Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant on Suicide Essay

Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant on Suicide - Essay ExampleWhether this flesh of suicide cases is reasonable or non, it is assumed that when the achievement was committed and even only at that point, an someone had considered suicide as the most reasonable means of surviving the situation, and that the number of people who accept such an idea may in fact be increasing. The 18th century philosophers Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant constructed ethical principles that determined the honor or wrongness of suicide. The act of suicide is not moral based on the ethical principles authored by Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant. Benthams philosophy is defined by the value of the litigate in terms of utility, which roughly translates as human eudaemonia, and so suicide does not give a person any material benefit in the long run for it almost always results in destruction. For the British philosopher, the moral basis of an action is how much utility it affords the individual. This trans lates as pleasure and avoidance of pang according to its intensity, its duration, its certainty or uncertainty, its resemblance or remoteness (Perry & Bratham 485). Most people would contend that suicide may bring the individual wild pansy and freedom from any more physical pain as he dies. However, committing suicide is also through pain itself, which is never a benefit to the individual. The intensity and duration of the act of suicide must be equivalent to the intensity and duration of pain that the person will experience. ... After all, there is no assure that there is no more spiritual pain and torment in the future even if death meant the cessation of all physical pain. Thus, suicide is not moral because it does not truly give the warrantee that one is freed from pain just because one dies. After all, there is no authentic proof that the afterlife is a life of eternal goodness and pleasure. Moreover, suicide is not moral because it is followed by undesirable circumstance s. For Bentham, an act is moral also if it is followed by sensations of the same kind, which is known as fecundity, or if it is not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind, which is known as purity (485). In terms of fecundity, no one can authentically be sure about suicide as its usual consequence is death. However, based on Benthams definition of fecundity, the sensations of pain from suicide may actually be followed by more pain in the afterlife or in the physical life if the person did not actually die. On the former(a) hand, when it comes to purity of action, even if the suicide were painless, there is no guarantee that there is no more pain for the individual in the afterlife. Moreover, there must even be a lot of pain that he would leave in the physical universe of discourse. There is therefore no escape from pain when it comes to suicide, thus it is not a moral act. Suicide is also not moral because it negatively affects many people. For Bentham, one prevail bas is of the morality of an act is its extent or the number of people who are affected by it (485). This means that the person who dies from suicide leaves behind family members and friends who would grieve his death or who would suffer in this world because of him. For example, if he were a doctor