Can suicide be a good death? A reply.
The commentaries by Feldman and Leenaars are less than persuasive, insofar as they are grounded in an arbitrary and potentially inappropriate advocacy of communal rather than individual values; in unproven assumptions about the constricted and illogical reasoning of suicidal persons; in an implicit equation of their acts with "sins"; and/or in a failure to recognize that the acceptance of suicide can sometimes be a compassionate response to intolerable "psychache." In contrast, I continue to assert that it is unfair to impose restrictions and moral judgments on death-choices when they are not imposed upon life-choices that also carry the risk of emotional harm to others.
Lester
David
D
Department of Psychology, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, P.O. Box 195, Jim Leeds Rd., Pomona, NJ 08240-0195, USA. lesterd@stockton.edu
D001293:Attitude to Death; D028663:Ethical Theory; D006801:Humans; D008128:Logic; D011908:Rationalization; D012931:Social Environment; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology*