Professor Shelly Kagan:
Last time, we talked about how
you should live your life,
in light of the fact of
our--your mortality.
How does the fact that we will
die--how should that affect the
way that we live?
What we're going to turn to
now, our final topic for the
semester, is the flip side.
The fact of our mortality
raises the question as to
whether or not we should put an
end to our life.
Strictly speaking,
I suppose it's not the fact
that we're mortal,
per se, it's one of those extra
features of death that I've
discussed previously,
the variability of death.
And more particularly still,
the fact that we can control
how long we live.
We face the possibility of
ending our life earlier than it
would end otherwise.
That's suicide, of course.
And so our final topic is,
under what circumstances,
if any, does suicide make
sense?
Under what circumstances,
if any, is it an appropriate
thing to do?
Now, it's a fairly widespread
feature of our culture that
suicide is looked upon with such
a mixture of disdain,
fear, finding it offensive,
that it's very hard,
often, to think clearly and
discuss the topic clearly.
Most people think it's either
that you've got to be crazy to
kill yourself.
The very fact that you are
contemplating suicide is
evidence that you're crazy.
And if you're not crazy,
then it shows that you're
immoral.
Suicide is clearly never,
never right,
the right thing to do.
So, what I want to propose is
that we take some time and look
at the questions on both sides
with a fair bit of care.
And the very first thing to do,
I think, in thinking about the
topic of suicide,
is to distinguish questions of
rationality from questions of
morality.
That is, I want us to take a
look at, initially,
the question,
under what circumstances,
if ever, would suicide be the
rational thing to do?
And then later turn to the
question, when,
if ever, would suicide be a
morally legitimate or a morally
permissible or morally
acceptable thing to do?
In posing this distinction,
I'm obviously presupposing that
these questions can come apart,
or at least they need to be
examined separately.
Questions of rationality on the
one hand, and questions of
morality on the other.
These are both questions about
oughts, as we might put it.
They're evaluative questions.
But at least most people are
inclined to think that we are
drawing on different evaluative
standards when we raise the one
set of questions,
as opposed to when we raise the
other.
In many cases,
no doubt, rationality and
morality go hand in hand.
And there are philosophical
views about the nature of
rationality and the nature of
morality, according to which
they always go hand in hand.
But many of us are inclined to
think that they can come apart.
Take, for example,
given the season of the year
that it is, consider doing your
income taxes or,
more particularly still,
cheating on your income taxes.
The rate at which income tax
forms get audited is very,
very slight.
And so--and the fines tend to
not be especially egregious,
even if you do get caught.
So that from a rational point
of view, many of us might think
it might well be a
rational decision to
cheat.
You're not likely to get caught.
Even if you do get caught,
how bad's the fine anyway?
But even if we were to agree
that it was rational to cheat,
most of us would then
immediately want to follow that
remark up by pointing out that
doesn't at all mean that it's
morally acceptable to cheat on
your income tax.
There's a case perhaps where
you're morally required to do
something that you're not
rationally required to do.
Or, take a choice from the
other point of view.
There you are,
trying to decide between--there
you are, trying to decide
between your various choices of
college.
And you've gotten into Yale on
the one hand,
and perhaps some crummy school,
your second-rate backup school,
on the other.
And you're trying to decide
what to do there.
Well, you might think to
yourself, morally I have no
obligations here.
There's no particular
obligation, moral requirement,
to go to the better school
rather than the worse school.
But for all that,
it would be irrational
of me, perhaps,
to go to the worse school.
So there's a case where there's
no moral requirement,
but there's a rational
requirement.
Again, we could debate the
details of the two examples,
but the point's just to show
that,
in principle at least,
on the face of it,
these two questions can come
apart.
Sometimes it's rationally
acceptable to do something,
but it's immoral.
Sometimes it's morally
acceptable to do something,
but it's irrational.
So in thinking about suicide,
we need to pose the two
questions, one after the other.
So, let's start with the
question about the
rationality of suicide.
When, if ever,
is suicide a rational decision
to make?
Now, once again,
the first thing I want to do in
thinking about the rationality
of suicide is to distinguish two
different issues,
or two different questions.
The first question is going to
be this.
When, if ever,
would it be true that you are
better off dead?
Could it be the case that your
life is going so badly that
you'd be better off dead?
Second question,
assuming that the answer to the
first question is,
under such and such
circumstances,
you would be better off dead,
we still have to ask,
could it ever be rational for
you to trust your
judgment that this is one of
those cases in which you're
better off dead?
Could it ever be rational for
you to kill yourself?
Conceivably,
the answer to the second might
be no.
All right.
So, the question was this.
It's conceivable you might have
a thought like the following.
In those circumstances in which
life has gotten so horrible that
you'd be better off dead,
you can't think clearly.
And the very fact that you
can't think clearly would entail
that you shouldn't trust your
judgment that you are in one of
those cases.
Whether that's a good argument
or not is something we'll have
to turn to later.
But it's because of the
possibility of that argument
that I wanted to distinguish the
initial question,
could it be true that you're
better off dead?
from the secondary question,
even if it could be true that
you're better off dead,
could it ever be a reasonable
or rational decision for you to
believe that you're in one of
those situations?
Unless we've got the two things
in place, it doesn't seem likely
that it's ever going to be
rational to commit suicide.
So, the very first topic we
have to look at is,
could it ever be true that
you'd be better off dead?
And immediately,
there's a kind of logical worry
that may occur to some of you,
certainly has been raised by
various philosophers.
And that's to say that the very
judgment, the very claim,
that Jones would be better off
dead can't make any sense.
On the assumption that,
look, in order to make
comparisons--better off,
worse off;
here he is in such and such a
situation;
he'd be better off in that
other situation--you've got to
be able to talk about,
on the one hand,
what condition or state the
person is before and what
condition or state the person
would be in afterwards,
if they were to make that
choice.
Call this the two-state
requirement.
Normally, when we make
judgments about whether
something would leave you better
off or worse off,
we satisfy the two-state
requirement.
You're trying to decide whether
or not to lose some weight.
And you think,
well, here's how well off I am
now, being overweight.
Here's how well off I would be
later, if I were to lose that
weight.
I can compare the two states,
say the second state's better
than the first state.
That's what makes it true that
I'd be better off.
Trying to decide whether or not
to marry the person or break up
with the person or pick this
career or change careers.
You've got the state you're in
and you compare it to the state
you would be in.
You compare the two states.
That's what allows us to say,
"Yeah, I'd be better off" or
"No, I'd be worse off."
But when we're talking about
cases of suicide,
cases where,
well, here I am now,
the before state
requirement's in place,
but if we contrast that with
the after state
requirement,
well, that part's not met,
right?
When you--On the assumption
that death is the end,
that you won't exist,
nonexistence isn't a
state that you will be
in.
It's not a condition of
you, because states and
conditions presuppose existence.
We can talk about are you happy?
Are you sad?
Are you bored?
Are you excited?
All of those things presuppose
your existence.
Even are you sleeping?
is a state or condition you can
be in, because you exist.
But if I kill myself,
I won't exist.
There is no second state to
compare.
So, how could we possibly say,
the objection goes,
how could we possibly say that
I'd be better off dead?
That seems to presuppose that
there's a second state that we
can compare to my actual state.
Since there isn't one,
the judgment,
I'd be better off dead,
can't even get off the ground.
It's got a logical mistake
built right into it.
Well, that's the objection.
And, as I say,
there are a number of
philosophers who are drawn to
it.
Maybe some of you are drawn to
it as well.
It seems to me that it's
mistaken.
Consider what we wanted to say
when we talked about the
deprivation account,
the central account of what's
bad about death.
For most of us,
dying would be bad,
because it would deprive us of
the good things in life that we
would get, if only we didn't
die.
