Deck 31: Of Suicide Excerpts

Question 1

Hume attributes a great deal of the belief in the immorality of suicide to

A) the widespread fear of death.
B) superstition.
C) mistaken medical beliefs.
D) the influence of ancient philosophical thinking.

Answer 1

superstition.

Question 2

Hume proposes that the moral wrongfulness of suicide will rest on which of the following?

A) Suicide violates our duties to ourselves.
B) Suicide violates our duties to God.
C) It is painful to engage in suicide.
D) Suicide violates our duties to others.

Answer 2

Suicide violates our duties to ourselves.
Suicide violates our duties to God.
It is painful to engage in suicide.

Question 3

Hume concludes that suicide does not violate our duties to God because

A) suicide is not fundamentally different from other self-interested actions that evidently do not violate our duties to God.
B) God is too merciful to punish someone for suicide.
C) the Bible contains passages sympathetic to suicide.
D) suicide does not count as 'murder' according to religious authorities.

Answer 3

suicide is not fundamentally different from other self-interested actions that evidently do not violate our duties to God.

Question 4

Hume argues that suicide does not violate our moral duties to others by appeal to all of the following except

A) suicide is not fundamentally different from other self-interested actions that evidently do not violate our duties to God.
B) suicide does not harm others but only fails to benefit them
C) the Bible contains passages sympathetic to suicide.
D) the harms done by our continuing to live can greatly outweigh whatever benefits others get from our continuing to live

Question 5

Hume says that a human life is no more important to the universe than the life of an oyster. What is Hume aiming to illustrate with this claim? Does the justifiability of suicide depend on the importance of human life from the standpoint of the universe?

Question 6

Hume seems to deny that people ever engage in suicide irrationally: "no man ever threw away life, while it was worth keeping," and anyone who engages in suicide must have a gloomy temper tat deprives them of all enjoyment in life. Do you agree with Hume's claims here? Or is too optimistic about the thinking and reasoning that lead us to suicide?