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As a notion, suicide is riddled with ideological baggage. Forbidden by most religions and snubbed by societal norms, the concept of self-annihilation often stirs emotions. On a more subtle level, this ought to be the case for philosophical suicide.

Alas, it isn’t. Ironically enough, as we’ll see, the reasons are related (at least indirectly) to the very dogmatism informing physical suicide.

But what is philosophical suicide?

Very briefly, philosophical suicide is an essentially ad-hoc attempt to explain away the inconsistency between the human desire for existential purpose and the apparent lack of such a purpose.

The term is heavily related to the concept of the absurd as described by Albert Camus. Therefore, in order to define philosophical suicide (also described by Camus), we must first take a quick look at the absurd.

From the Absurd to Philosophical Suicide

Briefly, the absurd here refers to the (effectively unbridgeable) gap between the human desire for meaning and inherent valueFor a detailed look at the concepts of meaning and inherent value, see my post on nihilism versus fatalism and the apparent lack of both meaning and inherent value.

Hence, in this framework, philosophical suicide is a leap of faith that attempts to bridge this gap.

Any religious, spiritual, transcendental (I’m tempted to squeeze in the word “quantum” in there) idea that explains away the unpleasant inconsistency, is an act of philosophical suicide.

Possible Solutions to the Absurd

Camus – as I understand him at least – saw three possible options to attempt an escape from existential absurdity.

• physical suicide. If life has no inherent meaning and one cannot accommodate one’s desire to find it, ending one’s own life is one possible option. Parenthetically, Camus rejected this not for moral or other similar reasons, but as an option that doesn’t resolve the predicament.
• philosophical suicide. This is what I described above. If one sees no apparent meaning in the universe, they can choose to believe that there still is such a meaning, only it is inaccessible to human rational thought. Kierkegaard often features as a poster boy for this kind of cop-out.
• accepting the absurd. For Camus, this is the only viable solution. It’s the acceptance of this unbridgeable inconsistency, continuing to live in a state of maximized (intellectual) freedom.

In his The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus uses the mythological hero as an example of conquering absurdity. According to Camus, when Sisyphus realizes the absurdity of his condition, he reaches a certain state of freedom and contentment. One, says Camus, should even consider Sisyphus to be happy – though for an… alternative view of what Sisyphus might have thought of Camus, see the relevant episode of the excellent Existential Comics series!

Overall, Camus seems to suggest a kind of paradoxical solution: freedom predicated on the lack of choices, and a state of being imposed on the individual. This is conceptually a hard pill to swallow, but there is merit in such a line of thought.

Why Is Philosophical Suicide so Attractive?

Of course, this question assumes it’s attractive. But if we examined the sociocultural reality around us, we would have to admit the fact. Indeed, examining our environment we would not only see that the assumption is true, but we’d also discover why it is true.

How many people do you personally know who prefer a comforting lie rather than an unpleasant truth? Moreover, how many people do you know who become so desperate in finding a cause that they literally invent one instead of confessing ignorance?

Our world is replete with people craving for answers, preferably simple ones. As a species, we also seem to suffer from delusions of being special and unique.

Philosophical Suicide and the Decline of Writing

Even in art (and writing in particular), the quality of texts surrounding us seems to be declining, with less and less symbolism and abstraction and more and more linearity and explicitness.

What’s that got to do with philosophical suicide, you might ask. And so, I answer: in that people seem less and less comfortable with the apparent literary absurdityAlthough I’m deploying the concept of the absurd here as a parallel, the allegory is not a strong one. The key difference from Camus’s existential absurd is that, in a literary context, the gap between desiring all the answers and not having them is, on the one hand, far less unbridgeable, and, on the other, far more likely to be a conscious authorial choice, rather than an inherent property of the system, like existential absurdity. In simpler terms, complaining about a novel not answering all the questions often says more about the reader than the novel. of not having all the answers. Negative capability, in other words.

Can We Accept the Absurd as the most Viable Option?

Just as it happened earlier, this question also contains an assumption. This time, however, the assumption is false – which effectively renders the question a loaded one.

The assumption is that “we” is a valid subject for the verb “accept”. In other words, the question assumes that all of us have an equal responsibility (in lieu of a better term) to embrace the absurd as the most viable option.

If… we were intellectually honest, we would have to admit that Camus’s argumentation is philosophically solid. That is, it’s argued efficiently – at least within its systemIf you’re interested in the philosophy of logic, you might find parallels with Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. Kurt Gödel formulated these theorems in the context of the philosophy of mathematics, but other branches have since attempted to adopt them. In very broad terms, Gödel suggested that a system is either incomplete or inconsistent – that is, any system complex enough will always entail a proposition that is unprovable within the system., with all its epistemological and metaphysical limitations (in a sense, what we know and what we are).

The problem is, just because an option is (arguably) the most philosophically solid, this doesn’t entail it’s the most viable. To put it simply, if we here defined “viable” as the option allowing one to continue living – as if nothing had happened, in a way – then accepting the absurd is out of the question for a vast majority of people – for reasons I showed earlier.

A Conflict between Knowing and Acting on It

Knowing – to be a precursor of true freedom, intellectual freedom – entails acting on this knowledge. Otherwise, acquiring knowledge and remaining unchanged becomes little more than a pointless hobby.

That’s what most people struggle with. And that’s the reason philosophical suicide – and sometimes actual suicide – seems like the only escape from the absurd.