That seemed like a natural
thing to say.
It seemed like an appropriate
thing to say.
Of course, we might ask,
if we believe in the two-state
requirement, how could we
have said that?
After all, given the two-state
requirement, to say that death
is bad for me,
I'd be better off staying
alive.
If we believe in the two-state
requirement, we've got to say,
Oh, so had I died,
I would have been in some state
that I could compare to my
current state and say that it's
worse.
But, of course,
death isn't a state.
So, the two-state requirement's
not met.
Well, we might say this should
give us some pause.
If the two-state
requirement--It would be one
thing if all that the two-state
requirement said was,
you know, we can't ever say
we'd be better off dead.
But it turns out the two-state
requirement's got more
implications than that.
It's got the implication that
you can't even say you're better
off staying alive.
And that's very,
very hard to believe.
Imagine that you've got some
happy person,
some incredibly happy person
with a wonderful life filled
with whatever goods you think
are worth having in life--love
and accomplishment and knowledge
and whatever it is.
He's walking across the street
and he's about to get hit by a
truck.
And so, at some risk to
yourself, you leap into the way,
pushing him out of the way,
saving his life.
And happily,
you don't get hurt either.
He looks up,
realizes he was this close from
death and he says,
"Thank you.
Thank you for saving my life."
And now what you have to say
is, "I'm afraid you're rather
confused.
Because to say ‘thank you'
for my saving your life is to
presuppose I've benefited you in
some way.
To presuppose I've benefited
you in some way is to assume
that you're--it's a good thing
that your life has continued.
But, you see,
given the two-state
requirement, we can't say it's a
good thing that your life
continued,
because the two-state
requirement says we can only
make that kind of remark when
there's a before state and an
after state.
And the after state would have
been nonexistence.
So, you see,
you're really rather
philosophically confused in
thinking that I've done you some
sort of favor by saving your
life."
I can't take that argument
seriously.
It seems to me that--and I hope
that none of you would take it
seriously, either.
Of course,
you are doing somebody a favor
when you save their life,
given the assumption that their
life has been and would continue
to be wonderful.
And what that shows is not that
so nonexistence really is a kind
of spooky, super thin state or
condition.
No, of course it isn't.
Nonexistence is nonexistence.
It's no kind of condition or
state at all.
What it shows is the two-state
requirement isn't a genuine
requirement on these sorts of
evaluations.
We don't have to say that if
you had died--when you point to
the person whose life you saved,
we don't have to say that had
you died, you would have been in
some inferior state.
We simply have to say the life
you would have had,
had I saved you and indeed will
have, given that I have saved
you, is a great life.
Since it's good,
to lose it would be bad.
Since losing it would be bad,
saving it for you is benefiting
you.
It's doing you a favor.
Two-state requirement says
otherwise.
Two-state requirement's got to
go.
But, having gotten rid of it,
we can say the same thing in
principle on the other side.
Imagine there was somebody
whose life was horrible,
full of pain and suffering and
misery.
Now, whether there could be
such a person,
again, that's a question we'll
turn to in a second.
But if there were such a
person, then we can say,
for their life to continue
isn't good for them;
it's bad for them.
Their life is full of misery
and suffering and frustration
and disappointment.
And the more and more of that,
the worse and worse the life
is.
To lead a life of 100 years,
where every moment is torture
and pain, is worse than a life
of 30 years, where every moment
is torture and pain.
So, if you had such a person,
for their life to go longer
would be bad.
In which case,
for their life to be going
shorter, would be better for
them.
And that's all we mean when we
say they'd be better off dead.
Not that there's some spooky
super thin and hard to describe
condition that they'd be in if
they were dead.
But simply, we look back at the
two possible lives they could
have.
Just with the person whose life
we saved.
The first person,
we compare the great life that
lasts 100 years versus the great
life that only lasts 20 years
because you didn't save their
life.
