JON MILLER Stoics and Spinoza on suicide - Torin Doppelt€¦ · · 2016-10-17JON MILLER Stoics...

JON MILLER

Stoics and Spinoza on suicide

Selfe-homicide is not so naturally Sinne, that it may neuer be otherwise.– John Donne1

Let me get intuitions flowing with discussion of some general issues per-taining to suicide. To begin with, there is the problem of determining what suicide is. In his influential study, Emile Durkheim argues that “the term suicide” is best applied “to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result.”2 As Durkheim acknowledges, this is a broad definition, combining actions which intuitively count as suicides (such as the business-man who throws himself on the tracks to escape bankruptcy) with those that don’t (such as the martyr dying for her faith or the mother sacrificing herself for her child). Durkheim is not bothered by this breadth, which re-sults primarily from his refusal to tie suicide to the agent’s intention or rea-son for action. He is suspicious of intentions or reasons for action, because they are hidden from an external observer and sociology as a science must be based on observations3. Most philosophers, however, adopt a less obser-vational stance than Durkheim, since they are primarily concerned with the morality of suicide. Because of their interest in its morality, they usually in-corporate intentions into their conceptions of suicide. John Cooper reflects this tendency when he attributes to ancient philosophers the view that sui-cide is “a person’s death both intended by him and brought about by some action of his own that was aimed, at least proximately, at bringing it about (or, of course, the person who brings about his death in this way).”4 While definitions or conceptions of suicide that emphasize agents’ intentions may narrow Durkheim’s definition in fruitful ways, they face problems of their own. Do all cases of intentional self-killing count as suicide, or only those in which the agent’s primary intention is to kill herself? After all, Socrates in some sense intended to die when he drank the hemlock. Did he commit

1 The sentence is taken from the sub-title of his Biathanatos, completed in 1608 and posthumously published in 1647.

2 For the purposes of this paper, I am using the English translation found in Durkheim (1951), p. 44.

3 Durkheim (1951), p. 42 – 3. 4 Cooper (1989), p. 516.

“Hellenismus”: T:\Kasper\Helle\1-Fahne\helle07HK.indd, Haus-Korr., BS/CK

2 Jon Miller Stoics and Spinoza on suicide 3

suicide, then, even though he was in some sense forced to the action by the unjust verdict of the state and his primary intention was to show obeisance to the law?5

Some of the uncertainty and general difficulty surrounding suicide is re-flected in the ways various languages have attempted to express it. Accord-ing to the linguist David Daube, languages have a problem even finding a word for suicide. Daube writes, “no language known to me has a genuinely separate word for suicide, a word neither a composition nor receiving the sense from an added specification… The words denoting it are always qualifications of others, mostly either of ‘to die’ or ‘to kill.’ Suicide, that is, is exhibited as a dying or a killing with a twist.”6 The indirectness of the vari-ous words or expressions that have been used to speak of suicide – autocheiri thneisko, mors voluntaria, Selbstmord, Donne’s “selfe-homicide” – indicates the crux of the problem. Other kinds of dying or killing are ordinary and so we have words for them. Like patricide or infanticide, however, suicide is not an ordinary kind of killing and so we must create a special word or phrase for it7. In addition, even after words were discovered or created for suicide, prejudicial attitudes blocked or at least frustrated the adoption of these words. Alexander Murray reports that the word “suicide” (suicida) ap-peared in a manuscript in the twelfth century8. Nevertheless, despite the word’s early appearance in at least one manuscript, it did not enjoy wide usage until the seventeenth century, with the publication of Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici in 1637. Murray argues that one of the key reasons why suicide, unlike other twelfth-century neologisms such as “theology” and “individual,” did not catch is that “suicide was different… Suicide was just too terrible to talk about. So long as you were content with words that did not quite hit the nail on the head, there were already too many words

5 For further and more detailed discussion of definitional problems pertaining to suicide, see Margaret Pabst Battin (1995), p. 20 ff.

6 Daube (1972), p. 390. 7 Daube (1972), p. 391 ff. 8 The manuscript, called De quatuor labyrinthos Franciae, is a polemical attack on Pe-

ter Abelard and three other contemporaries by the Paris Augustinian canon Walter of St. Victor. In this particular passage, he is taking issue with Seneca’s defense of the appropriateness of suicide in certain circumstances. He writes, “in summa luxuria effe-minatam animam ac si dormiendo evomuit. Miro scilicet ingenio, ipsam mortem mor-tisque dolorem vertit sibi in magnam voluptatem. Iste igitur non quidem fratricida, set peior suicida, Stoicus professione. Epicureus morte. Putasne cum Nerone et Socrate et Catone suicidis receptus sit Celo? Crede mihi melius illi erat si natus non fuisset homo, malletque semper luxuriari in balneo.” (The text is quoted by Murray [1998], p. 38 – 9, n. 61).


for it, approximate and archaic though they might be. The very last thing people wanted was an accurate term for the unmentionable thing itself.”9

In fact, although opinion about suicide may have been uniformly condemnatory in the middle ages, it has been more divided over the longer course of history. One reason for this is that suicide summons up a number of equally intuitive yet opposing lines of thought. For example, on one side, there is the feeling that nothing is more our own than our lives and so nothing should be more up to us to decide what to do with than our lives, while on the other side there is the sense of the preciousness of life – we get only one to live – and so a reluctance to end it artificially or prematurely. There is also the problem of conflicting obligations: to whom does one owe the greater duty, to oneself or to something larger than oneself (one’s family, one’s state, one’s God, etc.)? If one’s primary duty is to oneself, then it is conceivable that in circumstances when life becomes too difficult to bear, one may have an obligation or at least a right to end one’s life. Contrariwise, if one’s primary duty is to one’s family, state or God, then it may not matter what one suffers personally; one may be obliged to bear it all in order to fulfill one’s obligations to others. A third source of tension stems from different attitudes towards the naturalness of suicide. Is it more natural to continue life or to end it (say, in order to avoid terrible and permanent pain)? Given the widespread belief that acts which are opposed to nature are immoral, whether or not suicide is natural has ramifications for its moral standing. The precise expression of these intuitions has varied through time, as has the support they enjoyed (for example, if Murray is to be believed, intui-tions critical of suicide achieved near hegemonic status in the middle ages). I would argue, however, that all of them resonated in both of the historical periods covered by this paper. Whatever views Stoics and Spinoza came to possess about suicide, they did so under pressure from these and other such intuitions. Another problem raised by suicide is the relationship between the ra-tional justification of an action and its moral standing. Here, the question is whether or not rational justification and moral standing are separable prop-erties. An affirmative answer could be given by the utilitarian, for example, who associates justification with having good or bad reasons and moral rightness or wrongness with the consequences of actions. To such a person, someone could have good reasons to kill himself; if he did, his action would be justified. At the same time, his action might not be moral if it negatively

9 Murray (1998), p. 40.


affected those around him. A deontologist, on the other hand, might argue against the utilitarian that it is impossible to conceive of rationally defen-sible yet immoral actions, because some form of entailment exists between the two properties (either one implies the other or they mutually imply each other). As a result, one who commits suicide for good reasons must ipso facto have committed a moral act. An extreme strand of deontological thought tightens the relationship between the rationality of actions and their moral rightness or wrongness. These two properties do not merely stand in an implication relation to each other; they are actually identical. According to such a deontologist, then, to say that an action is rational is just to say that it is moral, and vice versa. The rational suicide (if there is such a thing) is the moral suicide; and any suicide which is moral is also rational. I do not intend for these remarks to prove anything or even to isolate all of the philosophically significant problems raised by suicide. Instead, the point is to highlight issues or ideas that will be useful to understanding what Stoics and Spinoza have to say about suicide. As we shall see, much of what vexes us about suicide was equally troubling to them.

