Suicide to Stoics and Epicureans

³⁰ The Stoics sometimes talk of leaving life with a gaiety and even with a levity.

This might make us believe that they could morally leave life wantonly, on the slightest disgust or uneasiness*.

S*uperphysics Note: This ease of leaving life is also present in Vedanta philosophy. For example, when Totapuri had dysntery, he tried to solve it by drowning himself in the river.

Epictetus says:

However, despite this gaiety and levity of expression, the decision to die or stay alive was a most serious matter for the Stoics.

We should never leave it until we were distinctly called on to do so by that superintending power which gave us life.

• We are called on to continue living, not merely as a consequence of human life.

Whenever that superintending Power rejected our life, his great rule that guided our conduct also required us to die.

We might then hear his awful and benevolent voice distinctly calling on us to die.

³¹ This is why a wise man might have the duty to die, though he was perfectly happy.

On the contrary, it might be the duty of a weak man to stay alive, though he was miserable.

The Wise Man’s Situation

If the wise man’s situation was rejected, then the whole situation became rejected.

The rule which the Gods had given him to guide his conduct, required that he should die as soon as the circumstances were convenient.

However, he was perfectly happy even while he remained in it.

He had placed his happiness not in:

• obtaining the objects of his choice, or
• avoiding the objects of his rejection

He always placed his happiness in choosing and rejecting with exact propriety the fitness of his endeavours and exertions, not in its success.

The Weak Man’s Situation

If the weak man’s situation had more choice, then his whole situation became the proper object of choice.

• It was his duty to remain in it.

However, he was unhappy from not knowing how to use those circumstances.

Even if his cards were so good, he did not know how to play them.

He could get no real satisfaction on the progress of the game whatever way it turns out.

³² Suicide was a common doctrine to the ancient philosophers even to the peaceable and indolent Epicureans. The Stoics insisted on the propriety of suicide.

During that age,the founders of all the principal sects of ancient philosophy flourished. During the Peloponnesian war and many years after it ended, all the Greek republics were almost always distracted by the most furious factions at home. Abroad, they were involved in the most sanguinary wars.

Each faction sought superiority and the complete destruction of all its enemies, or what was not less cruel, to:

• reduce them into domestic slavery, the vilest of all states
• to sell them, man, woman, and child, like herds of cattle, to the highest bidder in the market

The smallness of most of those states raised the possibility of them falling into that very calamity which they perhaps inflicted or attempted on their neighbours.

In this disorderly state of things, the most perfect innocence, joined to the highest rank and greatest public services, could not secure any man from being condemned to the most cruel punishment of some hostile faction. Even if he was at home and among his own relations and fellow-citizens.

He was exposed to greater injuries and insults if:

• he were taken prisoner in war, or
• his city was conquered

But every man naturally familiarizes his imagination with the distresses he foresees frequently exposed to him.

It is impossible that a sailor should not frequently think of:

• storms and shipwrecks
• foundering at sea
• how he will feel and act on such occasions

In the same way, it was impossible that a Greek patriot or hero should not familiarize his imagination with all the calamities he is constantly expose to. An American savage=

• prepares his death-song,
• considers how to act when he has fallen into the hands of his enemies,
• is put to death in the most lingering tortures amidst the insults and derision of all the spectators.

A Greek patriot would think about his sufferings when captured, enslaved, and tortured.

But the philosophers of all the sects very justly represented virtue or wise, just, firm, and temperate conduct as the most probable, certain and infallible road to happiness even in this life. However, this conduct could not always exempt. It might even sometimes expose the person to all the calamities during those unsettled times.

Therefore, they tried to show that happiness was independent of fortune.

• The Stoics showed that happiness was independent altogether.
• The Platonic and Aristolean philosophers showed that happiness was independent in a great measure.

Firstly, wise, prudent, and good conduct most likely ensured success in all undertakings. Secondly, if it fails, the virtuous man can still enjoy=

• the complete approbation of his own breast and keep calm and have peace within.
• the love and esteem of every intelligent and impartial spectator.

³³ Those philosophers tried to show that the greatest misfortunes could be supported more easily than imagined. They tried to point out the comforts we might still enjoy when:

• reduced to poverty
• driven into banishment
• exposed to the injustice of popular clamour
• labouring under blindness, deafness, in old age, near death

They pointed out, too, how his constancy could be supported under the agonies of=

• pain and torture
• sickness
• sorrow for the loss of children, death of friends and relations, etc.

The ancient philosophers’ writings on these subjects are the most instructive and interesting remains of antiquity. The spirit and manhood of their doctrines make a wonderful contrast with the desponding, plaintive, and whining tone of some modern systems.

³⁴ Milton says that those ancient philosophers suggested how to arm the hardened breast with stubborn patience, as with triple steel, they tried to convince their followers that:

• there was no evil in death
• if their situation became too hard, the could kill themselves without fear.
• if there was no world beyond the present, death could be no evil
• if there was another world, the Gods must likewise be there.

A just man could fear no evil while under their protection. In short, those philosophers prepared a death-song which the Greek patriots and heroes might use on the proper occasions.

Of all the sects, I think the Stoics prepared the most animated and spirited song by far.