"...life means so much to me that I will not settle for anything less. I will not accept a living death as a substitute."
This one is for those who actually value the concept of life, but consider suicide as a rational response when one's own life is compromised. From OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND: Here's a take on suicide from an Objectivist point of view, as presented by the author, Leonard Peikoff. Presented from the point of view of an atheistic, rational, and otherwise pro-life philosophy, it rejects nihilism, says that the world itself is knowable, and that one has a right to exist for their own sake, but also, it puts forth suicide as a rational choice when life no longer becomes worth living, or the person is unable to carry on:
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When they hear about the Objectivist ethics, philosophy professors from both groups ask, as though by reflex, the same question. "If the choice to live precedes morality," they say, "what is the status of someone who chooses not to live? Isn't the choice of suicide as legitimate as any other, so long as one acts on it? And if so, doesn't that mean that for Rand, too, as for Hume or Nietzsche, ethics, being the consequence of an arbitrary decision, is itself arbitrary?"
In answer to this, I want to mention first that suicide is sometimes justified, according to Objectivism. Suicide is justified when man's life, owing to circumstances outside of a person's control, is no longer possible; an example might be a person with a painful terminal illness, or a prisoner in a concentration camp who sees no chance of escape. In cases such as these, suicide is not necessarily a philosophic rejection of life or of reality. On the contrary, it may very well be their tragic reaffirmation. Self-destruction in such contexts may amount to the tortured cry: "Man's life means so much to me that I will not settle for anything less. I will not accept a living death as a substitute."
The professors I just quoted, however, have an entirely different case in mind. They seek to prove that values are arbitrary by citing a person who would commit suicide, not because of any tragic cause, but as a primary and an end-in- itself. The answer to this one is: no.
A primary choice does not mean an "arbitrary," "whimsical," or "groundless" choice. There are grounds for a (certain) primary choice, and those grounds are reality—all of it. The choice to live, as we have seen, is the choice to accept the realm of reality. This choice is not only not arbitrary. It is the precondition of criticizing the arbitrary; it is the base of reason.
A man who would throw away his life without cause, who would reject the universe on principle and embrace a zero for its own sake—such a man, according to Objectivism, would belong on the lowest rung of hell. His action would indicate so profound a hatred—of himself, of values, of reality—that he would have to be condemned by any human being as a monster. The moment he would announce his decision seriously he would be disqualified as an object of intellectual debate. One cannot argue with or about a walking corpse, who has just consigned himself to the void—the void of the nonconscious, the nonethical, the non-anything.
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This one is for those who actually value the concept of life, but consider suicide as a rational response when one's own life is compromised. From OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND: Here's a take on suicide from an Objectivist point of view, as presented by the author, Leonard Peikoff. Presented from the point of view of an atheistic, rational, and otherwise pro-life philosophy, it rejects nihilism, says that the world itself is knowable, and that one has a right to exist for their own sake, but also, it puts forth suicide as a rational choice when life no longer becomes worth living, or the person is unable to carry on:
Quote:
When they hear about the Objectivist ethics, philosophy professors from both groups ask, as though by reflex, the same question. "If the choice to live precedes morality," they say, "what is the status of someone who chooses not to live? Isn't the choice of suicide as legitimate as any other, so long as one acts on it? And if so, doesn't that mean that for Rand, too, as for Hume or Nietzsche, ethics, being the consequence of an arbitrary decision, is itself arbitrary?"
In answer to this, I want to mention first that suicide is sometimes justified, according to Objectivism. Suicide is justified when man's life, owing to circumstances outside of a person's control, is no longer possible; an example might be a person with a painful terminal illness, or a prisoner in a concentration camp who sees no chance of escape. In cases such as these, suicide is not necessarily a philosophic rejection of life or of reality. On the contrary, it may very well be their tragic reaffirmation. Self-destruction in such contexts may amount to the tortured cry: "Man's life means so much to me that I will not settle for anything less. I will not accept a living death as a substitute."
The professors I just quoted, however, have an entirely different case in mind. They seek to prove that values are arbitrary by citing a person who would commit suicide, not because of any tragic cause, but as a primary and an end-in- itself. The answer to this one is: no.
A primary choice does not mean an "arbitrary," "whimsical," or "groundless" choice. There are grounds for a (certain) primary choice, and those grounds are reality—all of it. The choice to live, as we have seen, is the choice to accept the realm of reality. This choice is not only not arbitrary. It is the precondition of criticizing the arbitrary; it is the base of reason.
A man who would throw away his life without cause, who would reject the universe on principle and embrace a zero for its own sake—such a man, according to Objectivism, would belong on the lowest rung of hell. His action would indicate so profound a hatred—of himself, of values, of reality—that he would have to be condemned by any human being as a monster. The moment he would announce his decision seriously he would be disqualified as an object of intellectual debate. One cannot argue with or about a walking corpse, who has just consigned himself to the void—the void of the nonconscious, the nonethical, the non-anything.
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