solitary flight

§59 Suicide is a casualty of war

Suicide is a casualty of war.

In the civil war of Corcyra the tide turns and one faction prevails. Many surrender and are summarily executed. Others are tried, then executed.

Thucydides reports: “Seeing what was happening, most of the other suppliants, who had refused to be tried, killed each other in the temple; some hanged themselves on the trees, others found various other means of committing suicide.”

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Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 3.81

Wincing at being by way of meaning or not meaning introduces the idea of suicide as the principle of being better off dead. The true sound of pure practical suicide, however, is not the wince the reverberates within as screaming or being abashed or whatever noise ennui makes. A wheezing wince? I don’t know. The key note to the eidos of suicide is not attuned to whether or not meaning in being. Meaning or not meaning to determine being or not being is a round and round game. Life has no meaning. But it can. Life has meaning. Watch in all fall down. This is why the philosopher marks ultimate meaning only in a final moment that can take the full and complete measure of being from the beginning, which is to say human hunger that can finally say whether or not it was well-fed. A telethon happy to reach its very end.

The eidos of suicide does not play that game. The true sound of suicide begins on a note of tranquility (ataraxia) as human being after and so before meaning. What does this suicide note sound like? It is the sound of bracketing. Bracketing life and bringing death into play. It is the sound of playing quietly.