Whats Wrong with Suicide?: Our Passional Natures and the Question of Rationality

According to many philosophers, the decision to commit suicide is irrational as a response to grief and hardship because the suicidal individual fails to properly appreciate the value of the future. The suicide, in her fixation on her interest in ending her current suffering, fails to consider the interest she has in the future. In this paper, I consider two views of suicide, one by Michael Cholbi and another by Richard Brandt, that argue that suicide is rational only insofar as the suicidal agent is able to appraise the value of her future. However, I argue that the epistemic standards set by both thinkers are too high. Then drawing on William James and Sren Kierkegaard, I argue that in relation to suicide, our subjective passional natures determine what our interests are, not external objective reasons to live. Suicide is thus no less rational than choosing to live.