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[3]Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee? The Stoics and
Existentialists agree on the answer [4]Should I kill myself or have a
cup of coffee? The Stoics and Existentialists agree on the answer
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Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee? The Stoics and Existentialists
agree on the answer

When Albert Camus pondered the choice between coffee and suicide, he sought to
show drinking coffee is an affirmation of life worth living not a blasé choice.

Albert Camus Coffee or Suicide

Issue 60, 6th November 2017
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*
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Skye C. Cleary

| Visiting Professor at Columbia University, City College of New York,
and Barnard College

Massimo Pigliucci

| Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York and author of
How To Be A Stoic (2017).
1,297 words

When every day many of us wake up to read about fresh horrors on our
fresh horrors device, we might find ourselves contemplating the
question as to whether, as Albert Camus supposedly put it, one should
kill oneself or have a cup of coffee. If there is any philosopher who
is famous for contemplating suicide, it’s Camus who, in a more serious
tone, proposed in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus that, “There is but
one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.''

The existentialists and Stoics are notorious for being at loggerheads
on many issues. Yet Simone de Beauvoir, who was much less famous for
her views on suicide than Camus, gives an example that shows the
existential answer isn’t so far removed from the Stoic one – a
fascinating case of philosophical convergence, two millennia apart.

In 1954, Beauvoir was awarded France’s most prestigious literary prize
for her book The Mandarins, in which the main character Anne
contemplates suicide. When once she saw the world as vast and
inexhaustible, she now looks at it with indifference: “The earth is
frozen over; nothingness has reclaimed it.” Her great love affair has
collapsed, her daughter has grown up and no longer needs her, and she
finds her profession unfulfilling. It’s not only that she feels her
life no longer counts, but also existing is torturous and her memories
are agony. Suicide seems like an escape from the pain. Clutching the
brown vial of poison, Anne hears her daughter’s voice outside and it
jars her into considering the effect of her death on other people. “My
death does not belong to me,” she concludes, because “it’s the others
who would live my death.”

___

"If having a cup of coffee is a blasé return to the quotidian, then
that’s just not good enough. However, if one embraces the coffee as an
affirmation that life is worth living, then choose your espresso and
leap into the day."

___

In her later autobiography, Beauvoir said that she wanted Anne’s
survival in her mundane existence to seem like a defeat. This outcome
implies not only that suicide is difficult, but that its difficulty
lies in the fact that apathy is not a viable option – which one of the
characters suggests earlier in the book. Living isn’t just about
breathing; living implies that you actively recognize value in
life, which Anne found in her relationships. Other people don’t always
infuse our life with joy, but they can certainly give it meaning.

Nevertheless, embracing life and living passionately when one is
despondent about existence is easier said than done. There is no
explicit answer in The Mandarins. In typical existential style, it’s up
to us to work it out for ourselves, to figure out what gives our life
meaning. However, elsewhere, Beauvoir gives a more active
interpretation: “Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future,
act now, without delay,” implying that we might only get one life, so
let’s treat it as a gift and make the most of it. If having a cup of
coffee is a blasé return to the quotidian, then that’s just not good
enough. However, if one embraces the coffee as a meaningful part of
one’s existence, for example, as an affirmation that life is worth
living, then choose your espresso and leap into the day.

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus provides a more direct answer. Suicide
is ethically acceptable, but only under extreme circumstances. He uses
a famous analogy, with a house on fire, full of smoke: “Don’t believe
your situation is genuinely bad – no one can make you do that. Is there
smoke in the house? If it’s not suffocating, I will stay indoors; if it
proves too much, I’ll leave. Always remember – the door is open.” The
choice is up to you: if you truly think the situation is unbearable,
the door is open. But if you stay, you accept the responsibility of
doing whatever it takes to live a life worth living.

In book II.15 of the Discourses Epictetus is told that a friend is
starving himself to death, a common form of suicide in ancient times.
He rushes to him and offers support, but discovers that the friend is
letting himself die for no good reason at all. Tellingly, Epictetus
then says: “If your decision is justified, look, here we are at your
side and ready to help you on your way; but if your decision is
unreasonable, you ought to change it.”

