Stoic Philosophy: A Note on Suicide.

**Annuit Coeptis** · 14/12/2012

Stoic Philosophy: A Note on Suicide

A Note on Suicide

Stoic teachings about suicide, though relatively clear, have, from ancient times to the present, perplexed students of the subject because of an apparent tension in the Stoic position. On the one hand, the Stoics seem to have been opposed to suicide because, like Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo, they held that each of us is appointed to his post in life by divine authority, and must not leave it until summoned. On the other hand, according to our information, both the first two leaders of the school, Zeno and Cleanthes, committed suicide, and leading Stoics explicitly taught that one may commit suicide to avoid intolerable situations, as Seneca did when the alternative for him was death at the hands of the sadistic Nero.

To understand the Stoics’ position on this subject the best place to begin is with an examination of the figure of the “smoky room” often used by them (see Epictetus, Discourses, I, xxv, 81ff.; IV, x, 27; Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, V, 29). The point is that if one wants to remain in a room, but it gets very smoky, there is no use in complaining. One has a choice: one can either remain, put up with the smoke, and quit complaining; or one can leave the room because it is no longer worth staying. Every alternative course of action has costs and benefits. A rational person will consider these and make his choice on that basis without uselessly bemoaning the losses incurred in pursuing the better alternative.

So far the figure suggests merely prudential considerations concerning costs and benefits to oneself, and the Stoics, perhaps as a propaedeutic, did address themselves to these considerations to suggest more rational behavior to persons who will only consider them. According to the Stoics these are, of course, not the only, or even the primary, considerations; but even for them they are proper grounds for deciding between the proegmena and the apoproegmena. Still, there are larger concerns for a member of the community of rational beings to take into account; his duties will outweigh purely private matters.

These principles do not in themselves determine when suicide is permitted, or even incumbent on, a person, and when not. As always, judgment is necessary. It appears, therefore, that if one is terminally ill or seriously and incurably disabled, and nothing else that will adversely affect others comes into play, one is permitted to commit suicide, but not to complain, for, as the Stoics liked to say, “the door is open.” Nice questions arise when one’s condition or situation is so miserable that it seems to him not possible for him to carry out his duties. Then suicide may present itself as a temptation; but each person must decide for himself whether he is forsaking his duties under difficult circumstances or it will be impossible for him to carry them out. In all of this the Stoics ignored, as most of us do in discussing the same subject, the extreme circumstances of one who is prevented from suicide by restraint and force-feeding. But there is, perhaps, little advice that one can usefully give to such an unfortunate.

**Annuit Coeptis** · 14/12/2012

I post this as a topic of interest for my Christian friends here. I am viewing the Christian World from my training in the Stoic belief (going on 20+ years now), which is not to be insulted or made fun of of at all. I hold the Christian Faith in the highest respect. =)

The issue of self-death has always intrigued me, i.e. when it is permissible? It's a horror to to my Christian friends but was allowable, under certain preconditions, to the Stoics. The only Stoic that I know of to have killed himself was Cato the Younger.

In Utica, Cato did not participate in the battle and, unwilling to live in a world led by Caesar and refusing even implicitly to grant Caesar the power to pardon him, he committed suicide in April 46 BC. According to Plutarch, Cato attempted to kill himself by stabbing himself with his own sword, but failed to do so due to an injured hand. Plutarch wrote:

Cato did not immediately die of the wound; but struggling, fell off the bed, and throwing down a little mathematical table that stood by, made such a noise that the servants, hearing it, cried out. And immediately his son and all his friends came into the chamber, where, seeing him lie weltering in his own blood, great part of his bowels out of his body, but himself still alive and able to look at them, they all stood in horror. The physician went to him, and would have put in his bowels, which were not pierced, and sewed up the wound; but Cato, recovering himself, and understanding the intention, thrust away the physician, plucked out his own bowels, and tearing open the wound, immediately expired.

On hearing of his death in Utica, Plutarch wrote that Caesar commented: "Cato, I grudge you your death, as you would have grudged me the preservation of your life."
Starting with Pliny the Elder, later writers sometimes refer to Cato the Younger as "Cato Uticensis" ("the Utican"). In doing so they apply to him a type of cognomen that was normally awarded to generals who earned a triumph in a foreign war and brought a large territory under Roman influence (e.g. Scipio Africanus). Such names were honorific titles that the Senate only granted for the most spectacular victories. Reference to Cato as "Uticensis" is presumably meant to glorify him by portraying his suicide at Utica as a great victory over Caesar's tyranny. Cato is remembered as a follower of Stoicism and was one of the most active defenders of the Republic.

Cato the Younger - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An interesting footnote in history.

=)

I don't make this thread out of horrid thoughts. I want to know what my Catholic counterparts think of the idea of self-termination. I've had conversations with Japanese Buddhists, such as the followers of Zen.

**Annuit Coeptis** · 14/12/2012

Paul Tillich once wrote a while ago that Stoicism is "the only real alternative to Christianity in the Western world." =)

**Hyeronimus** · 14/12/2012

I have Stoicism in high esteem, but it definitely falls short when compare with Christianity.

**Annuit Coeptis** · 15/12/2012

Iniciado por Hyeronimus

I have Stoicism in high esteem, but it definitely falls short when compare with Christianity.

And I hold the Christian Faith in high esteem as well. Because of the writings of the Church Fathers about the Stoics (St. Justin and St. Augustine to a lesser extent) I was able to go back and look at the fragments of the Stoic Fathers (Zeno, Posidonius, etc.). The writings of the ancient Christians have helped me to lean a great deal about the Stoics, to be honest.

I think that in terms of ethics and morals the Catholics are properly Stoic. Stoicism has some antagonism with Platonism, which the Stoics studied in order to refute alongside the Epicurean tradition. There was even a Jewish Stoic- Philo of Alexandria. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was a Semite (a Phoencian from the Kition).

Christians teach that God became a Man, the Christ. Stoics teach that every man is also God- but are ignorant and hence needful of divine instruction (not from a God-Man but from men who are aware that they are a part of God and will return to him when the body dies). The Stoics believed in the philosophers and not the prophets- but they weren't ignorant of the beliefs of their Christian and Jewish cousins at all IMO. Marcus Aurelius mentions the Christians rather ambivalently as being obsessed with death, but he was writing during the time of the Christian Martyrs and when their was turmoil in the Roman Empire.

A good Stoic does not dwell too much on death, martyrdom, suicide, etc. A metaphor that the Stoics used for God was "general" and another metaphor, for humans, was "soldier." A good soldier must always follow the commands of the general, even if he or she dislikes the commands. Only when the general says "dismissed" can the good soldier go and rest. =)