We say, oh, the life of 100
years, better life.
And so, saving their life is a
good thing for them.
Similarly, we compare the lives
of misery, the long life versus
the short life of misery.
And we say, oh,
the long life of misery is a
worse life to have than the
short life of misery.
And that being the case,
we simply can say you'd be
better off dead.
Not that you'd be in some
condition that's a good one.
It's simply,
you'd avoid this
condition, which is a bad one.
And if the two-state
requirement says otherwise,
so much the worse for the two
state requirement.
All right.
So this is by way of the
logical worry,
that we can't even get off the
ground in talking about the
possibility that you'd be better
off dead.
I think if we believe in the
two-state requirement,
maybe we'd have to say that.
But the cost of accepting the
two-state requirement is so
implausible, that the person's
dying of a heart attack and you
perform CPR.
Instead of saying "Thank you,"
they say, "Oh,
I'm really no better off than I
would have been if I died,
even though I'm having a
wonderful life."
The two-state requirement's
just so implausible,
we should let it go.
Now, having done that,
of course, doesn't yet tell us
that it could,
in fact,
be the case that somebody's
life could be so bad that they'd
be better off dead,
that the existence that they've
got is worse than not existing
at all.
All we've done so far is leave
open the door;
open the door to the
possibility of saying that
coherently.
But that doesn't mean it's true.
Whether or not there could be
such lives depends on your view
about what's the correct account
of well-being.
What is it that goes into
making somebody's life
worthwhile?
Now, as we've seen previously,
this is a controversial topic.
People disagree about the
ingredients of the best kind of
life.
And because of these
differences, we're going to get
philosophical differences of
opinion with regard to whether
or not a life could be so bad
that it would be better for it
to come to an end.
I'm not going to try to
rehearse all the possible
theories there are.
Or, for that matter,
even all the theories that
we've talked about previously.
But to give you an illustration
of how it could be true,
imagine, go back to our
simplest theory of
well-being--hedonism,
according to which your quality
of life is a matter of adding up
all the pleasure and subtracting
all the pain.
And we need to take into
account how long the pleasures
and the pains last and how
intense the pleasures and the
pains are.
But still, we add up the total
amount of pleasure,
add up the total amount of
pain,
subtract the pain from the
pleasure and look to see what
our grand total is.
If it's positive,
your life's worth living.
And the greater the number,
the greater the positive
number, the more your life is
worth living.
If it's negative though,
if your life is filled with
pain and suffering,
or at least so much pain and
suffering that it outweighs
whatever pleasures you may have
in your life,
so that your balance is a
negative one,
then your life's not worth
living.
Having that go longer and
longer is just more and more
negative balance.
That's a life that's bad for
you to have and you'd be better
off not having it.
You'd be better off having your
life come to an end.
You'd be better off dead.
And, of course,
the more and more negative the
grand total is,
the worse your life is.
And so the more it's true that
you'd be better off dead.
Well, that's what hedonism says.
If we're not hedonists,
and of course,
previously I've argued that we
shouldn't be hedonists,
then we need a more complicated
theory of the good.
We need to throw in other
things, perhaps,
certain external goods.
It's not just a matter of
getting the insides right--the
pleasure and the pain and the
other mental states--there are
various facts about your
objective hookup with the rest
of the world.
Are you really climbing Mount
Everest?
Are you really accomplishing
things?
Do people really love you,
and so forth and so on?
Whatever your list is of those
other objective goods--well
you'll probably also want to
have a list of other objective
bads, besides pain.
But still, the same basic idea
is going to be in place.
We're going to want to somehow
add up all of the various
objective goods,
add up all the various
objective bads,
and see where the balance lies.
Do the goods outweigh the bad?
If the goods outweigh the bad,
that's great.
Your life's worth living.
But if the bads outweigh the
good, then your life is not
worth living,
or not worth continuing.
