Month: November 2015

In this paper I will review Kant’s stance on what happiness is and why suicide can never be justified. I will also draw off of Solomon’s stance on the pleasure the world has to offer, and John Stuart Mill’s thoughts on how all this life is about is being happy. Then I will relate such ethical stances to my stance on abortion and observe whether or not they in any way support my view on abortion. The issue of abortion is a prevalent topic of debate in today’s society and is still being fought over in courts. Famous court cases such as Roe v. Wade have made a lasting impact on the world, and especially in the United States. Year after year parents all over the world abort countless numbers of unborn children. These are children that will never have the chance to be children and to live the life intended for them before their own parents stepped in and decided to murder their own child. No matter what someone might say to justify abortion, it is and always will be murder, and it is clear that murder is morally wrong no matter what. Therefore, the abortion of an unborn child is, no matter what the circumstances, morally unjust.

To me, happiness is a feeling of contentment or peace about the current state you are in which has derived from accepting certain truths about yourself, and the world around you. These truths include the facts that we were all created and saved by a good God, and that we were saved from an eternal separation from that God because of our decision to disobey His word. This view of how we are to be happy seems to match up well with Kant’s view of goodwill. Having a good will means having an overpowering compulsion to act in a morally good manner. Therefore, Kant does not believe that happiness is the ultimate ends. The person with a good will is not focused or concerned with the benefits it will bring, but are consumed by the overarching principles to act justly in accordance with natural, moral laws. Furthermore, Kant states that happiness does not last (Kant 5). Moreover, happiness to the society we live in is built on the beliefs of John Stuart Mill who said that happiness is “an existence as free as possible from pain and as rich as possible in enjoyment (Mill 8).” Mill also addresses that there are some types of enjoyment, or pleasure that are better or worse than others. He discusses how pigs have their pleasures as do humans, and how although the pigs may have a large abundance of their pleasure, the humans would never want any bit of it, because it is not a matter of quantity, but of quality. When a human’s tongue has tasted the pleasures of the upper crust, they will constantly be in pursuit of that pleasure, and eventually of something greater than that sensation, until eventually there is no more pleasure to be obtained (Mill 5). People think that in order to be happy they must live in the biggest house, drive the nicest car, or wear really fancy clothes. Therefore, the opposite is true as well – humans think that not having such luxuries as these causes automatic dismay. C.S. Lewis said in his essay Have We No Right to Happiness that, “…we depend for a very great deal of our happiness or misery on circumstances outside all human control (Lewis).” In many instances, we as humans attempt to take what is God’s responsibility or right into our own hands. God is a sovereign God, He knows all, sees all, and is everywhere – including in the past and future, for He is outside of time (Psalm 102:24-27, 2 Peter 3:8). We, thinking it will make us happy, attempt to take from God what is rightfully His (life, He is life), and we find that in the end we ultimately are guilty of disobeying Him, and although happiness or pleasure was there for a moment, shame prevails.

Taking a right of God is better know as sin, or disobeying God and His law. As we know, murder is sin – it is morally wrong no matter what the circumstances. Murder is taking someone else’s life with immoral intent. Therefore, with this in mind, let us shift to the topic of suicide. The connection between happiness and suicide is obvious. One becomes unhappy seeking after selfish ambitions and desires that even if met never satisfy that God-sized hole inside them, and they reach what seems to them the logical conclusion that it would be better to simply take their own life and end it all for a life that produces no happiness isn’t worth living. They reach this conclusion because they believe that the ultimate goal in life is to simply be free from pain and enjoy countless pleasures as Mill taught. However, they soon found out that living such a life is not that simple, and is in fact quite impossible. Solomon says in the book of Ecclesiastes in regard to pleasures of the world such as wisdom, knowledge, money, and accomplishments that “…all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun (Ecclesiastes 2:11).” Solomon is considered to be the wisest, richest, and most powerful man to ever walk the face of the earth. God gave him basically all he could ask for, and it did not satisfy – only the Lord satisfied Solomon. What drives people to commit suicide is their constant state of reaching for things that in the end leave them high and dry and looking for something substantial to hold onto. They are made unhappy by being disappointed by a world that they believe is supposed to contain all they could ever wish for, and then they act out in a desire to end their disappointment, and end it all.

