Some suicides stem from a horror of mortality itself rather than physical pain
Evidence
However, many suicides, rather ironically, result from the horror of mortality itself. Why bother to go on living when death will get you anyway? “The majority of suicides,” wrote the great Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, “would not take their lives if they had the assurance that they would never die on this earth. The self-slayer kills himself because he will not wait for death.” Dostoyevsky came to a similar conclusion in The Possessed, in which the character Pyotr Stepanovich explained his impending suicide: “I wish to deprive myself of life…because I don’t want to have the fear of death.” — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 736
Categorization
- SEED: An essay angle exploring suicide as an attempt to seize agency over the death one fears.
- XREF: connects to: The rationality of suicide is irrelevant to welfare critiques — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1600