Kant and The Irrationality of Suicide

North American Philosophical Publications
Kant and the Irrationality of Suicide

Author(s): Michael J. Cholbi
Source: History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Apr., 2000), pp. 159-176
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical
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History of Philosophy Quarterly
Volume 17, Number 2, April 2000
KANT AND THE IRRATIONALITY OF

SUICIDE
Michael J. Cholbi
The life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than

that of an oyster.
?David Hume, "Of Suicide"
To Immanuel
importance toKant, a person's
the universe than that oflife was certainly
the oyster, so much so of greater moral
that Kant held that we rational agents are subject to a categorical
duty of self-preservation, not to take our own lives willfully. Not to
commit suicide, according to Kant, is "the first, though not the
principal, duty of a human being to himself as an animal being."1
Regrettably, Kant's characteristic rigor and systematicity are
absent in his discussions of suicide. The arguments he musters for
the duty against killing oneself are diverse, sporadic, and all too
brief. The lack of a single authoritative Kantian approach to sui
cide casts doubt on what is generally regarded as an extreme and
implausible position, to wit, that not only is suicide wrong in every
circumstance, but is among the gravest moral wrongs.2
My discussion of Kant and suicide has two broad aims. The first
is reconstructive. I intend to remedy the above-mentioned lack of
systematicity in order to show that Kant's position on suicide is
more appealing and credible than it seems at first glance. Kant in
fact offers three distinct lines of argument against suicide. The
first holds that suicide violates the divine will, for in willing our
own deaths we usurp God's right to determine the duration of our
existence; as God's property, we are not entitled to end our own
lives willfully. The second holds that suicide is incompatible with a
system of willed ends conceived analogously with a system of na
ture, so a maxim to commit suicide cannot be coherently willed as
a universal practical principle. The third argument holds that be
cause suicide obliterates the rational will from the world, and as
159
160 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY
the rational will is the source of moral worth, suicide cannot be

consistently willed by beings subject to moral requirements. To
authorize oneself to take one's own life, Kant claims, is to attempt
"to withdraw from all obligation."3 We cannot, under the color of
morality, seek to cancel the will that authorizes all obligation in
the first place.
This third argument is demonstrably superior to the other two
in being both more philosophically plausible in its own right and
more Kantian in flavor. The former two arguments, I will illus
trate, rely on conceptions of God and of our relation to Him as
autonomous beings (in the case of the first argument) and on con
ceptions of nature and natural law (in the case of the second
argument) that Kant did not accept. Only the last argument draws
upon Kant's considered conception of moral value, a conception
based on the autonomous will's self-legislation as the sole source of
binding moral authority. On occasion, I will pose as Kant's foil
David Hume, whose "Of suicide" provides a useful contrast to Kant's
views. While I do not claim that Kant was expressly formulating
his arguments so as to meet Hume, I believe that wrestling with
Hume's arguments allows us to clarify Kant's central argument
against suicide.4
The second broad aim of my discussion is more didactic. As with
much in Kant's moral philosophy, the prevailing wisdom about his
views on suicide has been shaped by misguided and even hostile
critics. Kant is typically portrayed as occupying an extreme posi
tion on the scale of permissibility and impermissibility with respect
to suicide. He is generally called upon to exemplify the absolutist
view: that no one may ever will his own death, nor let it occur. I
will argue that Kant's prohibition on suicide is a good deal more
narrow. In so arguing, I will also draw several important conclu
sions about Kant's ethics from his treatment of suicide.
I
In his Lecture on Ethics, Kant proposes the thesis that suicide
opposes the purposes of God, who created us. The suicidal person,
Kant claims, is a "rebel against God," who in willing to end her life
has "upset the wisdom" of the natural world that God graciously
constructed.5 Inasmuch as we owe our existence to God, He is "our
owner; we are His property."6 To will to end one's own life is to play
a role in determining the duration of our existence that belongs
properly to God as our creator and the overseer of His universe.
KANT AND THE IRRATIONALITY OF SUICIDE 161
This first argument is regrettably imprecise, with Kant both

