throughout the latter part of today’s Philosophy, i found myself so unwilling* to write on about his theory because i couldn’t get past how his idea seemed to cause conflict in my mind and thinking. Schopenhauer says we exist because we have the never disappearing Will to Live, it is always with us, we never want to die, we always want to live. we always have the WILL to LIVE.
i don’t understand this, though, and putting aside the fact that it’s actually really sad that i don’t understand this (because it means something is wrong with me and i’m the one who’s become to impure and pessimistic and morbid - because no one else seemed to wonder about what i wondered), i don’t really understand why no one else wondered about that. what i mean is that the ones who want to die, the ones who are truly suicidal, can not really go under this category of “everyone” who wants to live. and that just can’t be, because it just said “EVERYONE”! everyone wants to live! everyone has that will! and yet, they don’t!
i understand there are many who commit suicide out of despair, when they realize that no one is listening to them, and their deepest wish is to be heard and saved. but what about the ones who actually do want to die? there are so, so many of those. there are those who are so deep inside this black hole that there’s no way out. there are those who say that only death’ll stop them (meaning mainly eating disordered people here who i’ve come to some (quite superficial) contact with). what about them? THEY surely don’t seem to have the never-ending will to live anymore. how is it never-ending and always existent then?
my teacher didn’t know how to answer me when i asked whether Schopenhauer had an opinion on this, which is why i conjured up my own theory (something i’ve also thought before). i thought that maybe, they do have the will, but they just hate themselves so much that they don’t think they DESERVE to have the will to live anymore, and that’s why they choose death. they’re undeserving of the will to live.
however, i did some digging in the internet, and found out Schopenhauer did after all express opinion on suicide:
Schopenhauer contends that suicide is not a denial of the will-to-live, because it is not a rejection of personal well-being but is only a rejection of suffering. Suicide does not reject life itself, but only rejects the conditions under which life is given. Suicide is a surrender of life, but not of the will-to-live. The individual who commits suicide gives up living, but does not give up willing. In the act of suicide, the will affirms itself, even though it puts an end to its individual manifestation.
- Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
this sees the act of suicide sort of differently. “I do want to live, but not in this kind of world, so I don’t want to live anymore” kind of way. it’s a possibility, but it sees suicide as a cowardly and weak thing, i think. doing it because you’re not strong enough to live under the circumstances life (or God or whoever you think leads it all) has chosen to give you.
i’m not sure if i see suicide like that. maybe i’m still a bit too naive, too young when it comes to this topic. then again, it’s easy to see suicide as something really cowardly (a few minutes/hours of pain rather than a lifetime that could all go wrong (but might not! - which suicidal people often don’t see)). i just see it as something more complex. suicidal people are ill, they need help, they don’t see the point anymore, the point in living. maybe they see they’ve already finished life, that it’s all over already, there’s no meaning in going on anymore. it does sound a bit childish - i don’t want to do it if it’s like this! - but…
oh, i don’t even know anymore. suicide is one of those topics where i always hit a wall in the end. i wish i could speak to someone who had really gone through with it, who had actually died because of it. impossible, i know, but i wish i could be able to understand their thoughts. why they did it, why they really did it. because then, it wouldn’t matter anymore. they’d already be dead, and that’d be done with. those who have survived, though, might hide behind something else. they might not, of course, but they still have something to lose, in a sense, or at least think they do (because in reality, everyone should be able to say what they need to without thinking they’ve something to lose), and because of that, they might, for some reason, kind of alter it all. the reasons, the way they feel now that they’ve survived…
it might not of course be true at all, what i’m writing here, but i do think there are some who might alter it all some way. that’s why it’d be really good to talk to someone who doesn’t have that “something to lose” anymore, someone who is already dead and for whom, nothing really matters anymore. nothing will change anymore. maybe then i’d finally figure out if suicide is completely cowardly or caused by self-hate in its truest (as well as cruelest) form.
* ha, how fitting! (i’m such a weirdo i know)
