzweiflungstod" (eng: 'Death of Despare') since they have completely different motives in it's nature. He doesn't morally evaluate death as “permitted” or “forbidden”, but rather as a function of strength and self-determination:

Freitod ("Free Death")

If death's consciously chosen and carried out by one’s own will, so as the final act of self-determined autonomy, he treats the free death as the crowning of a fulfilled life, when someone senses that their task is complete or that they alone can choose the right moment. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra (the chapter “On Free Death”), he suggests that one should die “when the fruit is ripe”, not out of flight from life but out of a sense of abundance.

Verzweiflungstod ("Death of Despair")

Contrarily, if death's brought by despair, resignation, or escape from suffering, without inner freedom, he considers this as a sign of weakness, weariness of life, or nihilism, and therefore not a conscious completion, but a breaking off because one cannot endure life.

Writings about Suicide

from THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA

Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strange soundeth the precept: “Die at the right time!

Die at the right time: so teacheth Zarathustra.

To be sure, he who never liveth at the right time, how could he ever die at the right time? Would that he might never be born!—Thus do I advise the superfluous ones.

But even the superfluous ones make much ado about their death, and even the hollowest nut wanteth to be cracked.

Every one regardeth dying as a great matter: but as yet death is not a festival. Not yet have people learned to inaugurate the finest festivals.

The consummating death I show unto you, which becometh a stimulus and promise to the living.

His death, dieth the consummating one triumphantly, surrounded by hoping and promising ones.

Thus should one learn to die; and there should be no festival at which such a dying one doth not consecrate the oaths of the living!

Thus to die is best; the next best, however, is to die in battle, and

sacrifice a great soul.

But to the fighter equally hateful as to the victor, is your grinning death which stealeth nigh like a thief—and yet cometh as master.

My death, praise I unto you, the voluntary death, which cometh unto me

because I want it.

And when shall I want it?—He that hath a goal and an heir, wanteth death at the right time for the goal and the heir.

And out of reverence for the goal and the heir, he will hang up no more

withered wreaths in the sanctuary of life.

Verily, not the rope-makers will I resemble: they lengthen out their cord, and thereby go ever backward.

Many a one, also, waxeth too old for his truths and triumphs; a toothless mouth hath no longer the right to every truth.

And whoever wanteth to have fame, must take leave of honour betimes, and practise the difficult art of—going at the right time.

One must discontinue being feasted upon when one tasteth best: that is

known by those who want to be long loved.

Sour apples are there, no doubt, whose lot is to wait until the last day of autumn: and at the same time they become ripe, yellow, and shrivelled.

In some ageth the heart first, and in others the spirit. And some are

hoary in youth, but the late young keep long young.

To many men life is a failure; a poison-worm gnaweth at their heart. Then let them see to it that their dying is all the more a success.

Many never become sweet; they rot even in the summer. It is cowardice that holdeth them fast to their branches.

Far too many live, and far too long hang they on their branches. Would

that a storm came and shook all this rottenness and worm-eatenness from the tree!

Would that there came preachers of SPEEDY death! Those would be the appropriate storms and agitators of the trees of life! But I hear only

slow death preached, and patience with all that is “earthly.”

Ah! ye preach patience with what is earthly? This earthly is it that hath too much patience with you, ye blasphemers!

Verily, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death honour: and to many hath it proved a calamity that he died too early.

As yet had he known only tears, and the melancholy of the Hebrews, together with the hatred of the good and just—the Hebrew Jesus: then was he seized with the longing for death.

Had he but remained in the wilderness, and far from the good and just!

Then, perhaps, would he have learned to live, and love the earth—and laughter also!

Believe it, my brethren! He died too early; he himself would have disavowed his doctrine had he attained to my age! Noble enough was he to disavow!

But he was still immature. Immaturely loveth the youth, and immaturely also hateth he man and earth. Confined and awkward are still his soul and the wings of his spirit.

But in man there is more of the child than in the youth, and less of melancholy: better understandeth he about life and death.

Free for death, and free in death; a holy Naysayer, when there is no longer time for Yea: thus understandeth he about death and life.

That your dying may not be a reproach to man and the earth, my friends: that do I solicit from the honey of your soul.

In your dying shall your spirit and your virtue still shine like an evening after-glow around the earth: otherwise your dying hath been unsatisfactory.

Thus will I die myself, that ye friends may love the earth more for my sake; and earth will I again become, to have rest in her that bore me.

Verily, a goal had Zarathustra; he threw his ball. Now be ye friends the heirs of my goal; to you throw I the golden ball.

Best of all, do I see you, my friends, throw the golden ball! And so tarry I still a little while on the earth—pardon me for it!

Thus spake Zarathustra.

from THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS (A MORAL FOR DOCTORS)

The sick man is a parasite of society. In certain cases it is indecent to go on living. To continue to vegetate in a state of cowardly dependence upon doctors and special treatments, once the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost, ought to be regarded with the greatest contempt by society. The doctors, for their part, should be the agents for imparting this contempt—they should no longer prepare prescriptions, but should every day administer a fresh dose of disgust to their patients. A new responsibility of ruthlessly suppressing and eliminating degenerate Life, in all cases in which the highest interests of life itself, of ascending life, demand such a course—for instance in favour of the right of procreation, in favour of the right of the right of being born, in favour of the right to live. One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death should be chosen freely,—death at the right time, faced clearly and joyfully and embraced while one is surrounded by one’s children and other witnesses. It should be affected in such a way that a proper farewell is still possible, that he who is about to take leave of us is still himself, and really capable not only of valuing what he has achieved and willed in life, but also of summing-up the value of life itself. Everything precisely the opposite of the ghastly comedy which Christianity has made of the hour of death. We should never forgive Christianity for having so abused the weakness of the dying man as to do violence to his conscience, or for having used his manner of dying as a means of valuing both man and his past!—In spite of all cowardly prejudices, it is our duty, in this respect, above all to reinstate the proper—that is to say, the physiological, aspect of so-called Natural death, which after all is perfectly “unnatural” and nothing else than suicide. One never perishes through anybody’s fault but one’s own. The only thing is that the death which takes place in the most contemptible circumstances, the death that is not free, the death which occurs at the wrong time, is the death of a coward. Out of the very love one bears to life, one should wish death to be different from this—that is to say, free, deliberate, and neither a matter of chance nor of surprise. Finally let me whisper a word of advice to our friends the pessimists and all other decadents. We have not the power to prevent ourselves from being born: but this error—for sometimes it is an error—can be rectified if we choose. The man who does away with himself, performs the most estimable of deeds: he almost deserves to live for having done so. Society—nay, life itself, derives more profit from such a deed than from any sort of life spent in renunciation, anæmia and other virtues,—at least the suicide frees others from the sight of him, at least he removes one objection against life. Pessimism pur et vert, can be proved only by the self refutation of the pessimists themselves: one should go a step further in one’s consistency; one should not merely deny life with “The World as Will and Idea,” as Schopenhauer did; one should in the first place deny Schopenhauer…. Incidentally, Pessimism, however infectious it may be, does not increase the morbidness of an age or of a whole species; it is rather the expression of that morbidness. One falls a victim to it in the same way as one falls a victim to cholera; one must already be predisposed to the disease. Pessimism in itself does not increase the number of the world’s decadents by a single unit. Let me remind you of the statistical fact that in those years in which cholera rages, the total number of deaths does not exceed that of other years.

Thoughts on Phillip Mainländer

Nietzsche immediately read Die Philosophie der Erlösung by Philipp Mainländer in the year it was published, before any review had appeared. The work contributed to his final separation from Schopenhauer's philosophy. In his own works, Nietzsche gave no attention to Mainländer until a decade later, that is, in the second, expanded edition of The Gay Science, the same book in which he had introduced the phrase "God is dead" in the first edition five years prior:

"Could one count such dilettantes and old maids as the sickeningly sentimental apostle of virginity, Mainländer, as a genuine German? After all he was probably a Jew – (all Jews become sentimental when they moralize)."

Though, Nietzsche also mentions in one of his letters that he met an adherent of Mainländer's philosophy, "a quiet and modest man, a Buddhist [...], passionate vegetarian." The "modest man" told Nietzsche that Mainländer was, in fact, not a Jew.

It has been suggested that Mainländer was more than a mere influence, and was instead actually kinda plagiarized.

Philipp Mainländer

Portrait (1867). 3 of his 6 siblings killed themselves, and he was apparently born after his dad raped his mother - Did it ever even begin, buddy boyos?

Philipp Mainländer (1841–1876) was a German philosopher who developed a one of the most pessimistic philosophies called the "Philosophy of Redemption" ("Philosophie der Erlösung") where he advocates in favor of suicide: He argued that the universe is driven toward self-annihilation, that non-existence (death) is the most peaceful/harmonious state and that voluntary cessation of the "Will to Live" (= irrational blind incessant impulse without knowledge that drives instinctive behaviors, causing an endless insatiable striving in human existence) can be a form of redemption. He saw non-existence as metaphysically preferable and saw voluntary death as one possible, expression of that insight. While he viewed voluntary death as a philosophically defensible way to align with this cosmic return to nothingness, he did not insist it was mandatory for everyone.

Remotely similar to Nietzsche, at the end of his life, he got insane thinking he's the "Messiah of Socialdemocracy" , and he eventually ropemaxxed in his apartment when his last published book was delivered to him. He was a fan of Arthur Schopenhauer, though, also dedicated to critisize him in his works.

Militarymaxxing (1875)

Philosophy of Redemption

Origin of the World

"God is dead" (but he didn't mean it in the Nietzscheanian way that society killed religion and it's principles - which Nietzsche himself saw as weakness of a herd morality to overcome), and "God" even killed himself (He lived before the Big Bang was discovered; Mainländer was also speaking poetically, not only philosophically), and we therefore live in the decaying corpse of this "God" until humanity and eventually the entire universe go extinct - which is just a question of time:

Before our universe was born, the only thing that existed was the "basic unity", a being in a state that can only be described by negations: It was not bound to time or space or matter and existed in a transcendental world that has nothing to with the laws of physics or anything else that we know from our world. All we can say about the "basic unity", is that is has been and is no longer, it vanished with the birth of our universe, which is the only miracle that ever happened. Everything that happened after that miracle, the very second the universe was born, is our world where our laws of physics make sense.

After defining the basic unity as a being that is absolutely different from us and is furthermore the cause of the birth of our entire universe, we can now give that being the name it deserves: "God" but we can not try to describe this God any further, because that would mean leaving our reality, projecting logics that only make sense in our world, into another world. The only thing we know is that the "basic unity" must have been killing itself, because it was the only thing existing before the universe and therefore it couldn't have been killed by anything else, because there wasn't anything that could have killed it. Therefore the universe, as we know it, was born through the suicide of God.

God decided that he can't bear his existence anymore (or maybe it was his last choice cuz nothing different could've been done except stagnation) and that he wishes to turn into Nothingness, Not-Being. But he was not able to reach that goal without thereby creating our world, because the path from his "Über-Sein" (metaphysical "Over-being") to Nothingness required a transition, which is being as we know it, our universe. This entire world is therefore nothing more than God's "body", that is in all its components rotting into nothingness now.

The Universal Law of the Weakening of Power

The course of the universe is therefore defined as a movement from the over-being (God) through the being (our universe) into nothingness. The world itself is the decay in the plurality, that means in egoistic individuals that are fighting each other. This path is predestined and it couldn't have been any other, any shorter or any longer than exactly how it is. The universal law of the weakening of the power (entropy) causes the world to decay in a large amount of unorganic and organic individuals that are all weakening the power of other beings and their environment and the same time getting weakened themself by the overall course of the universe. The purpose of every natural force, every form of matter and every form of life is exclusively to weaken the power sum of the universe by living the path through the state of being into nothingness. Every part of nature is desiring for absolute death, because that is the ultimate goal of every form of matter and life - to turn into nothing.

Teleology of Annihilation & "The Will to Die"

The universe is in a state of harmony, despite all the fighting and slaughtering that is going on in it. It is in harmony, because every part of it origins from the basic unity, the God that killed himself and therefore created the universe. Each individual once was a part of the basic unity, therefore it is exactly what it decided to be, when it was part of God. All the individual beings, no matter if organic or unorganic, are now representing Gods "Will to Die". Therefore, the will to die is the driving force of the universe. Contrary to Schopenhauer's idea of the "Will to Live" (= irrational blind incessant impulse without knowledge that drives instinctive behaviors, causing an endless insatiable striving in human existence), he therefore also argued in favor of this "Will to Die": The will, ignited by the knowledge that non-being is better than being, is the supreme principle of morality, for him.

