Ethical Framework Of Suicide By Immanuel Kant

The topic of suicide is often up for much debate in philosophical ethics. Some may say one person taking their own life is morally permissible while others may disagree and say that it is actually not morally permissible for one to end their own life. A popular ethical framework that enables us to determine if something is right and wrong is deontology which is based on the writings of the philosopher Immanuel Kant. Through his ethical framework, we will uncover that suicide is a morally wrong action. First, I will lay out the foundations of deontology which states that right action is an action that is done from duty and accords with moral and rational law. Kant sees that the categorical imperative is the way to determine if an action is morally right or wrong. First, you must take your action and turn it into a maxim. Secondly, you universalize
Another one of his formulas includes the end-in-itself formula. This formula states that one must act in such a way that you treat humanity, either yourself or another person, always as an end or never simply as a means. In other words, you must treat yourself or another person as a way to obtain something else. As we say in the reading “A Feminist Kant,” Kant tells us that we have a moral obligation to ourselves and that we must not violate anyone’s rational nature including our own. So, how can we use this to analyze the issue of suicide? The categorical imperative tells us that we have a duty to prevent harm to our own rational nature. Suicide harms our rational nature because it is ending our life since our rational nature is to be alive. By committing suicide, we are treating ourselves as a means, which means to be using our actions to achieve another end which would be ending suffering through ending our life. Therefore, we have a duty to prevent the harm done to my rational nature through suicide. Thus, suicide is never morally