I’ve always considered suicide to be a right. Surely if you own your life, you have the right do as you please with it. I was arguing with my mother about this, and she asked me a question I wasn’t prepared for. She asked if I would stop her from commiting suicide. And of course, I absolutely would, I love her. But would I be violating her natural rights by doing this? I can’t get around this inconsistency.
You already know the answer.
Well, I imagine that she has a clause in her life insurance policy that would void it in cases of suicide.
Of course, a better answer on your part would have been " That’s a good point, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how I react."
Maybe you need to distinguish between trying your hardest to convince someone not to kill themselves, and on the other hand trying to force them to live with coercive force.
There’s utter apathy on the one hand and there’s putting someone in a straight-jacket for the rest of their lives on the other. An appropriate response probably falls somewhere inbetween.
"Maybe you need to distinguish between trying your hardest to convince someone not to kill themselves, and on the other hand trying to force them to live with coercive force.
There’s utter apathy on the one hand and there’s putting someone in a straight-jacket for the rest of their lives on the other. An appropriate response probably falls somewhere inbetween."
That presumes that the person trying to kill themselves is in their right mind and thus capable of making an informed decision. There should be a separation between acts of suicide borne out of mental illness, and acts of voluntary euthenasia. I for one would absolutely stop a person from commiting suicide unless I knew for sure it was a long planned and informed decision that was not influenced by mental incapacity.
How do you propose to tell the difference between the two (someone in their right mind and someone who is mentally ill)?
“How do you propose to tell the difference between the two (someone in their right mind and someone who is mentally ill)?”
That’s a good question. There a some very complicated issues surrounding the scientific validity of the methodology used in the diagnosis of mental illness. I certainly do not have any answers regarding that, but I believe I know my friends and family enough to guage whether or not a suicide attempt was based on a healthy mind or not. Sorry if that isn’t a clearcut answer, but life isn’t always clearcut.
So you’re willing to yield your ability to choose death to your friends and family. I’m not willing to do the same. What then?
How about the case where that person is contractually bound to provide X service or Y product to you over a certain period of time or quantity and has not fulfulled the contract? Shouldn’t you be legally allowed to stop that person until you at least settle on a breach of contract agreement?
First, I would ask if the man wanting to kill himself had received a transfer of title to property from the other party already… if he hasn’t, failure to live up to his end of the contract means only that he fails to get paid. If he has, and this is my second point, the injured party is quite capable of taking the issue up with his heirs/agents in the event of his death. This would be no different, in my opinion, than a person who died unexpectedly.
I don’t see any issue here that would justify the focible prevention of “suicide.”
I see, and that makes sense. I was thinking in the case where there was no prior arrangement/agreement in the case of a breach of contract. If the person still committed suicide then they are intentionally shifting their burden to their heirs which seems wrong, especially if his or her heir wasn’t aware that they would be hit with the liability of taking over the contract.
I don’t think that in a free-market society, much like today, the cost of fulfilling contracts is the responsibility of the heirs.
For example. If I were sick today, and racked up $20k worth of health care expenses, my heirs aren’t required to pay the $20k dollars. They may be required to pay what they are able out of my estate, but no one is going to take their house or their land or their car in order to fulfill that debt. Even in death, those kinds of “bills” are my responsibility.
I don’t think that the “heirs” have a prior “property right” in the property of the deceased. I think that the creditors and people the deceased contracted with do. Let’s look at an example of land.
I enter into a contract with my neighbor that I would take possession of 5 acres of his property at price X to be paid monthly over 10 years. I die after 5. My heirs then have a choice. Continue/finish paying the debt from the estate or from their own pockets and keep possession of the property or default and forfeit the property. Whether or not the portion of the cost paid up to now by the deceased should be returned to his heirs in exchange for return of the property is a matter for the contract to decide.
Either way, I don’t see where there would be a basis for one of my creditors to sue one of my children for the fulfillment of a contract he wasn’t a party to.
If someone really wants to kill themselves, they can easily do it without anyone knowing about it until it’s too late.
@ladyphoenix, good responses, thank you.
The performance of suicide is not a right, it is a liberty. If you stop your mother from commiting suicide you are violating her liberty.
If my mother was standing on the top of a building I would prevent her from jumping. I would do anything to persuade her not to commit suicide, but if she decides she still want to end her life than I have no right to prevent her from doing it.
Raudsarw,
I think you’re getting responses missing the point. It’s your mom’s right to kill herself, you don’t have a right to interfere. That doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t, it just means she is justified and may take steps to take some action against you should you do so. All the discussion about law and rights always implicitly presumes a perfect world where everyone behaves according to the rules. We’re still human beings with free choice, and I personally would go to extreme lengths to stop someone I loved from killing themselves under most circumstances. If they have every possibility for a productive happy life in front of them, I’ll do what I can to stop them from offing themselves. And I would shoulder the punishment meted out by a court should that end up being what happens. Frankly I don’t see that happening, and if it does, I don’t see the court being overly harsh on me. All the argument about what rules are or might be doesn’t negate or change the fact that you are still an individual with free will, a moral agent, and in the end you have to make your own damn decisions about what what is right and wrong action.
The performance of suicide is not a right, it is a liberty. If you stop your mother from commiting suicide you are violating her liberty.
I’m sorry but it is utter tosh to put all human behaviour down to ‘choice’ and ‘freedom’ or ‘liberty’, because life isn’t a simplistic economic model in which people act rationally all the time.
Clearly there is a difference between a spontanteous suicide attempt and, for example, a planned, voluntary euthenasia because of a degenerative disease. In this last case the motivation is a rational response to suffering that cannot be prevented, in the first it can be caused by an unclear mind and thus a lack of choice.
If your mother had recently gone through a tough time and was not her usual self - she lost her job, her husband left her, she became ill or whatever - and you walked in on her hanging by her neck but still alive, would you cut her down or just accept that “it’s her choice” and leave her up there?
If my mother was standing on the top of a building I would prevent her from jumping. I would do anything to persuade her not to commit suicide, but if she decides she still want to end her life than I have no right to prevent her from doing it.
You can talk of abstract concepts such as ‘rights’ all you like, but what should really guide a pesons actions on an occasion like that is their responsibility to be a protecting child. This is the reason you would instinctively stop her - not only because of a feeling of love, but because as human beings we have a developed ethical component that overules philosophical considerations of what is a persons ‘right’, and emphasises familial bonds.
Stopping her from committing suicide might involve coercion, but so what? If she wants to sue you for it, she must stay alive to do so, and if she stays alive, she is tacitly admitting that you did the right thing. Her only way of demonstrating that you wronged her would be to actually commit suicide.
My advice: stop the suicide attempt, by all means!