Suicide - A philosophical overview

 A few years back, Aruna Shanbaug's case was in the limelight for Euthanasia, or in much simpler words - The right to Die. The victim had been in a vegetative state since 1973, as a consequence of the sexual assault on her. Her friend submitted a plea to the Supreme court asking to end her suffering of nearly 4 decades. Ending a life to end suffering, for example - self-euthanasia or Suicide needs to be evaluated judiciously in the current course of time.

The feeling of suicide among different age groups such as - teens, adults, and aged people is alike despite the reasons. As famous philosopher Albert Camus puts it in his book The Myth of Sisyphus - "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is Suicide."  The feeling of suicide can be called an extension of a feeling of injustice, the feeling that life has been unfair to you. The sudden catastrophe in life -an accident, a heartbreak, a failure - every attempt made to get away from the situation has been misery. The last call for help has been in vain. Life has been too much for you to understand. All hopes have collapsed. In such instances the person takes an extreme step, that looks justified to him, to end his/her life to end suffering - Suicide.

"In the room full of people, I felt alone! - Virat Kohli" 

Aristotle defines two kinds of people - the one who lives for family and the one who lives for a more significant cause, society, nation, etc. Though each is different, they are similar in one aspect - they live for some reason, A Meaning. As Albert Camus puts it - "An excellent reason for living is also an excellent cause of dying." The terrorist, for example, lives for a particular motive and dies for the same. The suicidal tendency can also be evaluated on similar grounds - the lost meaning. Devoid of things, persons, or reasons that assigned meaning to one's life or a certain achievement that became an identity of the person - are all excellent reasons for suicide. Closely looking, we can find out that when certain things, reasons, purposes, or meanings are given more importance than life itself then it has the potential to become a reason for suicide.

The Globalisation in 20th century brought many changes in human life, and one was the division of labor. Each human being is assigned specific tasks. And, this speciality has become an Identity. The cricketer, for an instance, for him/her the sports revealed his identity. It made the person a celebrity. The name, the fame, the money, the identity everything has resulted from his/her excellency in the sports. Separating the Cricket from him/her, for example - his/her underperformance in recent games which invited a lot of criticism on his/her position in the team, would gradually force him/her to question the sole purpose of his/her existence. He/She would feel detached from life, disconnected from the people around. As the famous cricketer Virat Kohli puts in his words - "In the room full of people, I felt alone !".

One thing that is common across all suiciders - they crave oblivion through it. They want to get rid of feelings of suffering, pain, heartbreak, and failure. Unfortunately, the easiest path they found to dispose of this feeling is Suicide. In other words, the easiest way is to put end to consciousness to end suffering. But what they do not realise is that this egoistic approach is a crime towards life itself. Appreciating the brighter phases of life but performing an act of suicide in darker phases (though subjective) is definitely a crime. A crime that you are different towards life phases, a crime that you've become egoistic, self-centered. 

According to the reasoning till now, any kind of killing to end suffering is a crime (not talking about homicides here). Then, why medical Euthanasia is not a crime ? It fits into the category of killing to end suffering. There is a tradition in Jainism - Santhara, in which a person willfully go under passive euthanasia cutting supplies of food and water until death. Also, there are many previous examples in Hindu culture where saints willfully ended their lives called - Samadhi, for example, Saint Dnyaneshwar left the world in the 13th century at the age of 21. For the person who wrote a commentary on Bhagavad Geeta at the age of 16 - the book is still worshipped at houses in Maharashtra - calling his decision a mistake would certainly be a limitation of the arguments. An explanatory argument could be - the people in all the above categories were not under any distress or suffering. They die willfully as they assume their purpose in life has been satisfied or they can no longer provide meaning to the world around (in the case of people with medical euthanasia). But this again contradicts our reasoning - living for the meaning, and purpose cannot be justified. So, further study is required in order to justify and question these acts.