suggesting that suicide is ungrateful, as we fail to acknowledge
God's goodness in creating both us and the world, and covetous,
since we treat ourselves as if we, and not God, enjoyed sole domin
ion over our lives. Nonetheless, the general idea seems to be that
in taking our lives, we exercise a choice that belongs, for whatever
reason, legitimately to God. This first argument of Kant's is, to
speak bluntly, bewildering, for it contradicts numerous Kantian doc
trines that he would later come to articulate in his critical philosophy.
First, the argument runs contrary to the metaphysical modesty
Kant advocated in the first Critique. If our knowledge is confined
strictly to empirical experience and its necessary conditions, then
to attribute to God such properties as owning us or shaping the
natural world in a beneficent way amounts to theoretical specula
tion. Therefore, arguments rooted in such attributions contain either
false or unconfirmable premises about God, who represents the
unconditioned, which Kant unambiguously claimed is always sought
by reason but never found. At most, we possess an Idea of God as
the ultimate ground of the unity of nature, but even this is only a
regulative principle that directs us to look upon nature as if it
originated in a self-sufficient cause. But a genuine transcendental
theology is impossible. Indeed, this argument even contradicts Kant's
claims in the second Critique about the moral necessity of belief in
God. Kant there claims that belief in God is necessary in order to
ensure the highest good, that conjunction of virtue and happiness
that Kant thought is unattainable in our finite and earthly exist
ence precisely because nature is not so designed that happiness
accrues in just proportion to virtue.
Secondly, the premise that God owns us is difficult to reconcile
with the theory of property Kant latter offered in the Metaphysics
of Morals. Kant is there concerned to show how "intelligible pos
session," the rightful ownership of external objects of which one is
not in direct physical possession, is possible. It is in this sense that
we are God's "property" in the argument above; God has a moral
right to control our lives (much as property owners exercise intel
ligible control over their belongings), even though other factors,
including both natural causal laws and our own free will, influence
what happens to us. God possesses us intelligibly and not physically.
But can we be anyone's property to begin with? On the face of it,
Kant's theory of property seems to allow that owning others as ser
vants is morally permissible. Servants belong to the head of the
household, and they are his "by a right that is like a right to a thing."7
Yet Kant is careful to note that this right follows only from a
contract, and that even with such a contract in place, the owner
"can never behave as if he owned them, . . . for a contract by which
one party would completely renounce its freedom for the other's
advantage would be self-contradictory, that is, null and void, since
by it one party would cease to be a person and so would have no
duty to keep the contract but would recognize only force."8 As ratio
nal freedom is a condition for the legitimacy of a contract to start
with, no contract can demand that one party renounce that free
dom as a condition of its fulfillment. Moreover, the right of the
head of household over a servant can extend only for a specified
time and not for the duration of the servant's life, lest the servant
be "used up" like a finite resource.
Kant therefore cannot claim, without a distinct speculative ac
count of divine ownership, that we are God's property such that He
retains the right over our fates that precludes justified suicide.
First, Kant is clear that such ownership only comes about via con
tract. But with what contract have we freely submitted to divine
authority? It may be thought that God's ownership of us is not
based in a contract but in origination, for if God created us, his
claim to own us is surely stronger than the right of ownership
produced via contract.9 But even if God did retain a right of owner
ship of this kind, the right is limited by our humanity and moral
freedom. As free rational beings, we presumably cannot be treated
however God might choose, for certain modes of treatment would
deny to us that very humanity and moral freedom. Our moral per
sonality is incompatible with being treated as property in the
unconditioned way suggested by Kant's first argument.
Even if Kant could meet the previous two objections, this argu
ment also runs afoul of Kant's general rationalism about morality.
The argument suggests that the moral wrongness of suicide is a
function of divine will or choice. By willing our own deaths, we
oppose God's plan for us or exercise a power of choice that prop
erly belongs to God. Yet Kant repeatedly states that moral obligation
derives from the rational will of moral agents and not from some
external moral authority capable of influencing our conduct. Ac
cording to this argument, however, the wrongness of suicide rests
on a heteronomous source and not on the autonomous will of the
free moral agent.
It is safe to conclude, then, that Kant's first line of argument is
not compatible with key tenets of his later critical philosophy.
II
In the Groundwork, Kant for the first time describes the command
not to commit suicide as the sole perfect duty to oneself. He asks
the reader to imagine a person "sick of life" due to a "series of
misfortunes."10 This individual contemplates suicide and the right
ness of that act, framing for herself the maxim, "From self-love I
make it my principle to shorten my life if its continuance threatens
more evil than it promises pleasure." The agent immediately tests
this maxim against the categorical imperative (in its law-of-nature
formulation) and rejects this maxim as not universalizable. Self
love cannot be a law of nature, for it is only a feeling "to stimulate
the furtherance of life." This maxim is self-contradictory, for it
rests the justification of suicide on self-love, a feeling whose nature
directs us to improve life, not to end it. Hence the miserable agent's
maxim is "opposed to the supreme principle of all duty." Kant
repeats this position in the second Critique, asserting that maxims
are adoptable "in order that a system of nature could maintain
itself in accordance with such a law. Obviously in such a system of
nature no one could arbitrarily end his life, for such an arrange
ment could not constitute a permanent natural order."11
On the face of it, Kant's second argument rests on counterfactual
considerations about possible systems of laws or of nature; we seek
to determine whether any hypothetical system of nature in which
suicide was willed would constitute a permanent order. Kant con
cludes that a system of ends in which all rational agents could
permissibly will their own deaths could not constitute such an or
der. But if this is Kant's argument, it seems odd at best and patently
deficient at worst. First off, it is not at all obvious why suicide,
both occasional and widespread, could not play a role in a perma
nent natural order. Hume put the point with typical flair by
comparing suicide to trivial alterations of nature.
And may he not lawfully employ that power which nature has en
dowed him? ... Is it because human life is of such great importance,
that it is a presumption for human prudence to dispose of it? ... A
hair, a fly, an insect, is able to destroy this mighty being whose life
is such importance. Is it an absurdity to suppose that human pru
dence may lawfully dispose of what depends on such insignificant
causes? . . . Where then is the crime of turning a few ounces of
blood from their natural channel?12
In what sense, Hume urges, could suicide be intelligibly deemed

