Suicide and Stoic ethics in the Doctrine of Virtue

Kant-Studien

Volumn 90, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 40-58

  James, David N ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 64349104570     PISSN: 00228877     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1515/kant.1998.90.1.40     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. An excellent example of this in the Doctrine of Virtue is Section 53, entitled "Ethical Ascetics" (Pp. 273-274; Ak. 484-485).
2. Here Kant says that ethical ascetics - what we might call the "style" of the good person - will combine the Stoic ability to put up with misfortune and do without pleasures, with the "ever cheerful heart" of Epicurus. Page references to the Doctrine of Virtue and the Doctrine of Right are to Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, Mary Gregor, trans. , Cambridge University Press, 1991, followed by the Akademie-Ausgabe pages.
3. Another translation of the Doctrine of Virtue is in James Ellington, trans. , Immanuel Kant, Ethical Philosophy, Hackett, 1983.
4. Kant's love of, and familiarity with, Latin authors is mentioned several times in Stuckenberg's readable biography: "Not only was [Latin philology] his favorite study in the gymnasium, it was the only one for which he manifested a preference, and in which he made any special progress. " (p. 27) "Kant's preference for the Latin language and literature might have continued at the university if he had there found a good instructor in Latin. " (p. 42) "In his first book, written when the impression of the classics was still fresh, Horace, Virgil, and Lucretius, are quoted. In his conversations he frequently referred to the Latin authors; and even in old age, when his memory for recent impressions had become very weak, he was still able to quote easily and correctly numerous passages from Latin writers, especially from the work of his favorite author, Lucretius' De Natura Rerum. " (p. 28) John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg, The Life of Immanuel Kant, Macmillan (London), 1882; reprinted with a new preface by Rolf George, University Press of America, 1986.
5. On the topic of suicide, two passages in Groundwork II have received the bulk of critical attention. In these, Kant presents the moral duty to preserve one's life as an example to illustrate the universal law and moral end formulations of the Categorical Imperative. Kant also discusses suicide in his Lectures on Ethics, in two passages in the Critique of Practical Reason, and in the Doctrine of Virtue, Part II. of the Metaphysics of Morals, the focus here.
6. An in-depth discussion is Michael J. Seidler, "Kant and the Stoics on Suicide," Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (1983): 429-453. Despite our very different conclusions, I have learned much from Seidler's analysis.
7. The works cited in this paper by Seidler, Novak, Batten, and Potter are the only ones in English I have been able to find which focus detailed attention on the Doctrine of Virtue suicide passage. This is quite a contrast with the mountain of literature on Kant's Groundwork examples.
8. I am speaking here from personal experience, specifically, from my work in clinical bioethics.
9. Plato, Republic, 431 A. Plato's point is spelled out by David Novak in Suicide and Morality, Scholars Studies Press (1975), p. 97.
10. John M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy, Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1969, p. 233. Rist provides a comprehensive discussion of the Stoic view of suicide in chapter 13.
11. Rist, op. cit. , p. 24. A less significant problem with the third sentence is Kant's erroneous assumption that when the Stoic philosophers were talking about the sage or wise man, they were talking about themselves. To the contrary, however, none of the Stoics claimed themselves to be wise men or sages. They thought such individuals could exist, but were extremely rare and by no means easy to identify. In speaking of "the wise man" the Stoics were doing something very much like Kant does in speaking of a rational agent - they were speaking about the properties of an archetype or ideal, not about specific individual persons. See Rist, pp. 242-243.
12. Critique of Practical Reason, Louis White Beck, trans. , Macmillan, Third Edition, 1993, footnote on p. 132; Ak. 127.
13. An article depicting just this sort of self-encounter by a suicidal person, though without making any explicit reference to Kant, is H. A. Hielsen, "Margolis on Rational Suicide: An Argument for Case Studies in Ethics," Ethics 89 (1979): 195-201.
14. Novak, p. 99.
15. Nelson Potter, "What is Wrong with Kant's Four Examples?" paper read at the American Philosophical Association Central Division Meeting, 1993.
