Do we own our own lives? A discussion on the morality of suicide and voluntary slavery.

[genkaus]

A few days ago I was having a discussion with a very religious friend of mine, and we found ourselves talking about the morality of suicide.

Personally I don't think that suicide is a morally deplorable act. I never had any serious suicidal thoughts, since I love life and its endless possibilities, but I can understand how a person could rationally come to the conclusion to end his life, and according to my opinion it should be within his or her rights to do so.

My friend accepted that his religious argument against suicide (i.e. "god is the real owner of your life") doesn't work if you don't believe in a god, but he brought up a really interesting argument based only on rationality alone.

He argued that if we reject slavery we claim that a human lives can't be owned or used as objects. According to my friend this means that you can't end your life because it doesn't belong to you (regardless of the existence of a god who owns it).

I countered his argument with the idea that every human being owns his own life. We reject slavery not because lives can't be owned, but because the lives of a person belongs to him and not to another person.

My friend replied that if I were right, we should approve voluntary slavery. If we own our lives, we should be able to sell them, like any other item that we own.

I didn't (and still don't) have a strong argument against this conclusion, but I don't really like the idea of voluntary slavery being morallly acceptable.

So I thought to bring these questions to the forums and to see what other people think of it. Is suicide morally acceptable? Do we own our own lives? And if we do, can we sell them to someone else?

First of all, to your friend - No, not a chance. Even if god did exist, he would not own my life - nor that of any other conscious and sentient being. Your right of your life is the social recognition of your identity as a sapient being - negation of the right does not negate the quality.

Also, if it were to be accepted that god was the owner, then all sorts of slavery could be justified by invoking the name of god. Wait a minute - that's already been done - for centuries, in fact.

Now, regarding your questions - just because something is immoral does not make it legally unacceptable. I consider living your life the best way possible (yes, that is subjective, but not the subject of discussion) to be the moral thing to do. Thus, as a thumb rule, I would consider both suicide and voluntary slavery to be immoral. However, because I accept that every person does own his/her own life, I recognize their right to end it or sell it as they please.

But the concept of voluntary slavery is much trickier than that. A person cannot truly become the property of another as long as he remains a self-aware, sapient being. All he can do is loan his time and his services to the will of another. And this is something we do all the time - from following orders from our employers which we'd rather not do to following our family's wishes. The only way in which slavery is different from all the other forms of employment is when it comes to the application of force. If the slave does not want to do what his master wishes, then the master has the option of using force to compel him. And as soon as that enters the picture, any voluntary aspect of "slavery" would disappear. So yes, I support voluntary slavery - but how is it any different from employment?