As a species with the apparently rare gift of being able to contemplate life and death, being able to choose our own end should we desire it, we are endowed, unavoidably, with the problem of suicide.
”There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” –Camus
Let’s start by acknowledging that it is a serious question, a serious problem. The answer is not simple. We cannot get away from this issue by blanket affirmations against suicide because it is cowardly or because it is hurtful to others. These things may be true, but they do not answer the question.
Those with the benefit of an airtight faith in some religion or creed that prohibits suicide may seem to escape the problem; but only because they never really address it. To eschew consideration of suicide because it is against the laws of a god or against the imperatives of a philosophical system is to have already given up the reigns of your own life to an outside authority. Rather than face the question yourself, it is side-stepped; in removing that one threat to your life, you have given up claim to that very life.
No, we must deal with the question head-on, on its own terms, for and by ourselves.
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“Once the decision has been made, close your ear even to the best counter argument: sign of a strong character. Thus an occasional will to stupidity.”
–Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
We live in a world of many choices: the foods we eat, the careers we choose, the relationships we foster, every consumer good we buy. We tend to have more than a binary yes/no choice, but rather many options, often with complicated trade-offs involving many dimensions. I like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but which peanut butter should I get: Crunchy or creamy? Reduced fat, normal fat or normal fat with extra omega-3’s? All-natural or not? Store brand or name brand? Which jelly: strawberry, grape, apricot-pineapple, or countless other fruit choices? Jam, jelly or preserves? Low sugar, low sugar with other additives, or normal? Relative balance of cheap, healthy and tasty?
Even simple decisions like this can present a crippling array of possibilities, over which we may feel some pressure to maximize and find the “right one”. But there’s a fine line between giving a little thought to decisions here and there, and agonizing over labels and minor cost differences at every choice.
Unfortunately, it’s not just minor matters that present us with myriad options. Buying a car: New or used? Lease or purchase? Cash or finance? Make, model, color, options, all of which we can easily find extensive information about. Presumably the more information we have — the better informed our decision is — the better our choice will be. This is what I might call the naive rationalist assumption.
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