 

Works Cited

• Lewis, C. S. “Have We No Right to Happiness?” Have We No Right to Happiness?net, 7 Jan. 1985. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.
• Broad, C. D. “Review: The Moral Law, or Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals.” Philosophy92 (1950): 85-86. Earlymoderntexts.com. Jonothan Bennett, July 2005. Web. Nov. 2015.
• Thomas Nelson NKJV Holy Bible. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1982. Print.
• Mill, John Stuart. “Utilitarianism.” (1996): n. pag. com. Jonathan Bennett, Sept. 2005. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.

Throughout pages of ancient historical texts and up to the modern era, the idea of a human taking their own life has been viewed in many different lights. For instance, the Japanese kamikaze warriors view suicide, when committed to retain honor or for the good of their people, as honorable and good. On the other hand, most Christians view suicide as an act against the authority of God, as disobedience towards His instructions – or sin. In this paper, I will observe philosopher David Hume’s argument that suicide, or the act of taking ones life is not necessarily wrong or sinful at all, and then I will expose his argument as being invalid. To do so, I will consult a couple sources explaining reasons for suicide being unjust. Also, I will consult works by authors of the Holy Bible such as John, Paul, and Jeremiah, along with others. Although Hume brings up interesting arguments that are very much against the majority of today’s society, and I for one am opposed to his method of thought. The act of taking your own life can never be justified, for in reality God reserved such authority to Himself.

Hume says that, “If suicide is criminal, it must be an infraction of our duty either (1) to God, (2) to our neighbour, or (3) to ourselves.” Furthermore, Hume claims that every action that occurs on earth, whether it occurs naturally or if man performs it, is under the sovereignty of God. He builds off of this by saying that even such an act of a man killing himself would be within the will of God, and would not disturb the various natural laws of our world given by God (Hume 21). Also, Hume discusses certain laws that govern the occurrences of the world around us. He claims that, “human life depends upon the general laws of matter and motion, and that you don’t encroach on God’s office when you disturb or alter these laws.” He goes on to equate a building falling on a man and killing him and that same man killing himself, and insists that just because one is more “animate” than the other doesn’t mean that the act of the man killing himself would impact the natural order of laws, nor would it be an act of “[intruding] into God’s affairs (Hume 24).”

Obviously Hume supports a view of suicide that permits it if the scenario were acceptable. He clearly is very focused on the individual instead of the bigger picture; so in light of this, let’s consider the selfishness of suicide. According to an Article by Dr. Andrew Corbett, suicide is “the ultimate act of selfishness.” His reasons for this conclusion are one, that committing suicide accomplishes nothing, but in reality leaves them exactly the way they were beforehand – and worse. Two, he says that even though some people contemplating suicide believe their doing so will make things better for those around, they end up just hurting their loved ones even more by following through. Third and last reason given by Dr. Corbett for suicide being a selfish act is that the pain caused by this selfish act “rarely heals,” and the affects of it will last (Corbett 1). Therefore, an individual’s reasons for committing suicide, such as grief, stress, or feeling unloved are, although serious issues, feelings and thoughts focused on oneself without observation of the thoughts and feelings of the others involved in those situations or of the ones you would be cutting to the heart if you would follow through with such an act.

Next, I will present a basic trail of thought laid out by an article titled “What Does the Bible Say About Suicide?” I chose Christian sources because I find them to be the most firm basis of ultimate truth and understanding of what is morally just and unjust. First in the argument, God has created everyone, and not only that, but he made everyone to be like him (Gen. 1:26-27). Also from Jeremiah 29:11 we see that God has a plan set out for everyone’s life before we even existed; it say, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” From this we also gather – from “to give you hope and a future” – that God has not only set a plan for where you’ve been and where you are, but for where you’re going. That means he knows the day you will die! Moreover, God did not create you to harm you, or he didn’t create you to die. He created you to have life! In the book of Romans Paul says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. (6:23)” Here we see that death was not a creation of God, but a result of man’s disobedience to follow his instruction, for that’s what sin is – disobedience to God (Gen. 3). However, we also are reminded that God provided salvation from the death caused by our mistakes by giving us his son to be a perfect sacrifice for our sins, and who rose above them so that we could have the real, eternal life that God created us for. Moving on, John 10:10 says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” Here, Christ is preaching and saying that the devil (thief) has the desire to see everyone fall and give into his temptations, and we see that his ultimate goal for everyone is death both physical and spiritual. But we also observe again, how the moral compass of the universe – God has provided truth and a way to be claimed just and alive. Building off of this, God is the keeper of life. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own, you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” The part to focus on here is that “you were bought at a price.” This price was the life of Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of God, the keeper of life. Therefore, since the perfect God of all things loved us enough to give us life, who are we to take it ourselves outside of his plan for our lives which he intends to be life – not death (Christian Answers 1)?

