The Stoics and suicide The Stoic perspective on suicide may strike some as paradoxical or even contradictory. Famous passages endorse the act as legitimate, at least within certain circumstances. Epictetus invokes the metaphor of an exit door to life in multiple places, for example in saying:

Remember this: the door is open; don’t be more cowardly than children, but do like them when something does not please them. They say “I will play no longer." So when things seem to you of that sort, you then say “I will no longer play", and depart — Epictetus, Discourses 1.24

Seneca notes the Stoic view is by no means the commonly held one in their times. There are even people some considered wise who viewed taking one’s own life as accursed (nefas), since we should instead wait for an exit from life that nature has decided. His response is that:

He who says this does not see that he cheats himself of freedom. The eternal law did nothing better than when it gave us one entrance into life, it gave us multiple exits. — Seneca, Moral Letters 70

These passages, among many others, might suggest that Stoics thought that suicide was morally permissible for anyone who chooses it, regardless of their reasons for doing away with themselves, or their mindset, their viewpoint, their character. That was decidedly not the case.

In perhaps its most stark form, we see Arius Didymus summarizing the Stoic view:

They say that sometimes the exit from life can arise appropriately (kathēkontōs) for good persons (spoudaiois), in multiple manners, but that for the morally worthless (phaulois) and those who are not going to be wise in the future, only [remaining] in life is [appropriate]. — Arius Didymus, Epitome 11m

His explanation for this distinction is:

For virtue does not hold them [the good] in living and vice does not cast them out of it. But life and death are measured by the things that are appropriate and the things that are inappropriate. — Epitome, 11m

Beyond the question of morality

The general Stoic view doesn’t just bear upon whether suicide is morally permissible, but involves a number of other considerations. What sort of person one is, virtuous or vicious, wise or foolish, is one. What is “appropriate” or the opposite, which we can also translate as what accords with one’s duties or contravenes them, also makes these matters more concrete. One’s motivations in doing what leads to life’s end, the valuations and priorities enmeshed within them, that too figures in.

Suicide, not just for sages

Suicide isn’t only for sages. One might argue Socrates or Cato, both of whom killed themselves, provided concrete examples of the legendary wise person, but there was no consensus among Stoics on that matter. Seneca clearly considered his own deliberate exit a right action (though wrongly ordered by the tyrant Nero), but he also very explicitly denies himself being remotely close to sagehood or even full virtue. When is suicide wrong then? It might be better to ask for what sorts of persons is it wrong? For the Stoics, there are several answers. It might be a person who chooses it prompted by a passion, a strong emotion that overcomes one’s rationality. Grief, despair, pain, unrequited love, even anger furnish bad motivations.

The role of indifferents

So does another emotion, fear, suggesting another criterion. Marcus articulates a common Stoic teaching:

[D]eath and life, reputation and its lack, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these happen to good and bad people alike, and they are neither noble nor shameful, and so neither good nor bad. — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.11

These are all indifferents. Though indeed “preferred” and “dispreferred” indifferents (so they do have some value), the loss of any preferred indifferent or the threat of some dispreferred one does not provide reason to dispose of life with a lack of justice, courage, or prudence.

Epictetus discusses yet another reason a person could have no good cause for committing suicide, obstinacy in sticking to one’s own bad judgments.

It is good to make firm commitments and to follow through, but only if what one determines is actually the right thing — Epictetus, Discourses 2.17

To bring this to a close, perhaps we might keep in mind that Epictetus speaks of an actual companion of his, who he managed with difficulty to talk out of killing himself by starvation. When or whether suicide might make sense or not, be right or wrong, is not just an abstract doctrine, but also for some an existential matter, one to which the Stoics might contribute some useful clarity.

Greg Sadler is the president of ReasonIO, a member of the Modern Stoicism Team, an APPA-certified philosophical counselor, and teaches at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.

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