Now, as we've noted before,
there are philosophical
theories which go on to
claim--pessimists,
various versions of pessimistic
views, which say,
for everybody in all
circumstances,
life is so bad that they'd be
better off dead.
Life's so full of suffering and
misery, that whatever pleasures
there are and other goods there
may be in the life,
they get outweighed by the
objective bads.
There are philosophical views
like that, but I suppose the
commonsense view is,
well, even if some lives may be
so bad that the person is better
off dead, that's not true of all
lives.
It depends on the facts of the
case.
So, let's focus on that
possibility.
Of course, even here,
we still have to return to
another issue that we've
considered before.
Namely, is life itself worth
having?
Is the very fact that you're
alive itself a good thing?
These are the valuable
container theories,
which I've previously
contrasted with the neutral
container theories.
You'll recall that according to
the neutral container theories,
in thinking about the quality
of someone's life,
you just look at the contents.
Life itself is only a
container, good or bad,
depending on what it's filled
up with.
But opposed to the neutral
container theories,
we had valuable container
theories which say the very fact
that you're alive adds some
positive value above and beyond
whatever's going on in your
life.
Now, even the valuable
container theories came in
different versions.
There were more modest
versions, where in principle,
the positive value of being
alive could be outweighed if the
contents got bad enough.
And we contrast that with
fantastic container theories,
according to which being alive
is so valuable,
that it doesn't matter how bad
the contents get,
the grand total is always a
positive one.
Now look, if you accept a
fantastic container theory,
then pretty clearly,
it's never true that somebody
could be better off dead.
Because no matter how bad the
contents get,
the fact that they're alive,
per se,
is so valuable,
it outweighs that subtotal,
giving us a positive grand
total.
So pretty clearly,
from the perspective of
fantastic container theories,
suicide will never be rational,
because it's never true that
you're better off dead,
because it's never true that
your life over all,
taking everything that's
relevant into consideration,
gives us a negative.
Yeah, question.
Student: [inaudible]
Professor Shelly Kagan:
The question was,
on the fantastic container
theories, what's so incredible
about life itself?
Are we saying it's
intrinsically valuable?
And yes, the answer is:
precisely.
The fans of the valuable
container theories are saying
being alive itself is valuable.
You may recall that I
previously said although people
talk that way,
they probably don't actually
mean it, right?
If you told them,
okay, you can be alive as a
blade of grass,
they wouldn't say,
"Oh, wouldn't that be
wonderful?
That's worth having."
Most fans of the claim that
being alive, per se,
is valuable don't really mean
life per se.
They mean something more like
life as a person.
Being the kind of entity who
can think and plan,
even if your plans go wrong,
at least you were a person able
to experience things,
know things,
and so forth.
Of course, if that's the reason
for accepting the fantastic
container theory,
then we might wonder what
should we say about those cases
where the P-functioning has
decayed and the person is no
longer able to continue as a
person,
but perhaps can still feel pain?
In that case,
perhaps, life could cease to be
worth living.
Though whether or not we should
describe it in that way also
depends on these complicated
issues that we've discussed
previously,
about would that still be you?
Would you still exist?
Would you still be alive under
those circumstances?
So, the basic idea behind
valuable container theories is
that life, or the life of a
person,
or something like that,
has intrinsic value above and
beyond the question of what's
going on within your life.
If we accept the fantastic
container theory,
maybe nobody's life is ever so
bad, grand total.
Because--so that suicide would
be the rational thing to
do--because the value of life,
per se, is so incredible that
it outweighs the contents.
It has to outweigh the
contents.
That's a philosophical view at
the opposite end of the
pessimists.
The pessimist said,
"As a matter of philosophical
reflection, we can see that
everybody's life is worse than
nothing."
The fantastic container fans
are saying, "As a matter of
philosophical reflection,
we can see that everybody's
life is better than nothing."
Most of us, I imagine,
find ourselves somewhere in
between.
Either we believe in the
neutral container theory and
think it's a contingent matter
whether the contents are
sufficiently good or bad.
