What Philosophy Teaches Us About Suicide

Here is the opening line to The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus:

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest - whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories - comes afterwards. These are games.

I don't know how true that is, but there are certainly deep shades of truth to it. Suicide is an exceptionally difficult topic to discuss, having all shades of social taboo linked to it: death (obviously), depression, the notion of immorality or weakness or unfairness, morbidity (who really wants to be the downer who discusses these things publicly?), and of course, blame. It's an issue that has been dear to me for a number of reasons, all of which led to volunteering on a suicide prevention hotline. Some of the conversations I had on those calls will stay with me forever.

This podcast approaches suicide from a philosophical angle, beginning with Plato and running through the Stoics, Christian and Enlightenment thinkers, before pausing for a moment with David Hume and resting on Immanuel Kant. It's quite fascinating to me to see where the genesis of stigma around suicide began to really take root, and in my more extreme moments, I wonder about the overall value and effect of the moral judgments we cast.