suicide were desecrated, forbidden burial on Church grounds and their possessions and property forfeit.
Philosophers throughout history have voiced varying degrees of opposition or tolerance for the act. In Ancient Greece, Plato opposed suicide, even suggesting that those who commit suicide be buried in unmarked graves. He did recognise certain exceptions where suicide was acceptable however: as ordered by the State (as with Socrates) or for dishonour or extreme personal misfortune. In the 17th Century, John Donne contended that suicide was not necessarily a sin depending on the motive behind the act. After all, the Bible does not expressly forbid it and further, Christianity makes exceptions to the
5th Commandment in instances such as martyrdom, capital punishment and, of course, killing in God’s name during war.
In the Romantic Age of the early 19th Century, suicide became something that was almost celebrated. It was acceptable, indeed almost expected, to commit suicide over the anguish of lost or unrequited love. Or the loss of your muse. Without being glib, the mindset was essentially that the best way to prove your eternal love for a woman was to write an epic ode and if you failed win her love you killed yourself. If you couldn’t finish the poem… well, all the more reason to die since you were clearly unworthy of your muse.
Perhaps the best known culture/epoch where suicide was considered acceptable was among the bushi of Feudal Japan. The old warrior culture regarded personal honour extremely highly and if one dishonoured themselves, seppuku (ritual suicide) was the way to regain that lost honour. Since the 19th Century (wars in the early 20th Century being the exception) the warrior culture of Japan has slowly declined and seppuku is far
less common now.
Regardless of religious faith or philosophical discipline, freedom of choice is the only freedom we ever really have. As Schopenhauer observed, the only thing that is ever truly ours is our own life. In the end, the choice is ours and ours alone. It is between the individual and whatever god, if any, they believe in.
“To be or not to be…”
~Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
While all “variations on a theme”, the decision to end one’s own life is deeply personal. A man committing suicide over lost love may be weak in the eyes of a man who would leap from a ledge if the stock market crashes. Some people are motivated by a sense of altruism while others by political and religious causes. Recently, suicide bombers have been counted by some researchers when compiling statistics. For the purposes of this article, suicide attacks, the intent of which is to kill others, are not considered as “true” suicides.
Altruistic suicides involve the sacrifice of one’s own life for the good of
others. While these types of suicides generally only happen under extreme and rare circumstances such as military campaigns or hostage situations, the altruistic suicide also includes the elderly and infirm who feel they’re a burden on their loved ones.
Political suicides are, of course, a form of protest, believing that death draws attention to the cause. For example, in the 1960s, Buddhists in Vietnam immolated themselves to protest the persecution of their faith and the communist regime. Though some religious and philosophical suicides are on an individual basis and can be perceived as altruistic, most often they are mass suicides by cult members. Examples include: Jonestown in 1978 where 914 people died in a murder/suicide, 74 members of the Order of the Solar Temple in the mid 1990s who believed they were leaving the oppression of the Earth and travelling to the star Sirius and in the year 2000, close to 1000 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God who broke off from the Roman Catholic Church, believing the world corrupt and that they alone were pure.