Suicide: An Ethical Delimna

[bennyboy]

If you're going to do a full ethical evaluation, you need to weigh up every aspect. If you hypothetically coerce someone into not killing themselves, the suffering they would have caused to others has been avoided. But is that greater than (worth the trade for) the suffering the person now has to live with?

I don't think that's a question simple enough to make a blanket ethical decision over.

One normally doesn't make ethical decisions with regard to oneself in this way. Ethics, it seems to me, is more about the effect one has on society. So it may be unethical to force someone to live who does not want to. It may even be unethical to make someone feel bad for feeling bad.

But suicide, with a few exceptions (like being captured by terrorists looking for information), is unethical at its core, as it disregards the suffering inflicted on others in one's pursuit to end self-suffering.