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Paolo Stellino Philosophical Perspectives on Suicide Paolo Stellino Philosophical Perspectives on Suicide Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein Paolo Stellino Nova Institute of Philosophy Universidade Nova de Lisboa LISBOA, Portugal ISBN 978-3-030-53936-8 ISBN 978-3-030-53937-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53937-5 © Te Editor(s) (if applicable) and Te Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Tis work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Te use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Te publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Te publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional afliations. Tis Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Te registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Preface According to Baruch Spinoza, “a free person thinks about death less than anything, and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life” (Ethics, IV, 67). Writing a book on the philosophy of suicide does not necessarily mean to meditate on death. Tis is what I tried to explain— often with no success—to all those friends and colleagues that in recent years kept asking me why I had chosen to work on such a gloomy subject. Of course, I could have reminded them of Camus’ well-known opening words of Te Myth of Sisyphus: “Tere is but one truly serious philosophi- cal problem and that is suicide.” But the fact is that whereas I am not persuaded by Camus’ claim, I am truly convinced that meditating on suicide means, to a great extent, meditating on fundamental questions that directly concern life, not death. Among others, these questions are: How do we conceive our obligations to society, friends, and family? Which is the set of moral values according to which we choose to orien- tate our life? Which is the value that we give to our autonomy and free- dom? Is this value non-negotiable? And how do we conceive dignity? Is it a “property” that, in specifc situations, can be undermined or deteriorated? I began to take interest in these questions almost ffteen years ago when, almost accidentally, I attended a session of the seminar of the Bioethics Research Group of the University of Valencia. At the time, I was still a PhD student and the subject of my dissertation (on Nietzsche v vi Preface and Dostoevsky) had little to do with bioethics. Juan Carlos Siurana Aparisi, the director of the research group, drew my attention to the fact that Nietzsche’s stance on suicide was almost unexplored by bioethicists. I began looking for Nietzsche’s remarks on suicide in his writings and posthumous fragments. What struck me immediately was Nietzsche’s joyous and almost poetical conception of free death. Te possibility of conceiving death diferently, that is, as a festival was something new for me. I left Spain in 2010. At the time, I had two main concerns: to fnd a post-doc position and to work on the English translation of my disserta- tion. I temporarily set aside my interest on the topic of suicide and devoted myself completely to Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. It was an inter- national conference on Kant and Nietzsche, held in 2012 in Lisbon, that gave me the occasion to work again on the philosophy of suicide. From that moment, suicide has been, somewhat intermittently, one of my main topics of research. Te idea of writing this book occurred to me some years later, when I noticed that there was a fl rouge that linked Kant’s, Schopenhauer’s, Nietzsche’s, and Wittgenstein’s views of suicide. I will motivate my choice to place these four philosophical perspectives on sui- cide side by side in the Introduction, so that there is no need to dwell on it here. Some chapters of this book are based on material previously published in P. Stellino, “Nietzsche on Suicide”, Nietzsche-Studien, 42 (2013): 151–177, and in P. Stellino, “Kant and Nietzsche on Suicide”, Philosophical Inquiry, 39/2 (2015): 79–104. Although in both cases I heavily reworked their content for this book, I would like to thank both journals for per- mission to revise and reuse these publications. My research particularly benefted from the works of three specialists on the philosophy of suicide: Margaret P. Battin, Héctor Wittwer, and Michael Cholbi. Wittwer’s book Selbsttötung als philosophisches Problem: Über die Rationalität und Moralität des Suizids particularly helped me at the initial stage of my research to understand the complexities of the dif- ferent arguments that are put forward in the debate concerning the ratio- nality and morality of suicide. Lisbon Paolo Stellino 23 April 2020 Acknowledgements I owe a great debt to the following friends and colleagues who read single chapters of this book and provided me with extremely valuable feedback: Roberta Pasquarè and Lorena Cebolla Sanahuja (chapter on Kant), Christopher Janaway and Vilmar Debona (chapter on Schopenhauer), Marta Faustino and Maria Cristina Fornari (chapter on Nietzsche), and Vicente Sanfélix Vidarte and Modesto Gómez Alonso (chapter on Wittgenstein). I am also most grateful to the anonymous reviewer for providing very useful critical and constructive comments on the entire manuscript. I would like to thank Brendan George and Lauriane Piette, from Palgrave Macmillan, and Charanya Manoharan, from Springer, for their help and support. I would also like to thank João Constâncio for kindly supporting my work since the frst day I arrived in Lisbon. I should also mention that this book would not have been possible without the sup- port of the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT). A part of this book was written during my stay in Montpellier. I would like to thank Pascal Nouvel for welcoming me at the Centre d’Éthique Contemporaine. A special thought goes to Nadia El Eter and Guillaume Bagnolini, who shared with me the daily routine at the Centre. A word of gratitude goes to all the friends who, inside and outside academia, near and far, have accompanied me during this journey. I can- not help mentioning Maria Cristina Fornari, Luca Lupo, and Pietro vii viii Acknowledgements Gori. In particular, I shared with Pietro all the ups and downs of the academic life as well as the experience of building a new life in a new country with our respective families. Finally, I am deeply thankful to my family for their constant support, and to Audrey for her love and for sharing her life with me (despite the fact that I am a philosopher). E lucevan le stelle… Contents 1 Introduction: Bringing Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein Together 1 References 9 2 Immanuel Kant: The Moral Duty of Self- Preservation 11 2.1 Contextualizing Kant’s Prohibition of Suicide 11 2.2 Arguments from the Lectures on Ethics 23 2.3 Arguments from the Published Writings 40 2.4 Concluding Remarks 64 References 66 3 Arthur Schopenhauer: The Metaphysical Futility of Suicide 71 3.1 Schopenhauer’s Critique of Religious and Philosophical Arguments against Suicide 78 3.2 Schopenhauer’s Metaphysical Worldview 90 3.3 Te Futility of Suicide 100 3.4 Concluding Remarks 117 References 118 ix x Contents 4 Friedrich Nietzsche: A Free Death at the Right Time 123 4.1 Voluntary versus Involuntary Death 131 4.2 Free Death and Quick Death 143 4.3 Meaninglessness and Suicide 155 4.4 Concluding Remarks 173 References 174 5 Ludwig Wittgenstein: Suicide as the Elementary Sin 179 5.1 Te Sources 189 5.2 Wittgenstein’s View of Ethics 199 5.3 Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Suicide 208 5.4 Concluding Remarks 221 References 223 6 Conclusion: What Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein Can Teach Us About Suicide 227 References 240 Index 243 About the author Paolo Stellino is Researcher at the Nova Institute of Philosophy, New University of Lisbon, Portugal. His main felds of research interest are the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, ethics, and phi- losophy of cinema. He has published many articles in international peer- reviewed journals and has authored several book chapters. He is the author of the book Nietzsche and Dostoevsky: On the Verge of Nihilism (2015). xi Abbreviations Kant References to Kant’s writings are cited according to the volume and page number of the Academy Edition (Kants gesammelte Schriften). A Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View CPR Critique of Pure Reason [1781 cited as A/1787 cited as B] CPrR Critique of Practical Reason LE Lectures on Ethics G Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals MM Te Metaphysics of Morals NF Notes and Fragments R Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason Schopenhauer References to Schopenhauer’s writings are cited according to the follow- ing abbreviations and the page number of the editions listed in the bibliography.
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