Kant Essentially, Although Kant Believed

Kant

Essentially, although Kant believed that individuals should act as their rational doctrines demanded, he also felt that a universal moral law could be derived, and generally, that all maxims of action can be reduced to a single "categorical imperative" applying to everyone. This, accordingly, positions his ethics in a difficult place with respect to the question of suicide. Kant was an explicit rationalist; he believed that rational thought could determine the morality of all human actions. This notion was born out of the idea that each individual possesses an amount of rationalism, and that as we stand at the crossroads of decision this rationalism pulls us in one direction as our base desires compel us to move in the opposite direction. To Kant, this represented the eternal struggle between reason and desire, and that fulfilling the obligation we hold to reason was the same as fulfilling our duty to God and morality. The ultimate result is that individuals should behave in a way that they believe will bring about the greatest happiness, so long as their actions do not violate his categorical imperative.

One of the fundamental principles that naturally outweighs common utilitarian ethics, to Kant, is the idea that, "Persons have intrinsic worth and must be treated as ends in themselves and not merely as a means to some other end." (Steinbock, 14). Obviously this can be applied to suicide in a fairly straightforward manner: one should not use themselves as a means -- by killing themselves -- regardless of the happiness that such an act might seed in others. It is even easier to rule out suicide, according to Kantian ethics, if the aim of committing suicide is to save oneself future pain and suffering -- from a terminal illness, for example. Kant's argument along these lines notes that preventing pain for oneself is done with the implicit purpose of self-preservation, but suicide is self-destruction (Steinbock, 16). To him, this is a clear contradiction and, thus, suicide is a highly questionable act.

However, this is not the whole story regarding Kantian ethics and suicide. There are two powerful objections to the catch-all maxim that "suicide is morally wrong," and Kant suggests one of them. He speculates about a "great king' who carried poison that he intended to take in case of capture so that he could not be coerced into acts that would harm his country," but fails to make a final judgment on such a hypothetical situation (Timmons, 283). This is a significant example because we should assume that this king would be facing certain death regardless of his actions, and that his reason for killing himself would not be to minimize personal pain, but to maximize overall happiness. This is a hazy situation for Kant because although the king would be using himself as a means to overall happiness, knowledge of his imminent death would almost demand that he take the poison so that others might not use him as a means to overall depravity.