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Can suicide be, in certain situations, morally permissible or even morally obligatory? Can it be a rational choice? What are our obligations toward suicidal individuals? How should we even define suicide?
The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Suicide discusses these questions and expands the frontier of philosophical discourse to include heretofore neglected ethical and social aspects of suicide.
Starting with a critical overview of the most important historical philosophical approaches to suicide, the chronologically ordered chapters in the first part of this volume cover both Western and non-Western philosophical traditions. The second part is dedicated to foundational issues such as the nature, morality, and rationality of suicide. The final section covers philosophical issues related to the practice of suicide, addressing topics such as the ethics of suicide prevention and intervention, new suicide technologies, suicide and mental illness, suicide and media ethics, and suicide and gender, among others.
Across thirty-three chapters written by thirty-five leading scholars, this handbook provides a fresh, compelling analysis of past and contemporary trends in the philosophy of suicide.
List of contents
- List of Contributors
- 1. Introduction: Past and Contemporary Perspectives on the Philosophy of Suicide
- Michael Cholbi, Paolo Stellino
- PART I: Suicide in Philosophical Traditions
- 2. Suicide in Asian Traditions
- Charles Goodman
- 3. Suicide in Ancient Greece
- Anna B. Christensen
- 4. Suicide in Roman Philosophy
- Hélder Telo
- 5. The Christian Prohibition of Suicide
- Philip A. Reed
- 6. Suicide in Islam: Classical and Contemporary Approaches
- Abdullah Saeed, Ali Akbar
- 7. Suicide in Early Modern Western Philosophy
- Colin Heydt
- 8. Suicide in Modern Western Philosophy
- Héctor Wittwer
- 9. Suicide in Contemporary Western Philosophy I: the 19th Century
- Patrick Hassan
- 10. Suicide in Contemporary Western Philosophy II: the Philosophy of Suicide in Twentieth-Century Continental Philosophy
- Yael Lavi
- PART II: Foundational Issues
- 11. What Is Suicide?
- Steven Luper
- 12. Choosing Death: Virtue Ethics and Suicide
- Liezl van Zyl
- 13. Kantian Approaches to Suicide
- Lina Papadaki
- 14. Utilitarianism and Suicide
- Torbjörn Tännsjö
- 15. The Rationality of Suicide
- Frances M. Kamm
- 16. Suicide's Relation to Freedom
- Paolo Stellino
- 17. Is There a Right to Suicide?
- Chris Belshaw
- 18. Is There a Duty to Suicide?
- Chris Belshaw
- 19. The Value of Death and Suicide
- Travis Timmerman
- 20. Suicide and Pessimism
- Andrea S. Asker
- 21. Suicide and Life's Meaningfulness
- Michael Hauskeller
- PART III: Suicide in Practice
- 22. Paternalism and the Ethics of Suicide Prevention
- Michael Cholbi
- 23. Assisted Suicide: Deliverance or Danger?
- Felicia Nimue Ackerman
- 24. Suicide and Non-Suicidal Self-Injury
- Zsuzsanna Chappell
- 25. The Risks and Rewards of New Suicide Technologies
- Adam Buben
- 26. Grief and Suicide
- Becky Miller
- 27. Suicide as a Protest
- Antti Kauppinen
- 28. Suicide Tourism
- Daniel Sperling
- 29. Suicide and Depression
- Nathaniel Sharadin
- 30. Suicide and Mental Illness
- Hane Htut Maung
- 31. Suicide and Media Ethics
- Sallyanne Duncan
- 32. Suicide, Social Media, and Artificial Intelligence
- Erick Ramirez and Susan Kennedy
- 33. Suicide in the Moving Image
- David Sorfa
- 34. Suicide and Gender
- Katrina Jaworski
- Index
About the author
Michael Cholbi is Professor and Personal Chair in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of
Suicide: The Philosophical Dimensions (2011) and an editor of
New Directions in the Ethics of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (second edition, 2023). Professor Cholbi is the founder of the International Association for the Philosophy of Death and serves on the editorial boards of the journals
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice,
Journal of Applied Philosophy, and
Philosophical Quarterly.
Paolo Stellino is Researcher at the NOVA Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA) and Invited Professor of the Department of Philosophy, NOVA University of Lisbon. His main fields of research interest are the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, ethics (with a specific focus on philosophy of suicide), and philosophy of film. He is the author of
Nietzsche and Dostoevsky: On the Verge of Nihilism (2015) and
Philosophical Perspectives on Suicide: Kant,Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein (2020).
