The Complex Dilemma of Suicide: David Hume’s Ethical Exploration
Words: 490 Pages: 2 2759A complex phenomenon and existential question, the word suicide is derived from the Latin “sui” meaning oneself and “cidium” meaning killing. Popular opinions of suicide during David Hume’s time were grounded in Christian theology, namely Summa Theologiae by St. Thomas Aquinas. As summarized by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy in an article on suicide, “Enlightenment philosophers tended to conceive of suicide in secular terms, as resulting from facts about individuals, their natural psychologies, and their particular social settings. David Hume […]