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Posted: 11 May 2022

Taken: 11 May 2022

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From •
The Story of Philosophy •
Author •
Bryan Magee •
Stoic •
Excerpt •
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF •
SCHOPENHAUER •
Robert Wicks •

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CHOOSING DEATH OVER LIFE

Suicide was not taboo for the Stoics. On the contrary, they believed in a man’s right to determine his own death as well as his own life.
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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Where as utilitarian moral thinking, like themoral thinking of the ancient Stoics, will condone suicide under certain circumstances, Schopenhauer denies that it is ever morally acceptable to kill yourself, and in this he resembles his theistic optimist opponents more closely than he might care to admit. Nobody choses to be born, and nobody can choose not to die, not to be mortal. But when a human being chooses to die at a time of his own appointing, he does something analogous to arrogating to himself a divine privilege, he does to himself what God in the sixth chapter of the Book of Genesis would have done to his creation had he really “blotted out” all living things instead of sparing Noah and the animals in his ark. It is the hubris implicit in the very idea of suicide that makes carrying out the act so singularly appalling to Schopenhauer. ~ Page 294

EXCERPT: THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF SCHOPENHAUER ` EDITED BY ROBERT WICKS
2 years ago. Edited 23 months ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
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<THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
2 years ago. Edited 5 weeks ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Both the Greek and the Roman Stoics allowed for suicide under very extreme conditions, which wer emuch more likely to exist in the ancient world than they are today. But suicide aside, there’s no question that Seneca would strongly advocate for ‘euthanasia,’ or having a ‘good death’ rather than living on for years in an incapacitated state. As he writes, “Few have passed through extreme old age to death without impairment, and may have lain inert, unable to use their bodies. In this case, the cruelest loss in life is the loss of the right to end it. ~ Page 178

BREAKFAST WITH SENECA
5 weeks ago. Edited 5 weeks ago.

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