The Role of Schopenhauerian Philosophy of the “Will” And Its Implication for Suicide in Contemporary Society

Abstract

The moral permissibility of suicide has been striking yet recurrent in its presence as it affects humankind in their daily lives. There have been categories of debates in past and present by philosophers, psychologists, etc. in the bid to decipher if suicide should be seen as immoral action and such condemnable in its practice. Many have fortified the claim that once one has lost the meaning of life due to perplexities, the solution to ease pain is suicide. However, no one especially those who held suicide wrong and problematic, has tried to give a lasting solution from the root of the problem. It is against this backdrop the 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer conceived the notion of suicide from a different angle though accepting that the decision to commit suicide is impregnated by unbearable and incurable circumstances that makes life’s meaning lost. In his notion, he debunked the arguments of some monotheistic philosophers who held suicide as an immoral act and suicidal persons as cowardice. For him, they have failed to give convincing reasons for calling them so and that the only moral argument against suicide is that it is egoistic and it does not serve the highest moral goal that considers others. He held that suicide is an elusive way of ending suffering, considering that suffering is the result of the Will’s constant striving to live. To end suffering he said, one needs to indulge himself in ‘Aesthetic experience’ and ‘Denial of the will’. Hence, the crux of this work is to understand Schopenhauer’s notion of suicide and his tenet to suffering especially as conceived in his philosophy of the ‘Will’.