By Brendan Walsh in The Tablet
Ludwig Wittgenstein knew a lot about suicide. At least two and perhaps three of his brothers took their own lives, one of them in imitation of the death of Otto Weininger, a young philosopher who in 1903 rented a room in the house in Vienna where Beethoven died, wrote a couple of letters to his family and then shot himself in the chest, dying in hospital later. Wittgenstein told his beloved friend David Hume Pinsent that he thought of suicide himself on many occasions, and “felt ashamed of never daring to kill himself”. In 1917 he wrote, “If suicide is allowed, then everything is allowed. If anything is not allowed, then suicide is not allowed. This throws light on the nature of ethics, for suicide is, so to speak, the elementary sin.” He added a doubt: “Or isn’t suicide too, in itself, neither good nor evil?” A few years later he described suicide as “a rushing of one’s own defences”, adding, “Of course it all boils down to the fact that I have no faith!”
As MPs and MSPs prepare to vote on proposals to change the law to allow terminally ill adults to be assisted to end their own lives, in our lead feature in The Tablet this week Julian Hughes, a psychiatrist who has cared for many suicidal patients, considers some of the ethical issues around the deliberate taking of one’s own life. Studies show that brain disease and mental disorder are often the underlying explanations of suicide. “It seems unjust to condemn its victims as sinners. The Suicide Act of 1961 established that suicide was no longer a crime. It was a humane and common sense measure,” Hughes writes. “But in no sense did it suggest that suicide was a good thing. Indeed, its continuing stipulation that a person is criminally liable for complicity in another’s suicide suggests the reverse.”
Pope John Paul II, pictured left with Monsignor Dan Hart, from Dumbarton, considered suicide as “always as morally objectionable as murder”. Hughes, who writes with great compassion about the many people he looked after over the years who were suicidal, is relieved to find that the Catechism is more lenient.
“There is still clear condemnation: ‘We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of.’ But then we read, ‘Grave psychological disturbances, anguish or grave fear of hardship, suffering or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.’ Moreover, ‘God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives’.”
Those who advocate changes in the law to allow people to be assisted in killing themselves tend to object to the term “assisted suicide”, preferring “assisted dying”. But, as Hughes writes, “assisting people who are dying is straightforwardly good clinical practice and the bread and butter of palliative care. Assisted suicide puts health care, certainly mental health care, in a bind. Compassion and charity demand that we try to find ways to help people to see life as worthwhile. In countries where ‘assisted dying’ is lawful, we see suicide prevention tussling with suicide promotion; and, strikingly, we see the rates of non-assisted suicide rise. Yet, perhaps discomfort can be alleviated, loneliness can be attended to, the burden of frailty can be lessened and old age can be celebrated. There remains the argument from Aquinas that we are all part of the whole: to kill yourself is to injure the community.”
