virus: Phenomenological Notes on the Will to Self-Destruction

This essay has been posted in Church Doctrine, on the suicide
thread.

Phenomenological Notes on the Will to Self-Destruction

by Joe E. Dees

This paper's purpose is to study the internal structure of an
emotion which has no name. We seem somehow reluctant to
name this emotion or to signify this particular attitude concerning
the world even though its manifestation in act, suicide, is an all
too common occurrence. Perhaps we do not wish to name this
emotion for fear that such a concession would impose meaning
upon what we would prefer to consider irrational and
meaningless; however this is to be in bad faith concerning a
'corner' of pur selves which we deny, but which nevertheless
disturbs us. Simply because it disturbs us is a prime reason why
such a phenomenological perusal should be undertaken.
We shall herein use the guidelines given by Jean-Paul Sartre (in
THE EMOTIONS: OUTLINE OF A THEORY) and contemplate
the phenomenon of the will to self-destruction "insofar as it is
significative". This is possible while still remaining within the
realm of phenomenology because the internal structure of an
emotion, the thing-in-itself, is nothing other than its signification.
Emotions having no corporeality, they are themselves only insofar
as they appear to us to be. Thus, "we shall try to place ourselves
on the grounds of signification and to treat emotion as a
phenomenon" (Sartre, ibid.). The particular phenomenon to be
studied here, the will to self-destruction, will be treated in this
fashion.
It is seen therefore that we may implement the phenomenological
method in order to study this attitude towards the world by
inquiring into the reasons typically given for committing the
suicidal act, or, in other words, studying the significations the act
held or holds for those who have seriously manifested suicidal
inclinations. The act itself, being external, is NOT the issue here;
the internal structure of the emotion or world-attitude which
precipitates the act IS.
An incomplete synopsis of reasons for their actions given by those
who have attempted suicide by communications made within
suicide notes includes: the rejection by or inability to support
loved ones, a revolt against their determination by society or
individuals within society, fear of insanity, senility, disease,
dishonor, or infirmity or a handicap or of assuming responsibility,
for revenge against or benefit to others, for recognition of
personal or societal problems, or to avoid death or torture at the
hands of others. Any emotion tries to invoke the external world,
and the changes the suicidal individual wishes to make in that
world are well documented. But these are changes to some other
state or process of affairs; what is the internal structure of the
emotion FROM WHICH the attempt to change the world is made?
Perhaps by contemplating what is ESSENTIALLY intended, we
may arrive at an understanding of the ESSENCE of the intention.
A Being-in-the-World (Dasein) contemplating suicide is taking
the view towards the world that its negation is to be subjectively
preferred to its continued appearance. This implies that to the
suicidal Dasein, the present appearance of the world is
unsatisfactory, and that the dasein perceives itself as unable to
change the world for the better in the future, and is willing to
negate the Becoming of the self in order to negate the Being-of-
the-World. Obviously, that portion of the Dasein's ambient world
which is imbued by the Dasein with primary subjective
signification, or the Dasein's life project, must be involved.
Internally, this project is presented to the Dasein by the Dasein
itself; it is an appropriation of the meaning which we're born into,
modified by individual intentionality for-itself. Therefore we
identify our intentionality with the project intended, as the
manifestation of that intentionality in act. Thus, our projects
becomes reified in act and we manifest ourselves through our
projects. The publicness of the anonymous One is the synthesis of
all projects generally agreed upon as having succeeded in the aims
of those whose projects they represent. These aims are to make
the generally accepted project and the personally appropriated
project one and the same project, and that one the individual
Dasein's own. The individual project also changes as we do; not
quantitatively, but qualitatively, as the evolution of successive
adumbrations of the majority or dominance of our emotional
interpenetrative states.
On these bases, our projects are related to ourselves in lived time,
and we perceive the flow of lived time through the becoming of
our projects. As our consciousness is consciousnesss of, so is this
intentionality directed towards the intended, and signifies itself on
the basis of the worldly reification of its project becoming in
duration.
This project may be an idea (such as freedom) or a career
(accountant) or another person or persons (spouse and/or children
usually) or a combination of these, but during any time, a Dasein
is committed to a project by the Dasein's style of Being-in-the-
World. One may only relinquish a project in favor of another
project, or, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty observed in THE
PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION, my freedom "is never
without an accomplice, and its power of perpetually tearing itself
away finds its fulcrum in my universal commitment to the world."
Why do some Daseins appropriate the project of negating the
world through negating the self (and thus non-relating the two)
rather than changing the world through their projects? It would
seem that the latter aim of changing the world through the
Dasein's project had been previously and unsuccessfully
attempted.
In this case, what would be the result if the Dasein perceives that
the difficulties involved in the reification of this project become
insurmountable obstacles rather than surmountable means?
When the Dasein cannot realize the Dasein's own existential
signification, when the dasein has a pripori committed its
contingent Being to a project lucidly seen a posteriori as
unattainable, when one's desires are seen as impossible to realize,
what does one do instead? Does the Dasein still have a subjective
reason for continued existence?
Not until a new project or a modification of the existing project is
embraced. The reason for the Dasein's existence, its own
subjective signification, has been lost, and the dasein must create
for itself just such another signification. But is this an easy task?
There are three ways in which this project may be lost: within the