"unnatural"? For the turning of a few ounces of blood from their
natural channel to constitute a morally impermissible act, Kant

must be thinking of nature in special way, as prescribing ends for us,
one of which is our self-preservation. But, as I will suggest, to ground
the prohibition against suicide in some natural end is both contrary to
Kant's insistence that morality's justificatory source must not be a
heteronomous end of nature and to Kant's conception of natural laws.
To appreciate the problems with this second argument, recall
Kant's law-of-nature formulation of the categorical imperative: "Act
as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a
universal law of nature."13 Kant's use here of the law-of-nature for
mulation of the categorical imperative raises some vexing difficulties.
Kant of course thought that all the formulations of the categorical
imperative were logically equivalent, with the role of formulations
such as the law-of-nature formulation being to render more intui
tive the core form of the categorical imperative expressed in the
formula of universal law. But Kant provides little guidance as to
how to employ the law-of-nature formulation; the most concise state
ment of the test is that the agent is to will the universalization of
a system of nature "of which you yourself were a part."14 Further
more, neither the suicide example nor the three subsequent examples
from the Groundwork (false promising, the cultivation of talents,
and benevolence toward the less fortunate) make explicit use of the
notion of willing a law of nature. These four arguments depend for
their force mainly on failures of universalization. Consequently,
most commentators have ignored the law-of-nature formula alto
gether, treated it as just a re-expression of the formula of universal
law, or claimed that "nature" here stands for human nature and
not for "nature" in the sense of the Critique of Pure Reason.15
However, I believe it is important to take Kant at his word here
and at least see what sense can be made of the law-of-nature formu
lation, particularly with respect to Kant's conclusion that the maxim
to end one's life from self-love fails the categorical imperative. I
will attempt to understand Kant's position on suicide with regard
to other formulations of the categorical imperative later.
The law-of-nature formulation contains a crucial ambiguity re
garding its central concept. On the one hand, we may take it to
mean that among the many universal laws of nature, suicide has no
part. That is, suicide is not a candidate to be a law of nature in the
sense given in Kant's theoretical philosophy; it cannot be willed as
one of the lawlike causal generalizations characteristic of natural
scientific inquiry as Kant conceived of it. We may also interpret
this formulation as asserting that suicide could not be the law of
nature. That is, no total system of moral ends, akin to the system
atic totality of scientific laws that Kant believed unified science,
can accommodate suicide.16
Let me deal with the former sense of the formulation first.
Roughly, Kant thought of scientific laws of nature as causal gener
alizations, as indicated in the first Critique s Second Analogy. To
will such a law is not impossible, since one could will a law to the
effect that a particular act should always be performed in order to
bring about a particular end. But the object of such an act of will
would be a hypothetical imperative, "in order to X, always Y," but
valid Kantian moral maxims are categorical and universal in na
ture. Therefore, such acts of will would merely reflect instrumental
reason and would have no moral worth apart from the ends speci
fied by their associated maxims. So interpreted, willing a "law of
nature" is compatible with willing one's own death in order, for
example, to relieve oneself of misery or hardship. But such "max
ims" are only hypothetically binding, and so could hardly make
sense of Kant's adherence to the categoricity of moral require
ments such as the injunction against suicide. Perhaps what Kant
had in mind was that such a maxim would contradict the natural
teleological purpose of self-preservation. We are after all equipped
with a natural inclination to pursue our happiness and our preser
vation, so willing one's own death is to "misuse" this inclination:
"One sees immediately a contradiction in a system of nature whose
law would be to destroy life by the feeling whose special office is to
impel the improvement of life."17 But absent an argument that the
agent must accept this purpose, the moral requirement to preserve
one's life has only contingent normative force. Nothing prevents
the suicidal agent "from willing both the instinct [for the preserva
tion of life] and its purpose be scrapped."18
What is obviously needed is an argument that shows why suicide
cannot be willed as an end. At first glance, Kant's aforementioned
discussion at Groundwork 422 seems designed to accomplish ex
actly that. He seems to claim that the aim of adopting the principle
of self-love is teleological, namely, to further one's own life, but to
will that one could take that life is contrary to the conception of
this principle. Yet again this argument expresses only the hypo
thetical requirement that if one wills the furtherance of one's own
life, then it is contradictory to will its demise.
The serious question then is how suicide is a morally impermis
sible end of the rational will. One way to understand this possibility
is by considering the second interpretation of the law-of-nature
formula that I proposed above, that suicide is not a permissible end