First of all, suicide is not a disturbance or intrusion of God’s order, for it withstands any opposition, and His affairs have been set since before the beginning of time. It’s that committing suicide rejects God’s order and it opposes God’s affairs. God intends us to live out life loving Him and loving those around us, allowing Him to direct our paths while we look forward to the day He calls us home away from this earth we’re on. He gives us no leisure or privilege to make our going to His heaven any sooner than when He has prepared for us already. The Bible tells us that only He knows the hour when He will call believers to heaven, and again, He has not granted us the right to shorten our lives just so we can go to heaven sooner (Matthew 24:36). The time He grants us here on His earth is so short anyway – why would you desire its completion before you have observed all that God is capable of doing in that short amount of time? God gives and takes away, we are His stewards, this includes our bodies, which He tells us are our temples in and through which we serve Him. If He instructs us to be good stewards of what He grants us and if He has granted us our temples – which He also instructs us to keep purified and holy – then why/how could destroying or wasting it with suicide be in line with the orders God Himself has set forth in this world? It cannot be.

 

 

Works Cited:

• Hume, David. “FOUR ESSAYS Tragedy, The Standard of Taste, Suicide, The Immortality of the Soul.” Earlymoderntexts.com. Jonathan Bennett, July 2006. Web. 22 Oct. 2015.
• Andrew Corbett, Dr. “The Tragedy of Suicide.” The Tragedy of Suicide. Findingtruthmatters, 20 Oct. 2006. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.
• “What Does the Bible Say About Suicide.” Http://christiananswers.net/q-dml/dml-y038.html. Christiananswers, 1997. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.
  • No author for this one??
• The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments: NKJV, New King James Version. Nashville: Nelson Bibles, 2006. Print.

 

 

 

An age old question for sure. Still today, all around us people are searching for what it really means to be happy. What does happiness look like? What must I do to be happy? How do I make the happiness last? All of these are common questions amongst today’s society, and it seems as if every individual has their own opinion od what happiness really is. With some 7 billion of these opinions it is certainly difficult to weed out those definitions of happiness that make the most sense. For some people happiness might simply be a Big Mac or a cute little yellow lab puppy, but for other the meaning of happiness reaches much deeper – as it should. John Stuart Mill, a philosopher of the 19^th century, in the section on happiness in his text on Utilitarianism, claimed happiness to be “an existence as free as possible from pain and as rich as possible in enjoyment (8).” That is straight forward enough, but as he raises objections to his argument, we see that even this definition lacks a bit of required depth.

The main objection is that humans can never reach happiness. Such objectors claim that the real goal of this life is “virtue,” and not happiness. Here Mill brings up his beloved topic of utilitarianism and argues that in observance of utility, obtaining happiness is not the only point of the matter, but also avoiding unhappiness. He goes on to say that if such objectors mean happiness to be “a continuous state of highly pleasurable excitement,” then he would agree that obtaining such a state would be impossible. However, when he further explains his definition of happiness, it is seen that such a state is in fact obtainable. He claims that a life sporting true happiness would be one in which there are times of pleasure accompanied with the occasional times of unpleasantness, along with a realistic drive to obtain a state of contentment in one’s endeavors (9).

Mill goes on to lie out two basic requirements of happiness. These requirements are “mental cultivation and unselfishness.” He claims that such things are available to all, not only the rich and comfortable, but also to those in a less achieved state of living. Mill explains how these two things are give way to happiness not by an individual seeking them out of “curiosity” or just for their own benefit, but for the sake of the things themselves. Seeking after such things for personal benefit, or out of a desire to be happy will not make you happy, for doing so would violate the second requirement of unselfishness. Mill argues that in the world we live in there are more than enough things to make us happy, so there is really no excuse for not being so. Humans have always longed for something to fill a hole in them that will make them happy, but time and time again the hole remains void. What is the answer to the age-old question of what is happiness? Happiness…

Still haven’t revised this one…

 

 

Mill, John Stuart. “Utilitarianism.” (1996): n. pag. Earlymoderntexts.com. Jonathan Bennett, Apr. 2008. Web. Nov. 2015.