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Fighting against the absurd so that living may become a deliberate choice
We are not objects, we are human beings. Our lives do not belong to anyone, nor do they belong to society or to State. No-one, ever, can claim to oblige us to live for someone, for society or for the State if we do not wish to live for ourselves. Painless suicide is our right. Let us hasten to conquer this right for our dignity not to be flouted any more.
We do not choose to be born. In the beginning, life is no choice, it is enforced upon us. A man and a woman have sexual intercourse and inflict life upon us without our agreement : such is the commonplace scenario. Whether it is in vitro fertilization or other devices, this does not change the problem altogether : our personal agreement was not requested.
Likewise, we did not choose to grow up in such or such a country, in this or that family, in this or that social background, to be endowed with such or such genes, such or such gifts or such or such handicaps. How is it that I am not handsome, tall and genetically well-endowed like this one man ? Why was I not born into a rich family that bequeathed its wealth to me, hereby exempting me from working for a living ? These questions, which seem naive and are more often than not looked down upon as pointless moaning are nonetheless legitimate questionings yet unanswered. They bear witness to the fact that as soon as we are born, we fall prey to natural and social inequalities which have nothing to do with merit or worth.
Most of the time, when these inequalities are favourable to us (when we are born handsomer, wealthier and cleverer than the average man/woman), we thrive on those to boast some intrinsic superiority and to rule over others, as though such qualities stemmed from being rather than having, as though they were not a matter of chance but of personal merit. Although part of those inequalities may be put down to nurture, itself depending on willpower, denying the very importance of nature and social conditioning, which we are not accountable for, is a telltale sign of bad faith.
As a matter of fact, and conversely, when those inequalities are detrimental to us (when we are born less handsome and less rich … than the average man), we complain about our lot, we are well aware that we did not choose to be and look so : we bitterly acknowledge how arbitrary and unfair they are. Someone who is not quite attractive will suffer from not having any sex appeal, hence from not enjoying the very carnal pleasure which others do. Likewise, a poor person will be unable to enjoy the luxuries that his well-to-do counterparts do.
Quite ordinarily, we are reluctant to face the problem of natural and social inequalities we are arbitrarily confronted with. We usually say : « this is life, that's the way it is », and turn to something different in an effort to escape from such a bitter injustice. Philosophically speaking, such an attitude is tantamount to a moral and an intellectual kind of retreat, which is why we shall not consider it in this essay. We shall analyse the theoretical aspects of the question, then we shall go on to draw the matter-of-fact consequences linked to the right to suicide.
In philosophy, the aspects that have just been discussed are best illustrated by the concepts of contingency and the absurd. Contingency means that something might not have been or might have been altogether different, what is here without any providential or moral reason. The world might not have been or might have been different (for instance, it might have been better). We might not have been born at all or been born very different (handsomer ad wealthier). Our birth place and the year ad century when we were born, our body and our social background, all this pertains to contingency. Thus, nothing morally justifies our being born and our being born the way we are, with our biological and social characteristics. To the questions « why are we here and why in such conditions ? », there is absolutely no answer.
What is absurd is what is devoid of meaning, that is, whatever is devoid of direction and purpose, that is what is aimless. This concept, linked to that of contingency, refers to life just as it is, just as it lies before us, with its succession of injustices and sufferings.
Life, as it is, is groundless and aimless, that is why it is devoid of meaning.
This assertion may sound pessimistic and nihilistic, and somewhat morbid ; it is actually the contrary.
To say that life is meaningful would then mean that whatever happens in the world is part and parcel of this general meaning.
My wife has died ? I have had a car crash ? I have killed someone ? If life is meaningful, then these events did not occur out of bad luck or a personal choice, but were bound to occur : such is the very logic of fate and providence.
In the same way, since by « life » we mean all human beings in the entire world, at all times, -if life has a purpose-, there is no such thing as evil then (everything is good, for everything has a meaning).
The Inquisition ? Nazism ? Isis ? Earthquakes ? If life makes sense at all, all these events then pertain to the general meaning of History : they were bound to happen, and no matter how bad they are, they are meant to lead to a far greater Good, that is, to an aim at which life drives.
Thus, the thesis whereby life is intrinsically meaningful is morally unsustainable. It is tantamount to justifying individual misfortunes and History's atrocities and justifying the unjustifiable.
I have cancer ? I deserved it ! The extermination of Jews in concentration camps ? They sure deserved it too ! The use of such disgraceful irony throws light upon the fact that asserting that life is meaningful, that whatever happens was bound to happen, that there is no sense of the absurd, is nothing but intellectual fraud and leads us to accept what morally ought not to be accepted.
