Stay : A History of Suicide and the Arguments Against It / Jennifer Michael Hecht.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hecht, Jennifer Michael, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Suicide.

Suicide--Prevention.

Communities.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (281 p.)

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [2013]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Worldwide, more people die by suicide than by murder, and many more are left behind to grieve. Despite distressing statistics that show suicide rates rising, the subject, long a taboo, is infrequently talked about. In this sweeping intellectual and cultural history, poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht channels her grief for two friends lost to suicide into a search for history's most persuasive arguments against the irretrievable act, arguments she hopes to bring back into public consciousness. From the Stoics and the Bible to Dante, Shakespeare, Wittgenstein, and such twentieth-century writers as John Berryman, Hecht recasts the narrative of our "secular age" in new terms. She shows how religious prohibitions against self-killing were replaced by the Enlightenment's insistence on the rights of the individual, even when those rights had troubling applications. This transition, she movingly argues, resulted in a profound cultural and moral loss: the loss of shared, secular, logical arguments against suicide. By examining how people in other times have found powerful reasons to stay alive when suicide seems a tempting choice, she makes a persuasive intellectual and moral case against suicide.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Ancient World

2. Religion Rejects Suicide

3. To Be or Not to Be

4. Secular Philosophy Defends Suicide

5. The Argument of Community

6. Modern Social Science on Community and Influence

7. Hope for Our Future Selves

8. The Twentieth Century's Two Major Voices on Suicide

9. Suffering and Happiness

10. Modern Philosophical Conversations

Conclusion

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780300187090

0300187092

OCLC:

1024014854