Augustine and Aquinas on suicide

I’m going to examine some traditional objections to suicide.

Augustine argued that suicide was self-murder, as a logical extension of the fifth commandment:

God’s command ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ is to be taken as forbidding self-destruction, especially as it does not add ‘thy neighbor’, as it does when it forbids false witness, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor’ (City of God, book I, chapter 20).

This is an argument from analogy, based on the perceived symmetry between taking someone else’s life and taking one’s own life. The argument has a lot of superficial appeal, but is overstated.

i) The reasoning is potentially reversible. After all, the Mosaic law includes cases of justifiable homicide (e.g. capital punishment, the laws of war). Homicide is not conterminous with murder. Although all murders are homicides, not all homicides are murders.

By parity of argument, if there are cases of justifiable homicide, then there are cases of justifiable self-homicide.

I’m not saying that’s a sound argument for suicide. I’m just saying that based on how Augustine framed the issue, his argument invites that counterargument.

ii) There’s another problem with the analogy. Let’s compare the analogy to some counterexamples:

a) If taking someone else’s life is murder, then taking one’s own life is self-murder:

b) If withdrawing money from someone else’s bank account is theft, then withdrawing money from one’s own bank account is theft.

c) If reusing someone else’s work without attribution is plagiarism, then reusing one own work without attribution is plagiarism.

Seems to me that Augustine’s analogy is overly facile. At best, Augustine needs to supply a missing premise.

iii) Is taking your life always murderous? On 9/11, we saw office workers trapped in the upper stories of the Twin Towers. Some of them chose to jump to their death rather than burn to death. I wouldn’t say that was self-murder. I wouldn’t even say that was wrong.

iv) Of course, that’s an exceptional case. Many or most cases of suicide may well be self-murder. But if some cases are not, then Augustine can’t argue that suicide is murder in principle. He can’t argue that suicide is intrinsically murderous.

Aquinas presents additional objections to suicide:

I answer that, It is altogether unlawful to kill oneself, for three reasons. First, because everything naturally loves itself, the result being that everything naturally keeps itself in being, and resists corruptions so far as it can. Wherefore suicide is contrary to the inclination of nature, and to charity whereby every man should love himself. Hence suicide is always a mortal sin, as being contrary to the natural law and to charity.

But this is overstated. Did the office workers on 9/11 kill themselves because they hated themselves? No.

Secondly, because every part, as such, belongs to the whole. Now every man is part of the community, and so, as such, he belongs to the community. Hence by killing himself he injures the community, as the Philosopher declares (Ethic. v, 11).

i) There’s some truth to this, but it depends on how broadly we define “community.” Does this mean individuals belong to the State? That would be totalitarian.

ii) Moreover, the argument could potentially backfire. If a murderous dictator kills himself, the community benefits from his demise. Far from harming the community, the community is better off.

ii) It would be better to narrow the definition. Suicide generally harms the friends and family members who are left behind.

iii) However, some people commit suicide because they are old and lonely. They have no friends and family who mourn their loss. The Thomistic argument doesn’t anticipate that contingency.

iv) In addition, it suggests your life isn’t inherently valuable, but only valuable insofar as your life is valued by others. Peter Singer could redeploy that as an argument for euthanasia.

Thirdly, because life is God's gift to man, and is subject to His power, Who kills and makes to live. Hence whoever takes his own life, sins against God, even as he who kills another's slave, sins against that slave's master, and as he who usurps to himself judgment of a matter not entrusted to him. For it belongs to God alone to pronounce sentence of death and life, according to Deuteronomy 32:39, "I will kill and I will make to live."

i) This is a promising argument, but it needs to be refined. As a rule, a “gift” implies transfer of ownership. If I give you something, then I relinquish claims on it. But on that definition, a man does have the right to take his God-given life by his own hand.

In fact, freewill theists so emphasize human autonomy that suicide might be generally defensible on libertarian assumptions. Of course, a Calvinist would demur.

ii) Mind you, even on that definition, it’s possible to abuse a gift. If, in his will, a renown violinist bequeaths his Guarneri del Gesù to his star student, and his student then sells the violin to buy a strip club in Reno, the student has dishonored his mentor.

iii) It is also possible to place conditions on a gift. A donor or grantor can designate the grant or donation for a particular purpose.

iv) Some would say a gift you can’t refuse is not a real gift. However, that’s overstated.

The victim of a traffic accident who’s wheeled into the ER unconscious can’t refuse live-saving treatment, but would we say it’s not a gift?

Likewise, someone who’s mentally ill can’t refuse psychotropic drugs that would restore his sanity, but would we say it’s not a gift?

v) A better argument would be to say, not that life is a gift from God, but that life is a loan from God. We’re like tenants. God is the landlord.

On that view, suicide is wrong because we’re taking (or destroying) something that doesn’t belong to us–without the owner’s permission.

Of course, there are situations in which one can rightly dispose of someone else’s property. So the argument would have to take into account God’s unique prerogatives.

v) We can also think of life, not simply as a “gift,” but a privilege. We should be supremely grateful for the privilege of life. We owe God a debt of gratitude we can never repay.