Chapter 69 Book IV The World as Will Revisited §69

The negation of the will-to-live, which has been fully expounded within the framework of our mode of consideration, is the only act in which the freedom of the will appears in phenomena; it is thus the transformation which Asmus calls transcendent.Nothing is more distinct from this denial of the will to life than the individual phenomenon of the actual annulment of the will—suicide.Suicide is far from the negation of the will, it is a phenomenon of the strong affirmation of the will.It turns out that the essence of negation [of the will] lies not in the abhorrence of pain, but in the abhorrence of enjoyment in life.The suicide wants life, he is only dissatisfied with the conditions [of life] in his turn.So he did not give up the will to life, but only gave up life when he destroyed individual phenomena.He wants life, he wants this body to survive unimpeded, and he wants to affirm this body; but the intricate environment does not allow this, which causes him great pain.The will-to-live itself feels itself so blocked in this particular phenomenon that it cannot carry out its pursuit.The will then decides in terms of its own essence itself, which is to say that it is outside those forms of the principle of sufficient reason, and therefore does not care about any individual phenomenon; is intrinsic to the life of all things.It turns out that the above-mentioned firm and inner certainty, which prevents all people from our family from living constantly in the fear of death, that is, the certainty that the will will never lose its appearance, is here. Suicide also supports this action.Therefore, the will to life appears not only in this self-expression [Xihua], but also in the comfortable state of "self-preservation" [Vishna] and the lust of reproduction [Brahma].This is the inner meaning of the trinity in a series of three gods, and any one person is completely this unity, even though this unity sometimes exalts one god in the trinity, and sometimes exalts the other god in the trinity. —As the relation of the individual to the Idea, so is the relation of the negation of the will to the suicide: what the suicider denies is only the individual and not the species.We have seen above that, since the will to life does not fear lifelessness, and since pain is essential to life, suicide, that is, the self-destruction of an individual phenomenon, is an utterly futile endeavor. , folly; [for when phenomena are destroyed,] the thing-in-itself remains intact, just as the rainbow itself persists in spite of the rapid replacement of the raindrops on which the rainbow depends.Moreover, this kind of behavior, as the most arrogant manifestation of the self-contradiction of the will to live, is also the masterpiece of Maya.This contradiction we see both in the lowest phenomena of the will, in the constant struggle for appearance of the forces of nature and of all organic individuals for matter, time and space, and in the ascending levels of the objectification of will. Seeing it more and more conspicuously, more and more obviously terrible; then, at the highest level, that is, in the idea of ​​man, this contradiction has finally reached such a degree that not only the individual who expresses this same idea They are killing each other, and it is the same individual that declares war on itself. [And at this time] the passion with which the individual pursues life and fights against life's obstacles and pains goes so far as to cause the individual to destroy himself; , and the body is nothing but the will itself becoming visible.Precisely because the suicide cannot abstain from wanting, he ceases to live, and the will affirms itself here precisely in the phenomenon of annulment, because it has nothing else to affirm itself.But just because the pain which it evades, as a function of the oppression of the will, may lead to its own negation, may lead to liberation, so the suicide is in this respect equal to a sick man after a painful operation which would have made him fully healed. After starting, he refused to let the operation be completed, but preferred to keep the pain.Pain has come before, and as pain opens up the possibility of reaching the negation of the will, but he, by this phenomenon of destroying the will, the body, in order to keep the will from being strangled, drives it away. —This is almost all ethics, whether philosophical or religious.Reasons why suicide should be condemned, though they themselves can give no other reason for this than queer and sophistical reasons.But if there is a man who restrains suicide from a purely moral impulse, the deepest meaning of this self-restraint (whatever concepts his reason may dress it up) is this: "I don't Avoiding pain so that it may serve to annul the will-to-live--so tragic is the phenomenon of this will--for pain is in this respect strengthening the knowledge I have now acquired of the true nature of the world, that is to say, it will become The last tranquilizer of my will and set me free forever."