intention behind the project (a posteriori seen as meaningless),
within the means by which the project is attained (seen as
ineffectual), and in the project itslef (seen as redundant,
unrealizeable, realizeable only through one's own death, or
finished). These three encompass essentially all the resons stated
previously; however, these three within themselves share a
common theme - that of the realization of fundamental self-
contradiction. The Dasein's project is not Becoming; time for the
project (and therefore for the Dasein) is standing still. The future
being cut off, the past is dwelled upon and thus the Dasein faces
its own contingency.
We would not intentionally choose a meaningless, redundant or
impossible project; therefore we did not choose such a project
from a position of absolute knowledge or understanding.
However, as the project progresses, previously unseen fallacies
inherent in the project's realization become revealed to us. But we
choose all of our projects from a position of Becoming, and there
is always the contingency (since we can't choose from a position
of Being) that they will subsequently be negated or denied; we
may be committed, but we are always unsure. However, if we
cannot choose with freedom and still be absolutely certain of
reifying our choices and preserving their subjective meaning
withoput possessing absolute knowledge, and if, as is the
definitional case, absolute knowledge is forever denied us, then
the dilemma and self-contradiction rears its ugly head; we are
conscious but unfree, and our very Sinngebung (meaning-giving)
is denied. Here lived time not only stops (boredom), but is seen as
having ceased irrevocably, beyond our ability to re-engage it
(helplessness and hopelessness). In short, our boredom has been
realized: we have become objects shorn of the power of self-
signification. Freedom being unattainable, the contradiction is
resolved by the denial of self-consciousness and world-
consciousness by the self, by rendering ourselfves into henceforth
unconscious objects. This denial, in act, is suicide. It is embraced
because all future possible projects are interpreted in the light of
abandoned past projects; that once we commit to them and
attempt their worldly reification, the sad knowledge we will
obtain will be the same; and thus we come to look upon both the
world and upon ourselves in these helpless, hopeless, useless
terms, and absolute committment to a future project, or to a future
which only has meaning insofar as we and our projects become
reified, is impossible, and the committment itself is a priori seen
as devoid of meaning and of subjectivity. Carl Rogers (in THE
END OF HOPE, edited by Kobler and Stotland)remarked upon
the case of a suicide that she "seems to have been dealt with as an
object."
Secondly, suicide may be signified as the only means of reifying
one's project, and therefore the only means of attaining freedom,
as in arthur Miller's DEATH OF A SALESMAN, where Willy
Loman kills himself to assure his family economic independence
through the payment of his life insurance policy. Here also one is
conscious but unfree, and commits suicide to become "free and
clear", for "twenty thousand - that is something one can feel with
the hand, it is there", and besides, is it better or braver to "stand
here the rest of my life ringing up zero?"
The third situation involving the Dasein and its project is if the
project is seen as finished. When the retirement watch is accepted,
the family's solvency is assured, what is there left to do, or to
become? One's project is finished, yet one still lives. The
expression of intentionality has been lost and once again the
Dasein is conscious but unfree. Its project no longer Becoming but
Being, and the Dasein being self-identified with its project, it
follows its project into Being and finishes itself.
In each of these three states-of-affairs, the same themes emerge:
of the Dasein's apprehension of itself as a self-conscious object, of
the lack of any possibility for future self-signification, and of the
perception of the irrevocable cessation of Becoming (of lived
time).
Albert Camus, in THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS, addresses himself
to the second of these themes thusly:
"In a sense, and as in melodrama, killing yourself amounts to
confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that
you do not understand it...merely confessing that life is 'nor worth
the troubel'. Living, naturally, is never easy. You continue making
the same gestures commanded by existence for many reasons, the
forst of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have
recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that
habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane
character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering."
It was also in this vein that Schopenhauer advocated the choice of
suicide or monasticism.
The magical act of suicide is also seen as acting upon the world
but not the self. We subjects have no more idea of being a thing-
in-itself alone than a rock can have of becoming us. Therefore we
do not take our own deaths seriously, but in bad faith, as if by
leaving this world our subjectivities will be thrown into another,
more favorable world, and thus not only survive, but, relatively,
prosper. This anticipation od the assumption of a new project in
new surroundings beckons to the irrational within us. These
surroundings are viewed by Kirilov in Dostoyevsky's THE
DEVILS as Godhood. A synopsis of Kirilov's reasoning is as
follows:
"(1) the human condition is torn between a radical contingency
and an irreparable need for the absolute; (2) the only way of
defeating contingency is to kill onself because by doing so man
becomes master of his life and death; (3) in the fraction of an
instant when he completes his act, man escapes contingency and
touches the Absolute: he becomes God."
One might also add that dual correlatively opposite absolutes are
simultaneously obtained; Godhood anf thinghood, each no longer
chained by contingency, and the nonsubject and the absolute
subject momentarily coincide. Here the self would still be the self,
at least on one of the poles, but an absolute rather than a
contingent one, and the poles collapse into a seamless unity.
But what of the world? This is what the suicide beleves he has
really killed. "The suicide, when he dies, kills not one person, but
many (genocide). To kill oneself is to kill everything that there is,
the world and all other persons" (Charles Willian Wahl, SUICIDE
AS A MAGICAL ACT: CLUES TO SUICIDE, edited by Edwin S.
Sheldon and Norman L. Farerow).
The poet A. E. Housman put it best:

