thanatovita
thanatovita (noun): thanatos (death) + vita (life) = suicide as a celebration of life
The opening of the Myth of Sisyphus, “there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide”, introduces the idea that questioning suicide, its meaning and its validity ultimately questions whether life is worth living and its meaning. Heidegger points out that ‘as soon as one is born, they are old enough to die’. Paradoxically, death is an intrinsic part of life; what then, does it say about how we view life, that we are so opposed to suicide? Weil argues that consenting to death must always be done with regret, otherwise it is a denial of life - but what if there was a way to willfully end our days without denying life’s value? What if suicide were a celebration of life? I’ll go over two ways we can understand suicide as such a celebration - by looking at it as a duty to ourselves, to honour the standards of our life and our autonomy, and as a symbol of self-affirmation, turning the ultimate passivity into an act.
“Crimson Spinning” - Adolph Gottlieb, 1959
IN DEPTH: How can suicide be understood as a celebration of life?
Hume believed that suicide could coincide with a sense of duty towards ourselves - if our life is not worth living anymore, if death is better than the life we are ascribed to, then he deems choosing death is fair. Cases of euthanasia arise because being forced to live a life we feel is undignified, in cases of terminal illnesses or handicap, is judged worse than death. In those circumstances, some believe we have a duty to ourselves to upkeep the standards we have chosen for our life, and protect our dignity. Nietzsche emphasises this idea when he states that suicide is ‘to die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly’. This viewpoint far from devalues life; on the contrary it understands its worth and refuses to live it in an undignified way. But why should dignity be so central? Because it is so intimately tied to autonomy. Following in Kant’s steps, Dworkin defines human dignity as the moral right and responsibility to confront the most fundamental questions about the meaning and value of our own lives for ourselves, answering to our own consciences and convictions. As such, our sense of autonomy is what makes our life feel like our own - this is why it is so central to our understanding and experience of life. Death is the ultimate symbol of our finitude and therefore of our lack of autonomy. Nonetheless, by choosing the terms of our death we regain a sense of autonomy within it. In this way, suicide is a way of celebrating the capacity for autonomy that makes our life ours.
Similarly, suicide can be understood as the most significant way of affirming oneself, turning the ultimate passivity into an act. Malraux argues ‘dying is passive, killing oneself is an act’. By deciding the time, place and context of our death, we embed meaning into all its details, making it a conscious act. Otherwise, death is imposed onto us and we only passively experience it. Suicide is a way to interact with death and turn it into a truly wilful act. This is a celebration of life in the way it centralises the role of our conscience and our experience with the world around us. Our conscience and our will being the spheres through which we experience the world, they act as central symbols of life - placing them at the forefront makes this a celebration of life and the elements that allow us to experience it.