It is also known that the children are often involved in suicides that often occur repeatedly: the father first kills his beloved children and then kills himself.Let us consider that conscience, religion, and all those handed down ideas have taught him that murder is the worst crime, and yet he commits it in his own death, and although it is impossible to have any selfishness. The motives of the child were still done; this behavior can then only be explained by the fact that the individual will here recognizes itself directly in the children, but is still limited to the illusion of the appearance as the essence. at the same time deeply moved by the realization of the pain of all life, he mistook the essence itself to be annihilated along with the appearance; therefore, seeing himself directly and living in the children, he wanted to put himself and the children together. They are rescued from the pain of existence and existence. ——There is another mistake that is completely similar to this, that is, people delusional to achieve what voluntary abstinence achieves by defeating the purpose of nature at the time of ejaculation; or focusing on the inevitable pain of life, even Instead of doing everything possible to ensure the safety of every [little baby] that breaks into life, it will promote the death of newborn babies.This is because if the will to life already exists, then, as the only metaphysical thing, as a thing in itself, no violence can break it, and violence can only destroy the phenomenon of the will to life at this time and place.As for itself, nothing can annul it except by knowledge.Therefore the only way of salvation is for the will to manifest itself unhindered, so that in this manifesting it may know its own essence.Only by means of this knowledge can the will annul itself; at the same time it can bring an end to the suffering inseparable from its appearance: but not by means of physical violence, such as sperm killing, infanticide, or suicide.Nature leads the will to the light, because only in the light can the will be liberated.Therefore, once the will to life - which is the inner nature of nature - has been determined, those purposes of nature should be promoted by all means. ——

There is another particular kind of suicide which seems quite different from ordinary suicide, but which has perhaps not been sufficiently noticed.This is death by hunger strike voluntarily chosen by the highest degree of abstinence, but in the past this phenomenon was always mixed with a lot of religious delusions and even superstitions, so the truth is not clear.Yet it seems possible to negate the will altogether to such an extent that the will which is necessary to keep the body alive by nourishment disappears.Suicide of this type by no means arises from the will to live and has nothing to do with the will to live. Such a thoroughly ascetic ascetic interrupts life only because he has completely renounced desire. .It is probable that no other way of dying here than that of a hunger strike is conceivable (and, if possible, springs from a peculiar superstition); Definitely will.On a hunger strike, the creeds that fill the reason of such a penitent reflect his fantasies, as if something higher had ordered him to fast, and [really only] inner inclinations drove him to do so. Do.Earlier examples of this can be found in the following publications: Compendium of Natural and Medical History of Breslau [region], September 1799, p. 363 onwards; Month, page 189 onwards; Zimmerman: "On Solitude", Vol. Page 69.More recent reports can also be found in the following books and periodicals: "Journal of Practical Medicine" edited by Hu Feinan, page 181 of volume one, page 95 of volume four eight; pp. 319, Edinburgh Regional Journal of Medicine and Surgery, Vol. V, 1809.In 1833, various newspapers published the news that the British historian Dr. Linkold starved to death in [UK] Deauville in January. According to later reports, the deceased was not himself but a relative of his.However, most of these reports describe those parties as mentally ill, and it is now impossible to ascertain the extent to which this statement is true.Though merely to preserve a rare instance of this striking, unusual, previously mentioned phenomenon in a more humane manner, I would like to note here a recent tidbit of such reporting.This phenomenon, at least superficially, falls within the scope of which I want to include it, and besides it would be a difficult phenomenon to explain.The recent news of which I am speaking appeared in the Nuremberg Letter of July 29, 1813, in the following text:

"According to a report from Bern, a small hut was found in a dense forest in Sheern, and there was a male corpse in it, about a month ago, and it is now decomposing. Clothes and shoes cannot be judged The identity of the deceased. There are two exquisite shirts next to the body. The most important relic is a "Bible" with white pages in the book, some of which were scribbled by the deceased. On these pages, he recorded The date of departure was given (but no place of origin was given), after which he said that the Spirit of God drove him into the wilderness to pray and fast. He had fasted for seven days on his journey here, and then he went on food and drink. From then on, he began to go on a hunger strike for several days in his new residence. Every day of the hunger strike was marked with a stroke, a total of five strokes. After five strokes, the pilgrim on the pilgrimage to the mountain might die. letter, to which the dead man heard a sermon delivered by the priest, without addressing the addressee.”—In this two willful deaths, born of extreme abstinence and generally of despair There may be some intermediate stages and mixed situations between the two. These are difficult to explain, but there are some deep, dark, and intricate places in the human mind, and it is extremely difficult to expose and exhibit these places.