With no intention of being flippant in any portion of this comment, I do believe that Seneca ended his own life after Nero asked him to because of some sort of plot. Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about the ethics of suicide. I'm fairly certain I committed suicide in my past life out of sheer petulance, and certainly regardless of its ultimate veracity and actuality, I have regretted that choice very bitterly.
Still, I'm not sure what duty we have to live. This gets into complex metaphysics. Since I remember past lives, I feel that suicide is simply....just another way to die. Let's say someone dies of some other manner that arises out of some sort of misapprehension. Let's say that someone dies of a young age from a heart attack caused by repressed rage. Certainly, from my metaphysical vantage point, that person will eventually have to face that rage in a future life. Equally if someone consciously chooses to end their life I think they will have to face everything they refused to.
That said, I think that from the Classical ethical standpoint there's more virtue to the conscious choice of running away from life than unconsciously dying from what a person refuses to face. If I actively refuse to face something, that seems to me more virtuous than being unconscious of the whole thing with the same effect.
Basically, I don't resonate at all with Christian or even monist ethical assumptions of any ultimate value systems. These value systems might well be ultimately true, but they are sincerely opaque to me. So I imagine that suicide is just another way of dying and if one isn't equipped for ethical suffering in death --- and to be clear I perceive conscious suffering as a supremely but not _normatively applicable_ ethical act --- I think I do agree, broadly with Seneca's position. That said, I can't imagine _lauding anyone_ for suicide. that strikes me as frankly grotesque given my cultural traditions.
That is to say, with a sincere ambivalence, that I tend to _operatively_ agree with your reservations here, Steve. The only real distinction I have is the ease I enter into a sense of concord with Seneca's basic position, and a sense of incomprehension regarding the normative statement that "We have a moral duty to see our lives to the end, and not to run away from suffering." That statement _may be true_ but I'm sincerely unsure of its universal applicability, and so doubt its logical foundations. I agree that it is ideal to suffer ethically rather than take the easy way out, at least, for most people most of the time.
I post this in the spirit of discourse, as I find the ethical and philosophical subtleties that this brings up interesting in and of themselves. Again, I in no way mean to be flippant and merely intend to answer your question about my personal reaction.
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With no intention of being flippant in any portion of this comment, I do believe that Seneca ended his own life after Nero asked him to because of some sort of plot. Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about the ethics of suicide. I'm fairly certain I committed suicide in my past life out of sheer petulance, and certainly regardless of its ultimate veracity and actuality, I have regretted that choice very bitterly.
Still, I'm not sure what duty we have to live. This gets into complex metaphysics. Since I remember past lives, I feel that suicide is simply....just another way to die. Let's say someone dies of some other manner that arises out of some sort of misapprehension. Let's say that someone dies of a young age from a heart attack caused by repressed rage. Certainly, from my metaphysical vantage point, that person will eventually have to face that rage in a future life. Equally if someone consciously chooses to end their life I think they will have to face everything they refused to.
That said, I think that from the Classical ethical standpoint there's more virtue to the conscious choice of running away from life than unconsciously dying from what a person refuses to face. If I actively refuse to face something, that seems to me more virtuous than being unconscious of the whole thing with the same effect.
Basically, I don't resonate at all with Christian or even monist ethical assumptions of any ultimate value systems. These value systems might well be ultimately true, but they are sincerely opaque to me. So I imagine that suicide is just another way of dying and if one isn't equipped for ethical suffering in death --- and to be clear I perceive conscious suffering as a supremely but not _normatively applicable_ ethical act --- I think I do agree, broadly with Seneca's position. That said, I can't imagine _lauding anyone_ for suicide. that strikes me as frankly grotesque given my cultural traditions.
That is to say, with a sincere ambivalence, that I tend to _operatively_ agree with your reservations here, Steve. The only real distinction I have is the ease I enter into a sense of concord with Seneca's basic position, and a sense of incomprehension regarding the normative statement that "We have a moral duty to see our lives to the end, and not to run away from suffering." That statement _may be true_ but I'm sincerely unsure of its universal applicability, and so doubt its logical foundations. I agree that it is ideal to suffer ethically rather than take the easy way out, at least, for most people most of the time.
I post this in the spirit of discourse, as I find the ethical and philosophical subtleties that this brings up interesting in and of themselves. Again, I in no way mean to be flippant and merely intend to answer your question about my personal reaction.