In the unorganic kingdom we have gases, liquids and solid substances. The gas only has one striving: to seperate in all directions. If it could unimpededly exert this striving, it would become weaker and weaker. If it truly fulfilled its striving, it would be annihilated. Liquids only have one striving: It wants to flow apart, to an ideal point, that is outside of itself. The striving for an ideal point outside itself is obviously a striving for annihilation, nothingness. Every solid substance or body has only one striving: to an ideal point, which is outside of itself. On our earth this point would be the center of the planet. If it would reach this goal, it would be annihilated the moment it reached it and turn into nothingness. In the unorganic kingdom we have seen the will to die in its blunt form. Now we move to the organic kingdom, where things are getting a little bit tricky. A plant grows, procreates and dies. While in the unorganic kingdom "life" only meant a repression of the will to die by chemical processes, the plant obviously wants life, because it grows and procreates to turn its absolute death into a relative death, by spreading it's "idea" into the future. Therefore, what we see here for the first time, is the will to live. The plant also has the will to die, but it can't reach it in the straight way, therefore its life is a medium for the purpose to reach death. Animals are initially plants and all we said about plants also goes for them. But what seperates them from each other, is that the animal instinctively fears death. If it realizes any threat for its life it either flees or fights for its life. Obviously, what happened here is that the medium (life) is putting itself in front of the purpose (death). The animal is, just like the unorganic individuals, will to die. While plants developed the will to live as a medium for the purpose to reach the goal, which is death, the animals will to die is now completely masked by the will to live. On the surface the animal only wants life and fears death, but that doesn't change the fact that it will eventually die and therefore deep down it is also the will to die, which is the driving force of everything, because reality itself is nothing more than a rotting God. Humans are initially animals and all we said about animals also goes for them. But what separates humans from the all the other individuals that represent the will to die, is that this basic universal will not only gets completely masked like with the animals, but it truly sinks down into the deepest abyss of oblivion and the only thing that seems to be left as the driving force is the will to live. Humans compassionately love their life and even the slightest thought about death disturbs them. The medium completely covers the purpose, life is abnormally loved, death is abnormally hated.

Mankind, Civilization and the Ideal State

The movement of mankind as a whole isn't any other and can't be any other than the movement of the universe. It's the movement from the over-being through the being into the nothingness. Every action of a human, the most nobel just as the lowest, is egoistic. Because just like the devil can't see his fellow people being happy, the saint can't see them being unhappy or suffering. Therefore, the devil and the saint, both act for egoistic reasons and both contribute to the overall movement of mankid. This movements final goal is nothingness of course, but for mankind in special, it is the reaching of the ideal state. The ideal state would be the ultimate utopia, a socialistic paradise to which all efforts of humanity will finally lead. It will be a world without war, hunger and any sufferings beside the sufferings of birth, age and death. All sicknesses will be cured, and people will have lives of joy with just a very small amount of work, because work will almost completely be deported to machines. So let's take a closer look on the citizens of that ideal state. Are they happy? They would be, if they wouldn't suffer from horrible boredom and an everlasting emptiness in their lifes now. If they even manage to live such a pointless life until natural death, they will not be willing to force new people into this mess by procreating. They have no hope left, because they know that they already reached the ideal state. Therefore, they will come to the conclusion that human life has to end or maybe even that all life has to end, because they finally realized that there is nothing to accomplish for sentience and that it would be better if they never had existed. This will be the point where the movement of humanity (or even the movement of all life on earth) will be fulfilled and the universe would now have to move on without (human) life on earth, to reach its own final goal, which is exactly the same: Turning into nothingness.

Just wear contant lenses, bro

Apologia of Suicide

The enlightened human being, equipped with the knowledge about the course of the universe and its movement into Nothingness, should now overcome all fear of death. Only who truly discarded that basic fear, created by the illusion of the will to live, which is just a mask of the true will of all beings - the will to die, is really free. What should contest an individual in that state of mind? Poverty? He has no fear of starvation. Enemies? They could in the worst case kill him, and death has nothing horrible anymore for him. Pain? If pain gets unbearable he gets rid of his body without hesitating. One can reach that state of enlightenment by always remembering that deep inside he wants death, because he is, like everything else, the result of a decision to die, which was the reason for the existence of our entire world. In fact, everyone was once part of the basic unity, therefore anything that happens now to an individual is the result of that very individuals decision that it made back in the basic unity. That means: That nothing in life can hit me that hasn't been chosen by myself before the world got created. Our will to die was created by the suicidal god who decided that not to be is better than to be. Therefore, if one can't take his existence any longer, he should throw it away and turn into nothingness, which is the movement of the entire world.

The View into the Void

The pessimistic philosophy will be for the coming period of history what the pessimistic religion of christianity was for the past. The sign of our flag is not the crucified saviour, but the death angel with huge, calm, mild eyes, carried by the dove of the redemption thought. Redemption of the individual idea one represents, can be reached by not passing the core of this idea to the future. In other words: by not procreating. Who doesn't live on in his progeny, will be absolutely redeemed from existence. And if this form of secure redemption isn't enough for an individual, it has always the possibility of resigning from its life by ending it. The course of the universe has now been proven as the movement from an over-being through a being into nothingness, and therefore it is secure, that redemption will come for everyone and everything. It's that a matter of time, and that timespan is exactly as long as it was decided to be by the basic unity. If an individual wants to phantasize about an Garden of Eden or whatever kind of paradise after death, we should let them, in the deep conviction that they simply can't see that the one and only true paradise is nothingness, which was chosen by the suicidal God as a better state than "somethingness".

Citation

The other side of life is neither a place of peace nor a place of torment; it is only nothingness.

The Philosophy of Redemption is the continuation of the teachings of Kant and Schopenhauer and affirmation of Buddhism and pure Christianity. Both philosophical systems are corrected and supplemented, and those religions are reconciled with science. It does not base its atheism upon any belief, but rather on philosophy and knowledge.

Everything which is was consequently in the basic pre-worldly unity, before which all of our mental faculties collapse; that is, we can form no image nor any likeness of it and therefore also no representation of the way and manner in how the immanent world of multiplicity existed in the basic unity. But, we gained one irrefutable certainty, namely that this world of multiplicity was once in a basic unity, beside which nothing else could exist. This is where the key lies for the solution to the problem we are dealing with.

Why and how the unity decomposed into multiplicity are questions for which physics has no answer. We can say only this: that whatever the decomposition may lead back to, it was the deed of a basic unity. When we consequently find on the immanent domain only individual wills and that the world is nothing but a collective unity of these individuals, then they are nevertheless not totally independent, since they were in a basic unity, and the world is the deed of this unity. Thus, there lies as it were, a reflex of the pre-worldly unity on this world of multiplicity; it encompasses, as it were, all single beings with an invisible, untearable bond, and this reflex, this bond, is the dynamic interconnection of the world. Every will affects all the others directly and indirectly, and all other wills affect it directly and indirectly, or all ideas are trapped in "continual reciprocity."

Whenever we consider an object in nature, be it a gas, a liquid, a stone, a plant, an animal, or a human, we will always find it in unsettled striving, in a restless inner motion. But motion was unknown to the basic unity. The opposite of motion is rest, of which we can form in no way any representation; we are not talking here about apparent external rest, which we certainly can very well represent to ourselves as the opposite of locomotion; rather, we are talking about absolute inner motionlessness. We must therefore assign the pre-worldly unity absolute rest.

If we delve into the dynamic interconnection of the universe on one side and the determined character of individuals on the other side, then we recognize that everything in the world happens with necessity. Whatever we may examine: a stone which our hand drops, the growing plants, the animal acting on basis of visualized motives and inner urge, humans, who have to act obediently according to a sufficient motive, they all stand under the iron law of necessity; in the world there is no free will.

Thus we are forced to the declaration that the basic unity was neither will, nor mind, nor a peculiar intertwinement of will and mind. Hereby we lose the last points of reference. In vain we tried to use our artistic, magnificent devices for the cognition of the outer world; senses, understanding, and reason: they all paralyze. Without avail we hold in us the found principles, will and mind, as a mirror before the mysterious invisible being on the other side of the gap, in hope that it will reveal itself to us, yet no image is cast back. But, now we have the right to give this being the well known name that always designates what no power of imagination, no flight of the boldest fantasy, no intently devout heart, no abstract thinking, however profound, no enraptured and transported spirit has ever attained: God.

Christ gave the individual his immortal right and based it on the belief in the movement of the world from life into death (end of the world), and he founded the atheistic religion of salvation. That pure Christianity is, at bottom, genuine atheism (i.e. denial of a with-the-world co-existing personal God, but affirmation of a pre-worldly perished deity whose breath permeates the world) and is monotheism on the surface only: this I will prove in this text.

Is more or less absurdity and faith not the case with every religion? Not all humans have the critical mind and seek the naked truth. Religion exists for two reasons: to control human behavior and to give every human a grip in the storm of life.

And the human, who has clearly and unmistakably recognized it, that all life is suffering, that it is, in whatever form it appears, essentially unhappy and painful - even when life is ideal and perfect - so that he, like the Christ Child in the arms of the Sistine Madonna, can only look with appalled eyes into the world, and then after considering the deep rest (the inexpressible felicity of the aesthetic contemplation) and in contrast to the waking state (the observation that happiness is found in the stateless sleep, whose elevation into eternity is absolute death), such a human must enlighten himself at the comparative advantage; he has no choice. The thought: to be reborn (i.e. to be dragged back by unhappy children, peacelessly and restlessly on the thorny and stone streets of existence) is for him the most horrible and despairing thought he can have; on the other side is the sweetest and most refreshing thought: to be able to break free from the long chain of life, where he had to go forward with always bleeding feet, pushed, tormented and tortured, desperately wishing for rest. And if he is on the right path, then with every step he gets less disturbed by sexual urges, and with every step his heart becomes lighter, until his inside enters the same joy, blissful serenity, and complete immobility as the true Christian saints. He feels himself in accordance with the movement of humanity from existence into nonexistence; from the torment of life into absolute death, he enters this movement of the whole gladly; he acts eminently ethically, and his reward is the undisturbed peace of heart, "the perfect calm of spirit," the peace that is higher than all reason. And, all of this can be accomplished without having to believe in a unity in, above or behind the world, without fear for a hell or hope of heaven after death, without mystical intellectual intuition, without inexplicable work of grace, without contradiction with nature and our own consciousness of ourselves; the only things we need to build that trust are merely an unbiased, pure, cold employment our reason, "man's highest power."

The knowledge that life is worthless is the flower of all wisdom. The worthlessness of life is the easiest truth, but at the same time it is the one that is the hardest to know, because it appears concealed by countless veils. We lie, as it were, on her; how could we find her?

Christ however taught love of neighbor and enemy and demanded the unconditional turning away from life: hate against one's own life. He demanded the nullification of the inner being of humans, which is the insatiable will to live, and he left nothing in man free. He rejected natural egoism entirely, or with other words, he demanded slow suicide. "Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." (John 12:25) The reward for full resignation is heaven, i.e. peace of heart. Heaven is peace of mind, and it is certainly not a "city of peace" or a "new Jerusalem" lying on the other side of life.

The true follower of Christ goes through death to paradise; i.e. in absolute nothingness, he is free from himself and is completely released/redeemed from worldly heartache and the torment of existence. The child of the world cannot enter hell after death, for it is through death that he actually leaves hell.

The relation of the individual to nature, of human to God, cannot be revealed more profoundly and truer than is done in Christianity. It appears concealed, and to remove this concealment is the task of philosophy.

Whoever investigates the teachings of Christ without dogmatic prejudice finds only immanent material: peace of heart and heartache, single wills and dynamic interconnection of the world, single movement, and world movement. Heaven and hell, soul, Satan and God, original sin, providence and grace, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: they are all dogmatic covers for knowable truths, but these truths were in the time of Christ not knowable and therefore must be believed and appear in such covers so that they would be effective.

If one compares the teaching of Christ, the teaching of Buddha, and the by-me-refined Schopenhauerian teaching, then with each, one will find that they in essence show the greatest possible conformity; for, self-will, karma, and individual will to live are one and the same thing. All three systems furthermore teach that life is essentially an unhappy one and that one can and should free oneself through knowledge. Ultimately, the kingdom of heaven after death, nirvana, and absolute nothingness are one and the same.

What did Buddha find when he looked in himself objectively? He found upádaná, (cleaving to existence, cleaving to existing objects), i.e. desire, hunger, thirst for existence and manner of existing, or simply: will to live.