By contrast, to say that life is absurd means admitting that there are biological -genetic diseases, cancer…) and social (poverty, dictatorial regimes) data that are morally unjustifiable and that should not be. This is no pessimism or nihilism, quite the contrary : it is because life is absurd that it is urgent that we should make it meaningful by first fighting injustices. If life were meaningful, we should then lock ourselves up in quietism and just take the world as it is ; on the contrary, the philosophy of the absurd proposes that we should not take it as it is but change it since nothing justifies it.
Let us bear in mind Lewis Carroll's thought-provoking statement in Alice in Wonderland : « if life be meaningless, what is it that prevents us from making it meaningful ? ».
If life were meaningful, it would follow that we are not free but submitted to that meaning. On the contrary, if life is absurd, it is we that make up the meaning : we are the authors of our lives.
The absurd is the condition for our freedom. Life is absurd, therefore it belongs to us : we choose the meaning we endow it with.
The paramount philosophical question, as L.Carroll sees it, therefore consists in our identifying the obstacles that keep us from making up a meaning for our lives so that we may fight them.
The first and foremost obstacle that lies before us is having to live biologically and socially-bound without our having decided to. Some avoid grappling with the question answering that they can always choose to commit suicide if they do not wish to live (any longer). That is true, and that is as true as a slave deciding to disobey his master or a citizen deciding to disobey the rules of the country he lives in.
However, such a rebellious decision generally entails painful consequences : the rebellious slave will be beaten and made homeless, as for the rebellious citizen, he will be fined and and sent to jail. In other words, despite having the opportunity to disobey, one is bound to admit that the slave has no other real alternative but to obey his master and the citizen no other alternative but to obey the rules of the society he lives in. Free will does not rule out constraint.
In the same way, we cannot decide to die of our own free will the same way we decide to raise our arm or close our eyes. Our body is biologically set for living and not for dying, thus, death, except for suicide, always occurs accidentally, which always makes it a very painful experience (cancer, intoxication, organ deterioration…).
If I want to die hic et nunc but do not have the sophisticated means to die peacefully, my body will struggle to keep me alive hereby condemning me to excruciating suffering : that is what is called agony. This term comes from the Greek agôn which means fight, that is fight for life : if my body did not fight to stay alive when it is dying, dying would not be a painful experience but would be as easy a process as digesting. I am therefore biologically bound to live. If the body were in full agreement with the mind when I rationally make up my mind to die, suicide would be an easy task and therefore would dispense with external means to make it a painless death.
This biological constraint is present without our being able to alter it, at least until the first transhuman is created, a topic we shall not consider in this essay, without nonetheless denying that transhumanism would enable us to fight natural inequalities and shake off the yoke of numberless biological constraints. As long as we dwell in « natural » bodies, we are biologically set to survive the way we do now.
However, this biological constraint, considering where science now stands, could easily be come to terms with, were it not doubled with a social constraint.
As a matter of fact, some devices allowing a somewhat painless death have indeed been worked out, which legally frees us from the body being made to live on, still, such devices are not within everyone's reach, which betrays an implicit social ban on painless suicide.
As Plato wrote in Phaedo, « the body is the jail of the soul ». The soul cannot spontaneously free itself from the body without suffering. The death-related devices above mentioned would allow us to fling open the doors of the jail so that we might no longer live out of biological constraint (but out of a personal decision since we could die painlessly when we want it), but society keeps us from doing so by making such methods inaccessible (or hardly accessible). For instance, the devices, set out as they are in Philip Nitschke's The Peaceful Pill handbook (Pilule Douce en français), would make a peaceful death within everyone's reach, were they socially implemented. The person in pain, instead of preparing for his/her suicide by him/herself in the dark, afraid of both laws and miscarriage, could in the open and shamelessly get hold of the devices/means he/she needs to depart peacefully.
The true problem at stake is therefore social. It is because society bars us from accessing those painless devices and leaves those suffering to their own devices desperately looking for a termination of some kind, that life is a constraint.
A social constraint then : « thou shalt live for thy family, for thy society, for thy country …/… Thy life is not thine ». We shall fathom out the religious roots of this absurd ban in chapter 4. But we can quote Shopenhauer at this stage, in Parerga and Paralipomena, « Ethics, Law and Politics », which sheds light on te fact that condemning someone to live when they do not wish to is inacceptable. « Requiring that a man who refuses to live any longer, should live on like a mere machine for others' usefulness, is an odd demand indeed ».
