'We have to look suicide in the face, long and hard, and see what features, what profile, what inherited character traits and wrinkles emerge.'
Suicide is everywhere. It haunts history and current events. It haunts our own networks of friends and family. The spectre of suicide looms large, but the topic is taboo because any meaningful discussion must at the very least consider that the answer to the question – ‘is life worth living?’ – might not be an emphatic yes; it might even be a stern no. Through a sweeping historical overview of suicide, a moving literary survey of famous suicide notes, and a psychological analysis of himself, Simon Critchley offers us an insight into what it means to possess the all too human gift and curse of being of being able to choose life or death.
Five years after its initial publication, this revised edition of Notes on Suicide includes a new preface by the author adressing shifts in the discourse surrounding suicide, particularly in relation to social media.
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'This book is not a suicide note. Ten days after Edouard Leve handed in the manuscript of Suicide to his publisher in 2007, he hanged himself in his apartment. He was 42. Two years after Jean Amery's On Suicide was published in 1976, the author took an overdose of sleeping pills. He was 65. In 1960, some eighteen years after Albert Camus had raised and - so he thought - resolved the question of suicide in The Myth of Sisyphus, he was killed in a car accident. He is alleged to have said that dying in a car crash is the most absurd of all deaths. The absurdity of his death is compounded by the fact he had an unused train ticket in his pocket. He was 46.
Let me say at the outset, at the risk of disappointing the reader, that I have no plans to kill myself. just yet. Nor do I wish to join the chorus of those who proclaim loudly against suicide and claim that the act of taking one's own life is irresponsible and selfish, even shameful and cowardly, that people must stay alive whatever the cost. Suicide, in my view, is neither a legal nor moral offence, and should not be seen as such. My intention here is to simply try to understand the phenomenon, the act itself, what precedes it and what follows. I'd like to consider suicide from the point of view of those who have made the leap, or have come close to it - we might even find that the capacity to take that leap is what picks us out as humans. I want to look at suicide closely, carefully, and perhaps a little coldly, without immediately leaping to judgements or asserting moral principles like the right to life or death. We have to look suicide in the face, long and hard, and see what features, what profile, what inherited character traits and wrinkles emerge. Perhaps what we see when we look closely is our own distorted reflection staring back at us.'Of course, regardless of his answer, Albert Camus’s question in The Myth of Sisyphus is the right one. Judging whether life is worth living or not amounts to answering the fundamental philosophical question: should I live or die? To be or not to be? As we will soon see, the legal and moral framework that still shapes our thinking and judgement about suicide is hostage to a Christian metaphysics that declares that life is a gift of God. Therefore to take your own life is wrong, although Scripture nowhere explicitly forbids suicide (and, of course, Christ’s crucifixion could be interpreted as a quasi-suicidal act). In killing oneself, it is claimed by Christian theologians, one is assuming a power over one’s existence that only God should possess. Therefore, suicide is a sin.
From the nineteenth century onwards, this theological discourse was displaced by the rise of psychiatry, where suicide was not declared a sin but seen as a mental disorder requiring treatment of various kinds. This is still largely how we approach suicide: we speak readily (and not wrongly) of suicidal depression as an illness best approached through a combination of drugs – Lithium, say – and psychotherapy. But the implicit moral judgement on suicide that comes down to us from Christian theology remains intact and in force. Even when society or the state has taken the place of God, even when suicide is decriminalized, as it has been in the West for the past half century, it is still regarded as a kind of failing that invites an embarrassed response. We think that suicide is sad or wrong, often without knowing why. And we don’t know what to say, other than mouth a few empty platitudes.
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Physical Info: 4.9 x 0.6 x 7.6 inches | 120 Pages | Paperback