Suicide
idea · 2 works · 3 mentions · 6 anchored passages
also in the atlas: Suicide the event
suicide · self-murder · voluntary death
in the texts
An Essay on Crimes and Punishments
Self-killing, argued to be a crime that cannot justly be punished by human law because punishment can only fall on the innocent survivors or an insensible corpse.
If it be demonstrated, that the laws which imprison men in their own country are vain and unjust, it will be equally true of those which punish suicide, for that can only be punished after death, which is in the power of God alone;
Suicide is a crime, which seems not to admit of punishment, properly speaking;
He who kills himself does a less injury to society, than he who quits his country for ever;
The Rights of War and Peace
The act of voluntary death, discussed as an exception to the right of burial and debated between Stoic and Platonist views.
There is one thing not improper to be observed, that the rule prevailing among the Hebrews with respect to burying the dead, contained an exception, as we are informed by Josephus, excluding those, who had committed suicide.
In opposition to the Stoics, and others, who admitted the dread of servitude, sickness, or any other calamity, or even the ambitious love of glory to be a just cause of voluntary death, in opposition to them, the Platonists justly maintain, that the soul must be retained in the custody of the body, from which it cannot be released, but at the command of him, who gave it.
Brutus, following the opinions of the Platonists, had formerly condemned the death of Cato, whom he himself afterwards imitated.