In these brief notes I shall not attempt to deal with the question of the right to life in general, but with the right to one’s own life, which corresponds to the ancient formula of jus vitae necisque. It is the right to accept human existence, or to put an end to it voluntarily. I intend to compare certain characteristic points of view which have been formulated in this connection in the East and in the West. However, the problem will not be considered from a social point of view, but rather from an interior spiritual one, whence it appears in the shape of a problem of responsibility only to our own selves. For this reason, I shall not deal with theories, such as that of the Japanese hara-kiri, or suicide for reasons of honor or loyalty, nor with similar doctrines which we also find in the West.
Perhaps the severest and most virile form in which the right to dispose freely of one’s own earthly existence is asserted in the West is found in the theory of Stoicism, and more particularly in the Stoicism of Seneca. This doctrine of suicide, unique on account of the peculiar ethos with which it is justified, may serve for us as a starting point. Seneca and the Roman Stoics conceived earthly existence in the form of a struggle and a test. According to Seneca the real man stands above the gods themselves. The gods, owing to their very nature, do not know adversity and disaster. Man, by contrast, is subject to these, but also has the power of triumphing over them. Unhappy is he who has never encountered disaster and suffering, Seneca wrote, for he has had no occasion to put his own powers to the test and to know them. To man something greater than mere exemption from ills has been granted: the power of triumphing over them within himself. And those beings who have been most subject to trials should be regarded as the worthiest, if we bear in mind that in war the commanders entrust the most exposed positions to the strongest and best qualified men, whereas the less brave, the weaker, and the less trustworthy are employed in the less difficult, but also less glorious positions of the rear.
In a general way, this is also the order of ideas brought forward when suicide is condemned and stigmatized as a form of cowardice and desertion. Seneca instead comes to the opposite conclusion, and actually attributes the justification of suicide to God himself (De Provid., VI, 7–9). He makes God say that he has granted to the true man and the wise man a power beyond all contingencies; that he has so disposed things that no one may be restrained when he no longer wishes to be; the way of departure is open to him: latet exitus. “Whenever you do not wish to fight, retreat is ever possible. Nothing easier is granted to you than to die.” The expression used, “si pugnare non vultis, licet fugere,” with reference to the voluntary death which the wise man is free to choose, may leave us perplexed. But the actual context within the ethics of Stoicism as a whole explains what is meant here.
There can be no doubt that when death is sought because a certain situation appears unbearable, from the point of view of virile ethics, suicide cannot be justified. In those very cases where a humanitarian point of view might admit the right to commit suicide, virile ethics cannot excuse it. Still less does it permit a man to take his own life through motives of affection or passion, because this would imply a passive attitude, and one of impotence with regard to one’s own spirit, thus deserving condemnation. Strictly speaking, from the point of view of Stoicism, suicide even for honor or similar motives (i.e., with reference to social conditions), is not admitted.
The Stoic must distinguish between “that which depends on oneself” and “that which does not depend on oneself,” and must follow the principle that that which does not depend on oneself does not pledge one’s responsibility, must not affect the mind of the wise man, and must not constitute the measure of one’s own value or dignity. As we know, this principle of detachment is in harmony with all that which India has regarded as truly spiritual. When we consider this, Seneca’s maxim can only indicate the importance to be attributed to the inner liberty of a higher being. It is not a question of retreating because we do not feel strong enough to face certain circumstances or trials. It is rather a case of the sovereign right, which we should always reserve for ourselves, of accepting or not accepting these trials, and also of placing a limit to them when we no longer see any meaning in them, or have sufficiently proved to ourselves our own capacity for overcoming them. Impassiveness thus remains the presupposition of that maxim, and the right of “exit” is justified only as one of the factors which may assure us that the vicissitudes in which we are involved have our consent; that in them we are truly active, that we are not merely making a virtue of necessity. This point of view is rational and unimpeachable.
Things would, however, present another aspect if we were to apply the heteronomous framework common to theistic and religious conceptions to the agonistic and virile conception of life. Cicero attributes to Pythagoras the following saying: “To quit the post which has been entrusted to us in life is not permissible without the orders of the Chief, i.e., of God.” That is the same view as that of Catholic moral theology, which actually reaches the point of condemning these who seek unnecessary martyrdom as guilty of sin.
Nevertheless, this appeal to an almost military form of fealty comes up against certain objections, because it presupposes a prior free and conscious devotion to a Chief. But from the point of view of Western religion we cannot speak of this, because that religious tradition denies that the soul exists before being associated with the body in this life. We suddenly find ourselves in the “post” mentioned above, because before being there we had no existence at all; we are thus there without having willed or accepted it. We cannot then speak of responsibility, or of “military duty,” or of a debt for a life received, but not asked for. Hence the prohibition on suicide has no inner logic; there is only an appeal to faith, a mere acceptance of the will of God.
In Seneca’s conception, the horizon is broader and freer; there remains the idea of finding ourselves through our place in a conflict. And there remains the general command of holding fast, but the person is conceived as being free, and it is the person who has the last word. It is thus on the basis of considerations of a different and interior nature that he must decide as to his own responsibility and his actual right to his own life.
Up to this point we have dealt with Western points of view. Let us now see how matters stand in a doctrine such as that of the Hindus and particularly that of the Buddhists, in which the implications of Western theism are absent (i.e., the relations between a created being and a creator) and in which man is left to himself and has only to consider the natural consequences of his acts. We believe that the East has a specific and interesting conception only on such a horizon. But from every other point of view the same problems of Western religion present themselves also in the East.