Or, we may accept the modest
version of the valuable
container theory.
On that theory,
of course, life has some
intrinsic value,
but it's got a finite intrinsic
value.
And in principle,
even that could be
outweighed if the contents get
bad enough.
And so again,
it would be an empirical
question.
We have to take a look and see,
in which cases do the contents
get bad enough?
Now, I guess I'm one of these
people in the middle.
I'm inclined to think it's not
true that everybody's life is
worse than nothing.
Nor is it true that everybody's
life is better than nothing.
It varies from person to person.
And indeed, not just--since
we're thinking about suicide,
we're not talking about their
life as a whole,
but really, what does life
promise from here on out?
Sadly enough,
sad to say, it seems to me
there are cases,
and probably most of us are
familiar with cases,
where the correct description,
given the--your favorite theory
of well-being--is going to be
that for this person,
here on out,
what life has to offer is
sufficiently bad,
so that the contents are
sufficiently negative as to
outweigh whatever value life
itself might have.
We could imagine somebody in
the terminal stages of some
illness, where their cancer
perhaps is causing them a great
deal of pain.
And the pain is so bad that
they can't really do much of
anything else.
It's not as though they could
continue working on their novel
or continue talking with the
members of their family,
because they're just distracted
by the pain and wishing it would
come to an end.
Horribly enough,
many degenerative diseases
leave the person less and less
capable of doing the things that
give life value.
And the very realization that
you're in that situation and no
longer able to spend time doing
things,
or hanging out with your
family, or talking with them,
or whatever it is may,
itself, be a source of more
frustration and pain.
There are medical conditions
where, horribly enough,
infants get born where they're
just in continual pain and they
never develop cognitively.
Their brain doesn't develop and
then they die.
And you look at these lives and
you say these are lives--I want
to say, these are lives that
were not worth having.
These children would have been
better off never having been
born at all, certainly not any
kind of favor for them to
continue their lives.
Well, let's focus on some case
like the terminal patient.
A person's got a disease--at
least, that would be a nice easy
example.
Not easy to live through,
but easy philosophically.
Easy example to think
about--some terminally ill
patient whose disease is getting
worse and worse.
And so, there are fewer and
fewer of the good things in life
that the future holds for them.
Instead, what the future holds
is more and more pain,
suffering, incapacity,
and frustration.
When it gets bad enough,
it seems to me,
in some of those cases the
person can correctly say,
or we, at least,
can correctly say of them,
they'd be better off dead.
All right.
Let me try to draw some
examples.
Again, we're bracketing the
question: Can the person think
clearly about their case?
That'll come later.
Let's just try to talk about
when would suicide make sense?
When would it be sort of a
rational thing to do to end your
life?
A couple of different cases.
I'm going to draw graphs.
We'll let the x-axis represent
time.
And the y-axis represents how
good or bad your life is at that
time.
For those of us who are fans of
the neutral container theory,
the thing to say is this
represents the overall goodness
of your contents or the overall
badness of your contents.
The higher up,
the better the contents.
The lower down,
the worse the contents.
For those who are fans of the
modest container theory,
this represents the grand
balance.
So it's contents plus the extra
bit you get from being alive.
But of course,
if you're a fan of the modest
container theory,
then even if the contents are
negative, the grand balance
might still be positive.
But this represents the overall
bottom line, whether you accept
the neutral container theory or
the modest container theory.
So, here's an example of what a
life might look like.
It's going along pretty well
and then things get worse.
And things sort of deteriorate.
And let's suppose this point
represents when you would die of
natural causes,
natural death.
So, towards the end,
life's not as great as it was
when you were young and vigorous
and healthy and had all sorts of
opportunities and
accomplishments.
But still, till the very end,
it stays positive.
Well, if that's what your
lifeline would look like,
pretty clearly,
suicide doesn't ever make any
sense.
