title: Spinoza, Styron, and the ethics of healing.
abstract: In this essay I discuss a passage from William Styron's memoir of his long struggle with chronic severe depression, from the standpoint of a Spinozian understanding of agency and self-worth. In this passage Styron relates how in hearing a piece of music he was abruptly struck by a recollection of "all the joys [his] house had known" and how this brought a realization that it would be wrong for him to kill himself: wrong because it would be an abandonment of those who had shared in those joys and a "desecration" of himself. He tells how this realization led him to admit himself to hospital for treatment and thereby to a slow and difficult recovery. This, I propose, illustrates the Spinozian idea that the value of an individual life is properly understood in terms of that individual's participation in the actualization of a shared value and that individual agency is empowered by the knowledge of such value.
authors.affiliation: Bioethics Centre, University of Otago, 71 Frederick Street, Dunedin, New Zealand, simon.walker@otago.ac.nz.
authors.forename: Simon Thomas
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Walker
mesh_terms: D001325:Autobiographies as Topic; D003865:Major Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D012649:Self Concept; D012945:Social Values; D013405:Suicide / Q000941:ethics / Q000523:psychology; D026712:Value of Life