On Suicide: Reflections Upon Camus' View of the Problem

Throughout the ages suicide has been studied almost exclusively by moralists and philosophers who have attempted to define suicide, as well as determine whether or not and under what conditions it should be permitted. Today, suicide is more a subject of scientific investigation. Those interested want to know the facts and their ‘causes’ and try to find means of preventing both the causes and the number of suicides.42

Philosophers, according to Van Vyve,49 50 feel that we must make a clear distinction among voluntary and freely chosen death, indirectly voluntary death, suicide in the strict sense of the term, and sacrifice. By a voluntary and freely chosen death is meant any death which, directly or indirectly, follows a positive or negative act performed by the victim himself with the explicit intention of obtaining this result. Suicide is a voluntary death caused in conjunction with a guilty intention so that the one who commits suicide knows that he is committing a morally bad act. The indirectly voluntary death is the death willed and intended as a means of obtaining something good which is of equal or greater value than the preservation of life. By sacrifice is understood the death caused or accepted in order to obtain something good which compensates for the loss of life.

In comparing these circumscriptions it is clear that those authors who endorse them admit implicitly that suicide is the act of one who, being perfectly sane, takes his own life. All of them share the opinion