Hume

5 Hume on suicide

Perhaps because he is aware he will be stirring up trouble by publishing his views on this topic, Hume warms to his theme by talking in paragraphs 1–4 about how he conceives of the relation between philosophy, religious ‘superstition’ and ordinary life. The rest of the essay can be read independently of this opening, but these early ruminations are worth pausing over. They reveal subtleties in Hume’s sceptical outlook that are drowned out in the more polemical parts of the two essays.

Hume is concerned with which of these three elements – philosophy, superstition, ordinary life – is most effective at dominating the other two. He is especially vocal about how philosophical reason is an ‘antidote’ to superstition, where this is clearly meant to include religious belief. But he also discusses the relation of both religion and philosophy to the views and emotions (‘passions’) that serve us so well in ordinary life -what he describes as ‘plain good sense and the practice of the world’.

He notes with regret that religious superstition can and does distort our ordinary outlook, and in a ‘pernicious’ way. He gives one or two examples, including the example of superstition surrounding death and suicide. A clear statement of what he sees as the negative effects of religious beliefs on human happiness is found later in the essay (paragraph 12):

The result of this pernicious influence of superstition on common sense is that dams don’t get built, smallpox doesn’t get eradicated, and those for whom it is rational to do so do not commit suicide. (Women in particular, he remarks, are particularly susceptible to superstition. It is not clear whether he is recommending they study philosophy, given that, as we saw earlier, he thought women have relatively poor powers of reasoning.)

Hume’s position can be summarized as: religious superstition can triumph over our ordinary views and emotions. And since philosophy is a ‘sovereign antidote’ to religion, philosophy can triumph over religious superstition. We might therefore expect Hume to think that philosophy triumphs over the views and emotions that ordinarily serve us so well in life, as and when these fall short. But Hume surprises us here. Our emotions are curiously immune to the influence of reason, he says; and in other writings he insists that our ordinary views and expectations, the habits or customs of our minds, will not bend to accommodate philosophical reasoning (A Treatise of Human Nature, I.IV.1). The relationship between the three elements – philosophy, religious superstition, ordinary views and emotions – is not hierarchical after all. None of them dominates the other two. The situation is closer to the children’s game in which each participant simultaneously brings a hand out from behind her or his back in the shape of either scissors, paper or stone. Scissors shred paper; paper smothers stone; and stone blunts scissors. Hume’s view is that philosophy cuts through religion; religion distorts ordinary views and emotions; and ordinary views and emotions are immune to revision through the application of reason.

Hume does not offer any lengthy reasons here for supposing that ordinary life is impermeable to philosophy. It is, however, a salient feature of his other work. Far from being a straightforward supporter of Enlightenment rationality, he was notoriously sceptical of the power of reason. For example, although you would never be able to guess it from the previous essay, he did not think the rule of analogy could be defended using reason. He thought this rule was simply something we blindly follow out of ‘habit’; the philosophical indefensibility of the rule can never alter this habit. So his appeal to this rule is actually an appeal to our common sense, which he thinks incapable of being grounded in reason. Hume is a celebrator of ordinary life, which is perhaps why he is so keen to defend it against the perceived threat of religion.

Evidence of this fondness for ordinary life was reflected in his personality. Famously, he enjoyed recovering from philosophical reflection by playing cards or board games. In A Treatise of Human Nature Hume describes how playing games allows him to ‘dispel the clouds’ of scepticism, cure himself of ‘philosophical melancholy and delirium’, and ‘obliterate the chimeras’ that abstract reflection has led him to conjure up (I.IV.7; Hume, 1978, p.269):

This aspect of his personality divided those commenting on his death in the letters you read earlier. Adam Smith described the dying Hume as ‘continu[ing] to divert himself, as usual, with … a party at his favourite game of whist’ (quoted in section 1 above). The Bishop of Norwich lamented how low the age has fallen that we are to admire someone because he ‘knew how to manage his cards’ (also quoted above). The symbolism of backgammon and whist is that just as philosophy is an antidote to religion, ordinary life is an antidote to philosophy, and to sceptical paralysis in particular.

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Paragraph 5 is where the essay really gets underway. In it Hume indicates the aim and structure of his argument and of the essay as a whole. Hume’s stated aim is to persuade his reader that suicide is not ‘criminal’, i.e. is not morally objectionable. If suicide is morally objectionable, he insists, it must violate (‘transgress’) some duty we owe, either to God, to other people, or to ourselves. So the essay considers in turn our duties to (i) God, (ii) to others, and (iii) to ourselves, finding in each case that the act of suicide violates no such duty. Most of his energy is directed towards considering our duties to God. Duties to others and to ourselves receive relatively short shrift near the end.

