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Suicide in history

Antiquity and Middle Ages

In general, the pagan world, both Roman and Greek, had a relaxed attitude towards the concept of suicide, a practice that was only outlawed with the advent of the Christians, who condemned it at the Council of Arles in 452 as the work of the Devil. In the Middle Ages, the Church had drawn-out discussions on the edge where the search for martyrdom was suicidal, as in the case of martyrs of Córdoba. Despite these disputes and occasional official rulings, Catholic doctrine was not entirely settled on the subject of suicide until the later 17th century.

There are some precursors of later Christian hostility in ancient Greek thinkers. Pythagoras, for example, was against the act, though more on mathematical than moral grounds, believing that there was only a finite number of souls for use in the world, and that the sudden and unexpected departure of one upset a delicate balance. Aristotle also condemned suicide, though for quite different, far more practical reasons, in that it robbed the community of the services of one of its members. A reading of Phaedo suggests that Plato was also against the practice, inasmuch as he allows Socrates to defend the teachings of the Orphics, who believed that the human body was the property of the gods, and thus self-harm was a direct offense against divine law.

In Rome, suicide was never a general offense in law, though the whole approach to the question was essentially pragmatic. This is illustrated by the example given by Titus Livy of the colony of Massalia (the present day Marseilles), where those who wanted to kill themselves merely applied to the Senate, and if their reasons were judged sound they were then given hemlock free of charge. It was specifically forbidden in three cases: those accused of capital crimes, soldiers and slaves. The reason behind all three was the same - it was uneconomic for these people to die. If the accused killed themselves prior to trial and conviction then the state lost the right to seize their property, a loophole that was only closed by Domitian in the 1st century AD, who decreed that those who died prior to trial were without legal heirs. The suicide of a soldier was treated on the same basis as desertion. If a slave killed himself or herself within six months of purchase, the master could claim a full refund from the former owner.

The Romans, however, fully approved of what might be termed "patriotic suicide"; death, in other words, as an alternative to dishonor. For the Stoics, a philosophical sect which originated in Greece, death was a guarantee of personal freedom, a way out of an intolerable existence. And so it was for Cato the Younger, who killed himself after the Pompeian cause was defeated at the Battle of Thapsus. This was a 'virtuous death', one guided by reason and conscience. His example was later followed by Seneca, though under somewhat more straitened circumstances. A very definite line was drawn by the Romans between the virtuous suicide and suicide for entirely private reasons. They disapproved of Mark Antony not because he killed himself, but that he killed himself for love.

In the Middle Ages, the Christian church excommunicated people who attempted suicide and those who died by suicide were buried outside consecrated graveyards. A criminal ordinance issued by Louis XIV of France in 1670 was far more severe in its punishment: the dead person's body was drawn through the streets, face down, and then hung or thrown on a garbage heap. Additionally, all of the person's property was confiscated.

Changes in Attitude

Attitudes towards suicide slowly began to shift during the Rennaissance; Thomas More the English humanist, wrote in Utopia (1516) that a person afflicted with disease can “free himself from this bitter life…since by death he will put an end not to enjoyment but to torture...it will be a pious and holy action”. Other thinkers with similar views were John Donne, and Montesquieu.

The secularisation of society that began during The Enlightenment questioned traditional religious attitudes toward suicide and brought a more modern perspective to the issue. David Hume denied that suicide was a crime as it affected no one and was potentially to the advantage of the individual. In his 1777 Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul he rhetorically asked, “Why should I prolong a miserable existence, because of some frivolous advantage which the public may perhaps receive from me?” A shift in public opinion at large can also be discerned; The Times in 1786 initiated a spirited debate on the motion “Is suicide an act of courage?”

By the 19th-century, the act of suicide had shifted from being viewed as caused by sin to being caused by insanity in Europe. Although suicide remained illegal during this period, it increasingly became the targey of satirical comment, such as the spoof advertisement in the 1839 Bentley’s Miscellany for a London Suicide Company or the Gilbert and Sullivan musical The Mikado that satirised the idea of executing someone who had already killed himself.

By 1879, English law began to distinguish between suicide and homicide, although suicide still resulted in forfeiture of estate. In 1882, the deceased were permitted daylight burial in England and by the mid 20th century, suicide had become legal in much of the western world.

Military Suicide

In ancient times, suicide sometimes followed defeat in battle, to avoid capture and possible subsequent torture, mutilation, or enslavement by the enemy. The Caesarean assassins Brutus and Cassius, for example, killed themselves after their defeat at the battle of Philippi. Insurgent Jews died in a mass suicide at Masada in 74 CE rather than face enslavement by the Romans.

During World War II, Japanese units would often fight to the last man rather than surrender. Towards the end of the war, the Japanese navy sent kamikaze pilots to attack Allied ships. These tactics reflect the influence of the samurai warrior culture, where seppuku was often required after a loss of honor. It is also suggested that the Japanese treated Allied POWs harshly because, in Japanese eyes, by surrendering rather than fighting to the last man, these soldiers showed they were not worthy of honorable treatment. In fact, a Japanese unit in Singapore sentenced an Australian bombing unit to death in admiration for their bravery.

In modern times, suicide attacks have been used extensively by Islamist militants. However, suicide is strictly forbidden by Islamic law, and the Muslim clerics who organize these attacks do not regard them as suicide, but as martyrdom operations. Clerics argue the difference to be that in suicide a person kills himself out of despair, while in a martyrdom operation a person is killed as a pure act.

Spies have carried suicide pins to use when captured, partly to avoid the misery of captivity, but also to avoid being forced to disclose secrets. For the latter reason, spies may even have orders to kill themselves if captured – for example, Gary Powers had a suicide pin, but did not use it when he was captured.

Social protest

In the 1960s, Buddhist monks, most notably Thích Quảng Đức, in South Vietnam gained Western praise in their protests against President Ngô Đình Diệm by burning themselves to death. Similar events were reported in eastern Europe, such as Jan Palach following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1970 Greek geology student Kostas Georgakis burned himself to death in Genoa, Italy to protest against the Greek military junta of 1967-1974.

During the Cultural Revolution in China (1966–1976), numerous publicly known figures, especially intellectuals and writers, are reported to have committed suicide, typically to escape persecution, typically at the hands of the Red Guards. Some, or perhaps many, of these reported suicides are suspected by many observers to have, in fact, not been voluntary but instead the result of mistreatment. Some reported suicides include famed writer Lao She, among the best-known 20th-century Chinese writers, and journalist Fan Changjiang.

Famous historical suicides

• Boudicca
• Brutus
• Mark Antony
• Cleopatra VII of Egypt
• Judas Iscariot
• Hannibal
• Nero
• Virginia Woolf
• Sadeq Hedayat
• Sigmund Freud
• Adolf Hitler
• Ernest Hemingway
• Sylvia Plath
• Marina Tsvetaeva
• Yukio Mishima
• Hunter S. Thompson
• Kurt Cobain
• Ludwig Boltzmann
• Ian Curtis
• Vincent van Gogh

See also

• Philosophical views of suicide
• Religious views of suicide

References

1. Durkheim's Suicide : a century of research and debate (1. publ. ed.). London : Routledge. 2000. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-415-20582-5. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help); |first= missing |last= (help)
2. ^ Maris, Ronald (2000). Comprehensive textbook of suicidology. New York : Guilford Press. p. 540. ISBN 978-1-57230-541-0.
3. "The History of Suicide". Jacob Crouch Foundation.
4. "A Brief History Of Suicide". Society for Old Age Rational Suicide.

• Articles lacking sources from August 2007
• Suicide
• History by topic