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Suicide and Self-starvation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Terence M. O'Keeffe
Terence M. O'Keeffe
Affiliation:
University of Ulster
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Abstract

A puzzle has been presented in the recent past in Northern Ireland: what is the correct description of the person who dies as a result of a hungerstrike? For many the simple answer is that such a person commits suicide, in that his is surely a case of ‘self-inflicted death’. Where then is the puzzle? It is that a number of people do not see such deaths as suicides. I am not here referring to political propagandists or paramilitaries, for whom the correct description of such deaths is ‘murder by Mrs Thatcher’ or ‘killed by British intransigence’ (to quote advertisements in the Belfast nationalist press at the time of Bobby Sands' death). I am rather thinking of some theologians who, despite being opposed to the hunger-strike and indeed publicly condemning the whole campaign, refused to describe what the hunger-strikers did as suicide.

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Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 59 , Issue 229 , July 1984 , pp. 349 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1984

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References

1 The medical certificates were amended to record the cause of death as ‘starvation’, after protests by the families of the dead hunger-strikers at the original pathologist's report which recorded ‘self-imposed starvation’. The coroner found that the cause of death was ‘starvation, self-imposed’.

2 Brandt, Richard, ‘The Morality and Rationality of Suicide‘ in Moral Problems, Rachels, J. (ed.) (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 375–6.Google Scholar

3 Ibid. 376.

4 Holland, R. F., ‘Suicide‘ in Talk of God (Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures Volume 2, 1967–1968), 82.Google Scholar

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6 Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, section 69.

7 Op. cit. note 5, 119.

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11 Op. cit. note 4, 89–81.

12 This is the definition of suicide given by Margolis, Joseph in ‘Suicide‘ in Ethical Issues in Death and Dying, Beauchamp, T. L. and Perlin, S. (eds) (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978), 92–97.Google Scholar Margolis wishes to distinguish the case of the person who rationally and non-instrumentally wishes to end his life from cases where the person acts irrationally (e.g. mental illness) or instrumentally (e.g. self-sacrificing deaths).

13 Foot, Philippa, ‘The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect‘ in The Oxford Review 5 (1967)Google Scholar; Bennett, Jonathan, ‘Whatever the Consequences‘ in Analysis 26 (1966).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 E.g. Thomson, Judith Jarvis, ‘Killing, Letting Die and the Trolley Problem‘ in The Monist 59 (1976)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Duff, R. A., ‘Intentionally Killing the Innocent‘ in Analysis 33 (1973).Google Scholar

1 E.g. Dinello, Daniel, ‘On Killing and Letting Die‘ in Analysis 31 (1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Russell, Bruce, ‘On the Relative Strictness of Negative and Positive Duties‘ in American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977).Google ScholarPubMed

16 Anscombe, G. E. M., ‘War and Murder‘ in Nuclear War and Christian Conscience, Stein, Walter (ed) (London: Merlin Press, 1961), 50.Google Scholar

17 This paper was first read to the Philosophy Staff Seminar at the University of Warwick, and a revised version to the Staff Seminar at the New University of Ulster. I am grateful for the helpful discussion and criticism I received.