5 Hume on suicide

Why, you may be wondering, would anyone think that we have a duty to God not to take our own lives? Because it would have been so familiar to his original readership, Hume barely bothers to state the position he is opposing before criticizing it. His concern is to refute the charge that in taking our own lives we would be ‘encroaching on the office of divine providence, and disturbing the order of the universe’ (paragraph 8). This position can be expressed less elegantly but more transparently as follows:

Hume is insistent on this point about the all-pervasiveness of harmony and order, and hence of God’s influence (paragraph 6):

In other words, all entities, including both inanimate and animate, appear subject to a single system of interlocking laws.

The significance of this is reached in paragraph 7:

Consider the last of these three phenomena, the ‘obedience’ of our limbs to our decisions to move them. What he seems to have in mind here is that when you act – to scratch your ankle, for example – you are usually able to do so because the physical world accommodates your mental decision. In a non-harmonious world, your decision to scratch could just as easily be followed by your hand flying up towards the ceiling as its moving down towards your ankle. The fact that your hand moves down towards your ankle is a sign that human decision making is just as permeated by harmony as any other event in the universe, and so equally subject to God’s benign influence as the rest of the universe.

A useful term to know here is ‘providence’. Divine providence includes all goings-on in the universe that are the direct result of God’s influence. Many theologians have held that human action falls outside of divine providence, that our individual choices are not part of God’s plan at all, and that we alone bear responsibility for them. Hume is arguing to the contrary that the entire universe, including each of our actions, falls within God’s providential reach. His ground for thinking this, to repeat, is that harmony and order are manifest in human action just as they are manifest in the non-human sphere, and harmony and order are the surest sign there is of God’s presence.

In paragraph 7 Hume addresses the thought that some of our actions do not really seem to be anyone’s but our own. We cannot see God’s hand at work in our actions looked at in isolation, he acknowledges. But seen as part of a harmonious system, our actions are as much permeated by God’s influence as is the rest of the universe.

Figure 6(a) J.P. Le Bas, Ruins of the Opera House (after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755), 1757, from the Le Bas series, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris. Photo: courtesy National Information Service for Earthquake Engineering, University of California, Berkeley.

Figure 6(b) J.P. Le Bas, Ruins of the Praca de Patriarchal (Patriachal Square) (after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755), 1757, from the Le Bas series, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris. Photo: courtesy National Information Service for Earthquake Engineering, University of California, Berkeley.

The Lisbon earthquake was mentioned earlier in a different connection. This event gave rise to debates that reflected issues salient at the time. Many focused on trying to understand the disaster as a natural phenomenon, and the science of seismology began in earnest around that time. Others were more concerned with reconciling such a cataclysmic event with their preferred conception of divinity. In particular, theologians struggled with the so-called problem of evil: if God is all-powerful and benevolent, why does he let terrible things happen?
A popular answer to this problem prior to the Lisbon earthquake was that evil is brought into the world by human weakness. This was one reason why many, unlike Hume, thought that human action fell beyond God’s providence. But while political corruption, murder and war could be understood in this way, earthquakes were clearly a different matter. A few tried to account for the earthquake as God’s punishment for the sinfulness of Lisbon, which was perceived as a decadent city. But this was hard to reconcile with the fact that the ‘decadent’ opera house (Figure 4.6(a)) was joined in ruin by the cathedral and other religious buildings. In fact, five of Le Bas’s six etchings contain one or more religious buildings. Figure 4.6(b) shows the patriarchal palace, which was the only major religious building to survive the tremor and the tidal wave. It served as an impromptu prayer centre before it too was lost in the fires that followed.

Having established that, on pain of having to reject design as a sign of God’s existence, all our actions need to be treated equally as a part of God’s plan, Hume unveils the relevance of this for the morality of suicide (paragraph 8).

It is absurd, he claims, to condemn an act of suicide as ‘encroaching on the office of divine providence’, that is, as doing what God and only God may do. Such condemnation would be absurd because every action would then have to be condemned for the same reason. If we condemn acts of suicide for encroaching on God, we would also need to condemn acts of ankle scratching. Both actions fall inside the scope of divine providence. Both have equal status as part of God’s grand design.

Hume is criticizing any attempt to establish a division between ordinary decisions and sacred decisions. Decisions of the first kind would belong to us alone; decisions of the second kind would belong to God alone. His long discussion of divine providence is meant to have shown that such a division is misguided. ‘Shall we assert’, asks Hume in paragraph 8,

It is ‘plainly false’ because having a specially reserved sphere of influence is incompatible with the universality of divine providence. All types of action, from ankle scratching to suicide, are on the same footing; indeed, they are on the same footing as every event in the universe. All are subject to the universal laws of nature. These regular, ordered and harmonious laws of nature are our only assurance that God exists at all, so must be taken as a sign of God’s influence.

