Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer and the Metaphysics of Suicide

Modesto Gómez-Alonso

doi:10.7213/1980-5934.30.049.ao02

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that the meaning of Wittgenstein’s remarks on suicide should be elucidated against the background of the transcendental picture that permeates Wittgenstein’s early writings. This picture is, in its essentials, Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of the Will. It is part of my purpose here to argue that the question of suicide such as Wittgenstein raises it, far from being a side issue, is internally related to problems concerning the ethical integration of Will and world, and the meaning of the world. As it will be seen, Wittgenstein manages to present a highly original view on the fundamental character of ethics that combines asceticism with an affirmative attitude to the world. Suicide would undermine ethics. As such, it stands for a nihilistic worldview.

Highlights

It would be tempting to see Wittgenstein’s remarks on suicide from a cultural and psychological perspective
I argue that the meaning of Wittgenstein’s remarks on suicide should be elucidated against the background of the transcendental picture that permeates Wittgenstein’s early writings. This picture is, in its essentials, Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of the Will. It is part of my purpose here to argue that the question of suicide such as Wittgenstein raises it, far from being a side issue, is internally related to problems concerning the ethical integration of Will and world, and the meaning of the world
Wittgenstein was too great a philosopher not to have elucidated the problem of suicide from a perspective that, much it touches the whole of the person, possesses an objective dimension that is irreducible to the circumstances and personality of the thinker

Summary

Introduction

It would be tempting to see Wittgenstein’s remarks on suicide from a cultural and psychological perspective. The first thing to say about the previous texts is that by connecting the problem of suicide with the question about the ultimate value and meaning of the world —the latter being, as Wittgenstein is eager to point, inherently related to the dichotomy between the good and the evil Will This, in turn, raises the question of whether, suicide appearing to be an unfree act —the rushing of one’s own defences—that the I can never voluntary choose, it is neither moral nor immoral This is what the final interrogation in the Notebooks seems to consider —whether suicide is not situated, after all, beyond good and evil, lacking as such any ethical significance. What unifies it is the thought that the transcendental I is the judge of the world and the measurer of things (NB, p. 82)

Wittgenstein’s Schopenhauerian Transcendentalism and the problem of suicide

Asceticism and the Affirmation of the World