within a system of ends analogous with the system of nature that
is apparently teleological as a whole. As Kant put it in the Critique
of Judgment, we attribute to nature as a whole an inexplicable
purposiveness that makes sense of the apparent unity of natural
phenomena and the seeming comprehensiveness of an ideal system
of science. Whatever order appears in the particulars of nature
and the empirical generalizations derived thereby is only contin
gent, although the supposition that nature as a whole is governed
by a purposiveness whose purpose we cannot ascertain but is sub
jectively necessary for our cognition of nature is a principle of
teleological judgment, according to Kant.
We might suppose then that morality, as a system of ends, must
be guided by an overarching end such that suicide is a precluded
subordinate end. Kant seems to suggest this interpretation when
he claims that self-love can never be the basis for morality because
it fails to generate a harmony of ends.19 The difficulty with the
second interpretation of the law of nature is that Kant does not
here specify this overarching end or why agents are necessarily
committed to it. In the absence of such an end, suicide is not
precluded from being compatible with some system or another of
ends. Taking strictly the analogy with the totality of nature in
Kant's philosophy of science, the individual scientific laws derive
their apparent purposiveness of design only from the teleological
character of nature as a whole. Similarly, the permissibility of sui
cide can only be assessed with a system of willed moral ends whose
comprehensive principle Kant does not identify in this argument.
Without the specification of that comprehensive principle, whether
or not a maxim forbidding suicide conflicts with it is undetermined.
While purposeless purposiveness might do as a systematizing prin
ciple of judgment in natural science, morality must have its
purposiveness (i.e., the highest end around which morality is ori
ented) spelled out.20
Thus, Kant must provide an end that subsumes other moral
ends and that indicates why suicide is incompatible with the re
quirements of rational willing. How is it that suicide is an end our
practical and lawlike reason may not adopt? Clearly, the answer
must have something to do with our practical nature.
Ill
Throughout his discussions of suicide, Kant is especially con
cerned to refute one apparently persuasive argument for the limited
permissibility of suicide, an argument of a Humean or

consequentialist flavor. The argument, more or less, is that we are
sometimes deeply troubled by the prospect of living any longer. In
certain conditions, then, as when our suicide would not gravely
injure others or render them unhappy, we may will our own death
in order to end this misery. Purusing our happiness does not itself
violate any moral requirements, and so the requirement to preserve
one's own life may be overridden in cases like these. Now that is what
Kant expressly rejects?that our happiness, the satisfaction of our
empirically contingent desires, is an aim that morality ever commands
unconditionally. Kant denies that one's own happiness is, by itself, an
end of moral worth. And this denial is the basis for Kant's deeper (and
in my opinion, more nuanced) position on the moral impermissibility
of suicide. Let us try to reconstruct this position.
Despite Kant's image as puritanical and anti-sensualist, he does
recognize the inherent embodiedness of human existence. "Our life
is entirely conditioned by our body, so that we cannot conceive of a
life not mediated by the body."21 The body is a constituent of the
self for finite rational beings such as ourselves. Although our wills'
being subject to empirical, physical determination is the causal
source of motivational heteronomy, we make use of our rational
wills only through our bodies. Furthermore, having a body allows
us to gain theoretical knowledge of the phenomenal world, knowl
edge useful in formulating maxims and in carrying out the means
adequate to our ends. In exercising our wills to destroy the body,
we destroy life; our will is destroyed in the process.22
Here is the key to Kant's opposition to suicide. In Hume, the
good is that of which our naturally endowed moral sense approves.
Reason, for Hume, has only an instrumental role in moral matters.
This is not so for Kant. In Kant, reason is the origin of the a priori
normative constraints that all rational agents recognize. The good
is not some abstract or natural object to be discovered by reason,
but is expressed in a formal principle rational wills legislate for
themselves. Practical reason can be pure of itself, according to
Kant, only because we have the property of autonomy, of setting
binding ends for ourselves. Duty is not alien to reason, but is reason's
own imperative. Kant maintains that our subjection to duty is an
undeniable fact; suicide destroys the rational will, the source of
that duty. Hence, it is contradictory to suppose that reason, the
source of obligation, could ever allow itself to be annihilated. To
imagine that we are "authorized to withdraw from all obligation,
that is, to freely act as if no authorization were needed"23 for suicide
is to formulate a maxim that no rational will can intelligibly formu