I. Stoicism and suicide

I start with Stoic axiology or theory of value10. According to this, there are three kinds of moral value: good, bad and indifferent11. Since the good is defined as that which benefits or does “not other than benefit”, and that which benefits is virtue alone, the true good is virtue and virtue alone12. Similarly, the not-good or bad is held to be that which does not benefit but harms, and since that which harms is vice, the only true not-good or bad is vice13. All other concepts and entities apart from virtue and vice are morally indifferent: that is, they neither help nor hinder the person’s moral char-

10 The following account of Stoic axiology is a condensed and summarized version of what has become the standard interpretation; for a more complete even if still introduc-tory discussion, see A. A. Long (1986), p. 184 – 205.

11 The division of things into good, bad and indifferent is found in numerous sources. See especially Stobaeus’ Anthology, 5a.

I should say that since I am only reprising the standard interpretation of Stoic axiol-ogy here, I will not provide complete textual references for each point made. Instead, I will offer a text (or texts) to represent the basic Stoic position on that issue. Many of the relevant sources appear in L – S 58 – 60 and 64.

12 For a representative text on the Stoic definition of the good, see Sextus Empiricus, Against the professors, 11.22; L – S 60G.

13 For one representative text, see Stobaeus’ Anthology, 5d.


acter14. The list of so-called “indifferents” is long and includes seemingly disparate items such as life, health, wealth, having an odd or even number of hairs on one’s head, and stretching or contracting a finger15. While all of these items are, strictly speaking, indifferent to one’s moral well-being, Stoics did grant that some of them (such as life) are more important than others and so they are to be “preferred”16. More on preferred indifferents shortly. First, let us consider the inspiration for and genesis of Stoic axiology. It is based on views about the nature of the individual and of the universe as a whole. Chrysippus reportedly said that “[t]here is no other or more appro-priate way of approaching the theory of good and bad things or the virtues or happiness than from universal nature and from the administration of the world.”17 From their study of phusis, Stoics concluded that the inherent order of the universe is best explained by positing the presence in it of logos. We humans are unique among animals, in that we share in this rationality.

The rational element of our nature was taken to be the most important part of us, as Seneca so clearly conveys when he writes: “What is best in man? Reason: with this he precedes the animals and follows the gods. Therefore perfect reason is man’s peculiar good, the rest he shares with animals and plants...”18. As implied by that last sentence, the belief in the importance of our rationality shaped Stoic views on the “end” or ultimate objective of human activity. While specific formulations of the end varied and became increasingly sophisticated from Zeno’s first statement of it as “living in agreement” to Cleanthes’ “living in agreement with nature” before culmi-nating Chrysippus’ “living in accordance with experience of what happens by nature”19, all Stoics seemed to agree that what is best for humans is a life

14 A point made by D. L. 7.101. 15 D. L. 7.104 – 5. 16 The distinction between non-preferred indifferents and preferred indifferents maps

onto the distinction Stobaeus records in the following passage between things “said to be absolutely indifferent” and things which are indifferent to virtue and vice but not “with respect to selection and rejection”: “some [things] are said to be absolutely indif-ferent, such as <having an odd or even number of hairs on one’s head, or> extending one’s finger this way or that way, or to picking off some annoying object, such as a twig or a leaf. In the [other] sense one must say that... what is between virtue and vice is indifferent, but not [indifferent] with respect to selection and rejection; and that is why some have selective value, and some have rejective disvalue, but make no contribution at all to the happy life.” (Anthology, 2.7; I – G p. 213).

17 Plutarch, On Stoic self-contradictions, 1035C; L – S 60A1. 18 Letter 76.9; L – S 63D1. See also Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II.153. 19 Stobaeus collects all three formulations in his Anthology; see L – S 63B.


in harmony with our nature as rational beings20. This view produces the axiology outlined above, insofar it leads Stoics to attach moral value only to those things that matter to our rationality and to denigrate as morally indif-ferent or worse all other things. These views on the good and virtue are not meant to be only theoretical; they have definite prescriptive force. Though perhaps paradoxical in other respects, Stoics subscribed to the common ancient eudaimonistic view of the end: Stobaeus tell us that Stoics “say that being happy is the end, for the sake of which everything is done, but which is not itself done for the sake of anything.”21 Certainly Aristotle, for example, would have agreed with this statement; but he and most other ancient philosophers would have balked at the next step Stoics take – defining happiness in terms of living “accord-ing to virtue” and arguing that virtue, and the “smooth flow of life” achieved by one who is virtuous, by themselves guarantee happiness22. I have alluded to some of the reasons for this controversial move in my references to Stoic physics and axiology; it is not necessary for present purposes to explore it further here23. Rather I want to conclude these preliminary remarks by re-turning to the concept of “preferred indifferents.” Recall that preferred indifferents are things such as life, wealth and health that are not morally good because they do not contribute to happiness24. Even though they are not morally good, they still have a kind of value (sometimes called “selective value”) that is keyed to their contribution to the so-called “natural life.” For example, other things being equal, it is better for a human being to have food than not, because without food he or she cannot survive. So food has selective value for humans and counts as a pre-ferred indifferent. Now, actions involving preferred indifferents can either be performed in a manner that suits our constitutions or not – that is, they can either be performed “appropriately” or “inappropriately.” If we use pre-ferred indifferents in a manner that is appropriate for our natures, then we are performing “proper functions” (kathekonta)25. The standard definition

20 For further discussion of the end, including a forceful argument against taking later Stoics to have diverged from the early Stoa’s view of the end as homologoumenos te phusei zen, see Striker (1986).

21 Anthology, 2.77; L – S 63A1. 22 The quotes come from D. L. 7.88; I – G p. 191. 23 For texts and commentary, see Brad Inwood (1999b), 680 – 2 and 684 – 7. 24 For some arguments supporting the conclusion that indifferents (even preferred indif-

ferents) do not contribute to happiness, see D. L. 7.103 and Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos, 11.61.

25 For one representative text, see Cicero, De Finibus, 3.20.


of proper functions is “something which, once it has been done, has a rea-sonable justification”26 and has been glossed as meaning “something which makes sense in terms of the nature of the animal in question.”27 Proper func-tions are natural and hence reasonable actions; fools and sages alike perform them. Actions that are morally perfect are also proper functions but are per-formed by the sage alone, because only he or she has the necessary virtuous disposition to execute the act properly and with the right intentionality28. These alone are “right actions,” strictly speaking. Even though we fools can-not perform right actions, we can perform ordinary proper functions and it is important that we do so if we wish to make progress toward our end of happiness or virtue. One of the most important preferred indifferents we can use appropriately or not is our own life; and one of the decisions we have to make about our own lives is whether and when to end it ourselves. In this way suicide can be linked to Stoicism’s most basic ethical and meta-physical doctrines. I have set out this interpretive framework because I think it provides necessary support for Stoic views on suicide. With it in place we can now pose the question: according to Stoicism, can suicide be a moral act – or, to use Stoic parlance, a “proper function”? We now know about the general re-quirements for the correct moral use of goods such as life: the agent must use them in ways that admit of reasonable justification, given her or his nature. Because the nature of the sage differs from that of the fool in certain crucial respects, how an agent should use indifferents will depend on whether she is a sage or a fool. Thus, to answer the question “can suicide be a moral act?”, we must look separately at the sage and the fool, to see whether it can be a moral act for each type of person. Let’s begin with the sage. I have suggested that for Stoics, the question of the morality of suicide hinges largely on the conceptually prior question: can suicide be natural and hence rational and hence moral? Now, it may seem that if this is the ques-tion, the answer is obvious about whether the sage could be acting morally as she kills herself. For the sage is the ideal human agent, one who always acts according to nature, i. e., rationally. Since all of the sage’s actions are rational or undertaken for the right reasons, if she decides to end her life, then that act would be eo ipso rational and therefore moral. In fact, all this

26 Stobaeus, Anthology, II.85.13 – 14 (L – S 59B1). 27 Inwood (1999b), p. 697 – 8. 28 As Stobaeus writes, “They [the Stoics] say that some proper functions are perfect, and

that these are also called right actions. The activities which accord with virtue are right actions, such as acting prudently, and justly” (Anthology; L – S 59B4).


is correct. But it is not very instructive, for it does not reveal anything about what we really want to know about – i. e., the circumstances under which suicide would be rational. It behooves us to examine more fully these very circumstances in order to clarify further the Stoic position. When, then, might the wise kill themselves? The “when” in this question is subject to two interpretations: one, temporal (“at such a time, suicide is rational”); the other, conceptual or logical (“when certain conditions obtain, suicide is ra-tional”). Understood in this way, how should the question be answered? Since the sage was an ideal, never realized by any actual person, we can-not point to any real individual who exemplifies sagacious behavior and learn from him or her how sages act. Nonetheless, Stoics did think that some real people had progressed further toward the goal of sagacity than others and they seemed to regard such persons as quasi-sages. From their discussion of these quasi-sages, we can make some inferences about the character and behavior of full-blown sages. Now, one of these quasi-sages was Socrates. Here is some of what Seneca says of Socrates’ death: “Socrates might have ended his life by fasting; he might have died by starvation rather than by poison. But instead of this he spent thirty days in prison... in order that he might show himself submissive to the laws and make his last mo-ments an edification to his friends.”29 What can we make of Seneca’s views on Socrates’ death? First of all, notice that regardless of which conception of suicide we at-tribute to Seneca, he seems to think of Socrates’ death as a suicide. If he accepts the broad Durkheimian formula (i. e., suicide is a death resulting directly or indirectly from any action of the agent himself, which he knows will produce this result), then clearly Socrates committed suicide, since he knew that by refusing to escape from prison (a negative action) he would die. On the other hand, if Seneca prefers Cooper’s narrower definition (suicide is a death both intended by the agent and brought about by his actions), Socrates still committed suicide, since he died by drinking the poison and arguably intended to die by this action. So, however suicide is defined, it seems that Seneca regarded Socrates’ death as a suicide. This is important, because we want to learn about Seneca’s views on the sage’s reasons for com-mitting suicide. Since Socrates was a quasi-sage and he committed suicide, we are entitled to draw inferences about a sage’s rationale for killing himself from what Seneca says about his death30.

29 Ep. 70.9. 30 Because of complications surrounding both the circumstances of Socrates’ death and

his action itself, it may not seem obvious that his death was a suicide. But a number


According to Seneca, then, why did Socrates commit suicide? His an-swer: “in order that he might show himself submissive to the laws and make his last moments an edification to his friends.” Seneca clearly thinks that Socrates was motivated by a desire to benefit others. He did not kill himself as soon as the death sentence was passed but remained alive for another thirty days, because those thirty days gave him valuable time he could use to converse with his friends about important philosophical matters. At the same time, he did not flee or attempt to delay death beyond the arrival of the ship from Delos but submitted to the laws and died at the appointed hour. This demonstrated to his friends the importance of the laws and our duty to follow them, even when we may disagree with them. Thus, there are at least two ways in which Socrates’ suicide benefited others: through the opportunity it presented for additional philosophical conversation and a display of submission to the laws. This in turn gave him two reasons to kill himself in the way and at the time when he did. In addition to the good his suicide might do for others, Seneca hints that Socrates’ suicide also benefited himself. It was right to kill himself and submit to the laws, because he owed an allegiance to the laws and would have imperiled his soul by violating them. Cicero is even clearer than Seneca on why a sage might commit suicide, even where his death benefits no one except his own self:

When a man has a preponderance of the things in accordance with nature, it is his proper function to remain alive; when he has or foresees a preponderance of their opposites, it is his proper function to depart from life. is clearly shows that it is sometimes a proper function both for the wise man to depart from life, although he is happy...31.

Prima facie, there is something odd about the sage committing suicide for his own sake. After all, he alone, of all people, is happy; why would he want to end his life? This oddity, however, should be eliminated by the fact that the sage’s happiness is not increased or decreased by the amount of time he is happy: his happiness is dependent only on his virtue; duration makes no contribution to his happiness32. As a result, he will not consider his own longevity when deciding whether remaining alive would benefit himself

of texts besides the one I am discussing confirm that Stoics at least regarded it as such. Cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations I.74, De Officiis 6.15 – 6; Seneca, De Providentia 2.9 – 10, Ep. 13.14, 24.4 – 5, 104.21; Plutarch, Cato 67 – 8.

31 De Finibus, 3.60; L – S 66G1 – 2. 32 Cf. Cicero De Finibus 3.46, Seneca Ep. 70.4 – 6, and, for discussion, Cooper (1989),

p. 535 – 6.


(though he may consider whether his longevity would benefit others; Seneca seems to think that Socrates did this). Rather, he will consider the impact that continued life would have on his rationality. Though a perfectly rational being, the sage is still a human and so requires food, friendship, etc. If he is deprived or anticipates being deprived of such necessities, to the ex-tent that it will be difficult or impossible to remain rational, then he might reasonably choose to preserve his integrity through suicide. Since life itself is only a non-moral good – a “preferred indifferent” with “selective value” – its worth cannot be compared to that of one’s rationality, the only thing one possesses with true moral value, and the sage would gladly surrender it for the sake of his reason. In general, then, there are two different kinds of reasons for suicide by sages: either for the sake of others, or for the sake of oneself. The canonical expression of this idea is by Diogenes Laertius: “They [the Stoics] say that the wise man will commit a well-reasoned suicide both on behalf of his country and on behalf of his friends, and if he falls victim to unduly severe pain or mutilation or incurable illness.”33

While it is not difficult to imagine situations in which a sage would com-mit suicide, it should be stressed that the sage would not undertake suicide lightly. For the sage (much more so than the rest of us) appreciates the true worth of what is morally good – i. e., reason34. This understanding of the true worth of reason causes him to want to nurture it whenever and wher-ever possible35. In particular, it is important to sages to help us fools become wise or, at least, not sink further into our foolishness. This duty the sage has to respect, preserve and enhance. Reason is practical and has the force of a strong imperative. Seneca expresses the urgency the sage (and any would-be wise person) must experience to respect reason when he writes, “It is no oc-casion for jest; you are retained as counsel for unhappy mankind. You have promised to help those in peril by sea, those in captivity, the sick and the needy, and those whose heads are under the poised axe. Whither are you straying? What are you doing?”36 Since sages usually cannot help anyone once they are dead, they will be reluctant to die. The story told of the aged

33 D. L. 7.130; L – S 66H. Cf. John Rist (1969), p. 239. 34 Martha Nussbaum (1994) lucidly expounds on the Stoic valuation of reason. See espe-

cially p. 324 ff. 35 Cf. Nussbaum (1994): “The first and most basic injunction... will be to respect and

cultivate that all-important element [reason] in [oneself ], the foundation of [one’s] humanity. Wherever [one] recognizes this capacity, [one] should honor it; and nothing else about a person is worthy of much honor” (p. 325).

36 Ep. 48.8.


Cleanthes illustrates the point: “When someone criticized [Cleanthes] for his old age, he said, ‘I too want to make my exit. But when I consider eve-rything and see that I am completely healthy and able to write and to read, I continue to wait.’”37 Only when it is absolutely necessary – only when reason tells them to do so – only then will sages end their lives38. Turning now to fools, we can construct an inverse argument to the one we encountered when first asking about the morality of suicide for sages: namely, if a fool is to commit a morally commendable suicide, then his or her action would have to be rational; but the fool by definition always acts “foolishly” or irrationally; therefore the fool cannot commit a morally de-fensible suicide. Are things so simple? In a word: no. For people to act morally, they must perform proper functions, using indifferent goods. To do this, they must be able to pass judgment efficiently and correctly on the matters before them. This is not a problem for sages, because of their superior epistemic abilities. These abili-ties provide sages with insight into the particulars of their circumstances, insight which they can use to project the possible available courses of action and decide which is best. It may turn out that even the sage cannot know things sufficiently well to determine the correct response; but in that case, the sage will know that he does not know and so suspend action39. With respect to suicide, then, the sage will never make the wrong choice out of ignorance: if his circumstances mandate suicide, then he will kill himself; if they don’t, then he won’t; and if they are indeterminate, he will withhold judgment until such a time that a decisive judgment can be made. Unfortu-nately for fools, they lack the wisdom of the sage. One consequence of this

37 D. L. 7.174; I – G p. 107. 38 The extraordinary value attached to reason by the Stoics, and the extraordinary im-

portance of this valuation to their philosophy, is often overlooked by commentators. For example, Michael J. Seidler (1983) commits this error in his otherwise estimable article and it leads him to make several mistakes. To cite a couple: when summing up “the Stoics’ position,” Seidler states that Stoics deny “the ultimate value of human life” and that the school was guilty of “pervasive elitism” (p. 438). Now, quite apart from the question of whether there is one position on suicide which all Stoics maintain, it is grossly unfair to Stoics to characterize them as being anything less than radically (for their time) egalitarian. For very deep philosophical reasons – namely, because of their belief in the rationality of all humans and in the value of that rationality – they must endorse the view that all humans are equal and worthy. Because Seidler does not seem to recognize the full significance of these points, his comparison of Kant and the Sto-ics makes them seem farther apart than necessary and casts the Stoics in a gratuitously unfavorable light.

39 Cf. Cicero, Academica 2.57.


lack of wisdom or knowledge is that fools cannot be confident of the verac-ity of their opinions and the appropriateness of their actions. This epistemic weakness afflicts all fools and can only be eliminated by increasing one’s knowledge to the point of sagacity. But Stoics offer advice on how to cope in the meantime, until fools achieve sagacity. One way that fools can deal with this problem is by “sticking fast to nature”: that is, by following nature and its plan for humans. Thus Chrysippus says, “As long as the future is uncertain to me I always hold to those things which are better adapted to obtaining the things in accordance with nature; for god himself has made me disposed to select these.”40 Because nature is providential and designed for the well-being of humans, by following nature humans are assured of acting in ways which are best for them. Now, the epistemic limitations of the fool and the value of following nature as a solution to these limitations provide the premises for the fol-lowing Stoic argument on the inappropriateness of suicide for fools. It is obvious from the design of the human species and all of the goods that nature provides for human consumption that nature intends for humans to grow to maturity, become rational, reproduce and perform all sorts of other actions – in short, to live. Because the default position for humans is life, then since foolish humans don’t have enough knowledge to be sure when death would be appropriate for them, suicide is not allowed. This argument is recorded by Stobaeus:

ey [the Stoics] say that sometimes suicide is appropriate for virtuous men, in many ways; but that for base men, [it is appropriate] to remain alive even for those who would never be wise; for in [their mode of ] living they neither possess virtue nor expel vice. And [the value of life] and death is measured by [a reckoning of ] appropriate and inappropriate actions.41

Since the vicious could not know when suicide is appropriate, they ought to remain alive, since the norm for all animals – a natural end for them to pursue – is the preservation of their lives. It is fairly clear from our sources that this view was shared by most or all members of the early Stoa42. But it is even clearer that it was not shared

40 Epictetus, Discourses, II.6.9; L – S 58J. 41 Anthology, 2.11m; I – G p. 229 (the first bracketed insertion is mine, the rest are

I – G’s). Cf. also Plutarch, On Stoic self-contradictions 1039E and Cicero, De finibus 3.60.

42 For texts, see note 41. For commentary, see Inwood (1999a). He concludes, “suicide is permissible in early Stoicism, but only when a clear and correct judgement can be made about one’s situation in life. No one but a wise person can do so; so only a wise person ought to commit suicide” (105).


by members of the late Stoa. In Seneca and Epictetus, for example, we find a variety of circumstances in which suicide could be appropriate: political oppression, protracted but not terminal illness, hunger, witnessing strange phenomena43. Cooper cites a later source, Olympiodorus, as reporting five situations in which Stoics thought suicide was appropriate: “(1) in discharge of some duty, e. g., to defend one’s country; (2) to avoid doing something disgraceful, e. g., betraying an important secret when pressed by a tyrant to do so; (3) when beset by mental deterioration in old age or (4) incurable, debilitating disease; (5) when extreme poverty prevents one from supplying one’s basic needs.”44 While Olympiodorus was a neo-Platonist and not a Stoic, his report is apparently based on standard sources of Stoic ethics and can be relied on as a source for Stoicism in late antiquity. Seneca, Epictetus and Olympiodorus; all late Stoics or sources for late Stoicism, and all sym-pathetic to suicide by fools. There is a conflict, then, among ancient Stoics over the appropriateness of suicide by fools: some Stoics (especially in the earlier Stoa) argued that suicide was never appropriately undertaken by a fool45; other Stoics (espe-cially in the later Stoa) insisted that it was. Because of this conflict, it cannot be said that there is single ancient Stoic view on suicide: while all Stoics agreed that sages could act appropriately when they kill themselves, fools present the harder case and they forced a schism in the school, one that breaks roughly along chronological lines. What makes this conflict even more interesting is that it takes place on thoroughly Stoic grounds. Later Stoics did not question, much less reject, the axiological and epistemic prin-ciples which had led their predecessors to argue that fools could not commit moral suicides. Like their predecessors, Seneca and Epictetus agreed that life is properly categorized as a preferred indifferent with selective value; they also agreed that sages’ cognitive abilities in general, and epistemic prowess in particular, far exceeded fools’. These principles are as firmly embedded in late Stoicism as they are in early Stoicism, and this gives us one important reason for regarding late Stoics every bit as Stoical as the early ones. What has changed is the interpretation of these principles. Whereas early Stoics

43 Cf. Seneca De ira III.15, Ep. 77, etc. and Epictetus Discourses I.9.10 – 17, III.8.1 – 6, III.26.29, etc.

44 Cooper (1989) 534, n. 20. The original text is Commentary on Plato’s “Phaedo” I, 8, 19 – 39, ed. Westerink.

45 There is one exception to this rule: divine intervention. As Rist persuasively argues, suicide would have been permitted when the gods signaled it (Rist [1969], p. 243). Apart from this very special circumstance, however, I do not think early Stoics allowed suicide by fools.


argued that the epistemic warrant for suicides by fools is impossibly high, late Stoics thought that fools could, in the right circumstances, achieve the degree of justification required for such an action. Like early Stoics, late Stoics thought that certainty is necessary for suicide; unlike early Stoics, late Stoics thought such certainty attainable. Of course, there is a lesson in this and it is with this lesson that I want to conclude my discussion of Stoics on suicide. The lesson is that one must be careful to specify which Stoicism one is speaking about when one makes claims about Stoicism. I do not believe or mean to suggest that the basic un-derlying principles, arguments and positions varied significantly from one formulation of Stoicism to the next. If many changes were made to these, it is debatable whether the resulting system would be Stoic; after all, there are limitations on the extent of innovation any philosophical system can ac-commodate, after which the innovator crosses from reform to heterodoxy. But these parameters allow for much interpretative leeway, especially on finer points (such as the permissibility of suicide), and it is to be expected that in philosophical systems with long and rich traditions such as Stoi-cism, many of these interpretations will have been tried out at some time or another. The historian must be sensitive to these, especially if she or he is interested in understanding the history of the school. In this paper, I have tried to heed this lesson: since I am comparing Spinozism with Stoicism, my comparison could be greatly affected by which Stoicism I choose for my comparison. Fortunately for me, the potential for mischief is diminished by the particular kind of comparison I am undertak-ing. My overall aim lies in identifying and comparing first principles of the two systems’ moral theories. Since Stoics basically agreed on first principles, it is usually not necessary for me to say which set of principles is being used to make my comparisons. If I moved down the ladder from first principles to derived principles, then it might become important to specify whom I am talking about – say, the derived principles of Chrysippus versus Pana-etius. On occasion, I shall speak of such derived principles and then I shall try to be careful to attribute the views in question to actual individuals. In general, though, since my project is more philosophical than historical – it is more focused on the two philosophical systems themselves than on how the one influenced the other – historical problems such as naming and iden-tifying the idiosyncrasies of various instantiations of Stoicism do not affect me46.

46 Although my project is intrinsically more historical than his, it bears a relationship to Becker (1998). While he is constructing an ethical theory for use in contemporary


II. Spinoza on suicide

Suicide is mentioned or discussed at least five times in Spinoza’s corpus: in Letter 23 and in Ethics IIP49S, IVP18S, IVP20S, and (obliquely) VP41S47. Of these five, the Letter and IVP20S offer the fullest discussion. In both places, he defends the thesis that suicide is impossible. I will show how by examining first the Letter and then IVP20S. In Letter 23, Spinoza is responding to yet another letter from an increas-ingly tiresome correspondent (van Blijenbergh) who persists in debating some ideas that Spinoza thinks have already received sufficient attention. Toward the end of the Letter Spinoza paraphrases several of his correspond-ent’s most recent objections; the last of these paraphrases is the question, “If there was a mind to whose singular nature the pursuit of sensual pleasure and knavery was not contrary, is there a reason for virtue which should move it to do good and omit evil?”48 To this question – which I take it asks roughly “if there were a person for whom baseness is natural, would that person ever do good?” – Spinoza responds by arguing that it “presupposes a contradiction.” To show why, he employs an argument from analogy; and here, in this argument from analogy, he talks about suicide. So suicide ap-pears in Letter 23 as part of an argument addressing an entirely different conceptual problem: in particular, it forms the basis for an argument from analogy that compares one who, by “nature,” wishes to commit suicide, to one who, by “nature,” is evil. So much for the context. The actual argument proceeds as follows: his opponent’s question, Spinoza states, is like asking, “If it agreed better with the nature of someone to hang himself, would there be reasons why he should not hang himself?” In answer to this question (which is supposed to be analogous to the original question posed by his correspondent), he grants the antecedent of the conditional: “suppose,” he writes, “that there should

society and I am attempting to understand two philosophical systems from long ago, both of us are more interested in the “timeless” abstract propositions that form the core of Stoic doctrine. To emphasize the non-historical character of his endeavor, Becker uses “stoic” (small “s”) instead of “Stoic” (which he associates with the ancient school). Because I will in fact be speaking of actual historical Stoics, I will not employ his con-ceit. But to the extent that the historical questions do not matter to the conceptual comparison I am making, I would have legitimate grounds for doing so.

47 When referring to the Ethics, I will use the abbreviations which have become common-place. For example, “IVP18S” stands for “Book IV, Proposition 18, Scholium.”

48 G IV: 149 – 50. Unless otherwise noted, all Spinoza translations are by E. Curley in Spinoza (1985).


be such a nature.” Then, he says, it must be the case that “if anyone sees that he can live better on the gallows than at his table, he would act very fool-ishly if he did not go hang himself.” After drawing this conclusion (which of course follows by modus ponens from the two premises), Spinoza drops the suicide case and returns to the original question about whether the naturally bad person could do good. He writes, “One who saw clearly that in fact he would enjoy a better and more perfect life or essence by being a knave than by following virtue would also be a fool if he were not a knave. For acts of knavery would be virtue in relation to such a perverted human nature.” In this passage, Spinoza is employing a reductio ad absurdum strategy. At the very beginning he alleges that his critic’s question “presupposes a contradiction.” After leveling this charge, he launches into the argument about suicide, which – since it is meant to be analogous to the case imag-ined by his critic – is supposed to help us see the contradiction in his op-ponent’s question. Given that the argument involving suicide is intended to be analogous to the argument he makes about the bad person being good, it must be the case that the suicide argument also presupposes a contradic-tion – otherwise, it would not be analogous. Since the argument involving suicide is in the form of a reductio, the proposition used to open the argu-ment must be thought by Spinoza to entail a contradiction. Unfortunately for us, he does not make explicit why he thinks it contradictory (but more on that in a moment). For now, what matters is simply that the proposition “there is a person for whom it agreed better with his or her nature to hang himself or herself ” entails a contradiction and therefore must be false. What this passage suggests, then, is that Spinoza thought that it is not the case that there is a person for whom it agreed better with his or her nature to hang himself or herself. Only for a “perverted human nature” could hanging agree – suicide does not agree with unperverted or normal human nature. Now, Spinoza does not say more in this passage than I have recounted and so a regrettable ambiguity obscures his position, an ambiguity stem-ming principally from the word “agree”49. There are two interpretations we can make of the word “agree” in this context. First, the failure of suicide to “agree” with human nature could mean that it upsets or offends human nature. If this is what Spinoza means, then it is not difficult to ascribe to

49 This is one of the few letters which seems to have been originally written in Dutch. Since Spinoza seems to have translated it himself into Latin, we might use the two words he uses to fix more precisely his intended meaning. Unfortunately, since those words (“overeenkwam” and “conveniret”) are largely overlapping, this technique is inef-fectual. Curley’s translation is perfectly adequate; the ambiguity lies in Spinoza’s diction and intentions.


him the view that suicide is wrong (though it is hard to say exactly why or in what sense). Second, the failure to agree could mean that it fails to concur with human nature, that it is incompatible with it. If this is the correct in-terpretation, then Spinoza is making the bolder claim that it is not possible for people to be acting in accordance with their own natures when they kill themselves, and any alleged act of suicide must be reconsidered in light of the fact that it is not initiated by the agent’s own nature. In fact, I prefer the latter interpretation, but I am willing to allow that it may be undetermined by the text. We cannot conclusively settle the matter with the resources pro-vided by Letter 23; for that, we must rely on the Ethics. In the relevant passage of the Ethics, Spinoza minces no words, declaring that “No one, therefore, unless he is defeated by causes external, and con-trary, to his nature, neglects to seek his own advantage, or [sive] to preserve his being. No one, I say, avoids food or kills himself from the necessity of his own nature” (IVP20S). It seems to me that this statement gives us the in-formation we need to understand the sense in which suicide disagrees with human nature. Here Spinoza maintains that no one chooses to kill himself, that all such acts are brought about by “causes external.” This implies that the “disagreement” of suicide with human nature is not ethical but onto-logical or metaphysical – suicide is incompatible with human nature itself. If suicide is defined as the act by which agents kill themselves through their own agency alone50, then suicide is impossible because whenever agents seem to kill themselves, they do not act under their own power but under the power of another. Only for a “perverted human nature” is suicide a possibility – for unperverted or normal humans, it is not. Spinoza seems to

50 Since Spinoza himself never explicitly states what he takes suicide to be, I have been forced to construct a definition that I think he would find acceptable. In formulating it, I have taken into consideration his statements about suicide and his definitions of an adequate cause and activity (IIID2 and D3). When discussing suicide, he completely excludes intentions and reasons for action from his analysis. As a result, I do not think it appropriate to attribute anything like Cooper’s conception of suicide to him. This finding is reinforced, I think, by the fact that Spinoza in general does not factor inten-tions into his comments on actions or how actions should be evaluated. Thus, in IIID2 he says simply, “I say that we act [ago] when something happens, in us or outside us, of which we are the adequate cause, i. e. (by D1), when something in us or outside us fol-lows from our nature, which can be clearly and distinctly understood through it alone.” I do not want to say that Spinoza uses a Durkheimian conception of action and suicide, since Durkheim requires that the agent (at least in the case of suicide) “know” suicide will be the outcome of her (positive or negative) action. If anything, Spinoza employs an even broader conception, since he drops the foreknowledge requirement and counts suicide and other actions as action just in case they follow from the agent’s nature.


confirm this interpretation at the end of the IVP20S where he writes, “that a man should, from the necessity of his own nature, strive not to exist, or to be changed into another form, is as impossible as that something should come from nothing.”51

IVP20S is interesting not just for the way it clarifies the ambiguity noted in Letter 23; it is also interesting because here Spinoza considers one obvious objection to his position. It might be thought that our ordinary experience contradicts the claim that suicide is impossible, for we all wit-ness (in one way or another) acts of suicide on a regular basis. How, then, can anyone maintain that it is impossible? In IVP20S Spinoza responds to this criticism by examining three cases of apparent suicide. His strategy is to interpret each in such a way as to prove that none is a genuine case of suicide but rather involves killing of another kind. He writes:

Someone may kill himself because he is compelled by another, who twists his right hand (which happened to hold a sword) and forces him to direct the sword against his heart; or because he is forced by the command of a Tyrant (as Seneca was) to open his veins, i. e., he desires to avoid a greater evil by [submitting to] a lesser; or finally because hidden external causes so dispose his imagination, and so affect his Body, that it takes on another nature, contrary to the former, a nature of which there cannot be an idea in the Mind (by IIIP10).

Some observations. First, notice how Spinoza concedes that people do kill themselves; he writes that “Someone may kill himself...”52. Spinoza does not legislate the action we now call “suicide” out of existence; instead, he seeks to provide a new understanding of it. Second, in each of the mentioned cases Spinoza gives an analysis of the causal/conceptual chain of command (so to speak), and shows that someone or something outside the person who died passed the original command. In effect, this analysis implies that the real killer is not the one doing the killing. Third, nowhere does the word “reason” (ratio) or its cognates appear. It does not have to, because (as should be apparent by now) Spinoza does not evaluate suicide in terms of its ration-ality or lack thereof. Which leads me to my fourth point: namely, that here (as in the letter) Spinoza does not bother to evaluate suicide at all – i. e., he does not determine its moral worth or state when it is justified. I think this is because he has no interest in examining the morality or immorality of

51 He further reinforces the point in IIIP10Dem: “Whatever can destroy our Body cannot be in it (by P5), and so the idea of this thing cannot be in God insofar as he has the idea of our Body (by II9C), i. e. (by IIP11 and P13), the idea of this thing cannot be in our Mind.”

52 See also IVP18S: “those who kill themselves are weak-minded and completely con-quered by external causes contrary to their nature” (G II: 222).


suicide – what interests him is simply the question: is suicide possible? And now (as before) Spinoza seems to say, “no”. I should pause briefly to explain what I mean by “impossible” when I say that for Spinoza, suicide is impossible. As is well known, he often conceives of possibility as an epistemic notion. In this sense, people believe that things are possible when they do not know enough about their causes to realize that they are either necessary or impossible53. With regard to suicide, how-ever, I do not think that this is the sense of possibility at play. Instead I think Spinoza believes that suicide is an instance of what we might nowadays call “nomological impossibility.”54 Nomological possibility constitutes the second and final major category of the possible in Spinoza’s philosophy (the first being epistemic possibility). Richard Mason explains how this kind of possibility is cashed out:

If the laws of nature are taken as universal and necessitating, then whatever can be the case can only be the case within them. To be possible cannot be to exist or to sub-sist in some shadow-realm of possibilities, but is simply to be an available outcome within the framework of nature and natural laws... Possibilities become what is pos-sible – what can happen – in a literal way.55

We shall shortly see that suicide is an action that violates at least one law of nature. Since suicide is an action that violates the laws of nature, and since all such actions are impossible, suicide is impossible56.

53 For example, see the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, § 53 and Ethics IVD4. 54 I use this phrase somewhat reluctantly, as there are key differences between contem-

porary nomological accounts of modality and Spinoza’s. In particular, contemporary accounts are contingent on the existence or occurrence of certain physical objects, states or events. Contemporary accounts do not believe that the conditions which make the laws true are themselves necessary. And they grant that if these conditions are not met, then all bets are off; the laws may or may not hold of the new form nature has taken. By contrast, while Spinoza’s modal views are contingent on the existence or occurrence of certain objects or events (viz. Nature and its modes), those objects or events are not themselves at all contingent; they are absolutely necessary. Since the conditions upon which the laws are contingent are absolutely necessary, the laws themselves are neces-sary.

Although there is this important difference between contemporary theories of no-mological possibility and Spinoza’s, both agree that the laws (whatever their own modal status may be) are what structures and delimits the range of the possible. It is for this reason that I persist in using terminology which otherwise threatens to mislead.

55 Richard Mason (1986), p. 325 – 6. 56 This is not the place to expound on Spinoza’s notion(s) of possibility; for more, see Ma-

son’s article and my article in The Review of Metaphysics. I shall only make two pertinent points. First, it is not enough to say that suicide is inconceivable and hence impossible, for possibility ultimately amounts (on Spinoza’s account) to being able to occur within


Hitherto I have given a largely descriptive account of Spinoza’s view; now I would like to discuss its argumentative basis. It depends entirely on one crucial and much-disputed principle, conatus, which appears in the Ethics as IIIP6: “Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being.”57 As with many of Spinoza’s innovations, deep problems plague the proper interpretation of conatus. I will avoid these problems here, since I am interested only in conatus’ application to suicide; to understand this, it is not necessary to understand what exactly conatus means or involves58. This is because no matter how conatus is interpreted, it forms the basis of Spinoza’s views on suicide and forces him to the conclusion of suicide’s impossibility. As the quote of IIIP6 shows, conatus is the doctrine that each thing strives to persevere in its being. Now, this striving to remain in existence is no accidental feature of each thing: IIIP7 adds to IIIP6 that “[t]he striv-ing by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing.” Nor does the striving occur on an infrequent or limited basis: according to IIIP8, “[t]he striving by which each thing strives

the limits set by nature’s laws whereas conceivability is not so bounded. This does not necessarily set very narrow limits on the possible; depending on what is said about ini-tial conditions and the matrix of possibilities allowed by the natural laws, many more things could occur than actually do. Even so, on my reading Spinoza will have to rule out as impossible some things we presently like to think of as possible just because they are conceivable, on the grounds that such things are not compossible with the laws of nature. That is because nomological possibility – and not conceptual possibility – sets the strict limits of all non-epistemic possibility in Spinoza’s philosophy. As he states in the Tractatus Politicus, “nature is not contained by the laws of human reason, but other infinite laws, which concern the eternal order of universal nature [natura non legibus humanae rationis… continetur, sed infinitis aliis, quae totius naturae… aeternum ordinem respiciunt…]” (Chapter II, § 8; translation with modification by Elwes in Spinoza [1951]). My second point is this: whatever Spinoza takes a law of nature to be, and whatever other laws of nature he may have identified, there can be little doubt that the so-called “conatus” principle (which I am about to discuss) counts as a law of nature. Cf. his statement in Chapter 16 of the Theological-Political Treatise, that “it is the supreme law of Nature that each thing endeavours to persist in its present being, as far as in it lies, taking account of no other thing but itself ” (G III: 189; translation by Shirley in Spinoza [1998]).

57 The Latin is: “Unaquaeque res, quantum in se est, in suo esse perseverare conatur.” There is little consensus on the proper translation of this proposition, especially the phrase “quantum in se est.” See note 15 in Spinoza (1985), p. 498 – 9, for an introduc-tion to the issues and some references. I remain agnostic on whether to prefer a more literal translation than Curley’s. It is my hope that my discussion of conatus will be neutral enough to be acceptable to either way of taking the Latin.

58 I should say now my views on conatus have been molded by many good commentaries, including especially Michael Della Rocca (1996), p. 193 – 210.


to persevere in its being involves no finite time, but an indefinite time.”59 For Spinoza, each being always does what it can to preserve its existence and it does so under the strongest of compulsions: by its very essence. Spinoza emphasizes these ideas later on, writing that

reason demands nothing contrary to nature, it demands that everyone love himself, seek his own advantage, what is really useful to him, want what will really lead man to a greater perfection, and absolutely, that everyone should strive to preserve his own being as far as he can. is, indeed, is as necessarily true as that the whole is greater than its part... (IVP18S)

Drawing these ideas together, we obtain the following three propositions: each thing strives to persevere in its being; each thing does so because this is the natural way for it to act – that is, it acts in this manner because of its nature; and each thing acts in this self-preserving manner for “an indefinite time” or as long as it exists. If suicide is defined as the act by which the agent kills herself or himself through her or his own agency alone60, then the three propositions eliminate the possibility of suicide. The first and second propositions entail that a being necessarily strives to preserve its own being (necessarily because this act of self-preservation follows from the being’s na-ture), to which the third adds that the being acts in a self-preserving manner for the entire course of its existence. It is true that in the passages dealing with conatus Spinoza does not di-rectly mention suicide. But he does write that “while we attend only to the thing itself, and not to external causes, we shall not be able to find anything in it which can destroy it...” (IIIP4Dem). And finally, in IVP20S Spinoza explicitly applies his “no self-destruction doctrine”61 to suicide in the last sentence, where he writes “that a man should, from the necessity of his own nature, strive not to exist or to be changed into another form, is as impos-sible as that something should come from nothing.” Spinoza does not tell us about the nature of the impossibility of something coming from nothing, so we cannot classify the precise nature of the impossibility of suicide. If what I have said about his notion of possibility is correct, then it is impossible for something to come from nothing because that violates the laws of nature. But whether that is the correct reading of this modality is less important than the mere fact that he calls suicide “impossible,” just as predicted. So regardless of whether we find his views adequately explained or at all plausi-

59 In the Demonstration to IIIP8, Spinoza makes it clear that the “indefinite time” for which the thing will strive to persevere in its being is for as long as the being exists.

60 See note 50 above. 61 I borrow the phrase from Bennett (1984), p. 234 ff.


ble, I think we must conclude that Spinoza’s views on conatus produced his belief in the impossibility of suicide. There is one text that may seem counter to this claim. IVP72 states that “A free man always acts honestly, not deceptively.” In the Scholium to this Proposition, Spinoza considers an objection:

Suppose someone now asks: what if a man could save himself from the present danger of death by treachery? would not the principle of preserving his own being recom-mend, without qualification, that he be treacherous? e reply to this is the same. If reason should recommend that, it would recom-mend it to all men. And so reason would recommend, without qualification, that men make agreements, join forces, and have common rights only by deception i. e., that really they have no common rights. is is absurd.

If one is faced with a choice between preserving one’s existence by “treach-erous” (perfidus) means or possibly dying and not being treacherous, then one ought to choose the latter. This seems to imply that self-preservation is not always primary; it can occasionally be overridden by other concerns. If self-preservation is not always primary, then there are at least possible cir-cumstances under which a person would or should commit suicide. If there are possible circumstances when suicide would or should be committed, it is not impossible after all. For at least three reasons, IVP72S does not actually present the threat to my interpretation that it seems to. First, this Scholium succeeds in casting doubt on my interpretation only if it belongs in the Ethics, alongside Spino-za’s views on conatus and suicide. But in the opinion of some commentators, the position of IVP72S in the Ethics is uncertain. The uncertainty does not surround its authorship – this cannot be doubted – but whether he should have written it. Thus, speaking of this Scholium and attendant passages, David Bidney writes, “Spinoza’s Stoic rationalism with its acknowledgment of absolute moral standards is incompatible with his biological naturalism which teaches the complete relativity of all good and evil, virtue and vice, to the requirements of self-preservation.”62 Bidney thinks that with IVP72S, Spinoza has flatly contradicted himself: on the one hand, he has previously argued for the primacy of self-preservation; but on the other, he “concludes with an uncompromising Stoic absolute idealism which discounts self-preservation.”63 If IVP72S is inconsistent with other, more well-established Spinozistic doctrines (such as conatus), then perhaps one ought to discard

62 Bidney (1962), 317 (his italics). 63 Ibid. I might observe that Curley also thinks IVP72S rests uneasily in the Ethics; see his

note 37 p. 587.


the former as a regrettable oversight, achieving consistency and preserving the more central Spinozistic ideas in the bargain. And should this be done, there would no longer be any textual basis for doubting my interpreta-tion. Bidney raises a serious objection to the coherence of Spinozism that we unfortunately do not have the space to deal with here. For now, let us set it aside and turn to the other two reasons why we need not be too alarmed about IVP72S64. On the one hand, this Scholium’s threat is dissolved by reflection on the nature of the Spinozistic individual. IVP72S gains much of its force if the individual is always conceived as a single human being (leav-ing aside other beings, for simplicity’s sake). If the individual is always an individual human being, then it is hard to see how individual humans could undertake actions that are individually self-destructing in order to avoid treachery. In such a case, the avoidance of treachery does seem to supercede self-preservation; and so conatus is not the basic impulse of all action. Yet, there is no need to conceive of Spinozistic individuals along these lines. In IIP13SDef, Spinoza tells us what he means by an individual:

When a number of bodies, whether of the same or of different size, are so con-strained by other bodies that they lie upon one another, or if they so move, whether with the same degree or different degrees of speed, that they communicate their mo-tions to each other in a certain fixed manner, we shall say that those bodies are united with one another and that they all together compose one body or [sive] Individual, which is distinguished from the others by this union of bodies.

It is consistent with this definition to think of, say, a well-trained army unit as a single individual65. When one member of that army unit throws his body down on a grenade to prevent others from being killed or wounded, he is not committing suicide, since he is but a member of the true individu-

64 Let me be clear that I am merely mentioning Bidney’s interpretation of IVP72S (it is a common one, as is his solution to the alleged problem it raises), without intending to endorse it in any way whatsoever. I do not agree with Bidney that it is inconsistent with other texts and I critically respond to his arguments (which do spot a potentially major incoherency in Spinozism) in chapter two of my dissertation (2002). As I argue in the following paragraphs, there are other ways to reconcile IVP72S with my interpretation of Spinoza’s views on suicide which do not require excising IVP72S, and I find these vastly preferable to what Bidney proposes.

65 In fact, we are obliged to view a well-trained army unit as an individual by IIP13SLem-ma7S. Here a recursive definition of an individual is presented, according to which larger and larger units can be conceived of as individuals so long as they maintain their proportions of motions and rest. This only ends with Nature as a whole, which “we shall easily conceive… is one Individual, whose parts, i. e., all bodies, vary in infinite ways, without any change of the whole individual” (G II: 102).


al. The real “individual” in this example is the army unit and it is engaging in self-preserving behavior, just as conatus maintains. On the other hand, far from sacrificing the primacy of self-preservation for other concerns (such as avoiding treachery), Spinoza (according to the present reading) is saying that self-preservation dictates the avoidance of treachery, no matter the circumstances. How could this be? The clue lies in the important adverb “without qualification” (omnino). This word in effect makes universalizability a required test of one’s action. If one were to take the maxim underlying a treacherous action undertaken to avoid “the present danger of death” and make it perfectly general, the result would be that all people “make agreements, join forces, and have common rights only by deception.” In such an event, one would find oneself confronted by dangers far greater than possibly dying. That is because there would be “no common rights.” So the rational thing to do is always to avoid treachery – always act honestly. This is the rational action because it is that action which is most to one’s advantage: one can best preserve and enhance one’s power of action by acting honestly. Furthermore, given one’s character as a rational being, even the supposed short-term gains that could be had by dishonesty are not in one’s advantage. Because one is a rational being, what one strives to preserve is one’s rationality. Dishonesty and treachery are actions that undermine the creation of conditions which allow the flourishing of reason, and so they are incompatible with attempts to preserve one’s true self and one’s power of acting. For these reasons, then, it turns out to be in one’s self-interest – spe-cifically, in the interest of one’s self-preservation – that one ought not be treacherous to avoid possible death. The grounds for reason’s inability to recommend treachery thus turn out to be precisely the same as those that prevent suicide – i. e., self-preservation or conatus66.

III. Stoics and (versus?) Spinoza on suicide

The first connection to be made between what Stoics and Spinoza thought about suicide is obvious: they thought differently. For Spinoza, the question to be asked about suicide is not so much whether it is right as whether it is

66 For a more extended discussion of IVP72, see Don Garrett (1990). So far as I am aware, my interpretation of Spinoza’s views on suicide is novel. For a

different take, see Wallace Matson (1977). In the section on suicide (409 – 11), Matson argues that suicide was possible for Spinoza but that it was an act of “madness” and “irrationality.” Cf. also Bennett (1984), p. 234 – 40.


possible. As I have argued, he does not think it is. Perhaps because he does not think suicide is possible, he does not bother to address its moral stand-ing. On the other hand, Stoics took suicide to be possible and concentrated on whether it is right. As I have argued, Stoic analyses of suicide are highly contextually specific: its rightness or wrongness depends on particulars about the person committing suicide and the circumstances in which he or she lives. Under certain circumstances, all Stoics thought that suicide might be an appropriate action for a sage and that therefore it could sometimes be moral. Their views on the fool are murkier, but here too at least some Sto-ics allowed for the possibility of a moral suicide. Described in this way, it is clear that Stoics and Spinoza thought differently about suicide. But would they have disagreed? Here the answer is both yes and no. As we have seen, a definite conflict arises over the possibility of suicide: whereas Stoics do think it possible, Spinoza does not. Even though they disagree on the possibility of suicide, on another issue it is not so clear Stoics and Spinoza do disagree. This is the rationality of suicide. As I said, Spinoza does not say anything on this head. His silence forces us to conjec-ture whether, if it were granted that suicide is possible, it would be rational. In my opinion, Letter 23 seems to indicate that he thought it would. In that Letter Spinoza argues that if there were a man who was suicidal by na-ture, then he would act rationally if he should kill himself (he actually puts the consequent negatively: “he would act foolishly if he did not go hang himself ”). That is to say, if (and I stress the counterfactual character of this conditional) there were no conflict between the end of self-preservation and the end of conformity to nature, then it may be the case that for Spinoza suicide could be a rational action. This belief is not so much interesting in itself – Spinoza would never grant the antecedent of the counterfactual con-ditional, just as he would never allow that “there were a man who was sui-cidal by nature” – as for what it reveals about Spinoza’s views on the nature of the rational act. To act rationally, we find Spinoza saying in this Letter, one must act in conformity with nature67. And of course this conception of the basic requirement for rational action is very like Stoicism’s. What is interesting, then, about comparing Stoics and Spinoza on suicide is not just what this teaches us about how they differ: essentially, the difference stems from conflicting views over the primacy of self-preservation, which Spinoza takes to be unrevisable and Stoics do not. In addition, what is interesting is that Stoics and Spinoza construct similar standards for rational and, given

67 Variations on this basic idea appear in other places besides Letter 23. For example, see the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, § 13; Ethics IVP27 – P31; Ethics IVApp§IX.


the close relationship both parties posit between rationality and morality, moral action: namely, that to be rational one must conform to nature. So far I have argued for two conclusions, one relatively narrow and the other less so. The narrow conclusion is this: whereas Stoics think conform-ity to nature can require some humans to commit suicide, because Spinoza denies the very possibility of suicide (for reasons pertaining to conatus), he does not think that conformity to nature or any other obligation (if such there be) can compel one to this action. The more far-reaching conclusion is this: the standards for rational actions are the same for both Spinoza and Stoics: those actions are rational that conform to nature. To end this paper and draw two more conclusions, I will bridge the gaps of time and contrast Stoics and Spinoza with some contemporary views on suicide. I will take Battin (1995) as my source. Her book contains, among other things, an analysis of common contemporary attitudes to suicide. One such attitude is based on the assumption that suicide is an action, properly speaking, and so is properly describable as moral or immoral. Very often, this same attitude has associated with it the assumption that an act’s ration-ality is a sign of its moral rectitude. If all this is true, then Battin argues that “whether there can be, by even an approximate set of criteria, any such thing as rational suicide” becomes a “pressing philosophical question...”68. In pursuit of an answer to this question, she begins by enumerating a “set of criteria for rationality” which can be used to assess the rationality of suicide acts69. Then she proceeds to examine the requirements for meeting each of these criteria. After completing this examination, and after discussing sever-al actual suicides and suicide types, she argues that “some persons do choose suicide in preference to continuing life on the basis of reasoning that is by all usual standards adequate” and that “where other strategies will not succeed, suicide may be the only rational thing to do.”70 From this, Battin concludes that those who believe that suicide is an action and that rational actions are moral actions “may need to reconsider [their] moral assessment of suicide” (at least, if they previously considered suicide morally indefensible)71. Now, there are substantial points of agreement and disagreement be-tween this view of suicide and that of the Stoics and Spinoza. Both of the latter would agree with Battin’s call for a “reinspection of our views” on

68 Battin (1995), p. 133. 69 They include: ability to reason, having a realistic world view, possessing adequate in-

formation when contemplating suicide, avoidance of harm, and accordance of suicide with fundamental interests (p. 132).

70 Battin (1995), p. 135, 153. 71 Battin (1995), p. 131.


suicide should it be found potentially rational. But they would doubtless disagree with many of Battin’s proposals, including her contention that ra-tional acts are not necessarily “morally good”72 and her specification of the criteria for rational suicide. More importantly, they might claim with some justification to be on philosophically firmer ground than Battin (or those she represents), inasmuch as they can base their ethical claims on a well-in-tegrated metaphysical conception of the nature of human beings and their proper place in the world, something notoriously absent from contempo-rary philosophy and hence unavailable to Battin. Unlike Battin, whose set of necessary and sufficient conditions for rational actions are ad hoc73, Stoics and Spinoza apply a previously devised and comprehensive outlook on life to the problem of suicide. For this reason, they might reasonably believe that their views are better argued for. The other contrast I will make revolves around what Battin calls the “de-terminist view of suicide.” Consider some tenets and facts of the “determin-ist view” that she lists:

“suicide is involuntary and nondeliberative, the outcome of factors over which the individual has no control”; “suicide is something that happens to the victim, a symptom of an illness or de-rangement that the victim cannot control”; as a result of the preceding, “it is irrelevant and misleading to speak of the moral issues facing such a person, and he or she cannot be held responsible for causing his or her own death... e only moral issue, if there is one, concerns the role to be taken by individual or institutional bystanders to the act.”; “[e determinist view] is prevalent among modern scientific approaches to sui-cide; ... Our public policies, prevention services, and treatment programs for suicide are virtually all based on the deterministic view; this is true also of research programs and decriminalizing amendments to the law. We live in a culture that widely regards suicide as an occurrence, not as a choice.”74

Of course, this attitude to suicide differs greatly from the other one Battin outlines; I also think that if we were to decide whose principles it matches

72 Battin writes, “That an act is rational does not mean, of course, that it is also morally good” (p. 131).

73 Battin herself is cognizant of this weakness in her argument. She writes that her “five criteria used here to assess the rationality of suicide are the same criteria we would use to assess any other act or choice. Of course such a list of criteria will itself invite philosophic dispute. There is little consensus among philosophers on the precise char-acterization of rationality... Rather than divert ourselves with these preliminary difficul-ties, however, we shall simply posit the five criteria to be discussed, and suggest that a rational suicide will meet all or most of them” (p. 132).

74 Battin (1995), p. 3 – 4.


more closely, the answer would have to be Spinoza’s. Stoics are at pains to emphasize the deliberateness of suicide, the control rational agents have over their choice of whether to end their lives, the moral significance of using preferred indifferents (such as life) properly. Spinoza, on the other hand, does not see the point of exploring these issues. It may surprise some contemporary philosophers to learn that their views on suicide closely cor-respond with someone who denies its very possibility; at the very least, I should think that this would invite reflection on the proper definition of the suicide act itself. Maybe Spinoza is wrong – maybe suicide is possible – but if so, one might wonder whether it is possible to maintain the modern de-terminist view of suicide. If it is possible, then determinists might be forced into the Stoic camp. But if not, maybe they ought to be Spinozists. That is, when it comes to suicide, if one takes a deterministic outlook, either one is a Spinozist or one is a Stoic, but not both.

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JON MILLER Stoics and Spinoza on suicide - Torin Doppelt€¦ · · 2016-10-17JON MILLER Stoics...

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