Good creatures, do you love your lives
And have you ears for sense?
Here is a knofe, like other knives
That cost me eighteen pence.
I need but stick it in my heart
And down will come the sky
And all foundations will depart
And all you folks will die.

Conscious but unfree, the Dasein decides to free its contingent
being from the determination of existence, so that Being-in-the-
world is no longer limited by the very facticity of the Being-of-
the-World. Nonrelational as death is, the Dasein tacitly assumes
the continuance of its subjectivity unbound by contingency as the
result of the contemplated act, and the destruction of the
objectifying object world. This paradoxically frees the self by
means of intentionality; one is free not to be and nevertheless still
conscious, and the Dasein forsees one final victory in becoming
Being. This victory is the anticipation that the instant one dies, the
self experiences self-conscious subject becoming unconscious
object. The two are opposites between themselves but identical
within themselves, and no duration separates the two. The dasein's
life is not seen as being lost and the act is envisioned as a magical
way of answering the unanswerable, of making all obstacles
disappear forever without further subjective sacrifice. This is seen
as the final solution, for the transition away from the world is seen
as irreversible and total; the retrieval of Lazarus appears to us
incredible and devoid of the reality that would truly terrify the
serious suicide.
Philosophically, the question of whether or not to continue one's
own existence is seen by Camus (in the MYTH OF SISYPHUS)
as the first question to be answered:
"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is
suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to
answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest -
whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind
has nine or twelve categories - comes afterwords. These are
games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietszche
claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by
example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it
will precede the definitive act."
But should one give this question an absolute answer from the
depths of human contingency? The attempt is a confusion of the
two. Dasein may fear death and face this fear in act, but this fear
of death is merely a reflection of existential boredom and anguish
in the face of contingency. Therefore, the existential death wish is
inauthentic, confusing the sign (death) with its subjective
signification. Rather than meeting the fear of death in act, Dasein
meets death itself in act, and rather than return from this facing
with renewed power and committment, Dasein returns not at all.
One must, as Kierkegaard urged, meet dread and boredom in act
with a commitment to the world rather than a negation of ot. The
more one refuses to do so, the harder it seems to change. The
inauthentic choice of not choosing is otherwise terminally realized
in the last choice; the self-contradictory choice to choose no more
(terminal bad faith).
---
To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>