In particular,
you wouldn't want to say oh,
look, here's the place where I
should kill myself,
because here is where things
start to get worse.
Yes, things are beginning to
get worse, but they never get so
bad that you're better off dead.
So, suicide wouldn't make any
sense at all.
For suicide to make sense,
it's got to be the case that
your life takes a turn for the
worse.
Not just any old turn for the
worse, but a turn so much for
the worse, that for some chunk
of your life,
your life is worse than
nonexistence,
the zero line,
the x-axis.
All right.
Imagine that's what's happened.
Here you are.
You're healthy,
you're vigorous,
you're accomplishing things,
but you've got some
degenerative disease that's
going to make things worse and
worse.
Here's the period in which it's
getting worse.
And then after a while,
your existence is going to be
worse than nothing.
Here, we can at least broach
the question in an intelligible
way.
Might suicide make sense?
Suppose this is the point where
the downturn begins.
Should you kill yourself at
that stage?
No.
Because, after all,
even though there's a downturn,
things are getting worse,
there's still going to be
another period of life,
another chunk of whatever it
is--year,
five years, six months,
whatever it is--where although
life isn't as good as it had
been before,
it's still better than nothing.
Killing yourself at this
earlier moment is,
we might say,
premature.
It's throwing away a chunk of
life that would still be worth
having.
It's not the right thing to do.
It doesn't make sense
rationally.
Well, if not that moment,
what about this moment?
Here's the precise point at
which your life is becoming
worse than nothing.
For some initial stretch of
that, it won't be very much
worse than nothing.
But still, overall,
it's a negative.
Up to that moment,
your life was worth living.
From that moment on,
your life is worse than
nothing.
If you've got complete control
over when to kill yourself,
well, that would be the time to
do it.
Suppose you don't have complete
control.
It's straightforward enough to
say if your life is going to
become worse than nothing and
you have complete control over
when you kill yourself,
it seems pretty plausible to
say the precise moment at which
suicide would become rational
would be exactly that moment at
which your life became not worth
having.
But you might not have that
kind of control.
Suppose that what you've got is
a degenerative disease that is
going to progressively strip you
of the ability to control your
body.
Still, your mind works for a
much longer time.
And so, for a period of time,
you're basically stuck in your
hospital bed being fed by
somebody else.
But perhaps you're able to
listen to your family talk about
things, have books read to you.
Maybe you can engage in
conversation,
even though you can't use your
arms and so forth.
Your life's still worth living,
but the time's going to come
when your life won't be worth
living.
And at that point,
you'll no longer have the
ability to kill yourself,
because you won't have control
over your body.
It raises the question of--I'm
sure you can all see at this
point, the question of suicide
also turns into or comes up
against,
the question about euthanasia,
mercy killing.
Under what circumstances is it
ever rational to ask somebody
else to kill you?
Under what circumstances,
if ever, is it morally
legitimate to kill somebody
else?
But let's continue to focus on
the case of suicide.
Suppose you live in a society
which is so unenlightened as to
have ruled out euthanasia.
In fact, you live in our
society.
And so, what we don't allow is
the possibility of somebody else
coming along and killing you
when the time comes.
So, you know the time is going
to come at which you'd be better
off dead.
But once you're there,
once you're here,
it's too late.
You can't do it.
You won't have the ability to
kill yourself,
and nobody else will be able to
do it for you.
In that case,
killing yourself earlier might
still make sense.
Take this earlier point,
for example.
Here, if you kill yourself now,
you're throwing away some life
that's worth living.
But if this is the last moment
at which you're going to be able
to kill yourself,
it might still make sense,
rationally.
Because your choice is not end
it here or end it there.
We're assuming you don't have
the possibility of ending it
here, at the precise moment at
which life became no longer
worth having.
Your choice,
instead, is really just this.
End it here and throw away this
whole last bit.
Or not end it and then continue
until you die from the disease.
So, your question is only,
what do I think about the value
of this last bit?
