De rationali e vita excessu: Plotinus and the stoics on suicide

Abstract

In the background of this article is the Platonic demand to flee from this world, since evil is necessarily related to mortal things and this world of ours.  To what degree can this perspective be considered an invitation to commit suicide, that is, an invitation to separate the soul from the body?  In the first part of this article I research the Stoic perspective, according to which suicide is considered permissible and under certain circumstance can even be the required course of action. Given that the wise man is self-sufficient and capable of enduring great adversity with fortitude, and given that virtue suffices for happiness, since virtue never abandons the wise, taking one’s life will never be reasonable.   Or what amounts to the same thing: the stoic theory on suicide is the equivalent of admitting that a happy life cannot exist without (some) corporeal and external goods.  Given that Plotinus agrees with the Stoics that the wise are self-sufficient, he too has to reject their theory of suicide. In the second part of this article. In the second part of this article, I research whether Plotinus rejects the Stoics’s theory of suicide totally and absolutely or not.  I analyze arguments for and against, paying special attention to the one that focuses on the situation of the wise man, who fully consciously, begins to realize that he is losing consciousness.