Suicide in Plotinus’ Philosophy on the Axis of Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy

Year 2018, Volume: 8 Issue: 1, 339 - 355, 21.07.2018

Mehmet Murat Karakaya

https://doi.org/10.18491/beytulhikme.446510

Abstract

Suicide, which is defined
as the attempt of the human being against his life using his will, has
been a subject of deep discussions of the philosophical field as an
equivalent of the search for the meaning in the existential sense beyond
just a sociological fact. In this sense, suicide has been debated in
the philosophical field from antiquity to nowadays and different
approaches to this phenomenon have been made. While Greek philosophy
opposes suicide in a holistic sense, in the Roman philosophy, positive
approaches have been taken towards suicide, particularly in Stoicism.
Plotinus, the founding philosopher of Neoplatonism who spent the last
days of his life in Rome, was not unfamiliar to the subject, and he
wrote a treatise on suicide albeit small. In this article, it will be
dealt with general approaches to the suicide in the Greek and Roman
philosophies, followed evaluations by Plotinus regarding the suicide.

Keywords

Seneca, Plotinus, suicide, killing another, soul, insanity

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