Suicide: An Ethical Delimna

[bennyboy]

Late response, but oh well, been super busy.

I would argue that the family should also be accepting of someone's "life orientation" as well. Plus to a family deeply immersed in their religion, if someone is gay it might not mean they die at that moment, but to the religious family it could mean eternal damnation. I really don't believe in eternal damnation, but to a family that does, believing your little brother will be tortured for the rest of eternity has got to hurt a lot too. At the end of the day what we are talking about is people trying to control someone else's personal life choices. This is a very black and white issue for me, my life...my choice.

I think almost this entire thread had been a red herring: whether any particular treatment or stance toward suicidal people is ethical. Should we prevent the act? Should we support it? Is it unethical to deny the right of suicide to someone who chooses it? Isn't the family being unfair by pressuring someone to live who doesn't want to?

Very few people have made any actual attempt to look at the suicide itself and answer a simple question: is it ethical, and (more importantly) why? What is the philosophical basis for establishing the rightness or wrongness of suicide?

Too many moral high-horses, and not enough http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_suicide .