On the whole,
it's got a good part and it's
god a bad part.
Is it better to have the good
part and the bad part or better
to have none of it?
And the answer,
of course, is well,
if the bad part's going to
continue long enough,
it's better to have none of it.
The bad outweighs the good.
So that the rational thing to
do would be to decide to end
your life then,
when you still can,
rather than condemn yourself to
the long final stretch of life
not worth living.
Well, what if the last time
that you could actually control
it was way back here,
for whatever reason it is.
Here, you've got access to the
means of killing yourself and
you won't have access later.
Your life's still going to be
great for a very long time.
And then, inevitably,
it'll be bad for a period of
time.
But at least if I've drawn it
right, if not,
we can shorten this.
I suppose death would come here.
Here's a case where if you
don't kill yourself now,
you're condemning yourself to
the whole rest of the story.
But we might say, "All right.
Although, admittedly,
the end of the story's going to
be negative, the only way to
avoid that negative last part is
to throw away this very long
great initial part."
That doesn't make sense.
Although your life is now still
going to be a mixture of good
and bad, and you wish there were
a way to end it here,
you don't have that choice.
It's throw away the good
and the bad,
or keep them both.
And in this story,
obviously enough,
the good is enough to outweigh
the bad.
So, suicide doesn't make sense
in that situation.
Here's a rather different way
the story might go.
Suppose your life's going along
really great and it takes a turn
for the worse but then is going
to get better.
So, it ends here with death by
natural causes.
Could suicide make sense here?
Does it make sense to say,
"Look, I'm going to kill myself
in order to avoid the downturn"
or indeed,
even if the recovery wasn't so
long a recovery,
could suicide make sense here,
because you're about to take
this big dip down and be
condemned to most of the rest of
your life being significantly
worse than it was before?
No, suicide doesn't make sense
in this situation.
Because even though what you're
going to have during this period
is a life worse than the life
you had before,
the life you've got here is
still above the x-axis.
It's still a life worth living.
This point, I think,
is probably crucial enough that
it's worth taking a moment to
reflect on.
The fact that your life is less
good than it had been,
less good than indeed maybe all
the lives around you are
having--all the people around
you are having lives that are
better than yours--still doesn't
mean that your life is so bad
that you're better off dead.
It's easy to lose sight of
that, right?
Here we are sliding down and
all we see is the fact that
we're moving down.
It's natural to get caught up
in the thought "I'm better off
dead," but it's a mistake.
You're not better off dead.
This situation,
I suppose, is probably--I
always worry when I spend--when
I end this class talking about
suicide,
because what's the major cause
of death among teenagers?
Well, it's suicide.
That's not really so all that
surprising, because teenagers
are pretty healthy,
as people go.
And so the--you're either going
to get killed by an accident or
you're going to get killed by
doing it to yourself.
The kind of mistake that I
think leads most teenagers into
killing themselves is something
like this.
They've broken up with their
girlfriend.
They've flunked out of school.
They didn't get into medical
school or law school or what
have you.
And they think to themselves,
"Oh, from here on out,
my life's not worth living."
And the answer is,
no, that's actually,
as an objective matter,
probably not the case.
Even if your life would be less
worth living than you had hoped
it would be, it's still better
than nothing.
Of course, in the typical case,
I suppose what it really looks
like is this.
Small dip then continues
wonderfully.
But you lose sight of all the
good stuff yet to come while
you're in the middle of the dip.
So, although I'm taking time
now to talk about the question,
under what circumstances might
suicide be a rationally
justified one?
I should hasten to add the
remark that I'm fairly confident
that for nobody in this class
would suicide,
in fact, be a rational
decision.
Now, that doesn't mean it
couldn't turn out to be a
rational decision later in your
life,
but that, very likely,
overwhelmingly likely,
is not one now.
Well, a couple other cases that
I still want to have us
consider, but I think that's
probably enough for today,
so we'll take it up there next
time.
 