late: '"As a rational will and the author of obligation, I make it my
principle to destroy myself." Suicide makes moral obligation, the
highest end of rational wills, impossible.
To annihilate the subject of morality in one's person is to root out
the existence of morality itself from the world as far as one can,
even though morality is an end in itself. Consequently, disposing of
oneself as a mere means to some discretionary end is debasing
humanity in one's person.24
For Kant, suicide motivated by some contingent end (one's hap

piness, pleasure, a desire for posthumous fame, etc.) amounts to
treating the rational will, the very genesis of obligation, as a means
to a conditionally valuable and morally discretionary end. Unlike
our desires for happiness, our moral freedom "cannot subsist ex
cept on a condition which is immutable"25 (i.e., our possession of
an autonomous rational will). Duty is a practically necessary obli
gation, whereas our happiness is idiosyncratic, mercurial, particular,
and most importantly, a heteronomous source for moral choice.
Suicide (at least the sort motivated by the considerations Hume
mentioned) places a greater weight on bodily happiness than on
practical necessity. To kill oneself is to treat oneself as a means
only, typically in order "to maintain a tolerable state of affairs till
the end of life."26 Human beings, oneself included, are not things, and
suicide is incompatible with the idea of humanity as an end in itself.
Furthermore, if suicide were permissible as matter of self-re
gard, as Hume suggested, then suicide is reduced to a means like
any other. To treat suicide as an occasionally permissible hypotheti
cal imperative, as Hume seems to, is to allow each individual's
assessment of their present and future well-being to cancel out
rational obligation. "Suicide is not abominable and inadmissible
because life should be so highly prized; were it so, we could each
have our own opinion of how highly we prize it, and the rule of
prudence would often indicate suicide as the best means."27
Kant acknowledges that one's happiness is an indirect duty, since
being happy wards off the temptations that may cause us to weaken
our moral resolve. So we are allowed to dispose of the negative "atten
dant circumstances" of our bodies, but taking one's life is taking one's
person; suicide is contrary to duty because it eliminates the condition
of all other duties by limiting the use of free will, whose exercise is
"possible only through the existence of the Subject."28
IV
We must keep in mind that Kant's denial that suicide is morally
permissible is a denial that we can frame suicide as an end for
ourselves. No one, not even a sovereign, can bind a rational agent
to have suicide as his end, because the rational agent is autono
mous and selects her own ends independent of any external empirical
determination. Now, Kant's claim that suicide can never be an end
for us does not entail that we have an absolute duty of self-preser
vation. Indeed, for the sake of consistency with his argument that
suicide opposes the very notion of rational obligation, Kant must
claim that rational obligation, whatever that may come to in a
diversity of circumstances, is the highest moral objective, while we
also have a lower-level duty of self-preservation. Hence, Kant must,
and he does, claim that the ends of self-preservation and moral
obligation can come into conflict, and when they do, moral obliga
tion is to be heeded. That is, since suicide is willful self-murder,
cases of intemperance, imprudence^ excess, and fate leading to one's
own death do not amount to suicide. In some instances, however,
one's life is threatened unless one does an act one knows is con
trary to duty. In these cases, Kant grants that we are to obey the
dictates of duty rather than preserve ourselves. Though defending
our honor and struggling against those trying to coerce us into
doing a vicious act is the more worthy option in Kant's eyes, there
is no wrong in submitting to what we might call "indirect" or "pas
sive" suicide. Morality and living honorably are necessary, while
life itself is not. "If I cannot preserve my life except by violating my
duties toward myself, I am bound to sacrifice my life rather than
violate these duties."29
It may be objected that my focus here on the permissibility of
suicide as an end is misguided, since suicide appears to be justified
as a means, according to the examples I just mentioned. This objec
tion wrongly supposes that when allowing oneself to be killed, or
even willing one's own death, that one is willing this result as an
end or under that very description. Yet in each of Kant's examples
in which an apparent suicide is permissible, what one wills is not
one's own death unconditionally, but one's own death as a means
to some other morally required end. Therefore, Kant is immune to
the objection that suicide is itself willed in these examples.
What this objection rightly calls attention to is that the duty not
to commit suicide is a perfect duty, a duty not to adopt suicide as
a means, which in turn follows from a duty of self-preservation.