According to the above-mentioned Oriental conception, the same prohibition against suicide of the more usual type is first of all affirmed. Wherever we reach the point of renouncing life in the name of life itself—that is to say on account of one or other form of the will to live and to enjoy—suicide is condemned. (On this point the Eastern view differs little from the Western.) In such cases the act of committing suicide is not judged as a form of liberation, but rather as an extreme, albeit negative, form of attachment to life, of dependence on life. No transfiguration after death can be expected by one who resorts to such violence on himself. In a different state of being the law of an existence devoid of light, of peace, and of stability will simply reassert itself once more. Thus, the problem will in no wise be solved by the act of suicide. Buddhism comes to the point of regarding even the inclination towards extinction, towards nirvana, as a deviation, when it appears as a desire or yearning. It is a Taoist saying that man attempts to free himself from death, but does not try to free himself from life.
At the same time, however, Buddhism, like Stoicism, admits suicide. But in whom? Once again, in a superior human being, in whom the characteristics of the Stoic wise man are to be found further strengthened: in a man who has realized such an absolute detachment that he has gone virtually beyond living and nonliving. Thus it is said that Mara, the demon of this world but also of the world of Brahma, sought in vain for the soul of the ascetic Channo who had “seized the weapon.”
Here, however, other difficulties arise. In the first place, if we have attained detachment, what can lead us to choose a voluntary death? In terms of the actual instances cited in the Oriental lore, the meaning does not seem to be very different from what it is in Stoicism. In certain circumstances, there is no reason to involve oneself beyond a particular point. We may “emerge,” almost as if we had had enough of a particular game—or as may happen when we wave off a fly, after having allowed it to crawl over our nose for a certain time.
But up to what point can we be sure of ourselves in such cases? He who has attained that spiritual perfection which renders the act permissible can hardly fail to find, in a certain measure, a super-personal significance in his existence on earth, realizing at the same time that this existence, taken as a whole, is but an episode, a transition, “a voyage during the hours of the night,” as the Oriental philosophers tell us. Oriental metaphysics in fact admits a multiplicity of states of being, of which the being of mankind is but a particular and contingent one. Once this is admitted, is not a feeling of impatience, of intolerance, even of boredom, evidence of a human residue of weakness? Is it not evidence of something not yet resolved or placated by the sense of eternity, or at least of the great non-earthly and non-temporal distances? And when things are thus, should we not be held, in the face of our own selves, not to act, not to “seize the weapon”?
We should, moreover, also bear in mind another order of considerations. When I speak of “my life,” adding that I am free to dispose of what is “mine” at my own good pleasure, I am acting without adequate reflection. In the texts of Pali Buddhism the relativity of this ill-considered talk about what is “mine” is effectively presented to us. It is said in those texts that just as a sovereign has the power of having whomever he wishes executed, outlawed, or pardoned in his own kingdom, similarly if I could say that this body, this life, is truly “mine” and “myself,” the wish that it should be so or not be so, could eventually be carried into effect. But that is not the case.
Moreover, strictly speaking, if life were our own in the absolute sense, it should be possible to bring our earthly existence to an end without even a violent act on our own body, but rather through a purely spiritual act. Once more, however, this proves impossible for almost the whole of mankind—only certain special forms of Yoga, of a Tantric inflection, admit the exceptional possibility of the so-called iccha-mrityu, of the death at will. This is tantamount to admitting something like an inner bond, a kind of will bound to a life which I cannot regard as extraneous to myself, but which at the same time I cannot identify with my own true will. We cannot fail to take this situation into account. It corresponds to the problem of our own existence as a certain definite sort of being. And any solution akin to that of the knot cut by the sword of Alexander the Great, is not a true solution. The fact of being, united to the impossibility of not being, gives us the disturbing hint of some sort of enigmatic, primal choice—almost as though we were involved and responsible in some obscure manner.
In this order of ideas, however, we cannot go too far when, following the views either of materialism or of Western religion, we consider the principle of life and of consciousness in physical birth. If we accept this, it is difficult finally to avoid a conception such as that of the Geworfenheit of certain Western existentialist philosophers: man as the being who finds himself “thrown” into time (in the East one would say into samsara), into a “situation” which involves and binds him to a responsibility, yet on a basis that is impenetrably irrational. This obscurity is certainly not solved by bringing in religious faith; indeed, generally speaking, the merit of faith is said to actually consist in accepting without wishing to understand. In the present instance it is a case of accepting a position which, hypothetically, has no connection of any kind, manifest or concealed, with that which may be attributed to my own will. Among Western existentialists, such as Heidegger or Sartre, this faith is atheistic and disconsolate. They do not even believe that the meaning which we are unable to see in our own lives today, might be grasped in a different state of being, as per the resigned hope of the believing Christian.
If we turn to the East, we encounter a different situation. Oriental traditions as a rule have admitted that we exist prior to earthly life, assuming a relation of cause and effect—and sometimes even of a choice—between the real force existing before physical birth and individual existence. (We know, however, that this doctrine was professed also in the ancient West, for instance by Plato and Plotinus.) In this case, although earthly existence cannot be attributed to the mere external will of the Ego, it represents a development associated with a deeper will, but always at the same time forming part of my own integral being. If, therefore, life here below is not an accident, then it cannot be considered a thing to be arbitrarily accepted or rejected. Nor can it be considered a bare and meaningless existential fact, before which there is only the choice of resignation or of a continuous test of resistance. Similarly problematic is the idea that earthly existence is something with which, before we find ourselves in the human state, we have, so to speak, “compromised” ourselves and are to a certain extent implicated—either, if we wish, as in an adventure, or as in a mission, a test, or election, accepting en bloc and beforehand even the tragic, problematic, or squalid aspects that the human condition in general may present. With this idea we may give a fairly satisfactory account of what we have just stated concerning the problem as to what may be regarded only conditionally and partially as “mine” and which nevertheless pledges myself.