As a matter of fact, on what moral principle could we condemn someone to live ? To consider that someone should serve their family or their society although they do not want to live any longer and are in great pain, it is philosophically speaking, reifying them, i e, reducing them to an object. To quote kant, it is tantamount to regarding man as a means rather than as an end.
It means looking upon man as a cog in the social machine hereby denying him his intrinsic dignity. It would mean that man is dignity-free as a human being, but entitled to one for his social usefulness (work, social rank…). To put it differently, man would be entitled to a mere external dignity which disappeared as soon as he ceased to be useful to society.
Consequently, if we regard man as an end rather than as a means, we cannot demand that he live to serve an external purpose of some kind if he does not wish to live any longer.
The right to suicide is a direct consequence of the Rights of Man. If man's dignity, if one is to believe the Declaration of the Rights of man, does not depend on his/her social belonging, but is inherent in his humanity, it is then immoral to oblige someone wanting to die, to be socially useful. To fully grasp the latter point, it is necessary to correct a language mistake that pro-choicers, -such as Exit- commonly make (pro-choicers whose general philosophy we however share).
The latter often use the phrase « to die in dignity », which, however, could mean that one can lose one's dignity if one dies in atrocious suffering, which betrays some absurd reasoning. The adequate phrase, if one wishes to be philosophically accurate, therefore is : « to die in accordance with one's dignity ». Let us hammer the point home : as human beings, we have an intrinsic dignity which depends on neither biological nor social factors : we shall therefore not lose any dignity. However, some situations of great physical or mental suffering do not agree with our sense of dignity and are morally intolerable precisely because we are beings endowed with a sense of dignity. We may agree to a table being « tortured », as it is devoid of consciousness and is therefore dignity-free. Yet, a human being Shall not be tortured presicely because he is endowed with a sense of dignity.
Thus, when a man is in constant pain (psychologically and/or physically) and when he no longer wishes to live, his sense of dignity morally requires a right to a painless termination.
To want him to suffer for his family or his society is to reify him as well as flout his sense of dignity ; it is condemning him to too much suffering that is incompatible with his sense of dignity. How can one then claim that one lives in the country of the Rights of Man until a right to suicide is implemented and socially organised ?
Living out of social constraint prevents one from living of one's own free will, whether or not one enjoys life. These days, someone who wishes lo live is socially obliged to live. The difference between living of one's own free will (which requires that one is not socially bound to do so) and living out of social constraint is the same as the difference between a love story and a rape.
In the former, will is paramount, in the latter, coercion is.
But if the rape victim nonetheless derived some pleasure from that experience (this may sound like sick humour, but it is meant to serve the purpose of our demonstration), if she/he was forced to have sexual intercourse, this is nothing but rape, and this is morally condemnable.
Likewise, even though human beings that are socially constrained to live do derive some pleasure from living, life remains a constraint : they are reified and their sense of dignity is flouted. Besides, if they are suddenly taken ill (incurably ill) or poverty-stricken, they have no means to peacefully terminate their lives.
The right to painless suicide allows but one thing : to be a willing human being.
To no longer live socially and biologically constrained (which amounts to being raped by the real/reality), because one chooses it. To live of one's own free will, leaving one's fear of suffering behind when committing suicide (on account of being constantly threatened to be « biologically chastised » for having wanted to depart from life). To live because one has decided to do so rather than out of fear of the consequences our suicide would entail (to do something because one fears the consequences if one fails to do it means doing it out of constraint. To live out of fear of dying is to live out of constraint).
This right alone may outweigh the contingency of our birth. We did not choose to be born and to be born under these or those circumstances ; the natural arbitrariness is unavoidable ; however for this contingency not to become an existential rape, the right to painless suicide is a moral necessity. Since we did not choose to be born, we ought to be granted the opportunity to die easily and peacefully.
If life is by essence absurd (since we did not choose to be « thrown into the world » or in such or such conditions even though we deem those conditions satisfactory), we can nonetheless make it meaningful ; and yet, a life lived against one's own free will cannot have a meaning which agrees with our human dignity. Consequently, the right to painless suicide, which alone enables us to live of one's own free will, is the sine qua non condition to make life meaningful despite the absurd.
It is not a question of denying the existential absurd, but rather of refraining from making it worse by adding a social sense of the absurd to it.
Human beings cannot choose to be born, but they can be allowed to choose the way they wish to die, that is, decide peacefully whether they wish to go on living or not. This opportunity of dying peacefully, far from encouraging suicide, dispels the fear of suffering and prompts one into living.
