Endlessknight
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Sep 10, 2021
- Messages
- 16
Objective in the traditional sense, the "opposite" of subjective -- but not implying any kind of value judgment or superiority for the objective.
I was using "objective" to mean: relating to something that is not wholly circumscribed by the bounds of a given subjectivity, with an existence that is usually present in matter; relating to something that has a form of its own, with independent properties that don't rely on a subject to define them; relating to something that can be accessed mentally in an unmediated way, with the possibility of gaining knowledge about it through the senses and one's reason.
Nowhere did I say that it had to "make sense" to an independent party; many people would still say it makes no sense at all to kill yourself if you are suffering from a terminal physical illness or facing life in prison, even though those problems are objectively present. Nor was I arguing that suicide is only rational/sane if there's an objective crisis immediately ahead. (Frankly, on a personal level, I sometimes feel like suicide is a rational choice at all times and a sane one under any circumstances....)
I was merely pointing out, first, that it seems easy to accept the rationality of people who kill themselves in the face of horrible objective situations where an outside force threatens them (fortress, shootout, etc.), and, second, that while the rationality of suicide in the face of an internal problem is a bit more complex, it seems to be a much simpler situation when the problem at hand has as an objective existence -- i.e. a physical, not mental, illness or disability. Suicide on purely subjective grounds is one of the more ambiguous areas within euthanasia "bioethics" AFAIK.
I think severity is, as you mentioned, a factor that is hard to avoid in assessing the sanity/rationality of someone's suicide, since it seems so integral to our common sense -- if it's suicide because of indigestion or suicide because of stage IV colon cancer, you can say either way: "He killed himself because his belly hurt."
But trying to measure the severity of other people's suffering is laden with pitfalls even in the ordinary run of things -- all the more so if underestimating it might consign the person to torture and overestimating it might irreversibly steal their life from them. At least with physical illnesses, unlike mental ones, there are some objective indicators that can be studied to get an idea of the severity (and immediacy) of suffering, which in turn can lead to more confidence over rationality/sanity of suicide or lack thereof.
I'm leaving it an open question whether or not "suffering" -- certain or possible, present or anticipated, acute or chronic, physical or mental -- is the only sane and rational ground upon which to commit suicide. It's certainly hard to escape the conclusion that suffering in one form or another is the main driver of everyday suicides. Without suffering, I guess we're talking more of an ideological/philosophical/religious form suicide, where there's a whole theory underwriting the act.
Thanks for taking the time to offer such a well thought out reply, it's definitely helped me gather my thoughts. Suicide is about suffering and since each person's suffering is unique and incomparable to another's objectivity goes out the window. It comes down to two questions. 1) Does the suffering outweigh the good, and 2) Is the suffering likely to end.
The 2nd question is by far the hardest to answer, at lest for me. Predictions about the future are always hard to make, even more difficult when one is suffering.