Suicide is self-justice for & against oneself.
In fashioning the ideal city-state of Magnesia, the Athenian of Plato’s Laws turns to the problem of temple robbery. The preamble for this particular law begins by confronting the criminal with an exhortation to give up his wickedness. The preamble concludes: “If … you find that your disease abates somewhat, well and good; if not, then you should look upon death as the preferable alternative, and rid yourself of life.”[1]
The Old Testament also speaks of the guilty administering their own justice through death. Augustine, however, overturns Matthew’s portrayal of Judas Iscariot. Augustine establishes: “by hanging himself he rather aggravated than expiated the guilt of that most iniquitous betrayal.” For: “he who kills himself is a homicide, and so much guiltier of his own death, as he was more innocent of that offense which doomed himself to die.”[2]
A Medieval poem reads:
Qui perd la joie et le plaisir
Par sa faute et par son tort,
Moult se doit bien hair de mort,
Hair et occir se doit[3]
Though Hume seeks to establish a firm foundation for suicide, he notes exceptions. Among them is the criminal already condemned to death. In light of his fate, Hume suggests that he might save himself the anguish of the wait, and save society the trouble of both killing him and having him alive.[4]
In “Psychodynamics of Suicide,” Herbert Hendin touches on the relationship between suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder among Vietnam veterans. The poison they all seem to share is guilt: for acts of war they viewed as atrocious, such as killing civilians; and, at the life they continue to enjoy while fellow soldiers have died along the way. Suicide is self-punishment, the expiation of guilt from these many crimes of death and life.[5]
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[1] Laws 854c.
[2] City of God 1.17.
[3] Minois, History, 15. He who loses happiness and pleasure through his own fault and wrong, he should despise himself to death, he should despise and kill himself. (My translation.) See also, my translation of the recently discovered haiku by the seventeenth century Japanese poet, Bashō. I don’t understand all the criticism, which is unfair and got really personal. All I can say is, I was trying. I mean I did the best I could. I also promise that the poem is real. I found it fair and square.
[4] David Hume, “Of Suicide,” in Essays: Moral, Political and Literary, 587-8.
[5] Herbert Hendin, “Psychodynamics of Suicide,” in Essays in Self-Destruction, 616.