Since the duty of self-preservation is perfect it prescribes both an
end and a universal means (not aiming at one's death) as well.
There is no duty precluding suicide apart from the duty of self
preservation. Preserving one's life is a duty, then, only when it
accords with the demands of rationally imposed duty. Our first, but
not our principal, duty to ourselves is self-preservation; as we are
both animal and rational beings, discharging our moral obligations
is the principal duty for us. Yet suicide can never accord with our
human dignity. Thus it is possible for us to be subject to a morally
required end for which the necessary means is one's death, but this
does not oppose the duty of self-preservation.
The most plausible and most Kantian view therefore places the
wrongness of suicide in the agent's erroneous belief that one is
authorized to destroy a source of rational obligation.30 Contrary to
Hume, happiness is not just one more element in our subjective
motivational set. Rather, morality is a condition of happiness for
Kant. Happiness, although not to be held in utter moral disrepute,
is an elusive goal in this life, a wayward state that can never serve
as the law for autonomous rational wills who recognize a categori
cal imperative. The highest good contains happiness as a constituent,
but happiness is to be accorded only in proportion to an agent's
moral worthiness. Happiness is a contingent moral good; moral
obligation arising from a formal principle autonomously legislated
is a necessary good. A common form of suicide, suicide undertaken
to relieve one's misery, inverts this relationship.
This third argument neither supposes nor draws upon the decid
edly un-Kantian speculations about God and our relation to Him
found in the Lectures on Ethics . Suicide opposes God's purposes,
Kant claims, but "suicide is not inadmissible and abominable be
cause God has forbidden it; God has forbidden it because it is
abominable."31 We are, in some sense, Gods unto ourselves in Kant's
moral theory. As the source of law, rational wills cannot suppose
that their self-destruction is ever warranted. Just as "a being who
existed of his own necessity could not possibly destroy himself,"
nor can human beings, possessors of rational wills that obligate
necessarily, destroy themselves. Necessity cannot cancel necessity.
Were God merely a human construction, suicide would still be
anathema to reason.
Nor does this second argument rest on a confused sense of will
ing a maxim as a natural law. Since suicide cannot fit into a system
of ends in which the autonomy and dignity of the rational will is
the source of moral normativity, it cannot be a morally permissible

end. In retrospect, however, we can see how the law-of-nature for
mulation Kant urged upon us in the Groundwork can be understood
as to disallow suicide: Because no system of ends, analogous to a
system of nature governed by particular scientific laws, having sui
cide as a component is consistent with moral valuation in general,
suicide is morally prohibited. What is crucial is that suicide may
not consistently be willed as a law of nature, lest the rational will
subject itself to intractable contradiction, for it is the will, and not
nature, that grounds obligation.32 Similarly, we can now see why, in
light of the understanding of the rational will as self-legislating
according to a law, the Groundworks argument makes sense in
terms of the formula of universal law. In willing one's own death
from the motive of self-love, an agent prescribes for all rational
agents what is contrary to rational agency itself. However, among
all the expressions of the categorical imperative, perhaps the for
mula of the end-in-itself best captures the flavor of Kant's prohibition
on suicide. The will is a law unto itself, and as the rational will is
its own end, there can be no law or principle according to which
the destruction of the will through self-murder is permissible. Un
der each formulation though, the contradiction in question is
practical, as the will offers forth a maxim whose end opposes the
will's own autonomy and ground of obligation.
V
Let me now conclude with some observations gleaned fr
above discussion.
First, despite the severity of his own language, Kant w
to make room for some kinds of intentional self-killing
derstand "suicide" simply as killing oneself, or allowing
be killed, where this is knowing and/or intentional, Ka
has room for such acts as morally permissible. Where Ka
is that we may not will our own deaths either as an end in
as a means to some morally impermissible end. To descr
view as absolutist therefore neglects his more subtle tre
the various ways in which conduct resulting in one's on
should be evaluated, namely, in terms of the ends will
maxims prescribing such conduct.
Indeed, Kant does not attempt to provide an authorita
sion procedure or test by which any conceivable dilemma su
self-preservation could be answered. In the Metaphysics of
Kant states that although the duty not to take one's ow
undeniable, many "casuistical questions" remain. May one will one's

