Altruistic Suicide

In modern medicine, suicide is largely understood as an outcome of depression, an act resulting from a trajectory of mental illness spiraling downward into that profound hopelessness from which the victim cannot recover: Killing oneself comes to be seen by the victim as the only way to relieve intense psychic pain, or the only way out of an intolerable situation. The final act of suicide can sometimes be delayed or prevented by the use of psychotherapy, drugs, and/or emergency hospitalization; long-term prevention strategies for repeat episodes of suicidality include treatment of the underlying illness and continuing surveillance for warning signals of self-destruction. This understanding of suicide casts it as largely nonvoluntary and self-referential, a human tragedy frequently stigmatized and always to be prevented. In contrast, the focus in this entry is on altruistic suicide, the taking of one's own life for the interests of others. Altruistic suicide may be undertaken for the sake of family members or loved ones, for cherished institutions, for communities, for ideas and principles, for society in general, to serve divinity, or for a number of other reasons.

Altruistic Suicide

Among the classic specimen cases of altruistic suicide is the jet fighter pilot, who, when his plane fails, crashes it with himself still in it into a field, in order to avoid a crowded schoolyard. He does so knowingly and deliberately, and he does it to avoid killing the children, even at the cost of his own life. It is a clear case of altruism, the sacrifice of one's own interests to promote those of others. Of course, such a death is not normally labeled “suicide” but “self-sacrifice,” “heroism,” or some other adulatory term. Nevertheless, the pilot did kill himself by refusing to eject from his crashing plane.

Is this a case of altruistic suicide? This first question can be interpreted as a conceptual one: Given the highly negative connotations of the term suicide in English but the positive appraisal of altruistic acts, is it coherent to speak of “altruistic suicide” at all?

A second question concerning the possibility of altruistic suicide is a psychological one: Is it possible for an individual to both knowingly and deliberately cause her own death in a way that focuses primarily on the interests of others, rather than on her own situation and consequences to herself? Is genuine altruism possible at all, or are all our acts self-interested? Thus it might be said of figures who give the appearance of altruistic suicide that they act primarily for the rewards of (posthumous) reputation or religious afterlife: Lucretia, who preserves her sexual fidelity and thus her husband's honor even at the expense of her life; the many Stoic Roman generals who fell on their swords rather than risk defeat or, like Cato, to preserve their honor as well as their people; the legendary Buddhist figure Sakyamuni, who allowed his body to be eaten by a starving tigress; or elderly persons in some traditional Inuit and African cultures, who cooperated in social practices such as being dropped through a hole in the ice or buried alive in order to protect their communities from the burden of caring for them. Tradition counts Lucretia, Cato, Sakyamuni, and to some degree the elderly who cooperated with senicide practices as people extraordinarily attuned to the interests of others; however, motivation may be difficult to assess in widely divergent or historical cultures.

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