We had not made three steps in the esoteric part of Buddha's teaching and already we found the complete fundament of the Schopenhauerian philosophy: the unconscious will to live. One may rightly assume that Schopenhauer's mind has most energetically been fertilized by the Buddhist scriptures; the ancient wisdom of India sank after almost three and a half millennia on the descendent of a migrated son of the miraculous country.

The grand principles of Buddhism would be complete without the existence of any other orders of being beside those that inhabit our earth and are perceptible to the senses, and it would be better to suppose that Buddha believed in neither angel nor demon than to imagine the accounts of the déwas and other supernatural beings we meet in the Buddhist literature in its first promulgation. There is greater reason to believe that this class of legends has been grafted upon Buddhism from foreign sources. It is very probably that his disciples, in deference to common prejudice, invented these beings. We have a similar process in the hagiology of all the ancient churches of Christendom and in all the traditions of the Jews and Muslims, which came not from the founders of the systems, but from the perverted imaginations of their followers in the days after.

The principle proposition of Buddhism, "I, Buddha, am God" is a proposition that is irrefutable. Christ also taught it with other words (I and the Father are one). I hold Christianity, which is based on the reality of the outer world, to be the "absolute truth" in the cloak of dogmas and will justify my opinion again in a new way in the essay "The Dogma of the Christian Trinity." Despite this, it is my view – and he who has absorbed the essay lying before him clearly in his mind will concur with me – that the esoteric part of Buddhism, which denies the reality of the outer world, is also the "absolute truth." This seems to contradict itself, since there can be only one "absolute truth." The contradiction is however only a seeming one, because the "absolute truth" is merely this: that it is about the transition of God from existence into non-existence. Christianity as well as Buddhism teach this and stand thereby in the center of the truth.

I repeat here with the greatest determination that it will always be uncertain which branch of the truth is the correct one: the one in the esoteric part of the Buddhist teaching or the one which lies in esoteric Christianity. I remind that the essence of both teachings is the same; it is the "absolute truth," which can be one only; but it is questionable and will always be questionable whether God has shattered into a world of multiplicity as Christ taught or if God is always incarnated in a single individual only, as Buddha taught. Fortunately, this is a side-matter, because it is really the same; whether God lies in a real world of multiplicity or in a single being: his salvation is the main issue, and this is taught identically by Buddha and Christ; likewise, the path they determined that leads to salvation is identical.

When I am unconscious I could not care less whether I lie in a palace or a horse stall.

The great promise of Buddhism, the most important reward for the virtuous, is nirvana, nothingness, and complete annihilation.

Whoever possesses a vivid phantasy and has had for just one moment, a clear and objective look at the world: he will suffer forever under the reality of the world.

Buddha destroyed the chain of purposeful struggle, and for that he gained the great reward: carelessness about the needs of the body.

How often the beautiful words of Christ get disparaged:

"Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, about your body, or what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes?"

"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?"

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

If someone expresses his mocking doubt in the most kind manner, then he says: "yes, in the time of the savior and in the east these words still had sense, but today, in the current battle for existence, they are meaningless," and yet while he says that he consumes an oyster and wets it with sparkling wine. I however say: never a frugal man has starved nor will a frugal man starve, even if the social circumstances will become even more grim than they are today. The words of the savior sprouted from a beneficial discipline and were the pure outflow from the fruit of such a flesh: from the sweetest carelessness.

Man wants life no matter what. He wants it consciously due to an unconscious drive. Secondly, he wants life in a specific form. If we ignore the wise (the holy Indian Brahmins, Buddhists, Christians and wise philosophers such as Spinoza), then everyone hopes that divine breath will carry them like the wings of a butterfly from flower to flower. This is the normal trust in the goodness of God. However, since the experience of even the stupidest learns, the divine breath is not only a soft zephyr, but can also be a cold icy wind of the north or a frightening storm that may annihilate flower and butterfly; therefore, besides trust, fear of God also appears. God-fear is fear for death; God-trust is contempt for death.

He who has overcome the fear of death, he and only he can generate the delightful, most aromatic flower in his soul: unassailability, immovability, and unconditional trust, because what in the world could move such a man in any way? Need? He knows no fear of starvation. Enemies? At most they could kill him, and death cannot frighten him. Bodily pain? If it becomes unbearable, then he - "the foreigner on Earth" - throws his body away.

As religion gives the individual the marvelous trust, it gives it in the cloak of pretty delusion. It lures the human with a sweet image, which awakens in him the passionate desire, and with the embrace of the marvelous illusion it crushes the fear of death away from his breast. He has contempt for the earthly life to maintain a more beautiful heavenly life.

Nature can fully be fathomed; only the origin of the world is a miracle and an unfathomable mystery.

The origin of the world is explicable as a metaphor, namely when we purposely attribute the worldly principles will and mind as regulative (not constitutive) principles to the pre-worldly deity. With that, in my conviction, humans' speculative desire has come to the end of its path, since I dare state about the being of the pre-worldly deity, no human mind can give account. On the other hand, the by-me-as-an-image mirrored origin of the divine decision to embody itself in a world of multiplicity, in order to free itself from existence, should be satisfying enough for all reasonable ones.

What has now followed from my metaphysics is precisely a scientific foundation, i.e. knowledge (not faith), on which the unshakable God-trust, the absolute contempt for death - yes love for death - can be built.

Namely I showed first of all, that everything in the world is unconscious will to death. This will to death is, in humans, fully and completely concealed by will to live, since life is the method for death, which presents itself clearly for even the stupidest ones; we continually die; our life is a slow death struggle; and every day death gains, against every human, more might, until it extinguishes of everyone the light of life.

The rogue wants life as a delectable method to die; the wise wants death directly.

One only has to make clear to oneself, that we, in the inner core of our being, want death; i.e. one has to strip off the cloak of our being, and at once the conscious love of death is there, i.e. complete unassailability in life or the most blissful and delightful God-trust.

If I have made the case completely plain and clear and if my heart has passionately seized the thought of salvation, then I must accept all events of life with a smiling visage and face all possible incidents with absolute rest and serenity.

Philosopher, c'est apprendre à mourir (philosophizing, that's learning to die); that is wisdom's last conclusion.

With right, the greatest fame of the savior is that he has conquered the horrors of hell and the terrors of death, i.e. the suffering of life and death.

This is why I see my philosophy, which is nothing else than the purified philosophy of the genius Schopenhauer, as a motive which will lead to the same internalization, absorption, and concentration in humans of our present time of history as the motive of the savior brought forth in the first centuries after his death.

Let however no one believe that this night relies upon harsh beatings by fate: on sicknesses, hunger, broken existence, fatalities of loved ones, or difficult worries about existence. Man's doubts, as well as the wasteland of the heart, are what shake him the most. Not a single enlightened one has been spared the thorns. Before he became enlightened, he looked into his eroding storming breast or in his desolate heart, and he saw only coldness, stiffness, and wasteland; there was no hint of enthusiasm to be found and no sparkling splatter in the treasures of trees on whose branches sing joyful birds.

Schopenhauer's philosophy can be seen as the bridge that lifts the people from faith to philosophy. It is therefore a deed not only in the history of philosophy, but in the history of mankind. The building blocks for this bridge are taken from his ethics, and the sum is called "individual salvation through knowledge." Hereby the will of the common man is given a sufficient motive and object which he can seize in such love like the Buddhist seizes the blissful knowledge: that he will experience no rebirth, the Mohammedan the hope for the joys of paradise, the faithful Christian the promise of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The teaching of the denial of the individual will to live is the first philosophical truth and also the only one that will be able, like religious teachings, to move and ignite the masses.

The riddle of life is extraordinarily simple. Nevertheless, the highest intellectual cultivation and the greatest experience is needed to solve it. Therefore, I call for education and equal education for one and all!

The two very aromatic blossoms of Christianity are the concepts "alienness on earth" and "religious homesickness." Whoever starts to see and feel himself as a guest on earth has entered the path of salvation, and this immediately becomes the payoff for his wisdom; from now on he sits until death in the world, like a spectator in theatre.

I must repeat it one more time: the deterministic, inevitable end or movement of the entire world history (i.e. all battles, religious systems, inventions, discoveries, revolutions, sects, parties etc.) is: bringing to the masses what some have possessed since the beginning of culture. That end is not to rear a race of angels, which will then exist forever, but salvation from existence. The realization of the boldest ideals of the socialists can merely bring for everyone a state of comfort in which some have lived since the beginning. And, what did these people do when they achieved this state? They turned themselves away from life, as there was nothing else they could possibly do.

Blessed are those who can say, "I feel that my life is in accordance with the movement of the universe." Or, to say it another way, "I feel that my will has flown into the divine will." It is wisdom's last conclusion and the completion of all morality.

The indifference of all those who have studied history and politics and renounced the world is grounded in the fact that further development of humanity can bring these people nothing which they already possess.

In life there is no freedom. Before the world there was only freedom.

(in this context, "salvation" and "redemption" mean the same thing, I suppose, unlike Christcucks where "redemption" refers to the price Jesus paid (His blood/death) to "buy back" humanity from sin and "salvation" is the application of this, representing the personal rescue from sin and the resulting state of "eternal life".

Hegesias of Cyrene (Peisithanatos; "The Death-Persuader")

The Cyrenaics or Kyrenaics (Kyrēnaïkoí) were a sensual hedonist Greek school of philosophy founded in the 4th century BCE.

Hegesias of Cyrene (Ἡγησίας), colloquially also known as Peisithanatos ("The Death-Persuader"), was a Cyrenaic philosopher who argued that Eudaimonia (happiness) is impossible to achieve, and that the goal of life should be the avoidance of pain and sorrow. Conventional values such as wealth, poverty, freedom, and slavery are all indifferent and produce no more pleasure than pain, so Cyrenaic hedonism was simply the least irrational strategy for dealing with the pains of life if you don't kill yourself. Jean-Marie Guyau has compared his teachings to Buddhism.

"The School of Hegesias"

There is no such thing as gratitude or friendship or beneficence, because it is not for themselves that we choose to do these things but simply from motives of interest, apart from which such conduct is nowhere found. 94. They denied the possibility of happiness, for the body is infected with much suffering, while the soul shares in the sufferings of the body and is a prey to disturbance, and fortune often disappoints. From all this it follows that happiness cannot be realized. Moreover, life and death are each desirable in turn. But that there is anything naturally pleasant or unpleasant they deny; when some men are pleased and others pained by the same objects, this is owing to the lack or rarity or surfeit of such objects. Poverty and riches have no relevance to pleasure; for neither the rich nor the poor as such have any special share in pleasure. 95. Slavery and freedom, nobility and low birth, honour and dishonour, are alike indifferent in a calculation of pleasure. To the fool life is advantageous, while to the wise it is a matter of indifference. The wise man will be guided in all he does by his own interests, for there is none other whom he regards as equally deserving. For supposing him to reap the greatest advantages from another, they would not be equal to what he contributes himself. They also disallow the claims of the senses, because they do not lead to accurate knowledge. Whatever appears rational should be done. They affirmed that allowance should be made for errors, for no man errs voluntarily, but under constraint of some suffering; that we should not hate men, but rather teach them better. The wise man will not have so much advantage over others in the choice of goods as in the avoidance of evils, making it his end to live without pain of body or mind. 96. This then, they say, is the advantage accruing to those who make no distinction between any of the objects which produce pleasure.

Quotes

The wise person would not be so much absorbed in the pursuit of what is good, as in the attempt to avoid what is bad, considering the chief good to be living free from all trouble and pain: and that this end was attained best by those who looked upon the efficient causes of pleasure as indifferent. Complete happiness cannot possibly exist; for that the body is full of many sensations, and that the mind sympathizes with the body, and is troubled when that is troubled, and also that fortune prevents many things which we cherished in anticipation; so that for all these reasons, perfect happiness eludes our grasp. Moreover, that both life and death are desirable. They also say that there is nothing naturally pleasant or unpleasant, but that owing to want, or rarity, or satiety, some people are pleased and some vexed; and that wealth and poverty have no influence at all on pleasure, for that rich people are not affected by pleasure in a different manner from poor people. In the same way they say that slavery and freedom are things indifferent, if measured by the standard of pleasure, and nobility and baseness of birth, and glory and infamy. They add that, for the foolish person it is expedient to live, but to the wise person it is a matter of indifference; and that the wise person will do everything for his own sake; for that he will not consider any one else of equal importance with himself; and he will see that if he were to obtain ever such great advantages from any one else, they would not be equal to what he could himself bestow.

The Apokarteron (ἀποκαρτερῶν = "The Man Who Starves Himself to Death")

Before The Apokarteron was recovered from the Herculaneum in 2017, Cicero claimed that Hegesias wrote a dialogue called ἀποκαρτερῶν (Death by Starvation), which allegedly persuaded so many people that death is more desirable than life that Hegesias was even banned from teaching in Alexandria.

It states that life is marked by enduring pain and only fleeting joy (assymetry between pain and pleasure): The lion may enjoy the meal, but the gazelle suffers far more. Even love inevitably ends in loss, and aging merely intensifies suffering. The last impression in life is often pain, thus, pain prevails --> Joy fades, pain leaves a more-lasting mark.

Since there is no clear divine answer, man must judge for himself - and reason shows that death is the lesser evil. To live is to risk further suffering; to die is to end it with certainty:Why hope - a feeble emotion - when one can dictate how much pain one can endure, with near-certainty?

Thus, suicide is not an emotional impulse for him, but a consciously chosen, philosophical decision - in the spirit of Plato, the most consistent form of lived philosophy since Plato saw philosophy as a preparation for death.

Complete Dialoge

Apokarteron:

How you managed to find me, my friends, I don't know but I am enormously impressed by your daring. That you managed to scale this steep cliff-face, and for the sake of an old wretch like me! I am unworthy of your friendship.

Clearchus:

How can you have stayed here for so long? No shade, no vegetation, water— there is no more barren a place anywhere, not even at the very tip of a Scythian mountain.

Bion:

You mustn't reproach yourself any further, dear chap, as you surely don't have any more energy to spare, nor indeed is there much left of you to reproach now. We have been searching for you for so many days now, and we have been living in fear for you for many more.

Clearchus:

You look like death! I can't believe you would have acted so foolishly in coming here, with no provisions! Eat this bread, or I will force it down your throat myself.

Apokarteron:

Clearchus, you are a good man, but ignorant. I have not sought this place to spend for a short while alone, but picked the wrong spot-no, I have come here to die, to resist the will.

Bion:

Take Clearchus' bread, my friend! We will bring you back to the city, and we can provide you with everything that you need. Please do not hurt us anymore, by doing this to yourself. Why, don't you feel hunger gnawing at your belly? Don't you feel ravenous desire, just at the mere suggestion of food? I admit that we could not stock anything more appetising, given our long journey, but it has still kept well. I can even break it up for you, if you are feeling too weak.

Apokarteron: You are as generous as ever, Bion, but I shouldn't I decline? You tell me that I am hungry, do you not?

Bion:

Of course.

Apokarteron:

And hunger is a kind of madness, if indeed it is something that can 'gnaw,' as you say, at one's belly and drive one to think obsessively about food? If one feels this way so intensely, isn't this madness? One should not give into madness.

Bion:

I do not agree there, friend.

Apokarteron:

How so?

Bion:

Why, I suppose hunger is not a madness, but rather a sort of divine message from a god to allow men to save themselves. Imagine if we could not feel terrible, all-consuming pain in reaction to being to being burnt by a candle in our sleep. If the god had not sent the message, how many would die in vain? If you feel hungry, it is the gods telling you to save yourself. This is not madness but on the contrary according to reason. Apokarteron: 'According to reason?' Very well, I will see if you can be persuaded yet. If a person loses their wits, and commits a crime, like a deranged Agave,* would you not say they are under the vice of madness? Certainly.

Apokarteron:

Well then! Are there not times where hunger achieves the very same effect? What of the story of Erysichthon of Thessaly, the famed king? When he upset Demeter, goddess of the grain, the goddess conspired with her sister to punish the king, by filling him with insatiable hunger, of the very kind you have just described. The king would eat and eat, but nothing would satisfy him; to fund his endless banquets, he ended up having to sell not only his possessions but his very own daughter! If this inhumanity wasn't a crime enough, he finally ate himself." Not out of anything else, not ill-will, not ignorance, but hunger itself. How can this not be, then, a kind of madness, if it can make a man sell his daughter into slavery, and eat his own body?

Bion:

I understand you now; yes, it is a kind of madness. But it is nonetheless a madness from the gods that can be used for good or ill. Doubtless many crimes have been done in the name of hunger from theft to far worse evils--but the madness can be cured by acting rightly, or having your friends act rightly by you, according to reason. If you are suffering any madness right now, on account of your hunger, you can cure it without acting in a manner that you would not normally.

Clearchus:

I am convinced the man is mad, although not with hunger.

Apokarteron:

I understand you now, Bion; but I must not give into any sort of madness, if I had it.

Bion:

It is not giving in to accept a cure when it is offered, my friend; you are committing a crime against the gods by refusing the bread we now offer you. Please, in the name of piety and friendship—and your own life, by Heracles!— accept Clearchus' bread. If you are mad with hunger, you should take what is offered to you.

Apokarteron:

'If, as the Laconians say. Bion, it is a wonderful truth about humans that there is nothing that they cannot soon learn to bear with equanimity. I will not pretend that I did not suffer in the first few days, but after some time I realised that I was no longer feeling pain, for it dulls over time. In fact, I have gone past the threshold of becoming mad with hunger, and if you were to feed me with bread, Bion, I would in fact be more prone to suffering this some time again. What you would give me is not the cure to a disease I hardly possess to begin with, but the disease itself!

Clearchus:

Thus he reasons, not to eat bread plainly offered to him! You can play these games of refutation all you like, but why must you pretend that they have any real import? You are dying, you fool, and not even an old man. At least take some water, by Zeus. Here.

Apokarteron:

I have an annoying habit that I must act in accordance with the argument, Clearchus. So I will again decline your water. After all, as we have just established, is not water another sort of nourishment?

Clearchus:

Why, obviously.

Apokarteron:

And nourishment a prelude to more hunger?

Clearchus:

If we are to be pedantic, of course it is.

Apokarteron:

And hunger is a sort of madness?

Clearchus:

In its more extreme form, perhaps.

Apokarteron:

Extreme, indeed! But Clearchus, if I am completely unhinged from the desire to eat and drink, that I should never feel the faintest tinge of madness to sate my appetite ever again, I should never dare risk to involve myself with these matters ever again. Leave your bread and water aside, gentlemen, as I no longer wish to be mad myself.

Clearchus:

You simply trade one madness for another. I cannot believe this, that you abide by these arguments. I regret playing this game with you. Come now: at least if you eat and drink, you fool, you can remain with us. Better to be slightly mad than dead.

Apokarteron:

On this very point we differ, Clearchus. But I do appreciate that you have put your goods away, so that we can talk civilly on these matters without me having to fear that I will be engorged with bread that I could hardly now digest!

Bion:

If Clearchus comes across as forceful, please do not think any less of him. Why it is just as he said—you are not even an old man! You have so many more years of life to pursue, and it is a terrible waste to take your leave now. As Pythagoras says, you ought to remain at your post until the god discharges you—so why disobey?" When an old man kills himself, perhaps he is justified in doing so, and the gods will look upon his act favourably, especially indeed if he was escaping from truly unavoidable pains after a long and fruitful life. He has exited from his post at the right time. But you, friend, are no Socrates; not aged seventy, and poised to drink the hemlock after so many years. It is a waste.

Apokarteron:

If I am to understand you correctly, Bion, you say that the remaining years a man could live has value, like a horse or a couch has value? For if something can be wasted, we imply it had a value to begin with, that was not put to the use it was rightly esteemed for.

Bion:

Yes, certainly the years ahead of us have value.

Apokarteron: Well, then: do we own our remaining years?

Bion:

Yes, of course! They are not years that can be put to any other.

Apokarteron:

Do we not have the right to destroy things of value that we own, if we are its sole possessors?

Bion:

By Zeus, what an argument you have put forward! I must take a step back, I think.

Apokarteron:

Where?

Bion:

When I said that you are the possessor of your remaining years. This is not true, for your remaining years are in fact a possession of the gods. I agree that it is our right to destroy what we own ourselves, if we so desire. But we cannot destroy our remaining years, or those of others, as they are a valuable commodity that is ultimately a possession of the gods, and we are merely a trustee, that cannot fail to fulfil our basic obligation to keep this possession as intact as we are able." Apokarteron: We should then, by your reasoning, only live for as many years as the gods have allotted to us.

Bion:

Certainly.

Apokarteron:

That if I were to take my life before my time, before my black hair turns white,' as the poets say," I am going against what the gods have allotted me?

Bion:

Yes.

Apokarteron:

Does this apply to adding time, and not merely taking?

Bion:

I don't understand what you mean.

Apokarteron:

If you saw a man about to be crushed by a large hailstone, and pushed him out of the way, have you not interfered with his fate? Have you not wronged the gods, by giving this man more than his allotted time?

Bion:

By Zeus, no! No, I would say not: for you are not stealing from the gods any valuables, but rather giving them more out of your own generosity.

Apokarteron:

But aren't the gods self-sufficient?

Bion:

Certainly.

Apokarteron:

Then why would you need to give them more years of a mortal, when the gods have already allotted him an amount in ample supply? They have already decided what is fitting, and you should not add more. It is as if you see a man pulling around a crate, and out of foolish generosity you add more weight to his load. You are still disrespecting his property by interfering with it, even if you are not stealing from him. Thus it is an affront to the gods to save a man's life!

Bion:

By Zeus, perhaps it was fate that makes one save a man, but when one kills oneself it is not fate but rather a man acting against fate.

Apokarteron:

And by what marker are we to discern one from the other? If I kill myself to escape from madness and want, perhaps it was fate that allowed me this? That the gods allotted me this fate, but nominated me myself to bring about the end of my days?

Bion:

Perhaps, on some occasions, the gods command a man to kill himself, or another, and it is in accordance with their fate and therefore pious. But by Zeus, have the gods told you to do this?

Apokarteron:

I have heard nothing from the gods, Bion, but neither have I heard from them that I am taking from them what is not mine. For in truth, Bion, how can one know whether something is according to fate, or acting against fate? When are we are acting against fate, and thus affronting the gods?

Bion:

When it is wrong.

Apokarteron: And what is wrong is when one acts against fate?

Bion:

Yes.

Apokarteron:

I am at a loss, Bion, for it seems that we have trapped ourselves in a circle. If something is wrong, it is against fate; if it is against fate, it is wrong. Because I have not been told by the gods that what I am doing is against fate, I cannot assume that I am in fact acting wrongly, stealing from them what is not mine, when I could in fact be carrying out their designs with perfect timeliness.

Bion:

It is perhaps a difficult matter, as you say.

Apokarteron:

But I remember something, that perhaps we can draw upon to address this. Did we not agree that the gods are self-sufficient?

Bion:

We did agree to this.

Apokarteron:

And are they not self-sufficient, not just at one time or another, but always, 'according to the ordering of time?

Bion:

Always.

Apokarteron:

Well then, Bion. We must ask ourselves how we can steal from something that is always self-sufficient. If the gods possess goods in perpetual abundance, we cannot take anything from them if they already have everything they need! If they are self-sufficient in an unchanging manner, their needed valuables are stable in quantity, so we take nothing, and in fact it is impossible to take from them anything. If I were to die, then, I could not even excite the admiration of Hermes, let alone the wrath of any god! As I do not take anything from them.

Bion:

Heracles, that is surely false. Perhaps it should be thought of this way: that the gods may have all they need, but they have surplus goods that it is nevertheless wrong to take. If you were to leave us, friend, you would take away from the gods a great and valuable thing.

Apokarteron:

I see now. The allotted years a man has remaining in his life are a luxury item of the gods, like murex dye or Indian incense, or even things of greater rarity still, like a tall golden statue led by the finest elephants?11

Bion:

Perhaps that is the case.

Apokarteron:

And given that there are many men, the gods possess these luxuries in abundance?

Bion:

Yes.

Apokarteron:

And if one possesses such items in abundance, and one does not need them, are they any less valuable?

Bion:

No, by Zeus! The gods find our lives valuable, and care about us. Apokarteron: If we care about someone, then we suffer if they are gone?

Bion:

Certainly, as we are soon to suffer now, if you don't oblige us.

Apokarteron:

And if we are negatively affected, a need is being frustrated, however small?

Bion:

Certainly.

Apokarteron:

Then if the gods care about us, even if we are mere luxury items, in a sense they still need us.

Bion:

Yes, the gods need us.

Apokarteron:

Then the gods are not self-sufficient, going against what we said before, and therefore we have acted wrongly against ourselves!

Bion:

Alas, I am at a loss, and I must admit to my ignorance. I do not know how the gods wish you to spend the rest of your days, friend; and perhaps it is impossible to know these matters, unless one were to send one of us a dream.

