칸트 인간 존엄성의 원칙에 비춰 본 자살의 문제 = The Problem of Suicide in Light of Kant`s Principle of the Dignity of the Human Person

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

With the fact that the suicide rate of South Korea has been ranked at the top among OECD countries since 2011, this paper`s goal is to find a proper answer in Kant regarding the question - is it permissible to commit suicide in some particular case or not allowed to do so in any circumstances? - by looking through the related issues of it in the western tradition of philosophy. It seems to have been arguably accepted in the western tradition of thought that we humans are not allowed to commit suicide in any events, and there are found four different reasons at large, I think. First, we humans are living things(i.e., animals) and, as long as our life-giver is considered at the higher level, we have no right to deprive us of our own life. [Plato, Augustine, and John Locke] Second, committing suicide is to violate the natural law, by means of which all natural things preserve themselves and resist what attempts to destroy them. [St. Thomas Aquinas] Third, committing suicide is regarded as a bad behavior not only to go back on one`s obligation for others (his parents, siblings, offspring, friends, and fellow citizens etc.) and the community to which he belongs, but also, a fortiori, to have a harmful effect on them. [Aristotle & Utilitarianism] Fourth, committing suicide is, in the end, to devalue the committer`s personality, that is, a misdeed to betray one`s duty to oneself. [Immanuel Kant] This paper shows in the first place that the first two reasons are logically self-contradictive in that they are not free from the ‘begging the question’ criticism, and therefore cannot go further. On top of that, I will argue that the third one is accepted only with qualifications, and a detailed analysis of it will naturally lead us to the next study, i.e., the study about Kant. Finally, with the fourth reason in mind, I will show how the proposition in question “we humans are not allowed to commit suicide in any events”, as a categorical imperative, is successfully elaborated within a Kantian personalist system of ethics. According to Kant, committing suicide appears to mean that a human being uses himself as a means of his happiness or his rather higher end to be realized, and for this very reason, any type of committing suicide in any circumstances cannot be allowed. For it would be, in the end, none other than one`s violation of duty to oneself. Such a Kantian thought is based on the so-called ‘principle of the dignity of human person as an end’, as the supreme principle of all ethical behaviors, and runs like this: “So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.” (Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, B66=IV429) Constructing a physically, psychologically, and societally desirable life environment where people rarely feel suicidal is regarded as a temporarily acceptable expedient, whereas realizing an ethical community - that is, making possible a cohesive group of people under the laws of mere virtue - where every person takes others as well as himself as an end (not merely as a means), is regarded as the ultimate way we have to take, in which we can be free from the charge of our violation of duty to keep our life safe, let alone the other types of duties from ethical practice.

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