Suicide is philosophical.

Camus begins The Myth of Sisyphus: “There is but one serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”[1]

Socrates declares: “The true philosopher is ever pursuing death and dying.” He continues: “one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death.” Suicide is praxis. [2]

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[1] Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, Justin O’Brien trans. (New York: Vintage International, 1991), 3.

The grand declaration is not entirely sincere, however. Camus does not exactly study what he calls “plain suicide.” He quickly dismisses it, declaring: “Rarely is suicide committed through reflection.” He determines that “killing yourself amounts to confession. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it.” The real, serious problem is what he calls “philosophical suicide,” as philosophy that reads meaning, unity, and eternal values into an absurd world and then is stunned by the scream of silence in reply. Often, he believes, the effect is plain suicide in the face of the absurd. This is the final confession of philosophical failure. The true task of living in the face of absurdity is Sisyphean, of course, to push the rock up the hill eternally and to be happy.

And yet for Camus suicide is in fact deeply philosophical as an ethical and political commitment to solidarity in the face of tyranny, injustice, and human suffering. The Rebel, writes Camus, “is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of the common good which he considers more important than his own destiny.” And: “If he prefers the risk of death to the negation of the rights that he defends, it is because he considers these rights more important than himself.” He cites as example the suicides of Russian prisoners in Siberia in protest for the torture of their fellow prisoners.

The Just Assassins also describes suicide as solidarity that pays the highest price in service of what is most valued. The task is to assassinate the Grand Duke, “that bloodthirsty tyrant.” It is a suicide mission. “Then I realized that just to denounce injustice wasn’t enough,” explains Voinov. “One must give one’s life to fighting it. And now I’m happy.” Kaliayev calls this action the very meaning of “love” — “sacrificing everything without expecting anything in return.”

The Fall (Le Chute) illustrates cowardice of the very same calling. Jean-Baptiste Clamence tells his story always in a half-light, riddled and refracted, and doubled over again and again.  His supreme clarity is coupled with a vital deceit that he is acutely conscious of and that he scatters to the wind, a life lost to itself.  His words mimic those of the absurd man, the lover, the conqueror, the prisoner, and the rebel.  They embrace the present, lucid despair, and the abandonment of hope.  His awareness resides in a shadow and suggests he could have illuminated a different path.  Instead, he lives failure over and over, an ongoing present without hope, now a studied perversion of absurd reason. 

The crucial test was suicide as self-sacrifice for the sake of another.  One night in November, Jean-Baptiste crosses the Pont Royal.  On the bridge he passes a figure leaning over the railing, staring at the river, a “slim young woman dressed in black.”  He reaches the other side. 

I heard the sound …  of a body striking the water.  I stopped short, but without turning around.  Almost at once I heard a cry, repeated several times, which was going downstream; then it suddenly ceased.  The silence that followed, as the night suddenly stood still, seemed interminable.  I wanted to run and yet didn’t stir.  I was trembling, I believe from cold and shock.  I told myself that I had to be quick and I felt an irresistible weakness steal over me.  I have forgotten what I thought then.  “Too late, too far…” or something of the sort.  I was still listening as I stood motionless.  Then, slowly under the rain, I went away.  I informed no one.

This moment could have been the inkling, the birth of absurd reason summoned to its purest fire.  It tried to be.  But “Too late, too far” he reasons once more, according to the half-light of memory.  The futility of jumping would produce a double sin, one suicide begetting another, two souls lost instead of one, the extreme minimization of truly living.  The moment seems to illustrate the painful crucible of an absurd ethics. But was this an example of absurd indifference or of cowardly indecision?  Jean-Baptiste thinks of it as an act of indifference.  But does he not simply adopt an indifference to his indecision, over and over again?  He is indifferent to his cowardice, not to her suicide. Perhaps Jean-Baptiste did become conscious in the half-light of a clouded conscience.  Perhaps his growing sickness — the panic and the shame of later events — betrays his growing or gnawing conscience.  He sickens himself. And each time he doubles down to the very last.  The Fall ends with a soliloquy as another debate with himself:

Then please tell me what happened to you one night on the quays of the Seine and how you managed never to risk your life.  You yourself utter the words that for years have never ceased echoing through my nights and that I shall at last say through your mouth: “O young woman, throw yourself into the water again so that I may a second time have the chance of saving both of us!”  A second time, eh, what a risky suggestion!  Just suppose, cher maître, that we should be taken literally?  We’d have to go through with it.  Brr…!  The water’s so cold.  But let’s not worry.  It’s too late now.  It will always be too late.  Fortunately!

[2] Phaedo 64a

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Now you sit back in your comfortable theater seat as the credits roll and that lovely theme music plays — rousing and majestic and a little bitter sweet, da da, dada, da-da da’da-da — and you think to yourself, Well, that was damn peculiar. What just happened? I was supposed to see the eidos of suicide. And that was not it. Did I stumble into the wrong motion picture?

Then you get a little upset. This was supposed to be suicide as quietude and lullaby, and that was nothing but fighting and sound effects and what about all those lessons? Suicide toward the greater good, society and (inter)species over individual. Suicide embodying thwart. New planets to start all over again. Kirk who is reborn for at least four more movies. And so much for neverness. That’s not bracketing life and bringing death into play. That’s storytelling to feed human hunger for a better tomorrow. We did not enter the holy of holies of suicide. We followed a trail of nonsense leading to a dead end. Where is the eidos of suicide?, you demand. Show me the eidos of suicide.

To be honest, you are a little too worked up. In fairness, we may have entered the wrong cloud. Played the wrong notes. Sang the wrong song.

I’ll tell you what. Let us enter the cloud of forgetting meaning let’s forget all about this. Cleanse the palette. Get a fresh start. There’s that case of those wild geese. Let’s talk about guns. Or maybe not. Let’s be quiet for a while. Tranquil. Still. Silent. How does that sound?