own death for the good of one's country or for humankind gener
ally? Should a man bitten by a rabid dog seek his own death rather
than risk exposing others to his fatal illness?33 Kant does not an
swer these questions because self-preservation, as with all wide
duties, involves both reduced stringency and, hence, more sophisti
cated judgment. That is, while the maxim not to will one's own
death is categorically binding, it may be limited by other maxims.34
Furthermore, because suicide is a question not of Right but of
virtue (i.e., its requirements cannot be enforced by an external
lawgiver), we lack a general method for the application of broad
maxims such as that against suicide. "Ethics," that part of moral
philosophy dealing with virtue, "inevitably leads to questions that
call upon judgment to decide how a maxim is to be applied in
particular cases."35 Therefore, questions like the permissibility of
suicide are not settled by any decision procedure, be it based di
rectly on the categorical imperative or on any general maxim. The
imprecision of such duties thus throws us back upon the shoals of
hoary casuistical questions.
As mentioned above, Kant's arguments nearly always return to
the claim that one's own happiness never overrides the duty of self
preservation. The need for casuistry, along with Kant's continual
attempts to refute arguments that allow suicide when it furthers
one's happiness, suggest to me that we should read Kant's discus
sions of suicide less as attempts at applying his account of right
action to provide a systematic account of when suicide is permis
sible and when not than as an elaboration of Kant's views of moral
and non-moral value in general. Kant tries to show that one's own
happiness is irrelevant to suicide because that is a source of heter
onomy, whereas moral value is a function of the ends and maxims
willed as universal laws by the rational and autonomous agent. We
can here see Kant further spelling out his theory of value in his
discussions of suicide; his desire for a final and authoritative an
swer as to when we may kill ourselves is a complementary objective
of his discussions. The above remarks have been perhaps too sug
gestive. Yet it is worth noting that Kant's prohibition on suicide is
hardly as severe as it seems at first blush and is much more tenta
tive than conventional interpretations acknowledge.
Let me conclude with some remarks on the harsh tone Kant has
for suicidal individuals; he claims they degrade themselves below
the level of beasts and are worthy of the highest moral scorn.
Undoubtedly, many (myself included) are inclined to treat the sui
cidal individual sympathetically, wondering what sort of grave dis

content or misery could lead a person to contemplate such a
frightening act, and if we have in some way contributed to that
state or failed to recognize its urgency. While we may have moral
qualms with the intentions of suicidal individuals, these qualms
seem out of place when dealing with an individual whose self-worth
already teeters on the edge of emptiness. In the one known in
stance in which Kant came face to face with suicide, captured in
his correspondence with Maria von Herbert, his reaction was part
indifference and part ineptitude.36 To condemn the suicidal person
strikes me as callous, even if we believe that Kant has captured the
core of suicide's moral incorrectness.
Moreover, Kant's account of the phenomenology of suicide seems
inaccurate, or at least incomplete. Serious suicides, those in which
death really is the aim instead of calling attention to one's suffer
ing, etc., are less rational than Kant's account suggests. Kant
portrays the typical suicidal person as a calm Humean or
consequentialist, weighing the meager prospects for future happi
ness against the relief death would bring and opting for the latter.
I suspect that many suicides, especially those caused by severe
depression, alienation, or isolation, are more desperate than this
and rarely involve such careful weighing of the alternatives. A sense
of despondency pervades many suicides. The individual does not
select one value over another, but lacks the capacity for care, moral
or otherwise. Such cases represent not the triumph of prudence
over duty, as Kant would have it, but the suffocation of hope by
nihilism. Considering what a Kantian account of suicide that took
stock of these points might look like is surely a fruitful enterprise.
For all this, I suspect that my reconstruction of Kant's analysis
of suicide's moral significance is closer to our ordinary moral sen
sibility than we might imagine. The kinds of considerations Kant
raises are those that I think many of us would call upon to explain
why suicide is such a profound moral tragedy. Human beings enjoy
autonomy and exercise their rational wills to place themselves un
der obligation. This amounts to a sort of dignity, a dignity that no
person or circumstance, not even the agent herself, can rightfully
terminate.
University of Virginia
NOTES
References to Kant's works are as follows. All references, except those

