*scratches head* Was that big OPAR quote and the part after it always there? I feel nigh on blind to have missed it before. The question after the OPAR quote deals with a substantially different motive for suicide than the motive given in the section before the big quote. The third world country thing, specifics of an individual case would be necessary to say whether or not somebody was really in that hopeless of a situation or not that it would make sense to quit living. “That’s begging the question. The whole point of the thread is: should we want to live of die?” I don’t think that is the point of the thread. The first section looks to be about somebody who wants to live, that being the reason to have a negative emotional response to the notion of it ending, so we’re already beyond the point of determining wanting to live or not. Wanting to live or not also has no "should"s though anyway because “should” is a moral issue and we can’t form moral guidelines for somebody until and unless they’ve already decided they want live since morality is built upon what to do if you want to live. “The argument isn’t that people live in terror because they don’t want to die, it’s that they live in terror because they fear death. You can fear things you want.” Why fear death if they don’t oppose dying? “. . . is moral to the extent that it doesn’t represent an aggression against anyone else.” The discussion related to this, in a nut shell, the problem with the line is that aggression against others is not the only immoral thing.
An ethical question regarding an agent’s action precedes rights in the conceptual hierarchy. SO it is your very invocation of the right to life in a discussion of whether a certain action is moral which is the problem.
…
“A ‘right’ is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life.” ~ Life, Right to - ARL
Note this statement equates right (quoted) as a moral principal; not the political reflection of a moral principal, but moral itself. Whether or not a man is free to act in a social context, it is correct and proper (right) to his nature to have the freedom of action to own his life. I think we agree that morality precedes politics, but disagree on the literal meaning of this right as a moral principle. So I will ask, if the right to life is only a political entitlement, why refer to it as being inalienable, as in the following taken from ARL, Individual Rights:
“It is not society, nor any social right, that forbids you to kill—but the inalienable individual right of another man to live.”
So we have by your logic delimited to a social context, a right that isn’t a social right, and glaring contradiction in the way Objectivism presents the right to life as a moral principle. Or we have a fundamental right that precedes politics. I choose the latter.
Notice also that Ms. Rand says “freedom of action”, not freedom from the action of others.
I asked about the life boat view in Oism because it turns some ideas expressed here on their head. Either one can treat emergencies as amoral, or one can choose to act on the principles that are derived from a context where moral, life sustaining choices are available. If one chooses the latter and chooses to pursue moral principles, the irony is that one will be acting against ones own life.
Example, a sick person is in a post hurricane disaster. They are an insulin dependent diabetic. They have no insulin and there is another person who is insulin dependent nearby and none else wise. You can either take their insulin and live, or choose not to live in a manner less than the rational animal-man qua man… If you choose the latter, to treat this as a moral context, you must choose to jettison life in order not to jettison moral principles.
Incidentally, I often think I would choose the latter, so I am not picking on SL. I don’t think I could sustain an untormented conscience by reminding myself that I had no moral choice but to accept that my life required me to behave like wild animals. But I am not sure.
I moved most of the posts about rights because they’re only indirectly about the OP questions at all.
They’re here.
OK, well nothing kills a good conversation like staying on topic…
There is a certain dark logic to Ligotti’s view. Supposing that awareness of mortality leads to suffering, and suicide is painless, then painful life is bad and painless death is good. Que theme song (Suicide is Painless, by Manic Street Preachers):
The game of life is hard to play
I’m gonna lose it anyway
The losing card of some delay
So this is all I have to say
That suicide is painless
It brings so many changes
And I can take or leave them if I please
A common sentiment expressed at the death of a loved one suffering from a terminal illness is, “it’s good that he’s no longer suffering.” But I think this is grasping at comfortable straws because if given the choice to continue living with a tolerable amount of pain, death wouldn’t be more preferable life. Certain, but tolerable, suffering is part of the experience of living a mortal life, and to paraphrase Reagan (about abortion), I’ve noticed that everyone who is for suicide is still here arguing."
In order to have moral weight, there must ba a good choice vs a bad choice. No choice carries no moral weight, and death is an end to choice, so it follows that choosing death is choosing an amoral solution. That is essentially what I was trying to express to StrictlyLogical when our conversation got derailed; that a moral choice that leads to an amoral consequence represents a contradiction of nature. For morality to remain valid, there can’t be logical loopholes to moral consequences. In order to avoid the contradiction, one must conclude that suicide (as a choice) is in fact immoral, not amoral. Even if one argues that a painful life is bad, there is no good feeling that results from choosing death, because a corpse isn’t capable of enjoying anything.
Suicide isn’t an escape from suffering, it’s the destruction of hope and therefore immoral.
OK, well nothing kills a good conversation like staying on topic…
There is a certain dark logic to Ligotti’s view. Supposing that awareness of mortality leads to suffering, and suicide is painless, then painful life is bad and painless death is good. Que theme song (Suicide is Painless, by Manic Street Preachers):
–
The game of life is hard to play
I’m gonna lose it anyway
The losing card of some delay
So this is all I have to say
That suicide is painless
It brings so many changes
And I can take or leave them if I please
–
A common sentiment expressed at the death of a loved one suffering from a terminal illness is, “it’s good that he’s no longer suffering.” But I think this is grasping at comfortable straws because if given the choice to continue living with a tolerable amount of pain, death wouldn’t be more preferable life. Certain, but tolerable, suffering is part of the experience of living a mortal life, and to paraphrase Reagan (about abortion), I’ve noticed that everyone who is for suicide is still here arguing."
In order to have moral weight, there must ba a good choice vs a bad choice. No choice carries no moral weight, and death is an end to choice, so it follows that choosing death is choosing an amoral solution. That is essentially what I was trying to express to StrictlyLogical when our conversation got derailed; that a moral choice that leads to an amoral consequence represents a contradiction of nature. For morality to remain valid, there can’t be logical loopholes to moral consequences. In order to avoid the contradiction, one must conclude that suicide (as a choice) is in fact immoral, not amoral. Even if one argues that a painful life is bad, there is no good feeling that results from choosing death, because a corpse isn’t capable of enjoying anything.
Suicide isn’t an escape from suffering, it’s the destruction of hope and therefore immoral.
I kind of like the sentiment in this, but its foundation needs some more rigor.
It needs to be reframed “first person” AND using the proper standard because that is what morality is.
A common sentiment expressed at the death of a loved one suffering from a terminal illness is, “it’s good that he’s no longer suffering.” But I think this is grasping at comfortable straws because if given the choice to continue living with a tolerable amount of pain, death wouldn’t be more preferable life.
I’m glad you raised this because the OP talks about “suffering”, but the dangerous assumption in his post is that he equates struggle with suffering: specifically, he speaks of the lives of “the great majority of people in third world countries” consisting of suffering!
Even when suffering is genuine – more than just a struggle – the other essential question is its permanence. If someone is suffering from a painful disease that he can get through and come out the other end to live a life without suffering, then the suffering would usually be worth enduring.
In addition, when people are depressed, they cannot visualize and “make real” the positive possibilities in the future. So, even an evaluation that one is suffering and that there is no reasonable light at the end of the tunnel can be wrong, under the influence of depression.
With all that said, in the typical case where people say they’re glad a loved one died because he was suffering, I think they are not making excuses or rationalizing.