6 - Suicide
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2014
Summary
Socrates: Yet I, too, believe that the gods are our guardians, and that we men are a possession of theirs. … If we look at the matter thus, there may be reason in saying that a man should wait, and not take his life until God summons him, as he is now summoning me.
Plato, Phaedo (61b–62d)In the Phaedo, Socrates conducts a discussion about taking his own life that is at the intersection of the two debates about killing of self and killing another. He did not desire death, nor did he believe that it was right for human beings to arrogate to themselves the right to choose to die. Having been sentenced to death and ordered by the Athenian authorities to drink hemlock, Socrates could have escaped from prison but did not do so, in spite of the urgings of his friends. Was his drinking hemlock, then, even suicide, properly speaking, or merely going along with a death sentence imposed from without?
Socrates himself clearly thought of it as an act for which he was responsible, but also as one for which he had received a “summons” from the gods. As a result, his view has been invoked both on behalf of view C, later espoused by Saint Augustine and many Christian authors, prohibiting all suicide as contrary to divine will, and as opening the door to views A and B, specifying certain circumstances under which suicide might nevertheless be legitimate.
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- Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide , pp. 93 - 106Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998