to the Lectures on Ethics, are to the Berlin Akademie edition pagination
and to Mary Gregor's translations in Kant's Practical Philosophy (Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). References are to the
Metaphysics of Morals (MM), Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
(G), and the Critique of Practical Reason (C). References to the Lectures
on Ethics are to page numbers in the edition translated by Louis Infield
(London: Methuen and Co., 1930).
1. MM 422-23.
2. Numerous portrayals of Kant's view as absolutist, extreme, and
indefensible can be found in the literature. A notable example is John
Donnelly's anthology, Suicide: Right or Wrong? (Buffalo: Prometheus
Books, 1990). Simon Blackburn, in his entry on suicide in the Oxford
Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), calls
Kant's view "conservative" and allied with the traditional Christian pro
hibition of suicide. Barbara Herman, though a defender of Kant generally,
dismisses at least the Groundwork argument in "Murder and Mayhem,"
chapter six of her book The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press,1993).
3. MM 422-23.
4. That Kant's writings on suicide were likely not a response to Hume's
now-influential essay can be established by two considerations. (1) The
ancient Stoics undoubtedly cast the greatest shadow on Kant's views on
suicide. For the details of the relation of Kant and the Stoics on suicide,
see Michael J. Seidler, "Kant and the Stoics on Suicide," Journal of the
History of Ideas, vol. 44 (1983), pp. 429-54, and David N. James, "Sui
cide and Stoic Ethics in the Doctrine of Virtue," Kant-Studien, vol. 90
(1999), pp. 40-58. (2) Kant may not have had Hume's "Of suicide" avail
able to him. Hume submitted the essay to his publisher around 1755, but
withdrew it due to its likelihood to generate opposition from religious
authorities. A number of copies of the essay were distributed in advance
of publication, and it appeared in a French translation in 1770. The essay
was first published in English in 1777, but neither Hume's name nor his
publisher's appears on the title page. The first edition acknowledging
Hume's authorship appeared subsequently. Mossner mentions in The Life
of David Hume (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1954) that an edition in German
appeared by the end of the eighteenth century but does not provide a
precise date. Thus, the availability of the essay to Kant, even subsequent
to Hume's death in 1776, is uncertain. See Eugene F. Miller's notes to the
essay in his volume of Hume's Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (In
dianapolis: Liberty, 1987).
5. LE 154.
6. LE 154.
7. MM 283.
8. MM 283.
9. I appreciate an anonymous referee's making me aware of this
possibility.
10. G 422.
11. C 44.
12. " Of suicide," 583 (in Miller, op. cit.).
13. G 421.
14. C 69.
15. A noteworthy recent exception to the trend of assimilating the law
of-nature formulation to the universal law formulation is Christine
Korsgaard, "Kant's Formula of Universal Law," Pacific Philosophical Quar
terly, vol. 66 (1985), pp. 24-47. An earlier commentator who, in my
opinion, misconstrues how the law-of-nature formulation is to be applied
is H. J. Paton, in chapter 15 of The Categorical Imperative: A Study in
Kant's Moral Philosophy (London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1947).
Herman treats "nature" as human nature in "Mutual Aid and Respect for
Persons," Ethics, vol. 94 (1984), pp. 579-80.
16. These two senses correspond very roughly to Korsgaard's two ver
sions of "the Teleological Interpretation" of the formula of universal law.
See "Formula of Universal Law," part II.
17. G 422.
18. Korsgaard, "Formula of Universal Law," p. 35.
19. C 28.
20. A worthwhile discussion of Kant's opposition to "natural obliga
tion" can be found in Lewis White Beck, A Commentary on Kant's Critique
of Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp.
123-24. Kant's use of the law-of-nature formula in the Groundwork ex
ample obviously raises the possibility that Kant was making use of a
natural law idiom that, while familiar to his readers, was vastly different
from Kant's use of a law of nature here.
21. LE 147-48.
22. This is a peculiar claim in light of Kant's practical postulation of
the immortality of the soul in the Critique of Practical Reason. The rec
onciliation of these two assertions undoubtedly turns on the distinction
between theoretical and practical reason, but Kant's point here, that death
annuls the condition of our exercising the commands of our rational will,
is straightforward enough.
23. MM 422-23.
24. MM 423.
25. LE 156.
26. G 429.
27. LE 154.
28. LE 149.
29. LE 151.
30. Seidler ("Kant and the Stoics on Suicide," pp. 441-452) provides a
similar account of Kant's fundamental argument. Seidler claims that be
cause Kant grounded moral value in autonomy, he could not allow for suicide,
despite his admiration of the Stoic justification of suicide when factual cir
cumstances threaten the agent's moral worth, functionally understood.
31. LE 154.
32. Kant emphasizes the distinction between a law of nature and will
ing a law of nature in his three other "illustrations" of the law-of-nature
test at work. See G 422-24.
33. MM 423.
34. MM 390.
35. MM 411.
36. For a fascinating account of Kant's cruelty toward her and his
silence in the face of her suicidal impulses, see Rae Langton, "Duty and
Desolation," Philosophy, vol. 67 (1992), pp. 481-505.

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KANT AND THE IRRATIONALITY OF

The life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than

the rational will is the source of moral worth, suicide cannot be

This first argument is regrettably imprecise, with Kant both

In what sense, Hume urges, could suicide be intelligibly deemed

natural channel to constitute a morally impermissible act, Kant

formula that I proposed above, that suicide is not a permissible end

permissibility of suicide, an argument of a Humean or

is to formulate a maxim that no rational will can intelligibly formu

For Kant, suicide motivated by some contingent end (one's hap

a means, which in turn follows from a duty of self-preservation.

the source of moral normativity, it cannot be a morally permissible

undeniable, many "casuistical questions" remain. May one will one's

cidal individual sympathetically, wondering what sort of grave dis

References to Kant's works are as follows. All references, except those

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