Hume on Suicide

This essay examines Hume's attitude to suicide, in which he had an ongoing philosophical interest, as found in the dialogue at the end of An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, and in his brief essay on the topic. His attitude to, arguments, and views on suicide are placed in the context of his other writings and biographical elements from his own life. The views of other early modern thinkers to suicide, Locke, Kant, and Montaigne, are presented and their arguments evaluated for contrast and comparison with Hume's views. The views of other writers, most notably the Stoics and St. Thomas Aquinas, are also examined to further elucidate Hume's views. By carefully reconstructing and evaluating his argument, Hume's line of reasoning on suicide is found to be out of harmony with his general moral philosophy. The major weakness of his argument is identified as the failure to realize the harm caused to others by suicide. Notes 1. I would like to thank Chistopher Hixon Anderson for the preparation of this manuscript. I am indebted throughout this essay to Michael Cholbi's erudite article, "Suicide," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Earnest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 198–200. 2. Mossner, The Life of David Hume, 202–3. See also, Roderick Graham, The Great Infidel: A Life of David Hume (Edinburgh: Tuckwell Press, 2004), 160–61. 3. David Hume, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); hereafter abbreviated as Enquiry and cited in the text. 4. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1980), 6, 9; 27, 19. 5. Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 6, 9. 6. Nicholas Jolley, Locke: His Philosophical Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 203. 7. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1981), 31. 8. Michel de Montaigne, "A Custom of the Isle of Cea," in The Complete Essays, trans. M. A. Screech (London: Penguin, 1991), 392–407. 9. Patrick Henry, "The Dialectic of Suicide in Montaigne's 'Coustume de l'Isle de Cea'," The Modern Language Review 79.2 (1984): 278–89. 10. Montaigne, "A Custom of the Isle of Cea," 393, 394. 11. Henry, "The Dialectic of Suicide," 282–85. 12. See Judith Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1984), 10. 13. Michael Cholbi, "Suicide," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), ed. Edward N. Zalta (2012), URL = , 2.1. 14. Hume, Enquiry, 105. 15. In a long footnote at the end of "Of Suicide" Hume makes it clear that he believes the Christian scriptures accord with what he takes the position of the Greeks and Romans to be. When Hume speaks of religious superstition, then, he is not referring to Christianity itself, but rather to the accretions of traditions that have become attached to Christianity. 16. In "Suicide," 2.2, Cholbi suggests that Socrates follows the Pythagoreans on this point. See also the discussion of Montaigne's use of St. Augustine in Henry, "The Dialectic of Suicide," 282. 17. For a different reconstruction of Hume's response to St. Thomas, see Tom Beauchamp, "An Analysis of Hume's Essay 'On Suicide'," The Review of Metaphysics 30.1 (1976): 73–95. 18. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part II, Question 64, Article 5, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.SS_Q64_A5.html. 19. David Hume, "Of Suicide," in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller, rev. ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Classics, 1985), 580; hereafter cited in the text. 20. Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 31. 21. Hume, Treatise, 2.3.3.4, 266. 22. This point is well-developed by G. R. MacLean in "Hume and the Theistic Objection to Suicide," American Philosophical Quarterly 38.1 (2001), 99–111

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