Apokarteron:

I confess that I feel the same way—I do not know what fate the gods have allotted me, and whether I act against them or carry out their designs. Not only in abstaining from food and drink, as I do now, but even before then, if I am to be honest with you.

Clearchus:

This must stop, all this talk of the gods. Save your dialectic-wrangling for the streets of Alexandria, you childish man, when you have fed and watered. Perhaps for the moment we cannot divine the intentions of the gods, regarding your fate—but we could bring you back to the city nonetheless and arrange for an oracle, and conduct the sacrifices, and indeed any necessary observances that could get an answer. I can easily arrange all of this, and I could approach Ptolemy himself and he would listen to us. In fact, I am prepared to take the risk, that if we are to be punished by the gods for interfering with your fate, by keeping you alive unseasonably for a few more days, I am prepared to take the blame before all, by Zeus; I only hope that the gods should take into account that I was only waiting for their answer. Please eat my bread, I do not want to beg; and we can seek counsel from the gods at a later hour.

Bion:

See now, you are making even Clearchus weep! You mustn't be so hard-hearted towards us; even if you weary of life, you still have people around you that need you regardless of the gods, we are certainly not self-sufficient. Come now, we can't lead you back to the city until you've had something to eat and drink—the gods will allow it!

Apokarteron:

What do they allow, Bion? By our argument, we have established very little, for determining how we should now act. Therefore, how I am I to be compelled to act one way or another, if the will of the gods is uncertain? It could be against fate simply to take me from my place, and to feed me a single of crumb of bread. No, I will not be persuaded to eat or starve, not by the gods, but only if it accords with reason; for I have had no counsels from the gods on how to act.

Clearchus:

Then forget the oracles, the sacrifices, everything to do with the gods! I cannot understand you. We have come here to save you, and I don't know how you can lie down in the sand here and ignore our tears. Don't you feel sick with yourself? Doesn't it hurt you to see us like this? Surely your soul is in torment.

Bion:

Clearchus, we shouldn't do this to the man.

Clearchus:

You are surely in great pain.

Apokarteron:

Yes. I have known you both for many years, and despite the affairs of the city getting in the way of our meetings of late, I have loved you both greatly. I have always appreciated that the both of you have taken the time away from the temples and the archives at the Museion, to talk to wretched me. To see you both so abject, hunched over and drenched in sand and tears, is greatly distressing to me.

Clearchus:

Then why do you continue to refuse us?

Apokarteron:

I refuse you, because although it pains me greatly to make you suffer now, I undergo less evils now than if I were to live.

Clearchus:

And how can you know that, when you know nothing about the will of the gods, and are out of your wits? You could only decide your fate more rationally, surely, if you joined us back at the city. Isn't that a more philosophical way to bear your toils?

Apokarteron:

Certainly not, as I am soon near the end, and still wide awake.

Clearchus:

Awake, but not sane by any means! I still don't know why you wish to die. But whatever is troubling you, can be addressed. I promise you to the bitter end we will assist you in whatever grievances you face.

Apokarteron:

You are setting yourself an impossible task, gentlemen, that not even the gods could hope to remedy. What are you really proposing? That it is possible to make a man happy?

Clearchus:

I will not answer any more questions like this.

Bion:

But of course! It is possible to make a man happy, and we will do this much for you. Whatever it is that troubles you—as Clearchus said—we will do anything. He will make the sacrifices, and I will ransack the library to solve any difficulty you endure, so you only need to tell us what it is.

Apokarteron:

But is making a man happy the same as remedying evils that he suffers?

Bion:

I would say so, of course! A man without troubles is a happy man.

Apokarteron:

So a man that does not suffer is happy?

Bion:

Yes.

Apokarteron:

So that a man who chooses death over life will not suffer?

Bion:

Why, how could you know that you will suffer more in the future, compared to the suffering you experience right now? That is surely presumptuous on your behalf.

Apokarteron:

Is it presumptuous, dear Bion? The choice is a clear one, and can be illustrated with ease. Is it not true that I know how much pain I suffer now? Isn't it what I know most immediately, of all the things I know?

Bion:

What do you mean?

Apokarteron:

If I grieve for the loss of a loved one, or suffer from the bite of a viper, or waste away from a disease, I could not be mistaken that I am feeling pain of some kind, that differs from other pains.

Bion:

Certainly.

Apokarteron:

Thus I know the kind of suffering that I am undergoing.

Bion:

Yes.

Apokarteron:

Therefore, if I were to die in several days or more, I should expect more of the same? That is to say, I should expect pain from the suffering of others, or perhaps again the pangs of hunger and thirst?

Bion:

It is true, although the nature of pain could wax and wane, and that you could not predict with any precision whatsoever.

Apokarteron:

But we must condude that, although I may be uncertain about the precise intensity of my pain, or its duration, I am generally acquainted with its nature. And its variations will be subject to vague boundaries that I can anticipate, if I carry out my actions correctly.

Bion:

I suppose so.

Apokarteron:

Then we are comparing this state of reasonable certainty, one that is short and predictable, to an indefinite future of many possibilities, a future that could extend into many years, increasing further the likelihood of suffering exponentially. The difference is between buying an item at once and knowing how much silver you have lost (or at least to an approximate figure), and blindly pouring your coins down a well for many hours at a time and at an unknown rate, hoping you have not squandered too much of it. It is true that I cannot predict the future, but given that there are many years that would have been ahead of me, I should expect some losses of great intensity, and I would not wish to gamble my losses when I can control them here and now. After all, every stage of life has its own evils, so I cannot expect to avoid them just by virtue of not being old.

Bion:

It troubles me to admit, but it is true that you can control your sufferings now, than if you were to allow yourself to live into the future. But, my friend, perhaps Clearchus and I have been focusing on the wrong things, and you have been focusing on the wrong things. For isn't it true that, although we are uncertain about what evils will face us in the future, not only can we equip ourselves with wisdom to endure these evils, but we can be blessed with great pleasures too?

Apokarteron:

No man denies that there are pleasures, certainly.

Bion:

Indeed! So why must we focus on avoiding unpredictable pains, when there are unpredictable pleasures too? As Pindar says, with every year we don't know what fate will bring," and no one would contradict him, but why should this dampen our spirits? I am reminded of this truth every day, even in sour times. I have told you before, but again I remind you. Years after my father died—much your elder, as you know I came to discover that he was a gifted poet. When my carpenter thumped open my courtyard wall, he found there a basket of poetry books that my father had written to my mother over some thirty years. It was only through the pain of losing my father that I could truly experience the pleasure of meeting him again, through words I had never heard him write before. Is that odd? Perhaps it is a curious example, but I only mean to say that good fortune can arise from many circumstances, and can even appear after a great loss.

Apokarteron:

So, then: you felt pleasure when you read your father's poetry.

Bion:

Yes, I did.

Apokarteron:

And you felt pain when your father died.

Bion:

Of course.

Apokarteron:

But your pleasure was not in equal intensity to your pain?

Bion:

No, by Zeus! The pain was far greater, and I fear that I will experience the same pain again, should we lose you forever.

Apokarteron:

And that is precisely the problem at hand, Bion, and why I do not consider pleasure a serious object of inquiry when we are considering how we are to act in the future. After all: if we were to make a decision, of which things we could control, would we not focus on the most intense matters at hand, and everything else only secondly?

Bion:

Naturally.

Apokarteron:

For this reason we must consider pain and not pleasure when we assess the choices we are to make in the future, as one is clearly more vivid than the other. I remember you the day your father died—you looked as you do now, but worse, and this grief was far more intense than any brief moments of recollecting his waking moments, which would have had to approximate a state of Corybantic ecstasy to equal your earlier grief. In truth, Bion, the difference in intensity between pleasure and pain is the difference between a lion taking pleasure in eating a gazelle, and the pain of the gazelle being eaten. Unless it is otherwise, and the lion is indeed in ecstasy?

Bion:

Perhaps not. Although doubtless there are some intense pleasures that we have not mentioned.

Apokarteron:

Very well, let us grant that there are intense pleasures. How are these experiences recalled, once they are gone?

Bion:

Some things are remembered fondly.

Apokarteron:

But what impression does one obtain from the whole, from what part? Bion: What do you mean?

Apokarteron:

When one has an experience that is divided into a beginning, a middle, and an end, and one reaches the end, which part is most vivid in perception to the observer?

Bion:

Why the end, as the other two parts have faded into memory, by comparison.

Apokarteron:

And do not all things wither? Youth, beauty, and all things treasured?

Bion:

Of course.

Apokarteron:

And doesn't our impression of these things mostly correspond to the final part of any given event recollected, that even remembering a late relative, or a lost lover, or any other cherished thing now gone, can only produce bittersweet emotions at best?

Bion:

Yes, I suppose.

Apokarteron:

Then loss has the final word on all our pleasures?

Bion:

Yes.

Apokarteron:

And loss produces pain.

Bion:

Naturally.

Apokarteron:

And that impression which has the final word is that which is felt most intensely?

Bion:

I cannot deny it.

Apokarteron:

Then pain is primary in all things, by virtue of time itself, in its intensity, and one must avoid pain while one can.

Bion:

But surely, friend, even though it is true that suffering leaves its stamp on all things, in the end, some things possess such power that they are ultimately of greater benefit to us?

Apokarteron:

What pleasure can you think of, that does this?

Bion:

Well, besides more short-term pleasures, there is the euphoria one experiences of love.

Apokarteron:

I see, the love that fades with youth. And how does that compare to the long-term suffering of losing a lover, or indeed never winning their love to begin with? Again, is it not this toil that is experienced the most intensely in life overall, given it occurs last in time?

Bion:

Why, that is a question I would prefer to never answer, having never been loved.

Apokarteron:

But when you spoke to me earlier of losing the daughter of Menelaus, you could nonetheless agree to the length and intensity of the suffering involved, and how it coloured your perception of your memories of her, and the world afterwards. For the worse.

Bion:

Yes, I could hardly disagree.

Apokarteron:

And this particular kind of suffering could be endured at any day, and could recur, or modify itself into new forms, at any time.

Bion:

By Zeus, I can only hope it does not.

Apokarteron:

Why hope—a feeble emotion—when one can dictate how much pain one can endure, with near-certainty? I conclude: if we are to assess whether we ought to pursue life or death, we should consider the overall measure of pain we must endure, above all, to allow us to control how much pain we should receive accordingly. And the example you have produced the sense of loss over someone loved shows that the overall measure of pain exceeds that of pleasure in intensity, as the order of time dictates this. Again, how does it feel, Bion, to lose someone? Do I lie, or understate the pain of loss? Do your initial feelings of hope remain untarnished by the events that proceeded it?

Bion:

I would rather not say.

Clearchus:

He is not wrong, but it does not serve the overall argument well. It is true that there is no greater pain than loss, and in its intensity the suffering it brings about has no rival in pleasure. As you say, loss has the final word when a loved one is gone, whoever it may be, and almost cancels out all prior joys, so potent is grief. Yet that is precisely why we need you to stay with us, and you are wrong to detain us with these arguments, and refuse our bread and water. Why not remain here?

Apokarteron:

I cannot.

Clearchus:

Merely to avoid pain for yourself? What about our pain, from this sense of loss you have argued is so strong? You will inflict this upon us?

Apokarteron:

What you decide to do with your pains is not my affair for I am only weighing up for myself the best course of action, which is to avoid pain in its entirety.

Some men may choose to endure life, knowing these arguments, but I cannot help but see them as suffering from their own sort of madness. No, I will knock on the Gates of Hades as I choose, rather than suffer this any longer. What better fate is reserved for the philosopher than avoidance of pain? Was it not Thales that said to Solon that we should avoid marriage and family, so that we could avoid suffering the pain of losing them? Was it not Plato that saw all philosophy as a preparation for death? You tell me that I do not bear my life

philosophically; but for a philosopher, I see nothing else that can sensibly be done. Pains are to be avoided, as they simply dominate pleasure, both in intensity and through the passage of time. And so I must take my leave. Clearchus: I will soon lose my temper, if you continue this charade. You are so weak, that I will drag you back myself! ... What now, Bion?

Bion:

Give me the bread, Clearchus. And the water. But keep that amount to yourself.

Apokarteron:

To the crocodiles below! Why, now there is only food and drink enough for one of us, Clearchus, so take your leave. You have suffered enough, for today, when you should prepare yourself for the evils that you may face tomorrow.

Other Interesting Opinions About Roping By Thinkers

Aristotle

…it is for a noble end that the brave man endures and acts as courage directs…

The coward…is a despairing sort of person; for he fears everything. The brave man, on the other hand, has the opposite disposition; for confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition. The coward, the rash man, and the brave man, then, are concerned with the same objects but are differently disposed towards them; for the first two exceed and fall short, while the third holds the middle, which is the right, position; and rash men are precipitate, and wish for dangers beforehand but draw back when they are in them, while brave men are keen in the moment of action, but quiet beforehand.

As we have said, then, courage is a mean with respect to things that inspire confidence or fear, in the circumstances that have been stated; and it chooses or endures things because it is noble to do so, or because it is base not to do so. But to die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is softness to fly from what is troublesome, and such a man endures death not because it is noble but to fly from evil…

Whether a man can treat himself unjustly or not, is evident from what has been said. For (a) one class of just acts are those acts in accordance with any virtue which are prescribed by the law; e.g. the law does not expressly permit suicide, and what it does not expressly permit it forbids. Again, when a man in violation of the law harms another (otherwise than in retaliation) voluntarily, he acts unjustly, and a voluntary agent is one who knows both the person he is affecting by his action and the instrument he is using; and he who through anger voluntarily stabs himself does this contrary to the right rule of life, and this the law does not allow; therefore he is acting unjustly. But towards whom? Surely towards the state, not towards himself. For he suffers voluntarily, but no one is voluntarily treated unjustly. This is also the reason why the state punishes; a certain loss of civil rights attaches to the man who destroys himself, on the ground that he is treating the state unjustly.

Martin Luther

It is very certain that, as to all persons who have hanged themselves, or killed themselves in any other way, ‘tis the devil who has put the cord round their necks, or the knife to their throats.

Mention was made of a young girl who, to avoid violence offered her by a nobleman, threw herself from the window, and was killed.  It was asked, was she responsible for her death?  Doctor Luther said: No: she felt that this step formed her only chance of safety, it being not her life she sought to save, but her chastity.

I don’t share the opinion that suicides are certainly to be damned.  My reason is that they do not wish to kill themselves but are overcome by the power of the devil. They are like a man who is murdered in the woods by a robber. However, this ought not be taught to the common people, lest Satan be given an opportunity to cause slaughter, and I recommend that the popular custom be strictly adhered to according to which it [the suicide’s corpse] is not carried over the threshold, etc. Such persons do not die by free choice or by law, but our Lord God will dispatch them as he executes a person through a robber. Magistrates should treat them quite strictly, although it is not plain that their souls are damned. However, they are examples by which our Lord God wishes to show that the devil is powerful and also that we should be diligent in prayer. But for these examples, we would not fear God. Hence he must teach us in this way.

PAUL-LOUIS LANDSBERG

He was a German Philosopher (1901-1944), left Germany after the potentially-gay & one-balled Führer came to power, then was placed in an internment camps during the German occupation of France in 1940 and during this time carried a poison that he intended to use on himself if captured by the Gestapo (secret police). He was arrested by German officers in 1943, but he had apparently changed his mind about suicide and had destroyed the poison. He died of exhaustion at a camp in Oranienburg, Germany, in April of 1944.

I shall be told that the problem I propose to discuss simply does not exist or, at any rate, does not exist for Christians.  We all that know that Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular, and all moral theologies, whether catholic or protestant, consider suicide to be moral sin, and do not admit that it can be justified in any circumstances whatsoever.  All this is quite clear, and there seems nothing more to be said.  Suicide is forbidden by divine authority and that ought to be enough.  I should like to add that, in my case, there seem to be two particular reasons which indeed make the question of suicide a very real problem, which neither Christian philosophy nor theology has the right to overlook.

1. I have been profoundly impressed by the fact that, of all existing moralities, Christian morality is strictly speaking the only one to forbid suicide outright, without willing to allow exceptions.  There are, it is true, some philosophers, particularly Plato and the Platonists, who share a certain aversion to suicide.  But we have no example of a non-Christian philosopher who considers it to be in every case a grave sin or crime.  We do, it is true, finding in the ethics of certain communities a marked disapproval of suicide, for instance, among the Jews of the Old Testament, the Buddhist, and the followers of the orphic mysteries; but here also we find a considerable number of exceptions which are considered to be justified, and there is no question of an intransigent principle.  The sacred horror of suicide is a peculiarly and exclusively Christian phenomenon.
2. From the philosophic angle, there is always a moral problem wherever there is a temptation latent in human nature itself.  It should be enough to point out that cases of suicide have occurred at all times and amongst all peoples, even amongst the so-called “primitives,” to a much greater extent than is generally admitted, to show that it is a temptation of fairly common occurrence.

And further, the very way in which the Christian religion opposes suicide by stigmatizing it as an extreme aberration, presumes the existence of such a temptation.  But above all, we need only to have lived and to have understood only a little of the human heart, to know that man can welcome the idea of death.  And as soon as there is temptation we have a positive meaning which can even serve to make our morality deeper and more conscious. The great temptations are active forces which are necessary to the moral evolution of an extremely imperfect creature that is nevertheless destined to perfection, that is to say, to man.  It is not sufficient to point purely and simply to a divine command when humanity is challenged by one of its specific and, so to say, basic temptations.  Man has to respond with his whole being, with the weight of his existence, in action, in feeling and also in his intellect.  All serious moral philosophy is the theoretical expression of the outcome of such a struggle against temptation latent in the human condition.

In view of this, perhaps I shall be allowed to affirm the existence of an authentic problem and of the philosopher’s right to discuss it.  We often find an argument against suicide, which is commonly put forward by the unintelligent.  It is very customary to find all suicides condemned as cowards.  This is a typically bourgeois argument which I find ridiculous.  How can we describe as cowardly the way of dying chosen by Cato, or Hannibal, or Brutus, or Mithridates, or Seneca or Napoleon?  There are certainly far more people who do not kill themselves out of cowardice.  The argument can only be valid on an entirely different level.  It may be that compared with the supernatural courage of Christ and the saints, even the courage of Cato might appear a form of cowardice.  But on an ordinary human level it is more frequently the courageous who, in certain circumstances, decide to kill themselves.  The Christian religion, which condemns it far more as a sin of Lucifer than a banal cowardice.  And further, nothing is more opposed to the spirit of Christianity than to treat the prolongation of empirical existence as an absolute value or even as a value of a very high order.  Similarly, there is no weight in the argument that suicide is always proof of a weakness of will.  There is a will to live and a will to die, and the latter has to be extremely powerful before it leads to suicide.

And then there are those, on the other hand, who still support the right to a voluntary choice of death by countering the Christians argument as follows: you say that voluntary death is contrary to the will of God who created us.  But if this is true, then why did he create us in such a way that we have the capacity and opportunity to kill ourselves.  This argument is all too easy to refute, but perhaps it is more important to learn from it.  The fallacy of course is obvious.  Every crime and sin is in a sense possible to man and the same argument could be used to justify murder and robbery.  The whole significance of a moral prohibition is that it is there to guide a man who has the capacity to act otherwise. But in the case of suicide we must dwell for a moment on the importance of the fact that man is a being who can kill himself and may not do so.  This is quite different from being incapable of doing so.  Temptation is an experience of the difference between the vertigo of power and the decision of duty.  The manifold possibilities open the unstable, intelligent, imperfect creature that we are, from the basis of all moral problems.  A genuine moral problem is always the immense problem of man taken from a given angle.  There are few facts so profoundly characteristic of the abyss of liberty and the power of reflection by which man makes himself, up to a certain point, master of his actions and even of his existence.  This is precisely why man lives his moral problems, and he has therefore to live this problem of self-inflicted death.  The temptation to suicide is part of the vertigo of his dangerous liberty.  If, therefore, the fact of being able to kill oneself is not a justification for suicide; it is nevertheless the basis of a specifically human problem.  For the temptation to fathom the full extent of his freedom is one of the profoundest temptations known to man.

It is therefore not surprising that philosophic discussion of the problem has always centered on the problem of liberty.  I have no room to do justice to the quality of this discussion.  It is no exaggeration to say that the problem of free choice of death is one of the fundamental problems of all the great moral philosophies.  All I can do here is to review briefly the stoic point of view, which is particularly important and well-developed.  Stoic wisdom did not necessarily entail death, but it depended on a frame of mind in which the whole person has become the free arbiter of his own “living or dying” according to the dictates of reason. The stoic was a man who could die if reason so ordained.  The empirical capacity to die which is common to all human beings was transformed in the stoic into a capacity which could function immediately if fate required it of reason.  It is not the external act of suicide which is glorified, but rather the inner liberty which permits and insists on it, in certain cases.  In such circumstances suicide is the via libertatis.  Then the voice of Seneca says to man: “You should not live in necessity, since there is no necessity to live.” It is Cato who will not survive if the Republic has lost its freedom, it is Hannibal who refuses to live as prisoner of the Romans, it is Lucrece who will not survive the dishonor she has suffered.  In modern times, it is Condorcet who will not live to see the degradation of the revolution.  There are the countless heroes of Plutarch; there is a Chamfort saying good-bye to a world where the heart must break or grow cold—or the suicides after the German defeat in 1918, and more recently after the defeat of France.  From the stoic viewpoint the death of Socrates is also voluntary, in the sense that he refuses to live as a fugitive far from the city.  This strong-willed and rationalist roman philosophy of the person Sui compos, master of his own life, is the last great philosophy of Greco-Roman antiquity before the victory of Christianity.  Stoicism has never completely died out and the conflict between Christianity and morality has continued to disturb the conscience of Europe, particularly since the Renaissance.  In any case, what is important here is that it is a philosophy of the autonomy of the reasonable being, the keystone of which is the philosophy of a free choice of death.

It is understandable that the struggle with stoicism should have led the Christian Church to give explicit reasons for its condemnation of self-conflicted death.  I believe, however, that the early Christians did not discuss the problem, simply because they considered it had been solved for them by the example of Christ and the martyrs.  There are many who kill themselves in order to avoid a certain form of death.  Hundreds and thousands of persons have killed themselves in this way, either in the prisons of the inquisition, particularly of the Spanish inquisition in order to escape being burnt, or during the French Revolution, like the Girondins and others, in order to avoid ignominy of the guillotine. Neither is it unknown in our present century, in the prisons of the Tcheka and elsewhere.  On the other hand, during the great persecutions, the Christian martyrs underwent the most hideous forms of death in the strength of a triumphant faith, without attempting to kill themselves before-hand.

It seems only fair, however, to put forward my own definition of suicide, which a human being deliberately creates what he considers to be an effective and adequate cause of his own death.  The theorists who look at Christianity from outside may, in fact, be easily led astray by the almost total contempt for empirical existence displayed by the martyrs.  This fact is important, since it demonstrates once again that Christianity has not been led to condemn suicide from any attachment to earthly life or from any particularly exalted view of its value.  In the story of the martyrdom of St. Peter, for instance, we find contempt for death and empirical existence which is inspired by Christ’s example.  “My brethren, my children, we must not flee suffering, for Christ’s sake, since He Himself of His own free will, accepted death for our sake.”  This is also the significance of the legend of Quo Vadis.  But this is far from justifying the fantastic idea which tries to make of Christ a type of suicide.  To kill oneself to avoid the cross and to suffer martyrdom on the cross are not exactly the same thing.  We should be quite clear that nothing was further from the minds of the early Christians than to condemn a self-inflicted death in the name of any loyalty to our empirical existence.  The contempt for earthly life amongst early Christians was so extreme that to modern eyes it might sometimes seem even monstrous.  Take, as an example, a passage from the epistle to the Romans of Ignatius the martyr:” let me be fodder for the beasts….I am the corn of God; I must be ground in the jaws of beasts….I hope to meet wild beasts of suitable disposition and, if necessary, I shall caress them, so that they may devour me immediately.”  Those who turn Christianity into a sort of virtuous optimism proper to all decent people, will never understand the attitude of true Christians to death, neither, as we shall see, will they understand the deeper reason underlying the Christian rejection of self-inflicted death.  The magistrate who said to Dionysius the martyr,” it is good to live”, received the reply, “Far other is the light we seek.”  Modern man is not superior, but definitely inferior to the stoics.  He has to be reminded that Christianity also condemns all forms of euthanasia, which must indeed be scandalous and hideously paradoxical to all but the heroic cast of mind.

