Subject: Re: suicide
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Date: Fri Feb 25 2000 - 19:31:52 EST
In a message dated 2/25/00 6:36:50 PM Eastern Standard Time, Akane574@cs.com
writes:
<< i was completely uninterested in this conversation, mostly because i've
just
been too busy to let myself be interested in it. but i see that mention of
existentialism and i can't help but reply. i'm not sure about this, but i
don't think existentialism condones suicide...i think. it's just the choice
that the "true existentialist" tends to make. or something like that. but
it's not condoned, just a common practice.
-Lauren
- >>
It's pretty hard to talk about "what existentialists think" about any
specific issue, because part of being an existentialist is indeed being
self-directed, and partly because existentialism has a long and odd history
and is, philosophically, all over the place.
I'd say guys like Dostoevsky (often considered a proto-existentialist),
Jaspers, and Kierkegaard would probably say little good about suicide as an
act. I think Dos's Russian Orthodoxy would recoil at the thought, as well as
K's and J's protestant backgrounds. I'd say Nietzche, Camus, and Sartre
would probably be ambivalent about it, and Sartre probably couldn't talk
about it at all except on a case by case basis.
What people usually mean by "existentialism" is Sartre's final fomulation of
it. I don't see Seymour as being an existentialist hero by committing
suicide because he seems to be reacting to external pressure, however we
define the pressure. I'm not saying his entire character was that of a
coward, but his succumbing to that particular impulse probably was, at best,
an isolated cowardly act.
If you think about all the examples of "noble suicide" given in previous
posts (which are irrelevant because I'm just talking about Seymour), in all
cases the individual takes his or her own life on the basis of a principle.
It's wired into the individual's society and that society's values. This
stands at complete odds with any existentialist formulation, esp. Sartre's.
So it's pretty odd to use both these arguments to support a single
proposition (suicide can be good).
Jim
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