By the end of paragraph 8 Hume has stated the main argument of his essay. The principal value of the essay lies in this discussion of the all-pervading presence of divine providence, and its relevance for the morality of suicide. The remainder is repetition or else it introduces some short and relatively easy-to-grasp theological considerations. So now would be a good time to state Hume’s reply to the sanctity-of-life argument in as simple a way as possible:

You may have recognized in Hume’s reply to the objection in paragraph 9 the comments that so annoyed the anonymous commentator for Monthly Review quoted earlier. Actually, Hume presents several different replies in quick succession. In the first of these he suggests that ‘the life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster’. It is not clear what Hume means by ‘importance to the universe’, but on the face of it this is a bizarre claim. He makes a similar-sounding claim in comparing diverting the Nile with diverting the flow of blood through human veins. This is a case where, as interpreters, we have to make a decision. Either Hume had a good but obscure point to make with these examples, and we should pause to work out what that point is. Alternatively he was just being sloppy, in which case we should ignore his remark and move on to his other responses. I am going to adopt the latter strategy.

A more promising reply (I suggest) is embedded elsewhere within paragraph 9. Hume points out that we don’t condemn those who save their own lives by ‘turn[ing] aside a stone which is falling upon … [their] head’ for stepping on God’s toes. Yet deciding to save a life is just as significant as deciding to end one. Why then should we make this complaint when it is a matter of ending our lives? The same reasoning used to condemn those who take their own lives could be used to condemn those who save their own lives. Both the taker and the saver could be said to be acting ‘presumptuously’ in taking such huge decisions. Hume treats this as showing the reasoning to be equally absurd in each case.

In paragraph 10 Hume is responding to the thought that by killing oneself one is destroying God’s greatest creation. This would be insulting to God, rather as destroying a watch would be insulting to the watch’s maker. Hume, however, is concerned with acts of suicide that are motivated by inconsolable misery and incurable illness. So a better analogy would be with the act of destroying a watch that is already permanently broken down and useless. Throwing out such a watch is in fact an act of respect for the watchmaker.

5 Hume on suicide

The main value of Hume’s essay lies in its discussion of our duties to God. Here Hume’s arguments initially seem quite convincing. But arguments almost always seem convincing when they are first heard and understood. The real test comes when we try to think of possible objections. Here is one such objection, based on what has become known as the problem of evil, the problem of reconciling God’s benevolence and omnipotence with the fact that evil exists in the world:

References

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Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material within this product.

David Hume, Of Suicide, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland

Of the Immortality of the Soul, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland

Allan Ramsay, David Hume, 1766, oil on canvas, 76.2 x 63.5 cm, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. Photo: SNPG/Bridgeman Art Library.

Joseph Wright of Derby, Lecture on the Orrery in which a Candle is used to create an Eclipse, 1766, oil on canvas, 147.3 x 203 cm, Derby Museum and Art Gallery. Photo: reproduced by courtesy of Derby Museum and Art Gallery/Bridgeman Art Library/John Webb.

William Blake, Isaac Newton, c.1795, colour print finished in ink and watercolour on paper, Tate Gallery, London. Photo: © Tate, London 2002.

Figure 1 Joseph Wright of Derby, “The Old Man and Death” 1773, oil on canvas, 101.6 x 127cm, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection

Figure 2 Louis-Léopold Boilly, “Les Cinq Sens (The Five Senses)”, 1823, colour lithograph, 21 x 18cm, Photo © Leonard de Selva/CORBIS

Figure 3 Johann Friedrich Bolt, after Vinzenz Kininger, title page from the printed music score of “Don Giovanni”, 1801, engraving, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna

Figure 4 William Blake, “Capaneus the Blasphemer”, illustration to Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, Hell Canto 14, 1824-7, pen, ink and watercolour, 37.4 x 52.7cm, courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (Felton Bequest, 1920)

Figure 5 Jean-Baptiste Greuze, “The Paralytic”, 1763, oil on canvas, 115.5 x 146cm, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Photo: Scala

Figure 6a J.P. Le Bas, “Ruins of the Opera House” (after the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755), 1757, from the Le Bas series, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Photo: National Information Service for Earthquake Engineering, University of California, Berkeley.

Figure 6b J.P. Le Bas, “Ruins of the Praca de Patriarchal (Patriarchal Square)” (after the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755), 1757, from the Le Bas series, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Photo: National Information Service for Earthquake Engineering, University of California, Berkeley.

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