But to return to St. Augustine, who was led to discuss the problem in his arguments with the Donatists, a Christian and belligerent sect which admitted suicide; and above all in his struggle with the Stoics.  His admirable text, which is the foundation of all Christian philosophy on this subject, can be found in the first chapter of the Civitas Dei.  You will remember the events which gave rise to the book: Rome the Eternal City, The City, in short, the holy capital of civilization and the Empire, had fallen for the first time in 410, to the barbarian invader. She had been partially destroyed and terribly ravaged by Alaric. The bishop of hippo, the apologist of the Church, wrote his great work in order to prove that Christianity was not the cause of this shattering event, and that the fall of Rome was far from implying the fall of the religion which, since Constantine, had been to some extent the Roman religion.  So he was compelled to tackle the stoic philosophy from the Christian point of view, since Stoicism had remained to a large degree the philosophy of the Roman nobility, and was apparently being used as the philosophical basis of the argument that Christianity and its slave morality had been responsible for the decadence of Rome.  Christian women were, in particular, reproached for not having killed themselves rather then fall into the hands of the barbarians, which inevitably implied the loss of their virginity.  St. Augustine replies first of all that the essence of virginity is not a physical state but a moral fact.  It can be lost morally without being lost physically but, what is still more important, when a woman loses her physical virginity without any consent of the will, as in the case of the women raped during the sack of Rome, she does not lose her moral virginity; she is innocent and not dishonoured and therefore has no reason to kill herself.

When discussing the classic instance of Lucrece, St. Augustine insists on the spiritual morality of Christians. But in the main he counters the stoic argument with the assertion that suicide is always and everywhere a crime. The arguments he uses reappear again and again in Christian literature down to our own days.  The principal argument is as follows; to kill oneself is to kill a man, therefore suicide is homicide.  Homicide is inexcusable and is forbidden in the Ten Commandments.  With all respect, I hardly feel that the argument is adequate.  The commandment cannot and should not be interpreted to cover every act which involves as a deliberate consequence the death of a man. The Christian tradition, apart from a few sects, has always allowed two important exceptions: war and capital punishment.  St. Augustine knows this very well, and therefore he treads warily. He says: “Ubique si non licet privata potestate hominem occidere vel nocentem, cujus occidendi licentiam lex nulla concedit; profecto etiam qui se ipsum occidet, homicida est.”  The stress is put on privata potestate and on cases where there is no legal sanction.  But the moment we begin to make moral distinctions between the different types of cases which may involve the death of a man, one may just as well make a distinction between suicide and the murder of someone else. In my opinion, it is even necessary to do so. In the first place, if we are deciding something which affects our own life, we are in a totally different position from deciding something which affects the life of another.  What would be an act of violent hostility towards another cannot be the same towards ourselves, if it is we who decide on the act.  In many cases, the man who kills himself has no intention of destroying his person, but rather of saving it.  Rarely, if ever, does he aim at annihilation.  There is a smack of sophistry about this moral identification of the two acts when their dissimilarity is so striking. As for the commandment, we must not make it say what it does not say.  It is universally accepted that it does not forbid a just war or the death penalty, but it is difficult to maintain that it does condemn suicide, at any rate unconditionally.  The Old Testament records as many suicides as it does wars, and some of them are glorified, as in the cases of Samson and Saul. Christians have made out, in the case of these biblical suicides, that a direct and exceptional command from God may hallow acts which are quite immoral in themselves.  This is the paradox taken up by Kierkegaard, of Abraham who is prepared, in faith and obedience, to become the murderer of his son.  It is Calvin’s justification of political sedition when ordained by God.  However, the Old Testament chronicles its suicides without insisting on any such supernatural justification.  There is no reason for believing that the Decalogue was intended to cover cases of suicide.  And the chain of reasoning which plays such a large part in Augustine’s text, is certainly not an example of his profoundest thinking.

There is an allusion to Job which allows us to suspect that he has not spoken his whole mind.  The reason is obvious.  He was dealing with Romans. It often happens that the brilliant orator and advocate, the direct descendant of Cicero, gets the upper hand and then he speaks ad extra and ad hominem.  Thus, in the middle of his expositions we find a beautiful passage which counters the famous example of Cato, so highly praised by his own master, Cicero, not with a Christian counterpart, but with the example of Regulus, who returned to Carthage in order to keep his word, in the certainty that he would be killed by the Carthaginians.

Unfortunately, I have not the space to analyse Augustine’s text as it deserves, nor to follow up in proper detail the evolution of Christian doctrine with regard to suicide.  We find no substantial argument added to the reasoning of the Father of the church in the period between St. Augustine and St. Thomas. But St. Thomas is not satisfied with St. Augustine’s arguments and tries to substitute others.  The fresh arguments that he adduces are three:

1. suicide is contrary to man’s natural inclinations, contrary to natural law and contrary to charity—to that charity which a man owes to himself. Amor bene ordinatus incipit a semet ipsum. What are we to make of this argument?  First of all, if suicide were, in every case, contrary to natural law, it would not occur, or only in a very few exceptional or pathological cases.  I must admit I find it difficult to see that something can be against natural law when it is practiced, accepted and often honoured amongst all non-Christian peoples.  Suicide is far from being contrary to human nature.  The human animal’s will to live is neither unlimited nor unconditional.  It remains to be seen whether suicide must, in every case, be contrary to the love we should have for ourselves. Suicide, no doubt, deprives us of that good which is life.  But in fact, and from the Christian’s point of view, this good is of highly dubious quality; and, in any case, it is not the highest good and often rather more like an evil. To deprive oneself of a purely relative good to avoid an evil which is expected to be greater, such as the loss of honour or freedom, is not an act directed against oneself.  And this is very often precisely the case of the man who kills himself.  It would be much more reasonable to say that he kills himself out of too great self-love. Consider also the importance of the almost ontological concept of war in the ancient world and Proteus’s suicide out of friendship.  If we interpret it on a deeper level, the argument runs: he who kills himself deprives himself of salvation, which would be the total negation of that charity towards oneself required by the gospels.  But in this case we are arguing in circles, since we have an argument which sets out to prove that suicide is a sin, by assuming the premise that suicide is already mortal sin.  In fact, the vast majority of those who kill themselves have no desire or intention of forfeiting their salvation.  On the contrary, they say, like Doňa Sol to Hernani: “Soon we shall be moving towards fresh light, together we shall spread our wings and fly with measured beat towards a better world.”  The case of Kleist and his woman friend is there to demonstrate that the romantic suicide is not a purely literary invention.  Man finds, on the other side of the grave, an imaginary home for the hopes which have been disappointed in life.  There Werther will meet Lotte once more?  “Death, tomb,” he says, “what do such words mean?”  In the majority of cases, the one who kills himself seeks neither perdition nor extinction; the life he knows seems less desirable than something which is vague and unknown, but at any rate something.  The theological sin of despair is not defined as to the loss of such and such an empirical expectation, but as the loss of that fundamental hope in God and His goodness which is the very life of the human heart.  The loss of expectation is even a necessary step in the spiritual journey of the masters.  It is therefore false to claim that all suicides are men without hope, in the theological sense.  Personally, I go so far as to believe that man never despairs completely, that it is impossible for him and contrary to his essential being, to despair. Desesperare, says St. Thomas, non est descendere in infernum.  He does not speak of suicide in his tremendous chapter on the sin of despair.  In my view, despair is not a characteristic of man on earth, but perhaps only of Hell and the Devil.  We do not even know what it is.  The act of suicide does not, to me, express despair, but rather a wild and misguided hope directed to the vast unknown kingdom on the other side of death. I would even venture on the paradox:  men often kill themselves because they cannot and will not despair. This is why the idea of Hell, which fills the place of the unknown beyond, is such a strong disincentive to suicide. Even Shakespeare, speaking with the voice of Hamlet, is held back by this dread of the terror of a future existence.
2. St. Thomas repeats the argument used by the platonic school, and particularly Aristotle, to discountenance suicide.  Plato was, in fact, somewhat opposed to the idea of suicide for reasons not unrelated to the enormous influence of the orphic mysteries on the spirit of his philosophy, and also because of his profound attachment to the idea of the Polis; one has only to read Diogenes Laertius to appreciate that suicide was almost the normal end of all Greek philosophers from Empedocles down to the Hellenistic period. But Plato gives the philosophers a place in the City and advises them not to desert this place.  Aristotle turns it into the argument that a man belongs to his country and to society and has no right to deprive them of his presence and activity by suicide.  St. Thomas takes up this argument which would, perhaps, have a certain value in an ideal society; but, in reality, people often kill themselves because the very imperfect societies in which they are condemned to live prevent them from leading any form of creative life.   So long as societies breed more forms of moral and material misery than need be our lot, it would be highly imprudent to authorise them to condemn those who try to escape from their authority by death.  Man did not ask to be born into a society and he does not see why he should not be allowed to leave it by the best door left open, if life in such a society has lost all meaning for him.  The argument may be valid in certain cases, where someone may in fact be abandoning an important social duty, but it is clearly inadequate as a general argument against suicide as such.  Moreover, the same collectivist premise might lead to the opposite conclusion if an individual could no longer find a social justification for his existence.  I would add that, to me, the argument seems inspired by a collectivist outlook, by the atmosphere of the Greek City which is essentially non-Christian.  It is purely and simply anti-personalist to try to decide such an intimately personal question as to whether or not I have the right to kill myself, by reference to society.  Suppose I die a little sooner or a little later, what has that to do with a society to which, in any case, I belong for so short a space?  St. Thomas is taking up one of Aristotle’s arguments, as he often does, without allowing for the profoundly non-Christian outlook which inspires his thinking both in detail and in the whole.  The weakness of the social argument can be seen even more clearly in Kant.  According to Kant, the man who feels temped to commit suicide should consider whether the principle on which his decision is based could become a principle of general legislation.  But man knows very well that he is faced every time with a particular situation, and that he is, as a person, unique.  In modern Christian moralists the argument reappears in the form that man has no right to kill himself since this would constitute a crime against his family.  But as a general argument, this also fails to convince.  First of all, a lot of people have no families, or a shattered or detestable family, and secondly, the question is really far too personal to be decided by such arguments.  Everyone dies sooner or later, and society and the family get over it.  It is true that those who have a normal family life seldom kill themselves, like those who might happen to live in an ideal society.  But all the same, the fact that there are so many suicides proves that many people do not find in their homes what they should find there.  One of the most frequent types of suicide is the result of a love affair, often in the form of a suicide pact.  It would be ridiculous to try to say to these unhappy creatures that they are proposing to commit a mortal sin because they are neglecting their duty towards their family.  Why does no one say the same thing to the young people who go into monasteries, often against the wishes of the family?  This is another of those arguments—not St. Thomas’s argument, but that of one’s duty to the family—which reek of complacency.  Suicide is often taken to be an act indicative of decadent and anarchistic individualism, overlooking the fact that amongst entirely healthy and even extremely warlike communities it is often considered, in certain circumstances, a social duty. But death is above all so much a personal and individual thing that the problem it creates transcend the social life of this planet.
3. By far the most weighty of St. Thomas’s arguments is the third: we are God’s property, just as the slave is the property of his master.  Man is not sui juris.  It is for God to decide on our life or death.

Leaving aside the comparison with the slave, which invites the stoic reply that it is precisely the free man who can kill himself, there is undoubtedly something strong and cogent in this argument. Suicide may be due to pride. Man can now prove that he can be sicut Deus. Montaigne has replied in defense of the stoic point of view: “God has given us leave enough when He puts us in such a state that living is worse than dying.”  The Thomist argument loses much of its value unless it is taken in a specifically Christian sense.  If we were dealing with a god who was a tyrant and slave owner, the argument would clearly not suffice.

•   *   *

I have discussed certain traditional arguments, not really so much for their historic importance as to bring out the enormous complexity and difficulty of the problem.  I turned hopefully to the Christian Father for an answer to the question and, in fact, failed to find a really satisfactory reply.  I might add that this seldom happens.  Neither have I criticized for the pleasure of criticizing such and such an argument, but for a much more serious reason.  “We can only discuss something honourably in so far as we sympathise with it”, says Goethe in Werther on the very topic of suicide. Picture to yourself a man who is very much tempted to suicide.  Perhaps he has lost his family, or he despairs of the society in which he has to live, or maybe bitter suffering is depriving him of all grounds for hope.  His present life is terrible, his future dark and menacing.  Suppose you tell him he must live in order to obey the commandment, or in order not to sin against the love of oneself, or to do his duty to society and family, or finally, in order not to decide something himself that only God is entitled to decide: do you think you would convince this man in his misery and suffering?

Of course you would not. He would find your arguments either dubious by technical difficulties, by cowardice or weakness of will, by a certain instinct for life or, as often happen, by an implicit faith in divine protection or by the fear of Hell. But these traditional arguments will probably be ineffective. So what he needs is not so much abstract arguments as an example of Christ.  Here we must turn, not to the letter of the old but to the spirit of the New Testament.  To understand why Christianity is opposed to suicide, we must recall the fundamental character of Christian life which is, in all its forms, an attempt at the imitation of Jesus Christ.

This effort implies a radical conversion of natural human attitudes, more especially with regard to suffering.  The human being has, by nature, a horror of suffering and a desire for happiness.  The man who kills himself almost always does so to escape from the suffering of this life toward an unknown happiness and calm.  In any case he says in his heart, “I want to go somewhere else.  I do not wish to endure this suffering which has no meaning and is beyond my strength”.

It is here that the spirit of Christianity intervenes with its tremendous paradox.  Yes, live and suffer. You should not be surprised that you suffer.  If happiness were the meaning of life, it would indeed be a revolting and finally improbable condition.  But the situation is different if life is a justification, the progress towards a transcendent goal, and if it’s meaning were in fact evident in suffering and achieved through suffering.  “Lord, to suffer or to die”, prays St. Theresa.  Yes, in spite of all those optimistic believers, life is the carrying of a cross.  But even the cross has a sacred meaning.

My belief is, therefore, that far from being one of the so-called natural laws, or the law of some peculiar common sense, the total prohibition of suicide can only be justified or even understood in relation to the scandal and the paradox of the cross.  It is true that we belong to God, as Christ belonged to God. It is true that we should subordinate our will to His, as Christ did.  It is true that we should leave the decision as to our life or death to Him.  If we wish to die, we have indeed the right to pray to God to let us die.  Yet we must always add: Thy will, not mine, be done.  But this God is not our master as if we were slaves.  He is our Father.  He is the Christian God who loves us with infinite love and infinite wisdom.  If He makes us suffer, it is for our salvation and purification.  We must recall the spirit in which Christ suffered the most horrible death.  In certain circumstances, to refuse suicide is far from natural.  To prefer martyrdom to suicide is a paradox peculiar to the Christian.  It was precisely this element in the martyr’s attitude which so profoundly shocked the pagan philosophers.  The martyrs refuse suicide, not through a cowardly attachment to life, but because they found a strange happiness in following the example of Christ, and suffering for Him and with Him. It has been quite reasonably maintained that the fact that people are willing to die for a cause argues nothing as to the value of that cause.  It is true that a great many persons have died for causes which we find deplorable.  So it is in a different sense that the martyrs bear witness to Christianity.  They do not prove any given theoretical truth, but they prove by their example that it is possible to live and die in a Christian manner.  It is not their death, but their manner of dying which is important.  They are witness in a very special way to the fact that Grace may enable a man to follow Christ in His attitude towards suffering and death, which is itself very far from natural. Their blessedness in, and to some extent through, suffering, far exceeds the somewhat frigid heroism of the ancient world.  The vast majority of humanity is morally inferior to the Stoics.  The Christian martyr is superior.  The stoic virtue is perhaps the highest morality known to man outside the sphere of Christian Grace.  The hero, master of his own death, stands above the mass of poltroons and slaves.  “This noble despair, so worthy of the Romans,” wrote Corneille.  The saint is, as it were a super-hero of specifically Christian character.  It is his life that in fact demonstrates the argument.  He shows that it is possible for man to live out his suffering by discovering a transcendental significance in its very depths.  One cannot stress too strongly the paradoxical quality of all this, just as Kierkegaard has so rightly insisted on the paradoxical nature of the whole of Christianity.  In order to gauge the paradox, we should remember what suffering is.  The word is quickly said, but the subject itself is vast, an authentic mystery.  Even physical suffering can take on horrible forms.  We are told that it will be limited and that consciousness, the precondition of suffering, fails at a certain level of pain.  Perhaps: we know little about it.  Man is always mistaken when he thinks he has reached the worst moral tortures.  One falls, one falls from abyss to abyss.  In periods like our own, one must feel frightened at the immensity of present human suffering.  When one reads history, one is overwhelmed by what men have always and everywhere endured.  Sickness, death, misery and all manner of peril, surround the human being.  The optimists are having a joke at our expense.  It is no exaggeration to speak, as Schopenhauer does, of a ruchloser optimismus, a frivolous and criminal optimism.

The same judgment applies equally to those who immediately try to console you with talk of divine Providence and goodness.  There is nothing more paradoxical than this divine love which has, according to Dante, created Hell.  Even Providence is another paradox.  All that is left is the example of Christ and of those men who were able to follow his example, showing that to do so they needed not to be gods, but only to be granted divine Grace, which is equally promised to us.

All that we can say to the suffering man who is tempted to commit suicide, is this “Remember the suffering of Christ and the martyrs.  You must carry your cross, as they did.  You will not cease to suffer, but the cross of suffering itself will grow sweet by virtue of an unknown strength proceeding from the heart of divine love.  You must not kill yourself, because you must not throw away your cross.  You need it.  And enquire of your conscience if you are really innocent. You will find that if you are perhaps innocent of one thing for which the world reproaches you, you are guilty in a thousand other ways.  You are a sinner.  If Christ, who was innocent, suffered for others and, as Pascal said, has also shed a drop of blood for you, how shall you, a sinner, be entitled to refuse suffering?  Perhaps it is a form of punishment.  But divine punishment has this specific and incomparable quality, that it is not revenge and that its very nature is purification.  Whoever revolts against it, revolts in fact against the inner meaning of his own life.”

There is no doubt that there is no justice here below.  Criminal monsters carry all before them, and none suffers more then the saint.  Here we approach the mystery of sin, which is so closely linked with this other mystery that the Christian finds the meaning of life in and through suffering.  Man, we said, was a creature who could kill himself and should not do so.  The meaning of this assertion now becomes clearer.  The temptation exists, and there is rejection of this temptation.  Where this rejection is authentically Christian, it is in the form of an act of love towards God, and towards suffering, not as suffering, which is impossible—algophilia is pathological, and even Christ faltered before His last agony, and prayed that it should be taken from Him—but towards suffering in so far as it contains a remedy desired by God.

Just as there is a qualitative difference between bourgeois and heroic morality, there is an abyss between natural morality on the one hand and the supernatural morality of Christianity on the other.  Our reflections on the problem of suicide show this, just as any profound reflection on any moral problem of practical and vital importance must show it.  Christianity is a new message.  The truth of stoicism lies in its understanding of the close relationship between human freedom and a contempt for death.  Whoever is a slave to death is in fact also a slave to all the accidents of life.  There is no liberation of the person unless the supreme and universal necessity of this mortal accident is transformed into a free act.  But whereas stoicism tries to acquire this freedom through the knowledge of the possibility of suicide, the Christian must acquire it through a loving acceptance of the will of God.  He may prefer life to death, or death to life according to the circumstances, but he must place the will of God with absolute sincerity before his own.  Death is often a boon, and swift was right o speak of “the dreadful aspect of never dying”, but it is God who must set a term to our suffering.

There are other doctrines beside Christianity, which have given a positive, metaphysical significance to earthly suffering.  The orphic mysteries, often considered as an early prototype of Christianity, saw suffering as a way to the liberation from the body.  There is Buddhism, and the almost Buddhist philosophy of Schopenhauer.  It is significant that these doctrines should be equally inimical to suicide.  But there is nothing in these attitudes to compare with the Christian drama.  To authentic Buddhism, as to Schopenhauer, suicide is an error, or sort of impasse.  What Buddha calls thirst, and Schopenhauer, the will to live, cannot be overcome by suicide.  Nor can one escape from existence by such violent means.  The suicide transformed, according to his Karma, but he does not attain Nirvana.  We have seen, in fact, and I know it to be true in many cases I have known of personally, that the purpose of suicide was not the idea of extinction but of attaining an existence radically different from the one left behind by death.  The Buddhist aversion to suicide is naturally not in any way comparable to the Christian rejection.  In the first place, genuine Buddhism is far too intellectualized to entertain any general concept of sin.  If anyone commits the error of refusing, by such an act of violence, to accept his suffering, he will suffer the consequence according to his Karma, and he will learn.  That is all.  Finally, and here the comparison may help us to establish an important point, the moment of physical death has not the same quality of metaphysical decision for the Oriental as for the Christian.  The stress placed by Christianity on this prohibition of suicide is no doubt partly explained by the idea that everything to do with death has a metaphysical aspect, an idea which is absolutely foreign to the East.  What is horrible about suicide to the Christian is that there is little or no time left for repentance after the sin has been committed.  In principle, therefore, canon law refuses Christian burial to the suicide, because he died in a state of mortal sin.  There are, however, two exceptions: one, if the act is committed in a state or even a moment of mental unbalance, which excludes responsibility; the other, if the suicide can be given the benefit of any doubt; if, for instance, there is any possibility that he may have made an act of repentance.  The existence of there two exceptions, and the obvious difficulty of excluding them completely in any particular case, have led the Church, particularly in modern times, to exercise indulgence.  Principles cannot be changed, but there are more scruples about the mental health of the suicide, and a reluctance to assert that no act of repentance, which might be something like a lightning flash of conscience, could have taken place.  Thus judgment is left to God, that is to say, judgment on the person, not judgment on the principle of the act itself.

Before drawing to a close, I should briefly mention one argument against the Christian point of view.  If suffering is sacred and contains the meaning of life, why are we entitled to struggle against it?  If we have this right, and even this duty, why should we not have the right to withdraw from suffering by suicide, if there is no other way out?  I agree at once that man has the right to struggle against the miseries of existence.  The contrary would obviously lead to moral absurdities, such as the immorality of medicine.  But we should not overestimate the struggle, neither in its importance nor in its chances of success.  It is natural and laudable for man to struggle against sickness, cruelty, misery and the rest. But in point of fact there has been no progress in human happiness in all our history, but rather the reverse.  Everything we know leads us to believe that the so-called primitive people are much happier than we are.  What is false is not the struggle against suffering, but the illusion that we can destroy it.  The means of fighting this suffering is, above all, work, which was given to man both as punishment and cure.  But this effort to combat suffering can not be compared with the act of suicide.  Suicide is something on its own.  It seems to me to be a flight by which man hopes to recover paradise lost instead of trying to deserve Heaven.  The desire for death which is unleashed when temptation becomes our master is, psychologically speaking the desire to regress to a pre-natal state.  To disappear, to get away from it all.  Stekel and others have given us a precise psychological analysis of suicide, the longing for the abyss, the mother, the return.  The whole process could be described in Freudian terms.  Theologically speaking, there is, in fact, the vague illusion of a return to Paradise.  The Rousseau-Werther type of suicide is usually conscious of this obscure motivation.  In this connection one could quote many interesting passages from Goethe, Sénancourt, Amiel, and others.  But Christ guides us through struggle and suffering towards a brighter light.  The god, or rather, goddess, of suicide thrusts us back upon the mother’s breast.  In this sense, suicide is an infantilism.  It is this quality of regression which prevents any comparison between suicide and man’s normal struggle against suffering.  It is the failure of all other means which, in the majority of cases, leads to suicide; it is the universal experience of powerlessness.  This convergence of one disaster after the other, destroying all possibility of living and struggling, is the common factor in the biographies of all suicides.  Without going into the details of some personal biographies I have myself studied, let me remind you of two great classics:  Werther and Anna Karenina.  You can see in these two books how life and his own character combine to form a trap for man.  And it is precisely what is most noble in man that may urge him to suicide.  If you can imagine a Werther or an Anna Karenina who were both slightly more frivolous, you will see that their problems might have been solved.  But you will see also that in such cases the only truly positive and honourable solution would be that complete conversion required by Christ.

It is perfectly clear that the Christian apologists were well aware of this real and profound explanation of the Christian attitude to suicide.  Saints such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas were certainly far better aware of it than I.  Why then did they not give it?  I think largely because things were taken for granted in that period of militant and heroic Christianity.  Do not forget that St. Augustine only mentions this problem when he is addressing Roman pagans, in defense against the charge that Christianity had grown weaker.  Nowadays, when it has frequently become painfully mediocre, it is again attacked by a new and fanatical paganism, which also has its moments of heroism.  Either Christianity will disappear, or it will recover its original virtues.  We do not believe that it can disappear, but it must certainly renew itself by becoming aware of its true nature.  It is therefore useful, by dwelling on one specific problem, to show that Christian morality is not some sort of natural, reasonable and universal morality, with perhaps a little more sensation in it than some others, but the manifestation in life of a paradoxical revelation.  It cannot be superfluous, either, to remind oneself to-day that Christian morality is not a morality of compromise, but that it requires a heroism more profound, more absurd and, in a way, more intransigent, than any other.  In other words, we had to become explicitly conscious of things which in an age still close to the martyrs could be taken for granted.

Memes

See also

• Cope or rope
• Visit Gandy (PSL phrase)