Suicide is rebellion against the state.

For Aristotle, suicide is the overthrow of the internal state as self-law, in that the law cannot obliterate the law, nor should the slavishness of brute and base instincts overthrow the master of reason. Suicide is an overthrow of the ethical and political order, an injustice to oneself. For no one may voluntarily treat oneself unjustly. And, it is a matter of positive law. Aristotle writes: “the law does not expressly permit suicide, and what it does not expressly permit it forbids.”[6]

Augustine complains of the martyrdom frenzy among Donatists. “They flung themselves on passers-by who were armed, hoping to be slaughtered, and threatening horribly to attack them if they themselves didn’t die by their hands.” And: “they are playing a daily game of killing themselves from steep precipices, or in water or flames.”

For Augustine, suicide necessitates “imperial decrees” that are grounded in the truth. For when piety and reason are absent within, they must be imposed from without.

< § >

—
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1128a & 1138a.
Augustine, Letter 185.