Pythagorean philosophers deprecated a voluntary end to life because, to them, life is sacred. Pythagoras taught that each of us is stationed at a guard post, responsible for attending to it until we are dismissed. Plato would borrow the idea, which remained a cogent metaphor for centuries.
- Jennifer Michael Hecht, Stay
DID NO ONE EDIT THIS. And it's illiterate too -- she fumbles on about Euripides before concluding "Euripides values life and seems to disapprove of suicide." Medea? Never heard of her, apparently. How, how did this get published at all, let alone reviewed favourably? How?
In her unwillingness to interrogate the concepts she introduces, Hecht gives us an unphilosophical history of philosophy, a non-intellectual history of ideas. Nothing disturbs the premise of her own pain: that when it comes to the immorality of suicide, the suffering of survivors is proof enough. This makes for an unconvincing argument—and one that ultimuately embodies the very ethical confusion it sets out to diagnose.
descensus Averno facilis est