green numbers give full details | back to texts | unexpand this idea
19739 | The maxim for suicide is committed to the value of life, and is thus contradictory |
Full Idea: If my maxim is to shorten my life if its continuance threatens more evil than pleasure ...it is seen that a system of nature by whose law the feeling intended to further life should actually destroy life would contradict itself, and could not subsist. | |||
From: Immanuel Kant (Lectures on Ethics [1780], 422:53) | |||
A reaction: [compressed] I take it this means that a potential suicide is assessing what is best for life, and is therefore implicitly committed to life. Not persuasive! Should we not terminate the life of a mass murderer in mid-crime? |