Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-9knnw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-01T13:15:24.710Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

No King and No Torture: Kant on Suicide and Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2016

Jennifer Uleman
Jennifer Uleman*
Affiliation:
Purchase College, State University of New York
*
Email: jennifer.uleman@purchase.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Kant’s most canonical argument against suicide, the universal law argument, is widely dismissed. This paper attempts to save it, showing that a suicide maxim, universalized, undermines all bases for practical law, resisting both the non-negotiable value of free rational willing and the ordinary array of sensuous commitments that inform prudential incentives. Suicide therefore undermines moral law-governed community as a whole, threatening ‘savage disorder’. In pursuing this argument, I propose a non-teleological and non-theoretical nature – a ‘practical nature’ or moral law governed whole – the realization of which morality demands.

Keywords

Kantsuicidemoral lawpractical naturemoral communitylawlessness

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 77 - 100
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Allison, Henry E. (2011) Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brassington, I. (2006) ‘Killing People: What Kant Could have Said about Suicide and Euthanasia but Did Not’. Journal of Medical Ethics, 32 (10), 571–574.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cholbi, Michael J. (2000) ‘Kant and the Irrationality of Suicide’. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 17 (2), 159–176.Google Scholar
Cholbi, Michael J. (2002) ‘Suicide Intervention and Non-Ideal Kantian Theory’. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 19, 245–259.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cholbi, Michael J. (2010) ‘A Kantian Defense of Prudential Suicide’. Journal of Moral Philosophy, 7, 489–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooley, Dennis R. (2007) ‘A Kantian Moral Duty for the Soon-to-be-Demented to Commit Suicide’. American Journal of Bioethics, 7 (6), 37–44.Google ScholarPubMed
Gunderson, Martin (2004) ‘A Kantian View of Suicide and End-of-Life Treatment’. Journal of Social Philosophy, 35 (2), 277–287.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Guyer, Paul (2007) Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Reader’s Guide. London and New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Harter, Thomas D. (2011) ‘Reconsidering Kant on Suicide’. The Philosophical Forum, 42 (2), 167–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1991) Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], trans. H. B. Nisbet, ed. Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herman, Barbara (1993) ‘Leaving Deontology Behind’. In The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), pp. 208–240.Google Scholar
Hill, Thomas E. Jr. (1991) ‘Self-Regarding Suicide: A Modified Kantian View’. In Autonomy and Self-Respect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 85–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hume, David (1984) ‘Suicide’ [1755]. In Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics), pp. 577–589.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1970a) ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose’, ed. Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet. In Kant: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 41–53.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1970b) ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’, ed. Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet. In Kant: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 93–130.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1991) Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1997a) Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1997b) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1997c) Lectures on Ethics, ed. Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind, trans. Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1998) Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, and Other Writings, trans. and ed. Allen Wood and George di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2000) Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2006) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. and ed. Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine (1996a) ‘Kant’s Formula of Universal Law’. In Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 77–105. Originally published 1985 in Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 66, 24–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine (1996b) ‘Kant’s Formula of Humanity’. In Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 106–132. Originally published 1986 in Kant-Studien, 77(2), 183–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langton, Rae (1992) ‘Duty and Desolation’. Philosophy, 67, 481–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latham, Stephen (2007) ‘Kant Condemned All Suicide’. American Journal of Bioethics, 7 (6), 49–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moran, Kate (2012) Community and Progress in Kant’s Moral Philosophy. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, Seiriol (2005) ‘The Missing Formal Proof of Humanity’s Radical Evil in Kant’s Religion’. Philosophical Review, 114 (1), 83–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Neill, Onora (1975) Acting on Principle. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
O’Neill, Onora (1989) ‘Consistency in Action’. In Constructions of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 81–104.Google Scholar
Paton, H. J. (1964) Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. and analysed H. J. Paton. New York: Harper & Row), Originally published as The Moral Law (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1948).Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Sally (2008) Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Timmermann, Jens (2007) Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tonkens, Ryan S. (2007) ‘A Reply to Cholbi’s “Suicide Intervention and Non-Ideal Kantian Theory”’. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 24 (4), 397–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uleman, Jennifer (2004) ‘External Freedom in Kant’s Rechtslehre: Political, Metaphysical’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 68 (3), 578–601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uleman, Jennifer (2010) An Introduction to Kant’s Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Unna, Yvonne (2003) ‘Kant’s Answers to the Casuistical Questions Concerning Self-Disembodiment’. Kant-Studien, 94, 454–473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Velleman, J. David (2008) ‘Beyond Price’. Ethics, 118, 191–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1961) Notebooks 1914–16, 2nd edn, ed. G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. G. E. M Anscombe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen (1999) Kant’s Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar