The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Suicide

Can suicide be, in certain situations, morally permissible or even morally obligatory? Can it be a rational choice? What are our obligations toward suicidal individuals? How should we even define suicide? The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Suicide discusses these questions and expands the frontier of philosophical discourse to include heretofore neglected ethical and social aspects of suicide.

Starting with a critical overview of the most important historical philosophical approaches to suicide, the chronologically ordered chapters in the first part of this volume cover both Western and non-Western philosophical traditions. The second part is dedicated to foundational issues such as the nature, morality, and rationality of suicide. The final section covers philosophical issues related to the practice of suicide, addressing topics such as the ethics of suicide prevention and intervention, new suicide technologies, suicide and mental illness, suicide and media ethics, and suicide and gender, among others.

Across thirty-three chapters written by thirty-five leading scholars, this handbook provides a fresh, compelling analysis of past and contemporary trends in the philosophy of suicide.

Michael Cholbi is Professor and Personal Chair in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Suicide: The Philosophical Dimensions (2011) and an editor of New Directions in the Ethics of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (second edition, 2023). Professor Cholbi is the founder of the International Association for the Philosophy of Death and serves on the editorial boards of the journals Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Journal of Applied Philosophy, and Philosophical Quarterly.

Paolo Stellino is Researcher at the NOVA Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA) and Invited Professor of the Department of Philosophy, NOVA University of Lisbon. His main fields of research interest are the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, ethics (with a specific focus on philosophy of suicide), and philosophy of film. He is the author of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky: On the Verge of Nihilism (2015) and Philosophical Perspectives on Suicide: Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein (2020).