16. Kant accepts the common sense view that many heroic and saintly acts are self-killing, but not self-murder or willful self-destruction. In the Lectures on Ethics Kant distinguishes suicide from self-sacrifice, thereby considerably narrowing his concept of suicide. "No one under the sun can bind me to commit suicide; no sovereign can do so. The sovereign can call upon his subjects to fight to the death for their country, and those who fall on the field of battle are not suicides, but the victims of fate. Not only is this not suicide, but the opposite, a faint heart and fear of the death which threatens by the necessity of fate, is no true self-preservation; for he who runs away to save his own life, and leaves his comrades in the lurch, is a coward; but he who defends himself and his fellows even unto death is no suicide, but noble and high-minded. " Louis Infield, trans. , first published in 1930, p. 150; Hackett has in print a reprint of the 1979 Methuen edition. While Kant's Lectures on Ethics are only student lecture notes, rather than something Kant wrote for publication, they are suggestive, nevertheless.
17. For a fuller account of the nature and role of Kant's open and closed casuistical questions, and for a classification of the twenty Doctrine of Virtue casuistical questions into each sort, see David N. James, "Twenty Questions: Kant's Applied Ethics," Southern Journal of Philosophy 30 (1992): 67-87.
18. William Smith, ed. , A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, John Murray, 1876, p. 906
19. Lectures on Ethics, p. 149
20. Margaret Battin, Ethical Issues in Suicide, Prentice Hall, 1982, pp. 122-127.
21. On manipulated or induced suicide, see Margaret Pabst Battin, "Manipulated Suicide," in The Least Worst Death: Essays in Bioethics on the End of Life, Oxford University Press, 1994, Ch. 10, pp. 195-204
22. and Suzanne Stern-Gillet, "The Rhetoric of Suicide," in John Donnelly, ed. , Suicide: Right or Wrong?, Prometheus Books, 1990, pp. 93-103.
23. Tacitus, Annels, John Jackson, trans. , Harvard University Press, 1937, Vol. 5, Book 15. , Sec. 61, p. 314 (Latin) and p. 315 (English).
24. Seneca, "On the Proper Time to Slip the Cable," in John Donnelly, ed. , Suicide: Right or Wrong?, Prometheus Books, 1990, p. 27.
25. Seneca, p. 29. Historically, Seneca represents the high-water mark of a positive attitude toward suicide. Pagan Rome soon gave way to a Western culture dominated by Christianity, and the Stoic approval of suicide was soon replaced by a Christian prohibition, a position developed most influentially by Augustine.
26. I shall not pause here to discuss Kant's view of capital punishment, a task others have carried out quite well. Two articles on Kant's theory of punishment by Jeffrie G. Murphy are especially helpful. Murphy's early discussion is in Kant: The Philosophy of Right, Macmillan, 1970, pp. 109-149.
27. His more recent reevaluation is in "Does Kant Have a Theory of Punishment," Columbia Law Review, Vol. 87, 1987, pp. 509-532.
28. See the works cited above.
29. Kant says, "the head of a state has only rights against his subjects and no duties (that he can be coerced to fulfil). " [Doctrine of Right, Ak. 319, Gregor trans. , p. 130. ] Here as in many places in the Rechtslehre, it is not entirely clear whether Kant is speaking only of legal duties and rights, or of moral duties and rights.
30. Nor is this case much like the twentieth century spy who carry cyanide capsules to avoid betraying secrets under torture. If captured, Frederick would have been held for ransom, not tortured.
31. There is a growing literature on Kant's virtue ethics. Essays by Onora O'Neil, Robert Louden, and others are considered in David N. James, "Kant's Virtue Ethics and the Cultivation of Moral Skills," in Commutarianism, Liberalism and the Good Society, Creighton Peden and Yeager Hudson, eds. , Edwin Mellen Press, 1991, pp. 29-41.
32. My understanding of casuistry and my efforts to explore Kant's casuistry have been stimulated by Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning, University of California, 1988.
33. I gratefully acknowledge the support of Old Dominion University for a 1993-94 research and development leave when much of this paper was written. I am also indebted to the National Endowment for the Humanities for supporting my participation in the 1993 NEH Summer Seminar on Kant's Moral Philosophy under the direction of Thomas Hill, Jr. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I developed some initial ideas. Among the many who have helped with suggestions and comments, I would particularly like to thank Thomas Hill, Robert Louden and the other members of the Chapel Hill Kant seminar; ODU colleagues Lawrence Hatab, Lewis Ford, and William Brenner, who discussed early versions in our Friday Philosophy Discussion Group; and William Jones and Richard White for help with Tacitus's Latin. Finally, I benefited from John Christman's insightful commentary on the first section at the 1995 meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology. This long list reflects the fact that philosophical ideas - or, at least, my philosophical ideas - only develop thanks to the help of others.