Existentialism and Suicide.
One of my friend message me to help him answer the above question on “Existentialism and suicide.”
“Last night I had a debate with my friend on suicide, his view-point was somewhat justifying a suicidal idealization based on existential attitude. In other words, he claimed that at some point suicide is a matter of existential agenda. I disagreed to his point of view, stressing on the point that existentialism is basically a way to find the meaning of living and one might get many social angst and anxiety and feel all the absurdities of living, still yet it’s not reasonable to say is not worth living for and suicide should somewhat stay out of existentialism.As a philosopher and a friend of mine, I want your unique and objective perspective on this issue. Thanks for your time.”
My Thoughts.
First of all, I have to commend you for presenting an argument in consonants with existentialism principles. Yeah, existentialism is basically a philosophical approach of find meaning out of the absurd world of human existence.
The question of suicide as a place in existentialism.
“Albert Camus, once said that, the truly philosophical problem is suicide. The question, whether life is or not worthy living, to him is amounting to answer the fundamental problem of philosophy. Camus summits that he sees many people die because they judge that life is not worthy living.”
The question of suicide is at the center of existentialism. If we argue in the negative that life is not worthy living, is suicide the way out of the existential predicament?
Existentialism as a philosophy of human existence help us to accept the reality of our existence in good faith and give us the courage to fashion our a new world out of this meaninglessness, it is not a philosophy that relapse into hopelessness and despair in the face of existential predicaments, rather it give us courage to accept our fate and struggle on in good faith.
Existentialism argue in the negative that life may be meaningless but because life is absurd, that does not mean we should despair. Existentialism is not a philosophy of despair that accept suicide as the way out of this meaninglessness, rather it accept that life may be meaningless and that we can create a meaning out of this meaninglessness. Existentialism recommended commitment to a purpose as a way out to fashion out a meaning.
To the existentialist suicide is a cowardice act, a form of escapism, no true existentialist we recommended suicide as a way out of the human predicament.
But the question of suicide is at the center of existentialism, whether life is meaningful or meaningless? If life is not worthy living what should we do? Commit suicide? If life is meaningless and killing one selves is a form of escapism, how can we create a meaning out of this absurdity? If you look at those questions you will see that the question of suicide is at the core of the questions, so we can’t remove the notion of suicide from existentialism, the notion of suicide we come into play when we try to answer the question of meaninglessness in human existence.
Life has no meaning and the only meaning that exists is the meaning you bring to it.
The positive thing is that existentialism does not recommended suicide as a way out of the human predicament rather it argue in the positive sense that we can create a meaning out of meaninglessness. It start negatively but recommended a positive way out.
Existentialism is a philosophy of courage not of despair, it looks death in the face and help us to face reality in a world without meaning.
Life has no meaning and the only meaning that exists is the meaning you bring to it. The tasks of existentialism is to search for meaning in human existence in a world without meaning. So existentialist does not see suicide as the best approach to answer to the question of meaninglessness in human existence.