And what counts as a reasonable decision? The Stoics, practical
philosophers that they are, tell us by example. Zeno, the founder of
the school, let himself die of starvation because he was too old,
fragile and dependent on others to be able to contribute any more to
society; Cato the Younger, the archenemy of Julius Caesar, committed
suicide in order not to be used as a political pawn by the tyrant; and
Seneca tells us of an unnamed slave, captured after a battle, who
decided that death was preferable to slavery.

___

"No one knows when our time is up. But precisely because we don’t know
when life is going to end, the Stoics say that we should live every
moment to the fullest, engaging our life in the here and now."

___

But there is a positive flip side to this coin: what makes a life worth
living is being useful to others, trying to make the world a better
place, our relationships with people we love, and our freedom as moral
agents. So long as we have those things, even in limited measure, we
stay. And the very fact that there is an open door is a guarantee of
freedom for the Stoics. It’s the reassuring knowledge that, if things
are really unbearable, you can walk out. As Seneca put it, liberty is
as close as your wrists.

No one knows when our time is up. But precisely because we don’t know
when life is going to end, the Stoics say that we should live every
moment to the fullest, engaging our life in the here and now. If we do
things that we don’t enjoy, or are not important, we are wasting the
only resource for which people cannot possibly pay us back: time. As
Seneca puts it: “Hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of today’s
task, and you will not need to depend so much upon tomorrow’s. While we
are postponing, life speeds by.” Marcus Aurelius, the
philosopher-emperor, agrees: “A limit of time is fixed for you, which
if you do not use for clearing away the clouds from your mind, it will
go and you will go, and it will never return.”

So the answer to Camus’ question is the one given by Epictetus: no, you
shouldn’t commit suicide so long as you are up to do what Marcus called
the job of a human being. Grab a cup of joe, and focus on appreciating
and creating meaningful relationships, projects to pursue, useful
things to contribute to others, and things to learn for yourself. So
long as that’s true, do as Anne does, and stay. If, however, the room
gets too smoky for you (and we are not talking about cigarette smoke,
which would be a problem for a lot of existentialists), then you do
have the option to walk through the door. Stoics and existentialists
agree that meaning in life does not come from the outside; it is
constructed by you as a moral agent. Therefore, the decision as to
whether to commit suicide or have a cup of coffee is also entirely
yours. So far as the two of us are concerned, we are about to head out
to the nearest java joint. Care to join us?

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email
[32][email protected]. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention
Lifeline is [33]1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support
service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can
be found at [34]www.befrienders.org.

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Steve Carnes 28 June 2018

To "anonym aenb"

I could not agree less with your statements about Massimo Pigliucci and
I find it telling that your post anonymously and offer no supporting
evidence to your claim. I have been following Massimo for a long time,
and I studied ancient philosophy in grad school, not to mention Ancient
Greek. He is a modern Stoic.

Johan Bosmans 6 January 2018

Detail to add:
« Non, je ne suis pas existentialiste. Sartre et moi nous étonnons
toujours de voir nos deux noms associés (…) Sartre est existentialiste,
et le seul livre d’idées que j’ai publié, le mythe de Sisyphe, était
dirigé contre les philosophies dites existentialistes (15 novembre
1945)
Deux semaines avant sa mort Camus écrivait à un professeur américain :
L’existentialisme chez nous aboutit à une théologie sans dieu et à une
scholastique dont il était inévitable qu’elles finissent par justifier
des régimes d’inquisition.(Essais, 1965). On ne peut qu’admirer la
persévérance de ces critiques littéraires et de ces historiens de la
pensée qui passent outre à de telles prises de position et qui,
aujourd’hui encore, taxent d’existentialiste celui qui écrivit dans le
Mythe de Sisyphe (1942) : L’existentialisme est un suicide
philosophique.
([47]http://www.guichetdusavoir.eu/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6587&view=print)

Maybe we can talk about it over a cup of coffee.

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