Talk:Dutiful suicide

Duty v. depression
I have a few questions about what constitutes "dutiful" suicide. Some possible examples:


 * 1) Socrates was under a death sentence. True, he refused to flee Athens (he had insisted on always obeying the law) and he did drink the hemlock. But we should assume that not everyone sentenced to death in Athens, without the means to flee, cheerfully drained the goblet. In that sense, Socrates' calm drinking was like a Jimmy Cagney gangster walking, refusing to be dragged, to the electric chair. On the other hand, Socrates refused to flee. So: suicide or execution?
 * 2) Joseph Göbbels and his wife (after killing their children) killed themselves rather than fall into Allied hands. So did Hitler, Eva Braun, and Hermann Göring. Do these deaths count?
 * 3) The Zealots at Masada committed mass suicide rather than face the humiliation of a Roman triumph.

One may say that most suicides kill themselves because they are unable to face living due to depression or perceived failure: they escape present emotional pain. On the one hand, the Nazi deaths above robbed the Allies of justice and closure. On the other, they prevented themselves from suffering at the hands of enemies they despised once their war effort was clearly doomed. Their suicides were aimed out, as it were.

I think these deaths do count, and would like to include them on the grounds that they were premeditated suicide to forestall future defeat and anguish and to prevent their enemies from achieving complete victory. (In Socrates, we see a man refusing to flee and abandon his positions in the face of public censure.)

Comments? Somercet 01:13, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Merge with Historical Suicide?
Just a brief comment, I'll elaborate on this later...

But the initial idea of this article was to remove the "non-japanese" dutiful suicides from the seppuku page.

But I don't think we have enought material to award a page of itself, specially considering your thoughts above... maybe we should merge this information as a section of History of suicide.

I'll comment your comment tomorrow night Claus Aranha 23:23, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Suicide v kamikaze/suicide bombers
I'm removing kamikaze and suicide bombers from dutiful suicide - one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. - Richardcavell 02:11, 23 May 2006 (UTC)